Server Task Updates to Outlook

[Gregg Richie]

System: PS 2007, MSP 2007 Pro, SQL Server 2005, WSS 3.0, Outlook 2003 (Office)

This morning, we made changes to a schedule that pushed a task out 6 months.
After updating, the President still had the original task on his outlook task
list, with the old date.

Here is what I have checked:
- Verified that the project schedule was saved and published
- Checked the queue to ensure nothing was getting hung up
- Verified that the status manager did not have an update approval waiting
(Am I missing something?)

The president is a "bull-in-a-china-shop" kind of operator when it comes to
computers. So he deleted the task and re-imported his assignments from the
server. The assignment did not come back since it is out 6 months.

I know when a previously published task has been deleted from a scheduled
and it is republished, the PWA update sync will remove it from the Outlook
task. So why, in this case, when assigments change to so far in the future,
do they not go delete or update in the Outlook task list when the new task
date is published?

By the way....thanks for the book. It is a life saver.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Gregg --

You need to sit down with your President and ask him to open his Outlook
application. Click Tools - Options - Project Web Access. Look at the
option selected in the Date Range section. Is the "Project Web Access date
range" option selected, which would import all tasks in all projects? Or is
the "Next ___ weeks" option selected, for which the default is 2 weeks?
That might explain part of the problem. Then look at the option selected in
the Import from Project Web Access to Outlook section. Is the "Manual only"
option selected, which is why the task schedule did not change? Or is the
"Every ___ weeks" option selected, for which 1 week is the default? These
two options might be the source of and solution to the problem. Hope this
helps.

 

[Gregg Richie]

Dale,

Thanks for the quick response. I did check his Project Web Access options
in Outlook. They are set to manual and the date range is the "Next 2 weeks".


Forgive me if I am being obtuse, but it is my understanding that when this
option is set to manual, then the user clicks on "Update Project Web Access"
and/or "Import New Assignments", any assignments that are already in their
Outlook task list should update or be deleted (according to date range
options).

Here is a different view of the issue:

Original Task (as assigned from when the project was originally published)
Task - Update Final Plat Drawing
Duration - 1 d
Start - 8-16-07

Republished Task (verified through the project center)
Task - Update Final Plat Drawing
Duration - 1 d
Start - 2-17-08

Task in the task list kept the original start date after publishing and
updating.

If this is one of those "things" then we can find a work-around (although
with 120+ projects across the entire enterprise this may become a problem).
I will try to recreate the situation to ensure this was not an anomaly.
Thanks for your time.
--
Gregg D. Richie
Engineering Project Manager
LeRoy Surveyors & Engineers, Inc.

Gregg --

You need to sit down with your President and ask him to open his Outlook
application. Click Tools - Options - Project Web Access. Look at the
option selected in the Date Range section. Is the "Project Web Access date
range" option selected, which would import all tasks in all projects? Or is
the "Next ___ weeks" option selected, for which the default is 2 weeks?
That might explain part of the problem. Then look at the option selected in
the Import from Project Web Access to Outlook section. Is the "Manual only"
option selected, which is why the task schedule did not change? Or is the
"Every ___ weeks" option selected, for which 1 week is the default? These
two options might be the source of and solution to the problem. Hope this
helps.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Gregg --

My experience has been that the task schedule should update, but I don't
believe the system deletes tasks in Outlook that were deleted in the
project. I have not explored this in depth in Project Server 2007, so I
cannot totally confirm this. However, what you are seeing with the update
certainly feels like just one more bug in Project Server 2007. I will
gladly invite others who have had more experience with the PWA/Outlook
interaction to share their experiences.

Dale,

Thanks for the quick response. I did check his Project Web Access options
in Outlook. They are set to manual and the date range is the "Next 2
weeks".


Forgive me if I am being obtuse, but it is my understanding that when this
option is set to manual, then the user clicks on "Update Project Web
Access"
and/or "Import New Assignments", any assignments that are already in their
Outlook task list should update or be deleted (according to date range
options).

Here is a different view of the issue:

Original Task (as assigned from when the project was originally published)
Task - Update Final Plat Drawing
Duration - 1 d
Start - 8-16-07

Republished Task (verified through the project center)
Task - Update Final Plat Drawing
Duration - 1 d
Start - 2-17-08

Task in the task list kept the original start date after publishing and
updating.

If this is one of those "things" then we can find a work-around (although
with 120+ projects across the entire enterprise this may become a
problem).
I will try to recreate the situation to ensure this was not an anomaly.
Thanks for your time.
--
Gregg D. Richie
Engineering Project Manager
LeRoy Surveyors & Engineers, Inc.