Entering time on Friday's of each week for time throughout the wee

[Colleen]

I am very new to MSProject and MSProject Server and I am working with a test
project before I go live in a month. This is a new job for me that I have
come into where the person previous to me set up instructions for users (team
members) on how to enter their time. The way they have users entering their
time is on a once a week basis to make it easier for them. In these
instructions it tells them to enter their time for the entire week on the
Friday columns of that week. Even though with the settings they have all
days of the week are available (unshaded) for entry. I tested this out with
my test project where I assigned 8 hours in one week on each day of the week
(M-F) for 5 different tasks and in each task row I entered the 8 hours in the
Friday column of each row. Now, I noticed that once I saved this and updated
it to the project plan (I am an administrator) it changes the project dates
for each task to say that each task started and finished on that Friday, in
other words it wiped out the original dates for each task and replaced it
with Friday's date since that is when I entered the time. So, this totally
adjusted the projects dates overall now. I wouldn't think we would want to
wipe out all original project dates for the dates that time was entered?
And, I tried entering that same time but in the proper columns for each day,
instead of entering it into the Friday columns, and the project dates stayed
the same which is correct, but this is not how they instruct the users to
enter their time so I need to figure out how to make this work. How can I
get the users to be able to enter their time in the Friday columns of each
week without totally changing all of the project dates for each task?

FYI, currently our tracking settings are:

1. Hours of work done per day or per week: Resources report the hours worked
on each task during each time period
2. Allow project managers to change the default method for reporting
progress if a different method is appropriate for a specific project.
3. Non Managed Periods - Allow Project and Project Web Access users to
update actuals.
4. Resources should report their hours worked every day

Am I missing something? I can’t really adjust much as far as the way things
are entered, since I have to conform to the way they have always done it in
the past. So, I’m trying to take this step by step to test out my own
project and figure out their ways. Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Colleen:

I would classify your predecessor's instructions and use of the product are
very misguided. They show almost a complete misunderstanding of how tracking
works with Project Server. If you're going to hours by day entry, then use
it that way. If you want to use weekly buckets, then set your tracking
settings to reflect that. When using hours by day, the system detects actual
start and actual finish based on the first day of time entered and the last
day of time entered to completion respectively. This is the most intuitive
tracking setting in Project Server. Using larger buckets, the system assumes
work starts and ends as planned, which may not be accurate enough for your
purposes.

So, you're not missing a thing, but apparently your predecessor was.<g>
You're seeing the normal behavior of the system when it's being misused. I
suggest a training investment for yourself, and then a rethink on the system
settings.