Workarounds for changing project owners

[th.maier]

As already mentioned in some posts here, for users to appear in the change
owner drop down menu in PWA (2007, SP1) they need to have the save project
privilige for the my organization category.

This workaround also works for me, but by doing so project managers can also
save projects that they should only be able to access read only. For instance
if they are participating as task owner, which is kind of a problem.

Can anyone confirm that and/or tell me how to fix this?

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

If you don't mind a little manual gate structure, you could create a "change
owners" category that selects only for specific projects. Then assign the
project managers group to the category and set the category permission to
enable Save Project. With this construct, the administrator must manually
move the project to the change owners category long enough for the new PM to
take it over, and then remove it from the category. At most times, the
category would contain no projects.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[th.maier]

Thanks for the hint. This should work fine for me.
Is this going to be fixed in some future release?

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

I don't think that anyone considers it a bug. In any event it is a design
issue, and I have no idea whether or not the design will change in future
versions. It seems like it should be a bit easier, but...

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[Jonathan Sofer]

Gary,

I'm pretty sure that there is a bug here. The bug is that the "Save Project
to Project Server" category permission which also controls the Owner
dropdown list does not work dynamically with some of the available category
rules under "Projects", specifically I am referring to the rule "The User is
on that project's Project Team".

In theory the out-of-the box permissions should allow for a PM in the
"Project Managers" group to be available from the owner dropdown list on
projects where they are on the project team. I verified that "My Projects"
category has "The User is on that project's Project Team" enabled and has
"Save Project to Project Server" category permission enabled against the
"Project Managers" security group. But this did not work as expected.

It now only seems to work if you open up the security to all projects by
adding the "Save Project to Project Server" category permission for the
"Project Managers" group under "My Organization". This does work as
expected.

I found this hard to explain so I hope this made some sense.

Jonathan

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Jonathan:

A good point, you're probably right, but I've never seen these work
consistently since 2002. I guess I've been conditioned to "lowered
expectations!"

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com

 

[Jonathan Sofer]

I agree with you about being conditioned for "lowered expectations"

I do feel like the dynamic project category rules worked better in MSPS
2003.

Jonathan

 

[Chak]

Jonathan and Gary,

YES, I agree. If we have custom security, It's now getting difficult
to manage "Change Owner" functionality on 2007 projects. The real
issue on custom security PWA model is, we can't grant the "Save
Project to Project Server" permissions under My Organization
category.

It was so nicely managed in MS Project 2003. (offcourse not from out
of box, but with some customization)

If you guys found any better work around, please let us know.

Thanks
Chak
http://www.epmcentral.com