Using Master Projects

[lodi]

I read through all the postings on using master projects and learnd that it's
not so easy and might case some trouble. Anyway, as a newbe in defining
master projects I'd like to ask whether it is possible to save the
sub-projects to the server without publishing and to publish only the master
projects. Would this work or will the sub-proojects automatically published
together witr the master? My idea was to using master project as some kind of
release indicator. Each project which is part of a masterproject can be
considered as released while the single sub-projects remain invisible to the
resources.

Thanks in advance, lodi

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

lodi --

You can save both the subprojects and the master project in the Project
Server database. You can publish the subprojects. You should not publish
the master project. Hope this helps.

 

[Eleanor]

More clarification please . . .

I was under the impression that one should publish the sub project only to
the Project Server, then save the master to a local machine to "roll up" when
necessary. Therefore, I do not understand what you mean when you say "save"
the Master to Project Server, but do not "publish". It may just be
termonlogy on my part. I also heard that there is an issue if you publish
the Master, i.e., that it may cause duplicate resources. Any truth to this?

Thank you
-Eleanor

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Eleanor --

You can save the master project anywhere you wish. You can certainly save
it as an .mpp file, if you wish. You can even save it to the Project Server
database as long as your Project Server administrator enables the permission
to save projects to the Project Server database.

Publishing master projects was problematic in Project Server 2002, as it
resulted in duplicate task assignments for everyone assigned to tasks in the
subprojects. There is still some debate as to whether this problem was
really fixed in Project Server 2003. As a result, I recommend that you
never publish a master project...period. Hope this helps.

 

[John Bridgman]

Save and Publish are actually two different operations. When you use MS
Project Pro to edit a project on the server and save the results you are just
"saving" -- "publishing" is actually a separate operation.

What makes this confusing is that there is an "automatically publish when
you save" option which is normally turned on and probably explains why you
don't see the two as different actions; I don't remember the details unless
the PC is in front of me

 

[lodi]

Eleanor,
The initial problem which was the reason for my question is that we have
project plans reflecting different stages of a project. Sometimes one of the
phases is already running whilest another phase is not released yet. For
budgeting reasons we need to establish at least a preliminary planning for
the phases not yet released so that we get an estimate on when things could
happen and how it fits with our overall ressource situation. Therefore I
thought that using sub-projects would be an option as the plan for some futur
projekt phases could be set up and saved to the enterprise what would allow
us to evaluate the ressource situation but at the same time avoiding to
confuse resources with a plan which is not approved by e.g. the management. I
thought that it would be possible to establish a system where the
Master-Projects represent the currently released activities whereas the
"future planning" remains invisible as long as it isn't officially released.
After getting this release the plan could be made "offical" by integration
into the master.
In the meantime I found out that despite all other problems would't work
because when displaying Master Projekts in the "Projects" section in PWA only
the summary tasks of the incorporated sub-projects are displayed what dosn't
help me at all.

Thanks,
Lodi