Distinguing Costs from Local vs Enterprise Resources

D

Doug Schurman

I'm trying to create a calulation field that only adds costs that come from
enterprise fields so I can exlude local resource costs. When in the
calulation dialog I can't seem to find a field to use in a conditional
statement for this purpose. Anyone have a way to accomplish this?

Thanks
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Doug --

Where do you want to display this information? In the Microsoft Project
plan? If so, where and what View? In PWA? If so, where and what View?
Let us know.
 
D

Doug Schurman

Hi Dale,

I'm trying to create a custom field that either sums the local resource
costs or sums the global resource costs. Then I can use this in Project Pro,
PWA and in the cube for calculation. However I can't figure out what to write
in the formula cell for the custom field to get this to calcualte on a task
level to then roll up to a project level. I would like it work for tasks that
have both local and global resource assigned at the same time.
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Doug --

If you are trying to create a custom enterprise Task field for this purpose,
it can't be done. Here's a workaround I would use, although it is a bit
cumbersome:

1. In your Enterprise Resource Pool, copy the Standard Rate from Cost Rate
Table A to Cost Rate Table B for each resource (that is the cumbersome
part).
2. For each local resource in your project, make sure that the Standard
Rate for Cost Rate Table A is the regular rate you want to use, and that the
Cost Rate Table B Standard Rate is set to $0.00.
3. In your project, apply the Task Usage view.
4. Right-click on the column header of the first column to the right of the
Task Name column and select Insert Column from the shortcut menu.
5. Select the Cost Rate Table field and click the OK button.

Notice that the Cost Rate Table for every assignment is Cost Rate Table A.

6. Click Edit - Replace.
7. Enter the following information in the Replace dialog:

Find What: A
Replace With: B
Look in Field: Cost Rate Table
Search: Down
Test: Equals

8. Click the Replace All button to change the Cost Rate Table A values to
Cost Rate Table B.
9. Apply any task or resource Cost value.

This action recalculates the Cost of your project based only on the cost
rates for enterprise resources and excludes the costs of local resources.
Re-run steps 6-8 again to replact Cost Rate Table B with Cost Rate Table A.
Hope this helps.
 
D

Doug Schurman

Hi Dale,

Thanks for reply and comming up with an alternate solution. In my case I'm
not sure that will accomplish what we need. We have about 100 projeects going
on at any one time run by 10 different project managers. I need a way to
break out the costs between local and global resources across all projects.

The other option I though of was using another custom outline code field. We
adding new tasks I could require each person to select from two options,
local or global. This would mean that we could not mix local and global
resources on a task if we wanted to be able to calculate these seperately
plus there could be a data accuracy issue for people that are always setting
the field correclt. Can you think of any other way considering I need to use
it accross many projects with many managers where the poroject are changing
all the time?

Thanks
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Doug --

My solution would have worked for a single project, but not for your
portfolio of 100 projects. My recommendation would be to create a custom
Portfolio Analyzer view for this purpose. First of all, before you build
the custom Portfolio Analyzer view, make sure that your PM's have set a
Standard Rate for each local resource in every one of their projects, and
make sure they have published the latest schedule changes to each project.
The nex time your OLAP cube rebuilds, you should be able to see current cost
information for local resources and enterprise resources by creating the
following Portfolio Analyzer view:

Name: Costs by Resource Type
Row Fields: Projects
Column Fields: Resource Status
Total Fields: Cost

Click the pick list button on the Resource Status dimension and select only
Enterprise Actual and Local Resources from the list. Be sure to add the
View to at least one Category. When applied, this custom View shows you the
breakdown of resource costs by project. The first Cost column shows you the
cost by project for only enterprise resources, while the second column shows
you the costs for Local Resources only. The Grand Total column on the right
shows you the total resource cost for each project. Hope this helps.
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Doug --

Excellent! You are more than welcome for the help, my friend. :)
 
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