Viewing of Proposal (under Proposals and Activities) work under My

[chris]

We are about to enable Proposals and Activities in our Production
Environment, but I'm observing a problem in My Tasks.

The question is why our resources are unable to view their assignments
generated under a Proposal Resource Plan.

In our Dev Environment, I have a Proposal with two resources reserved under
a Resource Plan (not via the Build Team button) using an FTE calculation.
After the Proposal and Resource Plan were both published, both resources
showed their time committed for this Proposal in the Resource Center.
However, neither resource sees anything under My Tasks under their Home Page
(we do not use timesheet reporting - only Task reporting).

Tracking Method is set to "Hours of work done per period" and PMs are forced
to use this reporting method. Hours are Committed and not Proposed. Not
sure what other configuration settings may be relevant.

The Project Experts Blue Book (specifically, the MS Project Experts Blue
Book "Managing Enterprise Projects" Second Edition, page 94, first
paragraph).
seems to state that Proposal activities should show up under the resources'
My Tasks link, even if their time is only reserved by Resource Plan as
opposed to linked to a task under the Build Team functionality. Is this
correct? If so, any ideas on why this work is not visible under My Tasks
would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks!
Chris

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

chris --

What you are seeing is the functionality of Resource Plans. The purpose of
a Resource Plan is to reserve a resource's time WITHOUT assigning the
resource to any tasks. That is why they cannot see any tasks from the
Resource Plan, because there aren't any tasks in a Resource Plan. If you
need for your people to see tasks from the Proposal, remove them from the
Resource Plan, add them to the team for the Proposal, and then assign them
to the tasks. Keep in mind that the system limits you to only ONE resource
per task, which is a huge deal breaker for most people.

Regarding the book (since I am one of the co-authors), you are
misunderstanding what you are seeing on page 94, first paragraph. Although
not explicitly stated, team members can only see tasks from a Proposal on
their My Tasks page if you actually ASSIGN them to a task. If they are part
of a Resource Plan only, they do not see their tasks.

Hope this helps.

 

[chris]

Dale,

Thank you very much for the quick response! I was afraid that that was the
answer.

Not only is the one resource per task a deal breaker, so is the % complete
time tracking (we use the "Hours of work done per period" method). We were
hoping to use Proposals to plan and track work during the Project Initiation
Phase and continue using the normal project functionality for the Execution
Phase, but that idea now looks pretty well impractical.

--

Chris Karanski
Application Administrator
Project and Portfolio Server

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

chris --

You are correct in all of your assessments of the Proposals feature in
Project Server 2007. Hope this helps.