Timesheet Hours Disappearing?

[Randy]

We have seen on occasion where a PM will accept submitted hours, saving the
plan, and then republishing all assignments. After this process has been
completed the hours have disappeared from the resources timesheet. Why?

Thanks!

Randy

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Randy --

The project manager probably clicked Collaborate - Publish - Republish
Assignments. If so, this action would clear the actuals from each team
member's timesheet in PWA unless the PM also selected the "Overwrite actual
work entered by resources" option in the Republish Assignments dialog. What
the PM needs to do after accepting task updates is to simply click
Collaborate - Publish - All Information. This will "push" the latest
schedule changes to every area of PWA. Hope this helps.

 

[Randy]

Dale,

So are you saying that if we do choose Republish assignments that we should
select the "Overwrite actual work..." to keep the actual work in the
timesheets? Or does Project overwrite what the resource entered with what is
in the project plan? This is confusing. When should Republish be used and
with what options selected?

Randy

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Randy --

When you update actuals from team members into the project plan, you should
click Collaborate - Publish - All Information to "push" the latest schedule
changes to PWA. From your description of the problem, it sounds like you
clicking Collaborate - Publish - Republish Assignments for this purpose,
which is not correct. You should use the Republish Assignments option
primarily for changing managers of a project. Hope this helps.

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"

 

[Michael]

MSProject 2003...
I was interested in this discussion and tried Collaborate - Publish -
Republish

Assignments without selecting Overwrite just to see if the actuals were cleared from my timesheet and they did not disappear.

What am I missing??

 

[SBelling]

I have to jump into this thread because we've experienced
similar loss of data in resource timesheets, but also
because a part of Dale's explanation is not making sense
to me:

If you are republishing all assignments, I would think one
would NOT want to select "overwrite actuals", because you
would not want to erase or overwrite what the resources
have entered in their timesheets.

Dale - are you saying that you need to select this to
ensure that not only are the assignments republished, but
that the actuals from the SQL table associated with the
project get pushed into the SQL table that populates the
timesheets?

Thanks,
SBelling

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

SBelling --

The republishing of assignments is generally done for only several reasons,
including:

1. You are taking over as manager of someone else's project
2. You have entered actuals in the Microsoft Project plan and want to
"push" the actuals to the team members' timesheet
3. You have imported a project containing historic actuals and want to
"push" the actuals to the team members' timesheets

Frankly I'm sorry I started this discussion thread, as it has caused me more
grief than it is worth. I was trying to troubleshoot someone's problem.
That's all.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

Randy:

You didn't provide enough information to give you a good answer. As Dale
told you, there's a big difference between publish and republish. If you're
using effort-based planning, and collecting hours by day, and only using
republish when actually required, then there's little likelihood that your
actions will move actual work displayed in the timesheet. However, if you
use republish on a task where actual work as moved as result of processing
in Project, you might move actual work around. It's a matter of a number of
factors including the task type in Project, and the tracking method settings
and how they interplay with one another and affect how time phased data is
calculated and written to the numerous tables in which actual work is
represented between Project and Project Server.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

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