Replies

HI,

I have checked with other IT people at work and they have not had the same problem. There are three others using Vista/IE7 and Norton. None of the other three using Vista did anything special to access the email.

Carla

HI Danny,

I see what you are looking for. Only thing I would know to do is to consolidate all the projects into a single window by making a single master project file, then the overall picture of summary groupings is easier to read. This is probably a lot of detail so you might try collapsing some of the detail in the master project.

Carla

The gray tasks are linked tasks in subprojects. If you have a consolidated plan you should not be seeing any gray tasks. The gray tasks should be visible in the individual subprojects only. If you have brought all of the projects into a single consolidated plan and you have used project summary tasks you should be seeing totals for work and duration. I am not sure where you are looking at Work totals. I added the work column to one of my consolidated plans to the task entry table and I am getting totals. If you have linked summary tasks to summary tasks and you are looking in the subprojects you will only get a path to the linked tasks.

Carla

Hi Catharine,

I have done an install without Exchange and I don’t recall having any problems, this particular organization had Groupwise as their email service and with some expertise from the LAN group were able to use the Project Server notification features with Groupwise. I could see a valid use for Project Server without the notification component, but it really seems poor planning to buy and implement this type of product and not fully use the capabilities. It is always difficult when the idea people that sell the value of these products are not around when they are implemented.

Carla

Exchange as with Windows and SQL Server does not come with the Project Server package. You must purchase those products separatly. Project Server without Exchange gives you the ability to have more of a reasonable Project Portfolio Management System. Project desktop has the same multiple user capacity and works much like Excel with shared files. Project Server using SQL Server as it’s data storage engine gives the same security and multiple concurrent user capability as SQL Server to Project Server. Shared Resource Pool and Consolidated Projects are reasonably managed on Project Server by comparison to the challenging ability to do this with the desktop product. Exchange offers you the ability to use the email and notification features of Project Server.

My experience with the Server product has been very good as a user. It is quite expensive to purchase the hardware and software, and usually needs a technical manager for the security and system setup as well as a Project Manager to determine what users should have what roles and permissions. The implication is that the organization has many users that are at least somewhat familiar with the Microsoft Desktop product. I generally only see this product used in larger Projectized organizations.

Carla

Duration and Work Effort are different fields stored in Project so there is no correspondence with the duration of the task and the work effort required to complete the task. Example a task can take 2 days duration and with one full time resource assigned this is 8 hours total work, with 2 full time resources assigend this would be 16 hours total work or a part time resources assigned may only result in 2 hours work. The easist screen setup to assign resources is the split view Gantt Chart, Task form combination. I have also included a short overview of resource assignment information.

Projects Scheduling Formula
Project uses the scheduling formula:
Work = Duration * Units

To make weekends working time go to Tools Options and select Change Working time and select the base calendar for the project. Change all Saturdays and Sundays by clicking the day label bar at the top of the column and click the nondefault working time radio button.

If this makes a change in the total working time for a week from 40 hours to 56 hours go to Tools Options Calendar tab and change the defaults to coordinate with the project base calendar. Duration calculations are based on these values. All durations are broken down to minutes, then converted to days and weeks based on what is set here, not what is set in the base calendar.

Another option is to use the 24 hour calendar if it is appropriate.

Bottom line the project base calendar and the the selections in the Calendar tab of Tools Options must synchronize.

Resources to be using this schedule should also be using for their base calendar the same base calendar as the project base calendar by default resource calendars are based on the Standard Calendar that says they work Monday – Friday 8 hours per day.

Carla

Hans,

Thank you for the link. I tried the ADO version and had trouble with it, DAO version worked fine.

Carla

Yes the project is scheduled around the project base calendar. If you want 10 hours to be a day to be Global you can make a named base calendar with 10 hour working days and assign it as the base calendar for the project and also go to Tools ==> Options ==> Calendar tab and make hours in a day 10. What is set in the Options dialog box needs to be synchronized with the Project base calendar.

If you only want this for the single resource you could make the task Fixed Duration and assign the resource and it will become a 1 day duration task with 10 hours work.

Carla

You have a lot of methods to get project level information. The easiest is to add a Project level task by selection Tools ==> Options the View tab and check the Show Project Summary Task in the lower left of the dialog box. This will add a Summary task for the entire project. There are also Project reports. Select View Reports and go the the Overview category.

You can add a Task Note to capture the clients name and contact information. You can select File ==> Properties and fill in the fields and these fields then become available to Headers and Footers of Project Reports. The comments section becomes a task note associated with the Project Summary Task.

Not sure if you are asking about all outstanding projects or outstanding task work. If you want to see multiple projects in a single file you can create a Master Project file that will display all the Projects in a single linked consolidated window. If you are asking about incomplete task work you can filter for Uncompleted tasks by using the filter dropdown in the formatting toolbar. It is the dropdown that by default says All Tasks. You can additionally select View ==> Reports and go the the Current Activities section and there are several different reports showing status of task work.

For Project Server you would need a server with Windows 2003 Server, SQL Server, IIS, and Exchange Server to use the features offered. It is a somewhat challenging and expensive setup. It is designed for large organizations and probably not appropriate for a small office. Master Project/ Subproject and Shared Resource Pool features of desktop Project will in most cases fill the needs of a small office.

Carla

Are you on a network? You might work with your LAN administrator to control permissions through netowrk security.

Carla

Select Format > Bar Styles.
In the dialog box select task in the Name column.
In the lower half of the screen select the text tab.
Click in the white section to the right of the Right button.
From the drop down list select Resource Names.
Repeat the same steps for Critical in the Name column.

This will change The Detail Gantt view in the current project plan only.

Carla

You might check the bar height. Select Format Layout and set the bar height to the default of 12.

Carla

Scott,

I wish I knew of a really great resource. Most of what I know about Project VBA comes from what I know about Access VBA. If you find one I would really like to have a place to read up on Project specific code.

Carla

I got this to work from a generic text box on the form I ran it off of:

Function fncProjectOLE()
Dim prjApp As MSProject.Application
Dim prjProject As MSProject.Project
Dim intTask As Integer
Dim TaskValue As String

Set prjApp = CreateObject(“Msproject.Application”)

prjApp.FileOpen “C:Project1.mpp”, ReadOnly:=True
prjApp.Visible = True

‘Run a macro.
prjApp.Macro “Toggle_Read_Only” ‘Toggle file back to read-write.

Set prjProject = prjApp.ActiveProject
TaskValue = Forms!Form1.txtName
‘Add tasks to the project.
prjProject.Tasks.Add Name:=”Build Team”
prjProject.Tasks.Add Name:=”Project Kickoff”
prjProject.Tasks.Add Name:=”Gather Requirements”
prjProject.Tasks.Add Name:=TaskValue
‘ et al.

prjApp.SelectColumn
prjApp.FontItalic True ‘Change font properties.
prjApp.EditGoTo 5, Date ‘Go to a specific cell in the column.
prjApp.FilePrintPreview ‘Print preview the file.

Set prjProject = Nothing
Set prjApp = Nothing
End Function

Carla