Cleaning up the databases

[BudOlly]

Hello all you Project Gurus out there... Thank your for taking the time to
read my post, this community is always so helpful!...

I just have a question about manually cleaning up rogue database entries.
What I mean by 'rogue' may be slightly off from the traditional definition...
I've noticed if a user creates a timesheet line and deletes it, data analysis
never loses that timesheet line. DA does not report the line directly, but
if you use the checkboxes from the "Task" field's drop-down list, all the
previously deleted task names still show up. Since we are using these
check-boxes as a way to differentiate 'unverified' tasks, it would be a lot
less 'tangled' if we could do away with any task names that our users have
deleted, and renamed for instance.

I have found the entries in a table called 'dbo.MSP_TimesheetTask' in PWAs
reporting database, and am experimenting with simply deleting the records
from that table. I realize this is considered bad practice, and to be honest
I don't know if those entries are tied to any other tables in the DB.

So, if there is a better way to handle this, or if I would be better off
leaving those entries alone, I am all ears for advice!

 

[Martin]

As far as I know the informaiton you are seeing is coming from the
MSP_TimesheetProject table which maintains the associations even if the items
are deleted, this is because all timesheet information is kept as a data
warehouse type record in the database.

I was going to suggest that you try to do a Reporting Database Refresh (by
doing admin backup / restore of custom fields), but from my experience this
refreshes everything except for Timesheet and WSS data, so that would
actually break your reports entirely!

Have you tried accessing via the different cubes? Each of the Timesheet
cubes stores slightly different information (MSP_Project_Timesheet vs
Timesheet) and I have previously found issues similar to this can be worked
around by looking at the different data?


Hope that helps!

Martin Laukkanen

 

[WillemTH]

In the spirit of this question, I ask a second question: Does this also apply
to Projects? That they will never leave the Data Analaysis Project List?
I have a few projects that have been deleted long ago, but they still can be
selected in the Project List in Data Analysis.

And yes, I have deleted them A. in Server Settings by Deleting Enterprise
Objects(out of all databases and also the site was deleted), B. They don't
show anywhere else, not in MS Project list. So why are these projects still
showing in Data Analysis and what can I do to to keep them out of my DA
reports?

Thanks goes out to readers and even betters to people who leave suggestions!

Willem