PS 2007 Activity Plans

B

Bill Busby

Is there any way to assign more than one resource to a task in an activity
plan? Could it be done programatically? If not, what is this intended for
(seems self-limiting)?
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Bill --

Excellent question! The way around this limitation is to create an
enterprise Team resource. Your Project Server administrator must create the
Team resource and then specify which human resources are a part of that
team. Then you can assign the Team resource to the tasks and when you
publish the Activity Plan, each member of the team will see the Activity
Plan tasks on his/her My Tasks page in PWA. By the way, a Team resource is
not the same as a Generic resource, so stress to your Project Server
administrator that these are two entirely different types of resources.
Hope this helps.
 
C

Colin

What is the difference in setup between a Team Resource and a Generic
Resource. I setup in 2007 what I thought was a team resource but I don't
think it's working correctly because when I try to reassign a task to a
specific team member, they don't appear in the dropdown list.

Colin
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Colin --

Before you can create a Team resource, you need to create a Lookup Table
named something like "Teams" to go with the Team Name lookup table. For
some reason, Microsoft overlooked creating this Lookup Table, so you have to
do it yourself. You need to populate the Lookup Table with names of the
teams you wish to use, and then you need to include the Lookup Table with
the Team Name built-in custom field. After doing this, you can create the
Team resource in the Enterprise Resource Pool by completing the following
steps:

1. Enter the name of the Team resource in the Resource Name column.
2. Enter all other basic information in the columns of the Resource Sheet
view.
3. Double-click the resource and select the Generic option in the Resource
Information dialog.
4. Specify cost information on the Costs page.
5. Specify custom field values on the Custom Fields page and then click the
OK button.
6. Right-click on the Type column header and select Insert Column from the
shortcut menu.
7. Click the Field Name pick list, select the Team Assignment Pool field
name from the list, and then click the OK button.
8. In the Team Assignment Pool column, select the Yes value for the Team
resource.


After you create a Team resource, make sure that you indicate the members of
the team by setting the correct Team Name value for the eacj resource that
serves on the team. Also, please note that you NEVER see the actual names
of the resources who are part of the team. When you assign a Team resource
to a task, and then publish the project, the task appears on the My Tasks
page for each resource that is a part of the team. Hope this helps.
 
C

Colin

Great stuff Dale but I seem to still be hitting a snag somewhere. I
followed the below steps you outlined but I still don't have any projects or
proposals showing up in "My Tasks" for Team Members. If I click on
Self-Assign Team Tasks I see the proposals I created. I can't imagine the
users are expected to go and look for their projects instead of have them
show up in their default view for My Tasks.
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Colin --

I'm not sure I can troubleshoot this problem for you from a distance. Did
you actually publish the project using File - Publish? All I know is that
the system works for me. Let us know.
 
B

Bill Busby

Dale, thanks for the reply. I followed your steps in this and another post on
creating a team resource. Seems to have almost worked (when I publish to the
team resource I get the task on my task list but others don't).

Unfortunately, I've since found that all tasks in activity plans are hard
coded to use 100% units and there doesn't appear to be a way to edit this
value outside of PSI coding. This completely undermines the usefulness of
this feature (kinda blows resource management out the window) so it doesn't
appear we'll be using activity plans unless Microsoft changes this behavior.

Still... I do appreciate your help on this.
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Bill --

Regarding why the tasks appeared on your timesheet and not on the other team
members' timesheets, you might want to check and make sure that the Default
Assignment Owner for each resource is set to each individual resource's name
.. For example, the Default Assignment Owner for Mickey Cobb should be
Mickey Cobb. If you do not specify the Default Assignment Owner value for
any resource, and then you assign that resource to tasks in a project and
publish the project, the system makes the PROJECT MANAGER the Assignment
Owner for each task and displays the tasks on the project manager's
timesheet. OUCH!

You can check the Default Assignment Owner values from the Resource Center
by editing a resource's properties. If you create a new resource through
the Resource Center interface, the system automatically sets each resource
to be his/her own Default Assignment Owner and Timesheet Manager. If you
create the resource through the Enterprise Resource Pool, however, the
system fails to set these values and you must then set them manually from
the Resource Center interface. I believe this is an oversight in pre-SP1
Project Server 2007.

Thanks for your comments about Activities. As of this very day, I have been
writing about Activities for our upcoming book on Managing Enterprise
Projects using Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. Hope this helps.
 
M

Michael Brown

Dale,

We were going down that very avenue with respect to activity plans and
assignments. Unless I'm doing something wrong though, there appears to be a
minor but bothersome limitation.

If, as you wrote, you assign a task to a TEAM resouce rather than a specific
resource, any one on the team can infact grab that task. However, only one
person at a time can take ownership. So, as an example, if I use the
"self-assign a team task" to myself, I don't believe you could also assign
that same task to yourself.

Is this true? Have I missed something perhaps?
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Michael --

I spent a significant amount of time last week researching and writing about
Self-Assignment of Team tasks. What I learned is not encouraging, as you
already surmise. Here's what I learned:

1. The Team tasks DO NOT show up on the My Tasks page of each resource
designated as part of the team. The team members must click the
"Self-assign Team Tasks" button to display the Team Tasks page. From there,
each team member can select the tasks that he/she will work on and then
click the "Assign task to me" button. This action moves the selected Team
tasks to the user's My Tasks page, so that he/she can report progress toward
the selected Team tasks.

2. In an Activity plan, each resource can self-assign Team tasks without
preventing their fellow team members from doing the same. However, when the
first team member enters and submits progress for a team task in an Activity
plan, the system removes that team task from the Team Tasks page of all
other team members who have not already self-assigned the team task. After
a resource self-assigns a team task from an enterprise project, however, the
system immediately removes the task from the Team Tasks page of all other
resources so that no one else can self-assign the task.

3. When a resource self-assigns a Team task from an enterprise project, the
system sends a Team Reassignment Request to the project manager, who must
approve the self-assignment. After approval, the system replaces the Team
resource with the self-assigned resource in the enterprise project. When
the team members submits a task update on a team task, and the PM approves
the update, the system shows the Actual Work hours for the self-assigned
resource in the enterprise project.

Hope this helps.
 
M

Michael Brown

Dale & Bill

Here's what we've done. It's not necessarily elegant, but it seems to work.
As a lead-in, we're using "Activity Plans" for production support type work.

1) Created an activity plan for production support activity(ies). NO tasks
were created underneath the plan itself - simply a high level place holder
plan name.

2) Used a resource plan to drive capacity analysis (eg: bob spends 25% of
his time on production support from 1/1 to 12/31. Sue spends 25% of her time
on the same activity).

3) Used "Build team" to add any resource who might need to report time
against this activity. Resources were added in as "proposed" rather than
"committed."

By using "build team," anyone who works on these activities can simply add
the line item to their timesheet without having to be assigned a specific
activity or task. For example, if this week Bob spent 15 hours on production
support, he just uses "Add new item" in his timesheet to post his hours
against the activity. For these items, we really don't care about
"progress", so we never have to touch the "My tasks" portion of the system
for folks doing production support work. "Percent complete" in this context
is somewhat irrelevant.
 
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