Unsubmitted Time & Administrative Projects

B

Bill B.

We are in the process of upgrading to Project 2003 from 2002 and are
planning on using time tracking in the new version but are having a problem
with the home page showing that users have not submitted their timesheets.
This is caused by the fact that they are assigned to the administrative
projects for the entire year or larger period of time and do not charge time
to that project every week. Our set-up follows the approach specified on
this group to set the task to fixed duration, unchecking effort driven, then
assign all users to the task with 0%. If the start and end dates are set to
1/2/03 and 12/31/03 respectively then the users automatically see the
message about missing timesheets on their home page. If we set the start
and end dates both to 12/31/02 then they do not set it immediately on their
home page. They will not until they post their time and the project manager
approves and posts the time to the project. Once this occurs the task dates
change and people start seeing the missing timesheet message on their
homepage. Is there a way to change the way the homepage displays the
missing timesheets or set-up the administrative project not to cause this ?
We thought about not approving the time but then it would be unavailable
within the OLAP cube. Any assistance will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bill
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz

Bill:

In migrating to 2003, it's worth considering using the built-in
administrative projects. The caution here is that they don't affect
availability.
 
B

Bill B.

Gary,

We are using administrative projects but still experience the problem. In
looking at the stored procedures that generate whether the notifications
appear they do not exclude admin projects. I have experimented with
modifying the stored procedures and it is possible to easily exclude the
admin projects but it is more difficult for non-admin projects. The same
issue happens when you have a person charges time to a task before it is
suppose to start which changes the task's starting date which means that
anyone else assigned to the task will show up with missing timesheets for
that week if they did not record time. Hopefully this makes sense but am
not sure the best approach to correct this.
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]

Bill:

Have you been experimenting with the lock down settings? I've recently
become aware of a bug with that feature that causes this behavior on the
home page. Call Microsoft Support and ask for Hotfix #9544.

There is no KB article currently available on this
 
B

Bill B.

Gary,

I'm not sure what you mean by the lock down settings? We are planning on
using managed periods and then closing them. Not sure if that is what you
mean. I have actually reviewed the stored procedures and there seems to be
some inconsistency between when you are a resource and when you are a
resource manager. One of them actually includes logic for administrative
projects but is checking for when it is not equal to 1 which I believe
should be 1. The SP's are msp_web_sp_qry_countofunsubmittedtasks and
msp_web_sp_qry_countofunsubmittedtimesheets. I have a call into MS Premier
support on this issue as well. On a separate development instance, I've
actually modified these SP's to check against the webwork table and a few
others to determine truely if a timesheet has been submitted and report back
that fact. This seems to be working for all the tests so far and might be
how I proceed if Microsoft does not provide any direction.

Bill
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]

Bill:

Yes, I meant managed time periods. You should get the hotfix, this sounds
related.
 
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