Actual work of administrative tasks in TimeSheet view

[Wil]

In a timesheet view it seems that actual work of "tasks" from an
adminstrative project is not shown in the sheet column Actual Work but in
Remaining Work. In the same view the % work complete is 0. The same timesheet
view shows the values of tasks in "normal" projects in the right columns.
I checked with project professional and an olap cube. Both show actuals in
administrative projects the way they should.
Has anyone seen this phenomenon and an idea of the cause?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Wil --

You are seeing some of the strange behavior of administrative projects.
This is one of the many reasons we do not recommend using administrative
projects if at all possible. Therefore, if you are going to use them,
you'll simply have to live with the weirdness. Hope this helps.

 

[Simon Dullingham]

Dale,

Any news as to whether this is one of the things that will be fixed in
Project 12? The administrative project feature in PS 2003 is probably the
worst feature of the system. There are more problems than I even care to
list.

Your approach of recommending them not to be used is OK, but how should we
track these types of activities (holidays, vacation, jury duty, etc). We
also have overhead projects that we book to for things like IT Management,
etc. Should we set these up as "projects" and just let them run?

I would like to see the admin project hooked into resource calenders
directly so this is managed properly. At the moment, the resource manager
has to manually put in vacation time time (whcih is the approach you and
Gary recommended). Its a tedious process that should be automated.

Also, the fact these always show any time booked to them as "remaining work"
is just plane daft. I would have thought Microsoft could have been
embarrassed into fixing this in a service pack.

Regards,
Simon

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Simon --

Thank you for your excellent questions and comments! To answer your
questions:

1. For information about features in Project 12, refer to the following
link to see Dieter's blog about the development of Project 12:

http://blogs.msdn.com/dieterz/

2. Given the problems and limitations with using the default administrative
project feature, we recommend that you use regular projects that function
like administrative project to track non-project work and project-related
work like project management tasks, meetings, etc. You can also use regular
projects to capture past unplanned nonworking time such as sick leave. We
recommend that you enter planned nonworking time on each resources's
personal calendar in the Enterprise Resource Pool.

3. Yes, adding nonworking time to each resource's calendar is tedious and
time consuming, and I agree that nonworking time entered in an
administrative project should go to the calendar automatically. No argument
from me on that one.

Hope this helps.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Simon:

I'll go as far as to say that the need for Amin projects goes away in P12. I
wish I could tell you why, but I can't until either Dieter spills the beans,
or the Project Conference happens in January.