Who becomes a manager of a task and when?

[Conrad Santiago]

I have a few questions on task ownership:

1. If Bob is the Owner of the project and Jim opens up the project and adds
a task, assigning it to Mary, then publishes the assignment, who is the
manager of the task?
2. If Jim is the manager of a task, then later Bob opens up the project and
changes the assignment to Sally, then publishes the assignment change, who
then is the manager of the task?
3. What if Jim creates the task, then assigns it to a generic resource
instead of a specific resource. Will this make a difference on who ends up
as manager of the task?

The reason I ask these questions is that we are using the Updates feature in
PWA and I want to understand what would cause Updates to go to someone other
than the Owner of the project.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Conrad --

Excellent questions! Here's how it works:

1. When Jim opens Bob's project, adds a task and assigns a resource to it,
and then publishes New and Changed Assignments, Project Server sets Bob as
the Manager of only that task (and none of the other tasks). Out of
curiosity, if the project belongs to Bob, why is Jim taking this action in
the first place?

2. If Bob opens the project and changes an assignment on a task for which
Jim is the Manager, and then publishes the assignment using Collaborate -
Publish - New and Changed Assignments, Jim is still the manager. Bob would
need to republish the Assignment using Collaborate - Publish - Republish
Assignments, select the "Become the manager for these assignments" option,
and then click OK to become the new Manager.

3. If you assign a Generic resource to a task, then it doesn't matter since
Generic resources do not have a timesheet in PWA.

Hope this helps.

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hi Dale,

I'm not sure, but isn't there a typo in your first example? I'm afraid that
Bob stealthily took the place of Jim in the sentence "Project Server sets
Bob as the Manager of only that task".
Could you confirm that suspicion?
Sincerely

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Gerard --

You are SO SMART, my friend! Yes, there is a huge typo in the answer to the
first question. The answer should read:

1. When Jim opens Bob's project, adds a task and assigns a resource to it,
and then publishes New and Changed Assignments, Project Server sets JIM as
the Manager of only that task (and none of the other tasks). Out of
curiosity, if the project belongs to Bob, why is Jim taking this action in
the first place?

Thanks for noting my mistake. Sorry, Conrad, if I caused you any confusion!

 

[Conrad Santiago]

Thanks for catching that and clearing it up, guys.

In our case, we have project management teams including a project director
and a project manager, both of whom could add tasks to a project. However,
as I understand it Updates can only go to one manager and not both of them.
We want all the updates in a project to be handled by one of the managers,
the Owner of the project.

On top of that, we use a "Master Scheduler" (who just happens to be me :| ).
I handle the balancing of the workload, which may include changing
assignments, sometimes from a generic resource to a specific resource.
Sometimes a member of the project management team will ask me to add tasks
to their project plans, usually when I have their projects open in a
consolidated file. I run a macro later in the evening, from my login, that
publishes All Information on the active projects.

Based on your answers to my questions, if Jim is the manager of the task,
then I change the assignment, the task will still belong to Jim, as long as
I don't Republish Assignments with "Become the manager for these
assignments" checked. Correct?

Regarding adding a task with a generic assignment, if I do that in a project
"owned" by Jim, then later I change the assignment from a generic resource
to a specific resource, then Publish All Information, will I become the
manager of the task?

Thanks for the great answers. They are helpful and appreciated.
--Conrad Santiago

 

[Paul Conroy]

Of course in PS2007, each task has an assignment owner which fulfills this
role.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Conrad --

To answer your last two questions, the answer is "Yes" to each of them.
Hope this helps.

 

[hbrown]

You might try using the "Project Manager" field in an Assignment view.

I have not fully validated it the usefulness of the field yet, but so far it
is showing different managers for tasks I have assigned and the project
manager has assigned.

Admin->Manage Views->View Name=Assignment
Create a new view or open a current assignment view.
Move "Project Manager" from the Available Fields to Displayed Fields

Save then go to the Resource Center and select View Resource Assignments on
the left menu bar, select a user then chose the view you added Project
manager to.