Enterprise Custom Field does not show in Timesheet

[Deshwal - Magus India]

Hi ... my product is in maintenance phase .. i get change request that i
categorize using Call no. ..(Custom Enteprise Task Text Field) ... the wbs in
most cases is same .. analysis, coding, testing, rework and deployment ....
now since the task have same name/description .. the differentiation is Call
no ..

100001 Coding
100001 Testing

100002 Coding
100002 Testing

I want to include the call no. field in the resource timesheets .... can
anyone help ..

 

[Ben Howard]

You can't, the timesheet shows asssignment level data, not task level data
which is where you are storing your call no.

 

[Pawel]

Well, I _can_ do that with Task-level Enterprise Custom Fields in my OPS2007.

That's how:
1. Go to "Server Settings" -> "Look and Feel / Manage Views" and click in
"My Timesheet" at the very end of the list.
2. There should be a section "Table and Fields" with a list of available
ECFs. I have a number of task-level ECFs and some resource-level ECFs.
3. Click "Add" on the one you are interested in and save view.
4. Voila!

Note: the downside is that I know of no way to have the field column at the
_begining) of the timesheet (e.g. right after the task name). Timesheet view
is displayed so, that the ECFs are always in the LAST columns.... If your
timesheet periods are short (like 1 week in my case), then this is not a big
problem (they are normally still visible), but if you use monthly periods...
Then the usability of such columns all the way to the right may be
compromised.

Cheers,

Pawel

 

[Deshwal - Magus India]

Pawel - Thank you for responding to my question.

I followed the steps you have mentioned in the note - the call ID column
does appear in the timesheet - the problem is it does not show any data?

Thank you once again for your time.

 

[Pawel]

You are right, unfortunately.
Indeed, the columns show nothing (unless selected/filled by the user, which
is opposite to what you need), even if I fill the ECFs on an _assignment_
level (which we do by default, as all our ECFs have the "roll-down to
assignments" flag switched on).
It seems that the way Microsoft meant that functionality to be used, is not
quite compatible with what you expected...

I am sorry for giving you false hope... I tested that a long time ago and
was convinced that it works differently.
Having said that - in my organization we decided against showing the ECFs in
timesheets because we found that showing the important codes on the opposite
side of the sheet than the task name is confusing for the users anyway.
Instead, we decided to add the "codes" to the task names (practically
duplicating the values already in ECFs, which we use for reporting and
analysis via cubes). Even if such solution seems silly, we found it easiest
to implement and to use given the current implementation of the OPS
timesheet. BTW, we were thinking about writing a short macro for MS Project
to do that automatically... but even that was not worth the effort - editing
was simple enough

I wish you best luck in your quest for some feasible solution to your problem!

Pawel