Que up changes for when a project is checked back in

[KinDA]

Is there a way that Project Server ("natively") can take care of
queuing up
changes when someone already has a project checked out and then
writing
those changes after they check the project back in? If so can we take
advantage of this through automation (specifically from an Excel VBA
application)? If so how do we do it? Through a PDS Extension? If so
what tables do we write to for this? Maybe some of the MSP_WEB_
tables? This is my guess since this seems to be the tables that the
Web Access uses and Web Access seems to have this capability to send
all changes through a Project Manager. This is the only way I can
think of that this may be possible. Otherwise we'd need to write our
own queuing code.

FYI - the changes we would want to make would be to some of the
regular fields (such as finish date and/or percent done fields) as
well as some of the custom fields.

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

You will have to do this manually (or with VBA). Make changes to the
database whilst the project is checked out will see them over-written when
the project is checked back in and saved.

Your problem is that you can't guarantee success. If a task is deleted
whilst the project is checked out, you can't update. Your only solution is
to keep all details of it in Excel so you can re-create the task.

Make sure you work only with task and resource unique ID's (names change)
and before you start brainstorm every change that might be made offline and
how the update will resolve any data conflicts in that scenario.

Expect the process to take time and for simple errors to appear due to
scenarios you didn't envision.

--
Rod Gill
Project MVP
For Microsoft Project companion projects, best practices and Project VBA
development services
visit www.projectlearning.com/

 

[Vinh Tran]

Queueing changes for future Publishing is terribly
dangerous and you are really testing your luck with DB
corruption.

If you're going to do it anyways, use the PDS. It's
irrelevant to you what tables the PDS alters. Call the
methods and let the PDS take care of it.




Vinh Tran

 

[KinDA]

But doesn't the Project Server 2002 Web Access have this capability to
notify a Project Manager of updates to a task and require them to
approve the updates first? I assume this isn't dangerous and won't
cause database corruption. It would be great if we could use
automation to do a similar thing with our external Excel VBA
application. But can this be done with the PDS? If so, what methods
would a person call for the PDS to make these updates? I didn't think
the "native" PDS looked like it had that capability. I figured I'd
have to write my own custom PDS extension (in which case I'd need to
know what tables, views, and/or stored procedures to use).