Are My Tasks always My Tasks?

J

Jonathan H

Hello,

A happy New Year to you all!

One of the fields taking up space in the My Assignments view under the My
Tasks menu item is 'Resource Name'. Is there ever a situation where this
Resource Name won't be the user who is logged into the PWA? If not, then can
anyone think why it might be a bad idea to remove this field from the view?

Thanks,
Jonathan
 
M

MP

I can imagine 2 situations where that field can be useful:

1) Your being the assignment owner (responsible for the update) of a task,
but not the person responsible for actually doing it.
2) You can share a task with someone else I probably the field will show
both resources.

Of course, those situations (and others that may exist) can be no useful to
your company.
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Jonathan H --

Following are the scenarios for tasks appearing on your My Tasks page:

1. You are are assigned to a task in a published Microsoft Project plan.
Your name will appear in the Resource Name column.

2. You are part of a group of resources designated as a Team resource, and
the resource is assigned to a task in a published project. The name of the
Team resource will appear in the Resource Name column.

3. You are designated as the Default Assignment Owner for another resource
in PWA, or are designated as the Assignment Owner for a task in a published
project. This means that you are responsible for entering actuals on behalf
of the other resource. Your name appears in the Resource Name column.

4. You are the PM of a project in which you assigned a Generic enterprise
resource. When you publish the project, the tasks assigned to the Generic
resource will appear on your My Tasks page and the Resource Name column will
contain the name of the Generic resource.

In nearly every situation, I personally feel that the Resource Name column
is a waste of valuable screen space, and for most organizations, the Health
field is a waste of screen space as well. I think it is better to remove
these columns and to replace them with columns that are more helpful. For
example, if you use the % Work Complete method of tracking, you can make it
"date sensitive" by adding the Actual Start and Actual Finish fields. Hope
thie helps.
 
J

Jonathan H

Cheers Dale - that's some good information there. I agree though, I've
already got rid of the Health field and will do the same with the Resource
Name field. I've got the 'Show hours per day' checkbox checked in order to
give something resembling a timesheet, so screen-space is certainly at a
premium.

Thanks,

Jonathan
 
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