Building OLAP Cube using Tasks within an administrative project

I

Imad Jomaa

Can I build an OLAP cube using the tasks of a single
project. This is an Administrative project and the
management wants to know the time (hours or days) spent on
the tasks within it.
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)

IMAD:

You can restrict a view of the OLAP cube to only one project by dropping the
Projects dimension into the filter area and deselecting all projects except
the one you want to look at.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

-
 
I

Imad Jomaa

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your reply, I have tried your your suggestion
by creating a new Portfolio View with only one project, in
the Filter area i dropped the project, and in the Category
area i dropped the resources, in the data area placed one
of the totals (work). The chart / table will show the work
done by each resource for the whole project, not for a
specific task. I am experimenting this solution using the
sample database shipped with the MS Project Server 2003.

I would like to share this small tip with you (may be you
know it already know it).

While creating Administrative projects don't add the names
of the resources to the tasks, just build the team using
their names. As needed and just for that particular
project, they would assign them selfs to only the task
they would be working on. This way the task list of the
resource will not be filled with tasks that he/she doesn't
work on (especially if the administrative project contains
a lot of Operational activities).

Imad Jomaa - PMP
 
I

Imad Jomaa

Hi,

The Administrative project covers the staff of seven
sections under one department. The department manager
published this project. I was thinking of making this data
availabe to the seven section managers, so each of them
can monitor the performance of his team.

Imad Jomaa - PMP
 
J

John M.

Imad -

By design, OLAP cubes are not intended for reporting at individual task
levels. They are designed to be used for consolidated reporting. The
requirements that you are looking to meet can be easily met in Project Pro.
The RBS information can be used to group the data for each of your sections
(or another code, based on your implementation).

I hesitate to pass this along for your case, but if you have your heart set
on getting this into the Portfolio Analyzer, you can follow the information
below:

There is a common way to leverage the out-of-the-box cube with a macro that
you add to the global template. This is normally used for consolidating task
information within and across projects (such as phase of project). It would
require that you create a task outline code where you categorize the tasks
(in this case each of the admin tasks would have a unique task outline code
value assigned). Please reference the discussion thread related to the
article (url below) as it contains updated VBA code for the macro. We
implemented the macro, but we trigger it on the Project_BeforeSave event
instead of the Project_BeforeClose one. We also use the following option on
the Tools -- Options -- Collaborate menu: Publish New and Changed
Assignments...when: Start, Finish, % Complete or Outline changes. This way
each assignment isn't flagged as needing to be published upon every save (as
the macro updates the assignment resource outline code value). The project
manager of the plan would also need to ensure their macro security level
allows macros to be enabled.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6315-1051489.html

Hope this helps.

John
 
I

Imad Jomaa

Hi,

Thanks for your feed back, I shall try the first option
(using the reporting within MSP) for few weeks, hoping
that the section managers will be satisfied, other wise I
would have to take the VBA route.

Thanks again and wish you all the best.

Imad Jomaa - PMP
 
O

Oliver

Hi John

i´ve implemented this macro as it is described in the article. First it
seems to work succsessfully but i´ve noticed the following problem:

I used Enterprise Outline Code 1 and Enterprise Resource Outline Code 1 for
task location. I also applied the fix in the comments. The Assignment task
location was exposed to the OLAP successfully. However, it grouped all the
work and resource availability into "No Value" and not break out by task
location. As a result, none of the selected task location has any values if
the no value is not selected.

Do you have the same problem or have i done somthing wrong?

Thanks for your help!
 
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