PS 2007 - tasks in project workspaces

H

Hellman

Why dont tasks in Project Workspaces get synched with Project Pro, or
summarised in PWA?

I created a new project within Project 2007 Pro, published it to PS 2007,
and created a Project Workspace for it. I can see that Issues, Risks, and
Documents created within the workspace are summarised in PWA and get
synchonised to Project Pro.

But it seems quite odd to me that the same doesnt apply to the workspace's
Tasks list:
- project tasks created within Project Pro and published to PS dont get
populated as Tasks within the workspace. The reverse doesnt work either.
- workspace Tasks also dont show up under My Tasks in PWA, but project tasks
created via Project Pro do.

Is this the way Project Server is supposed to work - if so, can anyone
explain why? Or do I have something wrong in my setup that is preventing
workspace Tasks from synching?

Thanks a lot,
Mike
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Mike --

I believe that workspace tasks are like "to do list" items, and not project
tasks. Hope this helps.
 
H

Hellman

Hi Dale - yeah, I was afraid of that.

But it really doesnt make sense to me - it seems very confusing to have a
Task list on the workspace that isnt related to the actual project tasks
dealt with via Project & PWA. Even more confusing is that WSS3 seems to
provide a Project Tasks list type as well, which is apparently different from
the standard WSS3 Tasks list, but is still not related to the actual project
server tasks....aarrgghh!

I guess overall I am a bit confused on what the purpose of the project
workspace really is then, since people will still need to go to PWA to manage
the actual project tasks...?

It seems like Microsoft had a great idea to combine the power of
project-centric WSS sites (i.e. collaboration, record keeping, reporting,
etc) with the people-centric features of Project Server (i.e. consolidated
tasks, updates, timesheets, etc). But not synching the actual project tasks
onto the project workspace really seems to undermine the whole thing.

Unless of course I'm just looking at this all wrong...!?!

Thanks,
Mike
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Mike --

Your expectations are not unrealistic. Unfortunately, they do not square up
with the way that Project Server 2007 uses WSS 3.0 functionality. In the
Project Workspace, yes, you do have two kinds of Tasks available, although
neither of them connect to the tasks shown on a user's My Tasks page in PWA.
In WSS 3.0, the regular tasks are like what we called "To-Do List" tasks in
Project Server 2003. In WSS 3.0, the project tasks are like "To-Do List"
tasks, except they also include a Gantt Chart to show when the tasks are
scheduled to be done. Because this functionality does not match your
expectations, yes, I agree that it can be confusing. Because of this, you
will definitely want to make this a training issue with your project
managers and team members. Hope this helps.
 
J

John Thoni [MSFT]

This is indeed confusing, and an unfortunate side effect of adding this
functionality. The Project Tasks List in a WSS site is an "out of the box"
list template. By this I mean that it is available on any default install
of WSS (whether or not PWA is installed). The list is a Gantt chart sitting
on top of a standard "Tasks" list. You could see the same if you went to
any list view in WSS, and created a new view of the "Project Tasks" type.
There are no functional links between this list, and Project or Project
Server. In fact, Microsoft could not legally ship Project code in a Windows
component (which is what WSS is). It just happens that when Project Server
provisions a WSS workspace, the default template includes the Project Tasks
list (and Calenard, Tasks, etc.).

You can "import" a Project Tasks list (or any other list for that matter)
into a Project Proposal in PWA (and from there, you could even upgrade to a
full project).

~john
 
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