Project Owner Re-assignment

D

David F-H

I am currently running MS Project 2007 / SQL Server 2005 and I want to
re-assign a project to another Project Manager. I go into Project Center,
Edit Project Properties and click the drop-down list box for Owner, but it
only lists myself and another administrator. I want to assign the project to
a resource that is set up as a Project Manager, but he is not in the
drop-down list to select - what am I doing wrong?
 
J

Jonathan Sofer

Hey David,

This dropdown is controlled by the category permission "Save Project to
Project Server". However, there is an issue with 2007 where it doesn't
dynamically work based on the category rules which out of the box "Project
Managers" has setup. It only works on categories where the setting is set
"All current and future projects in Project Server database" (for example
like "My Organization" category).

What I would suggest at least for testing is to assign "My Organization"
category to the "Project Managers" group and enable that one permission.
This category might already be associated to your Project Managers group and
if it is then all you have to do is enable the one permission "Save Project
to Project Server"

Let me know if that works.

Jonathan Sofer
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

David F-H --

The behavior you see with the Owner field is a known and reported but in
pre-SP1 Project Server 2007. The bug is that the Owner list does not
display the list of members of the Project Managers group. Here's a
workaround I discovered that will solve this problem:

1. Log into PWA with administrator permissions.
2. Click the Server Settings link in the Quick Launch menu.
3. Click the Manage Groups link in the Security section of the page.
4. Click the Project Managers group to edit the Group.
5. In the Categories section, select the My Organization category.
6. In the Permissions grid for the Categories section, set the "Save
Project to Project Server" permission to Allow:
7. Click the Save button.

Don't ask me WHY that works or HOW I discovered it, but it should solve your
problem temporarily until Microsoft fixes it permanently. After you apply
the workaround, refer to the 2007 section of the following FAQ to change the
Owner/Manager of the project:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Shared Documents/changeprojmgr.htm

Hope this helps.
 
J

Jonathan Sofer

Thanks for confirming my response was correct for my own sake and also
letting me know that this behavior is a known and reported bug for
Microsoft.

I really do think it specifically has to do with the category rule that
allows a category access to "All current and future projects in Project
Server database". If you change any category to this setting and enable a
group's permissions for "Save Project to Project Server" via the category,
that groups members will then show up in the owner dropdown list.

Jonathan
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Jonathan --

Thanks for a bit more informationa about this permission. This situation is
so bizarre and so frustrating. I can't wait for the arrival of SP1 for
Project Server 2007 (no known release date yet) to see if they resolve this
issue.
 
D

David F-H

Actually just found the "All current and future projects in Project Server
database" setting in the Category Edit for My Organization - it was set on.
 
D

David F-H

Thanks Jonathan,
It is now working!
The Project Manager group already had "My Organization" assigned so I just
had to enable "Save Project to Project Server". I didn't see the setting
"All current and future projects in Project Server database" though?
One other small problem was that when I clicked on a new Owner (in Basic
Details section), and clicked "Save & Submit" nothing was actioned. I found
I had to change another (custom field) as well, before it would it recognise
that a change had occurred and actions the save & publish for both changes !?!

Thanks again,
David
 
D

David F-H

Thanks for the workaround and insight guys!

One more question - is there a list of known bugs for Proj Server 2007 ?
 
G

Gregg Richie

We had the same issue, where we have 6 PMs and our projects change control at
least twice on every project.

What we did was to insert the "manager" field into the Project Center view.
This field is populated by the Manager field, located on the properties
dialogue box in Project Pro 2007. When our project change PMs. we open the
project, change the manager's name and republish it. This way everyone sees
who is charge of the project.

The problem I have noticed is that when a project is published to the
server, the person that publishes it becomes the "owner" on PS. When a
project is first published, they become the "Status Manager" for all tasks in
the project. So to truly "assign" a project to another manager, they have to
republish it to the server so their name becomes one of the available names
in the status manager field in the project. THEN, someone has to change the
status manager field to the new manager so they are the ones receiving the
status updates.

We also did the assignment of PMs to the PM group and had no luck. If this
problem is something we have forgotten to do, please let me know.
--
Gregg D. Richie
Engineering Project Manager
LeRoy Surveyors & Engineers, Inc.
 
J

Jonathan Sofer

Glad it worked.

Jonathan

David F-H said:
Actually just found the "All current and future projects in Project Server
database" setting in the Category Edit for My Organization - it was set
on.
Click to expand...
 
J

Jonathan Sofer

You are correct that the Status Manager field is the field that controls who
receives the project updates and if you are used to the 2003 version, this
can be more time consuming and frustrating to use. To add to this
frustration, the only available names for the Status Manager dropdown list
in a project are anyone who is marked as a status manager of at least one
task already or the current PM logged in so it can be frustrating to get a
new name to appear on the list without having that person log in themselves
and assign themselves at least to one task as a status manager.

There is also a bug that does not allow for dragging and dropping the Status
Manager field which makes it more difficult to mass change that field value.
There is a KB Article and hotfix for this and it will be included in the SP1
release later this year I believe.

Jonathan
 
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