Publishing and Saving

J

James

I have been assigned a task to disable the Project Manager's ability to
publish to the server, however I have been told that they must still be
able to save to the server. From what I understand in an EPM
environment, they are synonimous. I have found that there is a
versioning setting but this does not meet the objective as you must
first publish the project before setting the version to something else.

Is there any other way to attain this? Or other options that I should
propose?
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

James --

When a PM saves and then closes a project, Project Server publishes the
project in the background using Collaborate - Publish - Project Plan. The
system does this to automatically synchronize the information in the Project
tables with that in the PWA tables. Therefore, if a PM can save a project,
you cannot prevent him/her from publishing the project. Hope this helps.
 
J

James

Dale,

Thanks for the information! I presume that there is no other options
in the 'EPM fold'

James
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

James --

I am still trying to figure out your organization's reason for wanting to
prevent PM's from publishing their projects. Do you want them to be able to
open, modify, and save their projects? If so, there is no other option.
Please explain more and perhaps we can come up with a solution to your
problem.
 
J

James

As some of the PMs are not as experienced as others, the senior PM
wants to be able to review the projects and approve them before having
them published. I believe that their main concern is the baseline
approval. Once the project is approved, the project will then become
published.
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

James --

I understand your senior PMs' concern. Since you cannot prevent a PM from
publishing a project, then you need to make this a training and performance
issue. Hope this helps.
 
J

James

Dale,

Thanks for your assistance. This was what I was thinking, and is good
to get a second opinion!

James
 
A

ahelp

Whether you save or publish, the file extension is still .published. However
there is a difference, principally in whether or not the assignment changes
are pushed out to PWA. If you look at your group security permissions, in the
Categories section there ia a settings for Save Project. In the Global
Permissions section, there is a setting for Publish/Update/Status. My guess
is that you can Allow Save Project & Deny Publish/Update/Status, and that
will accomplish what you're looking for. You'll need to test the settings to
verify.
 
J

James

This does not work as one might expect. This produces a message that
the individual does not have the necessary permissions to perform the
action.

Thanks anyways!
 
A

ahelp

I'm sure that relates to what Dale wrote about Publishing being a part of
Saving. I forgot about that. Oh well, it was worth a shot.
 
J

Jackson T. Cole

Actually, there is a way to "save" in Professional, but not publish. You
may tend to want to hold your nose when you do it, though! :>)

After saving the last edits, instead of "Closing" the project or
Professional, activate the Task Manager, go to "Processes" tab, select
"WINPROJ.exe", then click "End Process", and "Yes" to the warning message.
Professional will terminate immediately with no "publish" activity. Be sure
to use "Process", not "Applications", as Professional treats an terminate
command from "Applications" as a "Close", and WILL publish as usual.

Ugly, but effective and safe. The only "correction" needed is to use PWA
to check in the project. Remember that the client/server process is
asynchronous, and gated through the spooler. As long as one remembers to save
before terminating, nothing is lost.

FWIW ...

JC
 
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