Working with templates other than Enterprise Global

[toymoto]

--NOTE--
I am reposting this with modifications after putting it in the wrong
discussion group.
--

Forgive me if this is a silly question, but I have not yet been able to start
properly researching this and am being pressed for an immediate answer:

Within the organization I am working at, IT controls the administration of
MS Project Enterprise; the department that I am in uses Enterprise for
Projects that I am managing; We are not able to add any resources ourselves,
not allowed to delete old projects, not allowed to make any changes to any of
the settings on the admin panel relating to our projects. For anything other
than simple managing of the projects we have no rights to do anything and
must go through IT to make those changes (i.e. add a resource to the
Enterprise Pool, change a label in Project Web Access, change the working
calendar etc.). A lot of the time the resource in IT who supports Project
Enterprise doesn't know how to do it and has to go to their outside
consulting support company...turnaround time for the SIMPLEST of changes
therefore takes upwards of a week.
I want to avoid this; I want us to be able to add people to projects (via
Enterprise Pool), I want us to be able to add labels, categories etc to
things in Project Web Access. Complicating some of this is the refusal to
allow us access to certain things such as the ability to nest projects within
other projects on the Enterprise Server as IT says that this will bugger up
their project plans.

Short of running an entirely separate version of Project Enterprise (which
cost and practical reasons dictate against) I am trying to look at what other
options may be; for example, I believe (and may be wrong) that you can set
up templates in Proj. Enterprise in ADDITION to the Enterprise Global
Template. If so we would then be able to base our departments projects on
the NEW 'Enterprise Global Template' so that we have certain rights within
that template to be able to do things on the server relating to our Projects,
and the ORIGINAL Enterprise Global Template (I realize that if this is
possible, they would have different names) could still be used by IT for
their Projects which are radically different than ours.

Does anyone have any experience with this, or any advice for my situation in
how to handle this from within Project Enterprise?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

toymoto --

Your IT people are taking a very "locked down" approach to managing Project
Server, which is not all bad. However, as they are currently managing the
system, they have created an environment that is clumsy at best and futile
at its worst.

To set the permissions that you seek, your IT people would need to add you
to the Administrators group in Project Web Access. This would allow you to
add resources to the Enterprise Resource Pool, create custom enterprise
fields and outline codes in the Enterprise Global file, and create custom
Views in both Microsoft Project Professional and PWA, for example.

Since I am a consultant and trainer professionally, I believe your company
would be WAY AHEAD FINANCIALLY if they would have one or two people from
your part of the organization, along with one or two IT people, to go
through a formal Project Server administrators class. Believe me, there are
many Project Server administrators "out there" who are non-IT people who
come into that role from the project management side of the company, so you
would not be alone as a non-IT person in that role. After successfully
completing the class, I would recommend that your IT people add you and the
other non-IT Project Server administrator to the Administrators group in
PWA. This will allow you to administer Project Server for your
organization, and would only require the involvement of IT when you need
specific IT skills, such as examining application Event logs or creating a
query in the SQL Server database, for example.

If you are interested in training for Project Server administrators, click
either of the two links in my signature block. We offer virtual classes
over the Internet, on-site classes at your company, or open enrollment
classes at our HQ in New York City. Let us know if we can help.

 

[toymoto]

Dale,

Thanks for the reply and I will definately take your training suggestion
under consideration. That being said, what I am trying to lock down right
now is whether my understanding is correct that a secondary 'enterprise
global' template can be created, let's call it 'enterprise global2', that
only our projects would use, that we would control independant of IT's
control over the actual and original 'enterprise global' template.

Thanks,

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

toymoto --

No, there is no secondard Enterprise Global template with its own
permissions. If you want your own Project Server instance, then you would
need your IT people to create one for you, and then you could take control
over it. Or you could become Project Server administrators over the present
Project Server instance. Given your current situation, I would be surprised
is your IT people approve either of these ideas!

 

[toymoto]

And, I assume then that a separate Project Server instance requires a
complete new license of the software, new server to run on etc?

Cheers,

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

toymoto --

I believe the answers are no and no. Hope this helps.