Inactive Resource w/Remaining Work

[Darrell]

Is there a fix for the "This project has inactive resources with remaining
work" issue? I was unable to find a discussion on this topic that included a
solution for 2007.

I am dealing with resources that came over during the migration from 2003 to
2007. I have tried to reactivate the accounts and zero all remaining work in
all schedules, plus toggling the "Publish" field to "No" after publishing the
zero remaining work to try to remove the assignment all together. No success.

Any help greatly appreciated.
Darrell

 

[Jonathan Sofer [MVP]]

What is the problem exactly? The message you are getting is valid. All you
should have to do is open up the schedule and zero out remaining work on all
inactive resources. This should then prevent the message from popping up
the next time you open the schedule. Are the zeroed hours not sticking in
the plan or are you getting the message even though the remaining work shows
as zero for the inactive resource?

 

[Sander]

This is something I have seen before and I think it has to do with the end
date that the inactive resource has and some actuals that are reported after
this date. So if all remaining work is set to zero (like jonathan suggested),
could you check if the latest available date from the resource is before or
after the last actuals in the project plan?

will be watching this trhead.

 

[Chak]

Hi Darrell,

Adding to the Jonathan's step, please update the resource availability
for that resource in enterprise resource pool.

Steps:

Open Enterprise Resource Pool
Double click on resource name to set the Resource Availability
information. You will see the Resource Availability window. (For
example, if you are making the resource as Inactive on July 24th,
2008, you have to set the availability for this resource as 0% for all
the future days stating from July 24th, 2008.)

Available from : 7/24/2008
Available To: NA
Units: 0 %


Thanks
Chak
http://www.epmcentral.com

 

[Darrell]

Jonathan,

The problem is that when I open a schedule I receive the list of inactive
resources with remaining work that have no remaining work. If I pick any one
the resources, I can go to the resource usage view and use the combination
view to identify all of the enterprise schedules where the resource has
remaining work. I have one resource listed on many schedules with remaining
work. The resource usage view even lists the amount of remaining work in each
project if you change the form view to "work". Now I can open those
schedules; filter by the resource’s name, insert the remaining work field,
and the schedules show NO remaining work for the resource on any of the tasks
in any of the schedules where the previous resource usage view listed the
remaining work.

In one case, the resource usage view lists a resource in a project with
15hrs of remaining work and when I open that schedule there is only one task
assigned to the resource and it is for 15hrs of work. The remaining work
field shows NO remaining work for the task… it shows ZERO work remaining the
task is done done.

Therefore, I now have one schedule’s Resource Usage view saying there is
remaining work on these projects yet when I open those projects those
schedules say there is NO remaining work. I have tried to resolve this by
re-activating the resource and again verifying there is NO remaining work in
each of the schedules and re-publishing the schedules. I have changed the
“Publish†field to “No†and re-publishing the schedules to try to remove the
assignments that might still exist because the remaining work might not have
been zeroed prior to the resource being made inactive and the schedules
migrated to the 2007 Server. Nothing is removing the assignments (I am
assuming this is where the problem rests) that show the resources as having
remaining work.

Noted there are resources on the list that were made inactive that do have
assignments in the future where the project managers has not re-assigned the
tasks or zeroed remaining work on incomplete tasks, these are not a part of
the issue I am attempting to resolve.

 

[Jonathan Sofer [MVP]]

Darrell,

I think this issue has to do with a combination of two things. One of them
being a log in setting and the other being a bug in the tool. Let me try
and explain.

1) When you log into project professional, by default, there is an option
enabled called "Load Summary Resource Assignments" which will show a summary
line item in the usage views represeting all other work the resource has
scheduled on other projects. If you never changed your project account
settings to "Manually control connection state", you won't even see where
you can disable "Load Summary Resource Assignments". To change your
connection state to manual go to Start>Programs>Microsoft Office>Microsoft
Office Tools>Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Accounts. The next time
you log in you will see a pop up log in screen and two new options on the
bottom.

2) There is an identified bug in Project 2007 (even with all the service
packs and hotfix rollups). The bug is described as followed:

a) Open Project Pro with "Load Summary Resource Assignments" checked.
b) Open a project schedule and using Resource Usage view, find a resource
that has work assigned to Other Projects and commitments.
c) Add the actual work and remaining work columns to the view.
d) The "Remaining Work" is not being calculated correctly, it is always set
to the same value as is displayed in the "Work" column.

So you can see that an inactive resource that incorrectly shows the "Work"
value in the "Remaining Work" field could cause this incorrect pop up error
message about inactive resources still having remaining work when in fact
they don't.

My recommendation to you is to disable "Load Summary Resource Assignments"
and see if that fixes your issue. If it does fix the issue then avoid using
this option. Currently, there is no plan to fix this bug until the next
version of Project Server.