Submitted Task Update Missing from Task Updates

[GHMontgomery]

First off, thanks in advance for any help or guidance anyone can provide me
on this issue - it appeared yesterday and I have thus far been unable to
trace the root of the problem.

Server: Project Server 2007

Scenario: Team Member accessed PWA->My Tasks and performed the following
actions:

1. Clicked on the Progress cell for a specific task ("Task A") and entered
Actual Work values for three days.
2. Clicked on the Progress cell for another task ("Task B") and entered
Actual Work values for three days.
3. Marked the checkbox next to Task A and Task B.
4. Clicked on the Submit Selected button.

The Status Manager (also the PM/owner of the project) received the e-mail
alert that task assignment updates had been submitted.

Issue: The submitted task assignment updates are not showing up under the
Task Updates page for the Status Manager. The submitted task assignment
updates also do not trigger a "Review Submitted Updates" popup when the
project is opened from within Project Professional 2007.

The Status Manager reports that this has happened before, for a different
user on a different project, and that the previous action taken was to
manually enter the Actuals into the project using Project Professional 2007.
The Status Manager has agreed to hold off taking further action for a few
days so I can troubleshoot the server to pinpoint any possible cause of the
missing data.

The Enterprise Resource profile of the submitting Team Member has been
checked and double-checked to verify information accuracy. The submitting
Team Member has successfully submitted updates to this project using the same
process up until now.

===========
Gina Montgomery

 

[Jonathan Sofer]

First I would verify that you are on the latest Service Pack.

 

[GHMontgomery]

We are running Project Server 2007 with SP1 installed.

===========
Gina Montgomery

 

[Jonathan Sofer]

Can you make yourself the status manager of Task A and Task B and re-publish
the project and see if you get the updates in your Approval>Updates page?

Also, have there been any errors in the queue from the resource that
submitted the task updates?

 

[GHMontgomery]

In response to the queue question, I should state that the project server
queue, server application event log, and sql server log all show as clear
with regards to this issue.

After posting my initial question, I began seeking more information from the
status manager's PWA account. For the status manager, we found the two
updates in question under the "Applied Task Update Requests and Errors" list
as "Accepted, Unpublished."

The status manager did not manually accept the updates via PWA. The status
manager also did not manually open the project via Professional and accept
the updates. No rules are defined to automatically process submitted task
updates for this status manager.

How can an update show as approved when the status manager has no knowledge
of performing the manual approval and no automated approval system is in
place?

More importantly, how do I get the project to reflect these updates within
Project Professional?

Many thanks for your continued assistance ...
===========
Gina Montgomery

 

[Jonathan Sofer]

Sounds like if it is accepted and unpublished that is should show in the
draft version of the schedule. Can you verify whether the hours have been
updated to the schedule?

Also, can you check the box next to it and click on Publish to see if that
gets the data pushed out to PWA or the schedule?

As for how that happened, I am at a loss. Could be user error that they did
not tell you about.

 

[GHMontgomery]

The hours have not updated to the working or publshed versions of the project
schedule. Publishing the accepted task update has no effect on the project
data. Publishing the project has no effect on making the missing data
appear, either.

After much digging, we found what we believe to be the source of the issue.
If anyone has encountered anything similar, please respond. The SQL database
recorded a deadlocked transaction while processing the task update. So, even
though the notification e-mail was sent to the Status Manager and even though
PWA shows the task update as accepted and applied, the SQL process which
actually applies the updates to the project never finished processing.

From an end-user's perspective, the system appeared to be functioning
normally. However, behind the scenes some sinister things were happening on
the SQL server. Due to resource issues with our SQL server, the rerun of the
failed transaction failed silently. We have been working to move our SQL
server to a healthier environment for some time, so it was of little surprise
when the failed transaction was unable to be automatically reprocessed by the
SQL server. What surprised us most was how quietly things failed - four
cryptic error messages in the server's application event log over the span of
10 seconds. No failure messages in the generic SQL log or in the project
server queue.

My advice to anyone who encounters task update information missing from the
project file even though every user interface says the update has been
processed and applied: check your database server application event log to
look for deadlocked transactions where the deadlock victim never successfully
reprocessed.

My question to the Project Server gurus out there reading this
issue/resolution: are there any checks within PWA code to wait for a
success/failure message from calls passed through the PSI to the DAL? While
I understand that it is not desirable for PWA to wait indefinitely for a
database transaction to return a status, the issue we encountered took
approximately 1 minute between initial submission and final failure.

Why would PWA continue its processing and mark an update as applied when the
database transaction performing such activity failed? Is there a PWA setting
I can change to force PWA to extend how long it waits for a success/failure
status from the database transactions it creates via PSI/DAL? Or, is this an
issue with the PSI itself?

While I have found the source of the initial issue, I do not feel like I
have solved the overall problem. We now have project managers who are
concerned that data will be missing from their project plans, even though
they have followed best practice measures to review and accept task updates
submitted by team members.

Any recommendations for how to better track the "task update submission by
team member -> e-mail notification -> task update review by status manager ->
task update accept by status manager -> Apply to Project (Draft)" process are
much appreciated. My attempts to trace this single event through the
published and draft databases produced very little useful information.

===========
Gina Montgomery