Timesheets vs Calendars for Resources

L

luai7

I am currently implementing MS Project Server 2007 in my organization. The
organization is rather small with around 25 employees. Also, the number of
projects that are expected to be managed at one single time is less than 10.

One thing that came to my mind is to adopt timesheets for our resources, but
then I thought that this will create a lot of overhead for the project
administrator and team members. This is also what I read in various articles
on the Internet.

Offcourse, I understand that calendars are not Timesheets and vice versa and
that calendars are a must in all cases.

My question to the experts is: Is using Timesheets in PS 2007 a must? Saying
that I might need to have different calendars for different resources that
include their vacation time... But I suppose for this thing I could create
various calendars and update them once every year. What's your opinion on
this issue?

Thanks.
 
M

Marc Soester [MVP]

Hi luai7,

Firstly timesheets are not a must. You dont need to use the timesheet
functionality to manage your projects. Also the enterprise calendars have
nothing to do with the timsheets. The calendars calcualte the capacity of
your staff members. Each individual resource has a calendar and yes you are
right you can amend the resource calendar to maintain their holidays and
public holidays.

Luai can I suggest that you may want to buy a project server book that
allows you to find out more about the configuration and administration of
Project Server. check out this link, I am sure you will find the appropriate
book:
http://www.projectserverbooks.com
Hope this helps
 
L

luai7

Thanks a lot Marc :)

In fact I already bought the "Managing Enterprise Projects using Microsoft
Office Project Server 2007 - For Project Managers" by Gary Chefetz & Dale
Howard.

I don't like this to be a commercial post for this book, but truly it is an
excellent book. Offcourse, there are other excellent EPM books that I am
considering now.... but I am trying to learn to walk before learing how to
run in this EPM product :)

However, I thought I might get the opinions of various MSPS2007 experts on
this Timesheet vs Calendar issue :)

The reason why I raised this issue is because when users and executives see
this "My Timesheets" in their PWA home page, they start raising questions
like: "Oh , why are we not using this My Timesheets thing? What is it for
anyways?... etc". You know this sort of thing :) and normally I should be
prepared with technically prooven answers ;-)

But honously, I don't think that we need timesheets because infact it will
create an uneeded overhead on our implementation plan.... Saying that
though... I might consider using it at later stages in the implementation
once employees are familiar with the basic functionalities of Office Project
2007.

Thanks again.
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]

luai:

If you like the Blue book, you'll surely love our latest as well. If you
choose to not implement the timesheets, it takes only a few minutes to
remove any reference to them in the interface. You can set the timesheet
link on the Quick launch menu to hidden and set the reminders web part to
hide their display as well. Your executives will never know that they're
there.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
 
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