Overwriting a Plan on Project Server

[Greg B]

Hi Folks,

One of our Project 2003 Users decided to take a copy of their plan from the
server to work (making a large number of changes) on it on their network
drive. The plan has been active since the beginning of the years so a larger
number of tasks have been completed and team members are updating the plan
through PWA.

I received a request to from them asking to replace the server version with
their version.

But here's the problem. Since taking the copy, all their team members have
been updating tasks through PWA so the Server version has changed.

I am not sure what the impact would be by overwriting the server version
apart from having them re-apply the changes made through PWA.

Is this as straight forward as it seems or could there be complications down
the track??

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks. Greg

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Greg,

Try posting on the server newsgroup. Please see FAQ Item: 24. Project
Newsgroups. FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information
can be seen at this web address: http://www.mvps.org/project/.

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Greg --

Your PM screwed up big-time by saving an .mpp copy of his project and then
making revisions to it while team members were submitted progress on that
project. What he should have done is to save the project as an Offline
project (File - Save Offline) and then he would not be facing these
problems. To solve this problem, somebody is going to lose something in the
process. Therefore, I would recommend the following process:

1. The PM should accept all tasks updates into the old version of the
project and ask team members to cease submitting actuals
2. The PM should save and publish the old version of the project
3. You (the PS admin) should delete the project and its accompanying WSS
subweb from the Project Server database
4. The PM should import the new version of the project using Tools -
Enterprise Options - Import Project to Enterprise
5. The PM should publish the project using Collaborate - Publish - All
Information
6. The PM should republish all assignments using Collaborate - Publish -
Republish Assignments with the "Overwrite actual work entered by resources"
option selected
7. The PM should ask his team members to RESUBMIT actuals for all
in-progress tasks, even if they submitted those same actuals in the old
version of the project
8. The PM should promise NEVER to do this again!

Hope this helps.

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the books on Project Server"