Category concerns

[Jan M.]

Hi

My job is to support every project managers in our company (about 20 right
now). It is not in our plans that every PM be trained to use MS Project. As a
project support officer, I have to create every schedule and I'm the only
person authorized to save and publish to the server. I have to update all
schedules too.

I want PMs to see only their projects in the project center. My problem is
that I cannot use the option "Allow users in this category to view all
projects they manage" in the "My Projects" category( because MS Project
considers me as the project manager of all projects).

The only solution I came up with was to create a new category for every PM
including only their projects ("My Projects-PM1", "My Projects-PM2"...).

Can anybody think of a solution that would create less maintenance?

P.S. I hope there would be a way to designate another person than the
"publisher" of the plan as the project manager (this would be useful for
reminders too). There are a lot of project officers/controllers/assistants
these days. That' a fact Microsoft should consider.

Thanks.

Jan M.

 

[TGG]

Actually there is a relatively painless way to do this, especially since you
are keeping the PMs out of the plans.

In Project, there are actually two owners. The Project owner and the Task
owner which are two distinct entities. In most cases, these are the same
person since most projects are managed by one person. This feature allows
you to have multiple project managers managing a single plan.

What you can do is set the PM to be the Project owner via PWA and you set
yourself up as the Task owner.

If you are creating the project plan, this is really easy to do. When you
create the plan, publish the plan. This will set the task owner to the value
set for the project owner. Then change the project owner to the desired PM.

If they created the plan, you will have to go into Project Pro, do a
republish assignments for all tasks and check off the box that says become
manager for this task. You don't want to change the Project owner in this
case, since you want them to still access the plan.

Either way, they get access to the plan using the category settings, you get
all of the updates to process. And if you make any changes to the plan, any
new tasks will retain you as the task owner for receiving updates.

Hope this helps.
TGG
blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/evildoctorporkchop

 

[Jan M.]

Thanks a lot TGG!
I didn't know the difference between project owner and task owner.

One more question:

I created brand new groups instead of modifying Microsoft default groups,
which means that there are no users in the default "Project managers" group.

Is there a way to add PM's names in the list of available owners in PWA?

What do you think about not using and modifying default groups? Am I too
cautious?

Thanks

Jan M.

 

[Jan M.]

Thanks TGG! I didn't know the difference between project owner and task owner.

One more question:

I created brand new groups instead of modifying Microsoft default groups,
which means that there are no users in the "Project managers" group.

Is there a way to add PM's names in the owner list in PWA?

Do you think about not using default groups and creating new ones instead?

 

[TGG]

Jan,

No, I don't think you are being overly cautious. The default groups and
categories tend to be overlaid when you upgrade versions as we found out.
Creating your own tends to give you more control in upgrades.

I would make the permissions of the new group the same as the default
project manager group. I know one of those permissions is what Project keys
on to put them in the owner list. I knew it when we went from 2002 to 2003,
but it's been awhile.

I would look at the security config guide on the Microsoft site where they
give you a detailed description of every permission. Unfortunately, it
doesn't have a big flashing arrow over it to point this out. It's buried in
the text. I'll see if I can find it.

TGG
blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/evildoctorporkchop

 

[Jan M.]

Thanks for the tip.

I'll do some research too and I'll let you know if I find something.

Jan M.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

TGG and Jan --

The permission that displays project managers on the Owner pick list in PWA
is the New Project permission. Hope this helps.

 

[TGG]

Thank you Dale! I found it right about the time you posted.

I was thinking she could give the PMs New Project permission, but take away
their Save Project permission. That way, the PMs can take ownership and see
the plans, but they can't muck with the contents since Jan is managing the
updates.

TGG
blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/evildoctorporkchop

 

[Jan M.]

Thank you guys!

Jan M.

Thank you Dale! I found it right about the time you posted.

I was thinking she could give the PMs New Project permission, but take away
their Save Project permission. That way, the PMs can take ownership and see
the plans, but they can't muck with the contents since Jan is managing the
updates.

TGG
blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/evildoctorporkchop