external resources in project server environment

L

lynne baker

Hi all
we are running Project server 2002 and PWA

We have a number of projects where we use external resources.
I would like to add these resources to my plans which I publish onto
the server.
We use windows authentication, I believe we had to change to this when
we added the issue log functionality - prior to this we could use
server authentication too.

Ideally we would like to see the external resource name on the
published plan, and if they could be emailed their tasks so much the
better.

When I tried to do this, I got a project server spooler message
telling me that only windows user accounts are allowed.

Please can someone tell me the best way to do this - and if it can't
be done how we can best get round it: we have to have a way of
assigning tasks to external resources - we surely can't be the only
people to do that!
 
D

Dale Howard

Lynne --

You have a couple of options, given your current situation:

1. If you want your external resources to report progress to their project
manager using using your company's Project Web Access site, then your
company's Project Server administrator would need to make a change to your
Project Server settings. He/she set the authentication mode for Project
Server to Mixed. This would allow your external resources to have user
accounts in your system with Project Server authentication. These external
resources would not have access to either the Documents or Issues features,
however. Doing so would allow you to publish the assignments for your
external resources and you would not get the error message you are seeing
when you publish.

2. If you do not need your external resources to report progress to their
PM through PWA, then you will need to change a setting for each external
resource in each project plan. To do this, open the first plan and apply
the Resource Sheet view. Double-click the name of the first external
resource. Set the Workgroup value for this resource to None and click OK.
To simplify this process, you can temporarily insert the Workgroup field in
your Resource Sheet view, as each external resource listed in each project
would need to have their Workgroup value set to None.

Those are a couple options I can think of, but perhaps the others will have
ideas for you. Hope this helps.
 
L

lynne baker

Many thanks Dale - that worked just fine, except for one thing - now
we have the external email addresses set up they seem not to work!
I created a dummy project, with dummy resources and an external email
account.
I created 2 tasks, one assigned to an internal resource and one to an
external one. The internal one received an email with no problem, but
the external one got diddly squat.
Any ideas on where to check what it is I have done wrong?
Many thanks
lynne
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]

Lynne:

If you've got the email information accurately added to the users records,
and you're using the SMTP service on Project Server, I'd ask your network
folks what might be stopping the SMTP traffic from leaving your network. It
may be that you'll need to use your company's mail server, rather than the
built-in SMTP service in IIS.
 
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