EPM, Microsoft Project and You

BY: Collin Quiring

The way the ribbon works is that the format tab will automatically appear based upon the view that you are in at the time.  And, the options that the ribbon contains at that point are based upon the view so that you have options that are appropriate to the view.  This “always” works.

I was working in Project Professional 2013 and wanted to change the formatting in the view that I was in.  The problem was immediately obvious to me, the format tab was not appearing in the ribbon.  But, it is “always” there.  I tried other views and for a few of them, it appeared, for others it did not.  I closed out of Professional and re-opened it (I was not connected to a server so it was purely a local client issue).  I even rebooted my computer, but no difference.

Since I had been working in Professional the whole time and since I hadn’t done anything special I know for a fact that I did NOT do anything to make this stop happening.  However, I have used computers long enough to know that the “impossible” happens quite often.

Project Professional 2013 is new and there may be some sort of bug or it may have been something on my computer in the background (again, it was NOT something that I did) or it could have been anything happening that I don’t know about.  I am not sure about how it happened, just that it did.

So, the key item – how did I get it fixed?  Well, with the help of Project MVP Julie Sheets we discovered that a few of my format tabs had been turned off!  How, we don’t know.  But, the fix was to turn them back on and the world was a happy place again.

How do you turn them on?  Go to File — > Options — > Customize Ribbon and then go to Customize the Ribbon on the left hand side and select the Tools selection from the drop down or select the All Tabs option.  Then, scroll down until you find the Tools option and the Format option.  Select the checkbox next to each Format option.  This is what was randomly turned off on a number of mine.

BY: Collin Quiring

As more and more of my users get Internet Explorer (IE) 10 I am getting questions about error messages.  To clarify, as of this writing, IE 10 and Project Server 2010 don’t play well together.

Some screens within Project Web App (PWA) appear to work and some others don’t work at all.  One of the error messages that you get is unfortunately a very unhelpful and non-accurate message.  It states that Project Server 2010 feature requires at least Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0.  But, you are already using version 10!

So, first thing is to ignore that message.  Don’t click on “Go Back to Site.

You have two options here to fix this.  The first one is the immediate fix but requires you to do it every time you hit one of these pages.  In the address bar is the “Compatibility View” icon.

Selecting this should make the screen open properly and you can go on until you get the error again and then you hit the icon again.

The other option is to try and use the Compatibility View Settings.  To do this, go to IE– > Tools — > Compatibility View Settings —  >  and then add the website to the list.  I say “try” this because it hasn’t worked for me yet.  I have a couple websites in my list that don’t work right and I have to hit the icon in the address bar anyway.  There are other options in the Compatibility View as well that might work for you.  Those are outlined here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd567845(v=VS.85).aspx .

By:  Collin Quiring

I see the world through the prism of Project Management.  Lately, I have been thinking about the Risk of a key person leaving an organization – a succession plan.  When Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation I was surprised to learn that the Catholic Church had a plan for the resignation of a Pope.  It hadn’t happened since 1417, nearly 600 years.  Yet, there was a  plan for succession based on a resignation (different from the plan for succession by death).  The most recent updates to the plan that I found were made in 1917, 1975 and 1996.  Those documents even set out the rules for the reasons a Pope can resign.

It makes sense to have a succession plan for key executives of an organization.  But, I think there should be a succession plan for key folks that centers around “what do we do about the knowledge that is leaving”.  I think organizations often have a succession plan from an organizational structure point of view but don’t know what to do about a key person’s ability and knowledge.  I am not referring to an executive but a person that should be considered key due to their knowledge or experience.  In some project plans we put in a risk that identifies a certain subject matter expert as a critical person to the success of the project.

But, what do we do about a person that is critical to the ongoing success of an organization?  They may have a small part in a number of projects, or they are a subject matter expert that keeps everything running smoothly because they “just know what to do.”  Almost by definition, we can’t have a plan to replace the person’s knowledge. But, what have we done to minimize the pain the organization might incur if that person is suddenly gone?

I know of one organization that had two people that knew “what to do” for a specific product line – and only those two knew.  They both left the company at about the same time.  Suddenly, the organization didn’t know what to do to produce that product.  They had to recreate the process from the beginning and it cost them lots of money to find the suppliers, manufacturers and create the internal processes to produce a relatively simple product.  They thought it was so simple that they never bothered to get the knowledge of how to do it.  It turns out that the reason is seemed simple was that these two people had figured it out and just “knew what to do”.

While you can’t ever 100% be ready you can do some preparation and planning.  For example, you can try to document what they do and how they do it.  You can try to put as much of the work into a system (computerized or other) so that it is at least in a framework for somebody else.

But, at a minimum, there should at least be a general plan about what to do if a critical person suddenly leaves.

BY:  Ali Salih

Just a quick note for a strange error we got while trying to get an OLAP cube to work in Project Server 2010.  The problem seems to be that we were using a non-default directory for Analysis Services.  Every time that we ran the cube we got the following error message:

===== Initiating OLAP database build process =====

[12/17/2012 8:37 AM] Cube build request message has been added to the Project Server queue

===== Verifying and running pre-build server event handler =====

[12/17/2012 8:37 AM] Verifying and running pre-build server event handler

===== Determining database and OLAP database structure =====

[12/17/2012 8:37 AM] Cube build initialization started

[12/17/2012 8:37 AM] OLAP database and cube structure was determined successfully

===== Building database and cubes =====

[12/17/2012 8:37 AM] Cube build session started

[12/17/2012 8:37 AM] Analysis Services server failed to build OLAP database. Error: Error Adding DataSource ‘Project Reporting data source’ to database ‘Proj10Cube’. Error: Errors in the metadata manager. Either the database with the ID of ‘Proj10Cube’ does not exist in the server with the ID of ‘xxxxx’, or the user does not have permissions to access the object.

===== Process Completed =====

[12/17/2012 8:37 AM] Failed to build the OLAP cubes. Error: Error Adding DataSource ‘Project Reporting data source’ to database ‘Proj10Cube’. Error: Errors in the metadata manager. Either the database with the ID of ‘Proj10Cube’ does not exist in the server with the ID of ‘xxxxx’, or the user does not have permissions to access the object.

This error might be due to NTFS permissions on the data directory for OLAPDATA. A permission addition might be needed.  Since we were using a non default directory, the normal settings weren’t automatically set.

• Add the SQLServerMSASUser${SERVERNAMEHERE}$MSSQLSERVER local security group to the data directory for Analysis Services.

You can check the data directory from properties on Analysis Server, Right Click and go to Properties.

BY: Collin Quiring

Recently an associate created a Project Detail Page (PDP) that had a large number of fields in it.  He added the appropriate custom and standard project fields (about 25) to the PDP knowing that he would have to create a very similar PDP immediately afterwards.  The second PDP had to have all of the fields of the first one plus an additional number of fields (about 10 more for a total of 35).  And, he didn’t want to have to recreate the second PDP from scratch.

When he asked how to copy the PDP I told him it was relatively easy in that he would just go to the Server Settings and Project Detail Pages page which lists all the PDP’s and then select the one he wanted and click on the Download a Copy, save it with a new file name and then use the Upload Document button and there it is – your new PDP!

Well, not so fast.  What we just copied was really the Name, Display Name, Page Type and it wants me to add my own Description.  That might be nice but what we needed in this case was for the 25 fields that he had added in the first PDP that we THOUGHT we were copying to the new PDP.  The problem is that the custom fields do NOT copy along with the PDP.  The 25 fields that we really wanted to copy are in the web part that were within the first PDP.

After some Bing-ing and Google-ing I didn’t discover a solution so I present our solution (which, you need to remember, is free so you might be getting what you paid for here! J  )

A SharePoint expert might have had a more elegant method to solve the problem but here is how we did it.

1. From the Project Detail Pages – All Documents screen we selected the first PDP to open that page with the 25 fields.
2. We selected the Export option on that page and saved the web part.
3. We then went back to the Project Detail Pages – All Documents screen and selected the new PDP page – which opened a totally blank screen.
4. On the new blank PDP we selected Site Actions – Edit Page.
5. We then selected Add a Web Part
6. At the bottom left of the screen under that Categories scroll bar is the Upload a Web Part option.
7. We selected the web part that we just created (in step 2 above).
8. Then, right next to the Browse button is the Upload button which we selected.
9. Selecting Upload kicked us back to the Add a Web Part again and we had to select it again to get right back to the Categories options in the Edit Page.
10. In the Categories options at the top of the list is now an option for Imported Web Parts.
11. When selecting that Category the Web Part now shows up that we just uploaded.
12. We then selected that web part and clicked on Add
13. Then we added the10 new fields and we were done!
14. That’s it, a lucky thirteen “simple” steps to make the original 25 fields available in a new PDP so that we didn’t have to retype them.

BY:  Pete Evangelista

When a project schedule has both Local Resources and Enterprise Resources assigned to the same task there are some unique challenges that are presented to the Project Manager during the task update process.  The following example outlines how durations, work and other calculations are done by Project Professional 2010 and Project Server 2010 when the update process uses timesheets in Project Server.

We have been asked by Project Managers and Resource Managers as to why the duration of some of their tasks seem to increase into unexpected amounts.  In this case, they are used to manually updating the task in Project Professional directly.  But, now that they are using Project Server and getting updates from Project Server Team Members directly but when they go to manually update the Local Resource’s work they are seeing that the duration of the task is no longer what they originally set.

After some research, it was discovered that this happened whenever the Enterprise Resource updated their tasks but did not update it to 100% complete.  Here is an example and explanation of what is happening.

I have a task in my plan:  69- Review Sponsor’s Access to PMO site.  It’s a fixed worked task.  I set the work to 4 hrs and assigned myself (a resource in the pool who does timesheets) and Joe Sponsor (a local resource) each 100% to the task.  Project made a 2 hr task assignment for me and a 2 hr task assignment for Joe Sponsor on Wed 8/14/12.  Here is a snapshot of the Project Professional Gantt chart view:

Here is the TASK USAGE view from Project Professional (helpful for analyzing how resources are USED on TASKS):

Seeing that this is what I expect for myself and the local resource Joe Sponsor, I then save and publish the schedule.

Once on Project Server, I open my timesheet.  The task shows up as expected with 2 hours assigned to me.  For purposes of this example, I will update the task to indicate that I have spent 1.5 hours on it.  With no other time recorded on it and no other modifications or entries, I record 1.5 hours on 8/14 and I then save and submit that time:

After submitting the timesheet/task update and the Project Manager approving the task, this is what shows in Project Professional.  I went to the Task Usage view and insert the following columns for demonstration purposes:

Actual Work – 1.5 hours, just as I reported

Remaining Work – 2.5 hrs – .5hrs left for me, and 2 hrs left for Joe Sponsor.

% Work Complete – is a calculation based on Work.  I’ve done 1.5 of the 4 hours of work.  So, 1.5 divided by 4 is 37.5% (rounded to 38% by Professional)

Now, it gets a bit interesting in the Duration calculations..

Duration – .31 days (or 2.5 hrs) – This is because I marked 1.5 hrs done (75% done).  I still have .5 hours LEFT to go – in other words, .5 hrs / 8hr per day = .0625 days duration.  THE KEY ITEM is that because Project received the update from Timesheets, it assumes that NO MORE WORK will be done on that day.  It ADDS the remaining work to the currently scheduled duration.  In this case, add .0625 to the original .25 day duration to get .3125 days (rounded to .31).  So, the Fixed Work task remains at 4 hours BUT the duration has now been extended.

Note that the planned finish time is now 10:30 a.m., not 10:00 a.m.  We would expect that the new Finish Date wouldn’t be 10:30 on the same day but would rather put that 30 minutes on the next day since it is already assuming that the duration has to increase.  Maybe that is a bug?  Maybe that is an oddity of the way the calculation is done?  Either way, it does make logical sense that the duration has been extended based on our update.

% Complete –  is a calculation based on duration of the both resources over the total duration.  In this case, 1.5hrs / 4.5 hrs (total duration) = 34% (with some rounding).

Actual Duration – Is a calculation of Duration (now .31 days) *% Complete (.34) = .1054 or .11

Remaining Duration – Is Planned Duration of .3125 days minus the Actual Duration of .1054 (.11)  days to get .2071 days (.21 with rounding).

So, we understand why the Project Manager sees a Duration and Remaining Duration that don’t necessarily make sense at first glance.  However, the system is producing a logical result when broken down into its calculation method.

BY: Collin Quiring

Sometimes two projects on the same Project Server 2010 instance are being managed separately, perhaps even by different groups or organizations, but they have inter-dependencies. When doing Google and Bing searches for the best way to do that, I keep running into sites stating that you need a Master Schedule.  This isn’t the case.  And, in many situations, having a Master Schedule is much more damaging to Resource loading and other areas that they aren’t worth it (hence why there is even an option to NOT allow Master Schedules to be published at all…but I digress).

Also, I suspect there is a bug in the way that I have seen others explaining how to do this.  That is highlighted below.

I thought I would just post a quick “how to” when you want to link tasks within different projects but not have a Master Schedule to deal with.  I have two schedules built on the same Project Server 2010 instance.  They are named ScheduleONE and ScheduleTWO.  ScheduleONE currently has four tasks, all at 2 days duration and all linked sequentially like this:

ScheduleTWO has tasks with 4 day durations and is linked sequentially like this:

Both of these are saved to the server (they don’t need to be published for this to work).  For our example, we have decided that for Task C in ScheduleONE to be completed Task 4 in ScheduleTWO must be completed.  Or, using the Project parlance – ScheduleTWO, Task 4 is a predecessor for ScheduleONE, task C.

Now is the critical part – the syntax.  To link between projects, the syntax is to have <>\Project Name\Task ID  .  NOTE – that is the task ID, not the task name!  So, in our case, the syntax is going to be: <>\ScheduleTWO\4.  And, we are going to put that as the predecessor for Task C.  The natural way to do this, and normally the documented way, is to go to the Task Information for the task, and add that syntax to the ID field in the predecessor tab.  And, it APPEARS to work – in fact, you get this result:

All appears well – the syntax in the ID field, and the system has even put in the text for “External Task”.  But, when you click on OK, nothing happens.  No error and no result.  Hence why I think this is a bug.

However, this is easily resolved.  Just put the syntax into the Predecessor column text field directly like this:

Now, after you hit enter, the predecessor will be in place.  And, if you have the “show external predecessor/successor” set to display then you will see the ScheduleTWO task in ScheduleONE as a grayed out task like this:

AND, in ScheduleTWO, Task C will automatically appear like this:

No need for a Master Schedule and when you have the syntax down and the work-around for the predecessor bug, it works great!

BY: Collin Quiring

Having recently worked on two separate Project Server 2010 implementations where each organization used the Timesheet functions I have come across a few gotcha’s that I think might be helpful to document.

This article will discuss the Timesheet Chain.  This is where the timesheet is approved but when the approver approves the timesheet they have to send it on to another approver.  Even though they approved it, the timesheet still isn’t really approved until the last person in the chain does the approval.  In one case, we had four people involved with three approvers.

For example, this is the way it worked:

Team Member  — >  Manager A — > Manager B — > Manager C

This is the way it worked “out of the box”.  We didn’t set up any special groups or settings.  In researching it, we had to first figure out why it did the chain approval.  Each person’s Timesheet Manager was the person that the approval was going to and Manager C was their own Timesheet Manager.  (They were all their own Default Assignment Owner.)

For example, from their user setup screens:

The Team Member:

The first manager:

The second Manager:

And the third and final manager:

So, that was easy enough to see WHY it was chaining.  Since each Manager was the next manager’s Timesheet Manager it kept going through the process.  But, this setup is correct in that we really did want Manager B to report to Manager C.  We really did want the Team Member to report to Manager A.  HOWEVER, we wanted it to stop at one approval.

The users were all setup in groups with no selected permissions in their own user setup.  The default group settings were not changed.  The Managers were all in the Resource Manager group, the Team Member in the Team member group.  The RBS was setup but doesn’t appear to play a role in this situation.  We searched high and low and were able to piece together the following three pieces that all work in tandem.

Here is gotcha number one:

The system needs to be setup so that the resource that you want to approve timesheets has the “Approve Timesheet” permission.   (Note – there is an “Accept Timesheet” and an “Approve Timesheet” permission.)  When an individual has the “Approve Timesheet” permission it should stop at that point.  They need to have the “Accept Timesheets” permission set to allow in the Global Permissions for the group as well.  In our case, no joy.

Here is gotcha number two:

In the timesheet settings you have to turn off (uncheck) the Fixed Approval Routing in the Timesheet Settings and Default screen.  (Note – unchecking this only stops the Managers from “selecting” who the timesheet goes to, it does NOT stop the routing from happening.)

Here is gotcha number three:

The permissions for this are based on the Category within the group.  The Manager who is approving the timesheet must have the Approve Timesheet permission IN THE CATEGORY that the Team Member has on their group.

Let’s walk through Manager A.

• Manager A was in the Resource Manager group.
  • The Resource Manager Group global permissions had the “Accept Timesheets” permission:

   

  • The My Resources Category had all Resource permissions checked, including the “Approve Timesheet”
  • 

• Still, when Manager A approved the timesheet, it went to Manager B.
• So, we looked at the Team Member.  The Team Member had the Category “My Tasks” in the Team Member Group settings.
• Therefore, we went back to the Resource Manager and added My Tasks to the Category and gave it one permission – Approve Timesheets

And, finally, it stopped routing to the next manager.

Now, when Team Member updates the timesheet, Manager A approves it and it is done.  Manager A’s timesheet is approved only by Manager B and Manager B by Manager C.

By:  Collin Quiring

 My property line borders “The City” but I am officially in “The County.”  The good news is that I don’t have city taxes but the bad news is that I don’t get some city services.  One of those services is Trash Removal.  I am talking about the simple act of taking my regular household trash to the street and having it picked up and hauled away.  This would seem a relatively simple process.  As a county household, I can contract with whomever I want that will provide service in my area.  There are actually a number of available companies.

The first company was great (at first) at the pick-up part but horrible at the billing and payment part.  Most of my neighborhood used them, but, they slipped in service over time and stopped picking up trash all together after a while.  So, most of my neighborhood had to switch.  Quite a few of us switched to a relatively large company that was reasonably priced.  They were great at billing and payment (doing it online if desired) but they sometimes just missed our entire neighborhood.  Or, they would come the day AFTER we were scheduled to be picked up.  Or, two days later.  Or, not for a week.  This led to the majority of the neighborhood having trash on the street for 1 – 7 days.  And, the dogs loved that!  Calling the company was futile.  Rarely, you would get somebody to answer the phone and if you did they would have a list of excuse and promises and then never come out anyway.

Some of the neighbors still try to use them, and it shows by the number of days their trash sits at the street.  I noticed that my next door neighbor had consistent service and asked who was picking up the trash.  We called the number he gave us and we got a real person who knew where our neighborhood was and even understood where our house was.  Prices were fair and we were given the day of the week and approximate time of the pickup.  They showed up, as promised.  They gave my neighbor a discount for a month because he “recruited” us.  Our neighbor on the other side saw that we were getting our trash removed and we told about this company.  We received a discount for a month for recruiting our neighbor.  They kept showing up when promised.  Their bill and payment system is consistent (and they even put a different little note on the invoice every month which I like to read).

Then, they had an issue come up purely internal to them.  They sent everyone a letter explaining that for a while our day would change.  Even though it really wasn’t our concern, they explained why as well.  AND, then they called our house and let us know as well and to confirm that we knew our day was changing and the effective date of the change.

Ok, so?  Well, this is Project Management at its finest to me!  This is stakeholder management and effective communication!  Until the last few years, when I lived in “The City” this was never something I thought about.  I put the trash at the street, it goes away.  Simple, right?  I am on my THIRD trash removal service in just a few years!

It makes me wonder, how many of the “simple” projects that your PMO does are failing your stakeholders?  If you aren’t making life easier for your stakeholders then you aren’t being helpful.  If you are getting constant complaints about one or two of the “little” things is there a way to resolve it before they look elsewhere for that service?

This article is an overview for the diagram that can be found here:  http://pmpspecialists.com/WhitePapers.html  and is called “Timsheet and Task Update Workflow”.

The diagram and this article are a high level overview and are to help with understanding the workflow in Project Server 2010 for using Timesheets and Task Updates.  The goal is to demonstrate how the timesheet “splits” into two separate flows (from a system perspective).

First, it helps to understand that in Timesheets there are two basic types of work being accounted for:

1. Work assigned in schedules as tasks
2. NON-scheduled work called Administrative tasks

NON-scheduled tasks include things like Sick Time, Vacation, Jury Duty or other items that you want to track within your organization.

Secondly, there are two perspectives to think about – the Project Manager and the Timesheet Manager.  These are not necessarily the same person as the Timesheet Manager is the person approving the number of hours a person worked and may not even be a Project Manager.  The Project Manager may have only one task for an individual that takes only a few hours of their week and from their perspective, they don’t care whether or not the individual worked 4, 40 or 90 hours during the week.  They care about whether or not the individual worked on the tasks they were assigned and how that work (or lack thereof) affected the overall schedule.

When an individual enters their time, the timesheet “splits” into two separate flows:  one for the Project Manager(s) and one for the Timesheet Manager.  The splits are named based on their type – the updates of time on scheduled tasks are called Status Updates and the other items along with the overall timesheet are considered Timesheet Updates.

Not represented in the diagram is that Timesheet Managers can set up rules about accepting updates.  And, it is also an automatic setting that if you are your own Timesheet Manager that your update will be accepted.  So, it is important to understand that the diagram and this brief post are about the high level workflow and doesn’t try to include every setting that can be made to automate this process or the cases where a Project Manager and Timesheet Manager are the same person.