FAQs
We get asked many questions about Microsoft Project Server and Server Online from customers around the world. Check back here frequently to see if your question has been answered. Submit a question via our Contact Us page.
The main thing that makes the department field different is that it drives certain associations, including the following:
- When creating projects, users can only see Enterprise Project Types with no department or with the same department as that associated with the user.
- A project Enterprise Custom Field that has a department associated with it will only be visible (both in PDPs and in the “Project Information” dialog in Project Professional) for projects associated with that department.
This means that if you have a lot of possible values for the department, each time an enterprise project type (EPT) is created, you need to consider a lot of possible departments to associate the new EPT with. If a new EPT is missing a department value that it should have, then people who should be able to see that EPT when creating projects will not be able to see it. Conversely, if a new EPT includes a value a department that it should not have, then people who should not be able to see that EPT when creating projects will be able to see it.
Also, higher levels in a department look-up table do not inherit the visibility of the lower levels. So if you have a user whose department is “IT.Apps”, he or she will not be able to see EPT associated the “IT.Apps.Support” department.
If there is an anticipated need to capture a hierarchical department structure for reporting purposes, a custom field associated with a lookup table that contains that structure is probably a good idea. If the anticipated need is security based, the RBS field and associated lookup table might be the appropriate mechanism to leverage.
Desired Behavior
Work scheduled to be performed during the resource’s time off should be automatically pushed into the future.
Suggested Approach
Maintain individual resource calendars.
Desired Behavior
Work schedule to be performed during the resource’s time off should make the resource appear over allocated.
Suggested Approach
Maintain a “Non project work” schedule intended to consume resource availability. Consider including a “Time off” task in that schedule. Assign resources to that task, and maintain their allocation in a Task Usage or Resource Usage view. Be sure to maintain the allocation in the time-phased portion of the view!
A user has some level of access to the system, but cannot be assigned to a task in a project. This could be an administrator or an executive that would need access to PWA but would never be assigned actual work in the system. The user entity is also where security is applied.
Resources are sometimes mistakenly considered people alone. A work resource could be a person, team, or a role. You could also have material and cost resources. The point is even if you are talking about personnel resources they don’t necessarily need access to Project Server.