Newbie to MS Project - Need Help with Views

[Joanna]

I'm new to MS Office Project, and I've been tasked with creating some new
reports/views for our MS Office Project Web Access 2003. I was able to
create 2 of the 3 (I think), but the 3rd one has been problematic.

I created the views via Admin > Manage Views > Add View. The 2 views that I
added now appear in the list of views under the heading Project Center.
However, when I go to Projects > View Projects In Project Center, the 2 new
views are not in the Choose a view drop down. One of the PMs said that
sometimes we have to wait overnight for things to populate on the Web Access.
Is that the reason why I can't see my new views right away? Do I have to
wait for a process to run overnight? Will I have to wait overnight to test
any changes that I would make to these views? Or is there something else
that I need to do to get them to show up in the list?

Next comes my problem with the 3rd view/report. They want to see all
Projects listed with Start and End dates, Work, Actual Work, and Owner. But,
the tricky part is that they want this broken down by Resource. In the Add
View page, I can get all the fields I need in the Project Center view type
EXCEPT for resource. If I use the Resource Center veiw type, I can't seem to
get the project fields. Is there a way to do this report? I also tried
experimenting with the Portfolio Analyzer, but I couldn't seem to get this
report that they want.

Thanks so much!

Joanna

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Joanna --

In the future, please post your Project Server questions in the
microsoft.public.project.server newsgroup, as this newsgroup is dedicated to
the Microsoft Project desktop application only. To answer your first
question, you need to add the two new Views to at least one Category. Open
each of these Views for editing individually, scroll to the bottom of the
page, and in the Categories (Optional) section, add the My Organization and
My Projects categories to the View, and then click the Save Changes button.
The word "Optional" in the Categories section is ridiculous; Categories are
not optional for Views. If you don't include the View in a Category, no one
can seem the View in PWA!

To answer your second question, the View you want cannot be created.
Whoever asked you to break down a list of projects by resource is asking for
the impossible. Instead of creating a Project Center view for this purpose,
a better approach would be to create a Portfolio Analyzer view that shows
the list of projects broken down by resource, but you won't be able to
include the Start and Finish fields without extending the OLAP cube. You
can include all of the other information in the Portfolio Analyzer view,
however. Hope this helps.

 

[Joanna]

Sorry about that. I will definitely post in the Project Server newsgroup for
future questions.

The information about assigning to a Category worked perfectly. The new
views are now showing up.

For the second question, regarding extending the OLAP cube, where can I find
additional information on how to do that?

Thanks so much for your help. I really appreciate it.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Joanna --

You have two choices on extending the OLAP cube. One is to do it yourself.
Refer to Bob Segrest's excellent white paper on this subject at:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Downloads/Forms/AllItems.aspx

The other option is to buy a tool to assist you with the process. Refer to
the following:

http://www.bogdanov-associates.com/eng.asp?rubr_id=484

Before you go too far down the road on extending the OLAP cube, I would
encourage your people to drop the requirement for including the Start and
Finish dates in the Portfolio Analyzer view. Without that requirement, you
could "cook up" that custom View in a couple minutes and be able to report
things like Work and Actual Work by project and by resources over time. I
don't see how the Start and Finish dates are relevant to them, quite
frankly. Hope this helps.

 

[Joanna]

I will check to see if the requirements for the report can be changed. I was
able to create the Portfolio Analyzer view. The only fields missing are
start, end, and owner. Is owner another field where I would need to extend
the OLAP cube to be able to display it?

I will take a look at the white paper that you linked to. Overall, though,
how difficult/complex is it to extend the OLAP cube? Are we talking a
day/week/month long project? Is there a lot of risk involved?

Thanks again.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Joanna --

The Owner field is not an available field in a Portfolio Analyzer view. To
work around this, you could create a custom enterprise Project outline code
field containing the names of all of your project managers. Make this a
Required field as well. Then, whenever your PMs create a new project they
will need to select their name from the list. Because it is a Project
outline code field, it will automatically appear as an available Dimension
in the OLAP cube for inclusion in your custom Portfolio Analyzer view.

I have no idea how long it will take you to extend the OLAP cube. It all
depends on your development skills and the complexity of the data you want
to add. As I stated previously, I think you should simply ditch the Start
and Finish fields in your Portfolio Analyzer view. It would save you lots
of time and bother.

Hope this helps.

 

[Joanna]

Thanks, Dale. One last question. I am adding the new custom enterprise
project outline code for project manager. Do I need to manually enter the
names of the project managers in the Edit Lookup Table window? Or is there
any way to connect this field automatically to same data as the owner field?

Thanks!

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Joanna --

You need to manually create the list of project managers. You will need to
add new PMs as they join your organization. Do not delete the names of PMs
who leave the company, however. Leave them on the list for historical
purposes. Hope this helps.

 

[Joanna]

Thanks so much. This is exactly what I thought we needed, but I wanted to
make sure there wasn't something that I was missing.

Thanks again for all of your help.

 

[Joanna]

Sorry, one last question (hopefully).

I am trying to add values such as "Smith, John", with the last name comma
first name format. However, when I put a comma in the code, I get the error
"One or more code values in the lookup table do not match the mask defined
for the code, include the separator character, or exceed 255 characters in
length. Invalid values will not be used."

In my code mask for the outline code, I have the Sequence set to Characters,
the Length set to Any, and the Separator set to - (I had it originally set to
the default but figured that might be my problem. But, changing it did not
solve anything).

Is there a work around for this? Thanks.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Joanna --

Do not use the comma character as it is a reserved special character. It
would be better to enter the names as First Name Last Name instead. Hope
this helps.

 

[Joanna]

Thanks so much. I was hoping that wasn't the case, but I'll go with the
first name last name format.

 

[Joanna]

Ok. Last step. I had added the Enterprise Project Outline Code (6) to the
Enterprise Global yesterday. I saved and closed. Then, I went into one of
my projects and added data to that field and saved.

However, I still don't see the field in MS Office Project Web Access (on the
Specify Views page in the PivotTable Field List popup). Is there a step that
I am missing?

Thanks!

 

[Crook]

Hi Joanna,

Has the cube been rebuilt since adding your new outline code with data? As
you know, the field will not show up until the cube is rebuilt.

HTH,
Crook

 

[Joanna]

It looks like this was most likely the problem. I thought the cube was being
rebuilt last night, but there were apparently some "problems" with the
rebuild (not sure what exactly). Looks like I'll need to wait until it is
fixed and rebuilt. Thanks.