SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

I was triggered to make this post about the Resource Pool functionality because I see a lot of questions about it popping up from clients and forums I am involved in.

In this post I will give a quick overview of how you create and use a resource pool.

Note that I am talking about Project Professional here and not the Project Server Enterprise resource pool functionality. I hope this post will give some insight in how you can use this functionality without having the luxury of Project Server.

Again I will be using Microsoft Project Professional 2013 to demonstrate this. However this is the preview version and not the final product changes may still occur.

What is a resource pool?

A resource pool is used to centralize the company resources in a Microsoft Project file. So in essence this Microsoft Project file will contain every employee that can be assigned to a project. The project file can then be saved to a file share so that everyone can access it or it can be saved locally if you only want to use it for yourself. When it is saved you can connect your project plans to the resource pool and gain access to the resources.

Note this file cannot reside on SharePoint. Project Professional won’t allow you to connect to the resource pool that is located on SharePoint.

So what can a resource pool mean for me?

With your project plans connected to the resource pool you can access and assign resource to your projects. When multiple projects share the same resource pool you will get a good view of the allocation of the company resources. This also allows you to see over-allocated resources where you have the ability to act on it.

So how do I create a resource pool?

The first thing you need to do is open Microsoft Project Professional and save the file to the location where you want your resource pool to reside. Give it a clear name that it is the resource pool. For this post I will call mine CXS Resource Pool.

When you created the file and saved it, you have to start filling it with your resources. Depending on how many resources you need to fill in this could take a while. A little trick to make it easy. If you happen to have a excel fill with employees names you can just copy it into the resource sheet.

Note: Make sure you have a name convention in place. Project doesn’t see the difference between R. Kruithof or Robin Kruithof. This could lead to duplicate resource in your resource pool and we don’t want that.

Ok now that we saved are resource pool and filled it with resources let’s see what it does, shall we.

Now that I have created my resource pool, how do I use it?

Before I tell you how to use it I have to tell you about the catch. To use the resource pool with your project it also need to be opened. This however can be in read-only mode as long as you have it open. Otherwise your project is not able to get the resource information out of the resource pool. Now that’s out of the way let’s continue.

Create your project and go to the resource tab. Click on Resource Pool and then Share Resources.

Select Use resources (requires at least one open resource pool) and select your resource pool file. Also make sure that Pool takes precedence and press OK.

Note: When you link a project to the resource pool Microsoft Project will recognize the project file as a resource pool. Whenever you open the resource pool you will get the following message.

My advice is if you don’t need to edit always open read-only. Additionally, once a project is linked to the resource pool it will ask you if it should open it. When clicking ok it will open the resource pool in read-only mode.

Now that you have linked the project to the resource pool we can start using it. As you can see in the image below I am able to select the resources residing in the resource pool.

For this post I made two projects: Project A and Project B. Both of these projects are linked to the resource pool. Let’s see what happens when I start assigning resource to my task. For good measure I will also create some over-allocation.

As you can see in the image above the project now has a over-allocation (The red man icon identifies over-allocations). This information is gathered from the resource pool.

Ok now to see where the over-allocation resides. You can either see this from the resource pool or from the project itself.

Let’s go to the Resource Usage sheet to see where the over allocation occurs.

Tip: In the Resource Usage view add the column “Project” and open the details view as well to get a clear indication which task of which projects are creating the over allocation.

As you can see in the image above the project gives you a clear indication on where the over- allocation resides. And because you know were the conflicts are you are able to act on it by using the team planner for example.

In the image above I have three options. One: delay the task of Project B. Two: delay the task of Project A or, Three: hand over the task to Alex running as he seems to have time. This example all depends on the priority of the projects and the ability of Alex Running to take over a task from Tim Mouse.

A resource pool gives you great insight on the resource utilization over multiple projects. Add this with the ability to make reports and you have a great way to see which resource is doing what and plan accordingly.

After playing around some more with over-allocations and reports I created the following report see image below. I love the new report functionality in Microsoft Project Professional 2013.

Note: When you want to create a report always do this in your project. The reason behind it is that while the resource pool has your resource information most reports are based on tasks even for resources. Because this information is located in the project plan you won’t be able to create a report with the information in the resource pool file itself.

I hope this gives a bit more insight in how to create a resource pool and how you can use it. It is great functionality for organizations that does not have Project Server but still want to do centralized resource management. Using the resource pool will take some time to get used to and to use it effectively. But in the end it is worth it.

via SpeakingSilent » Robin Kruithof http://speakingsilent.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/practice-makes-perfect-part-5-microsoft-project-resource-pool/

I am Robin Kruithof. I am working at CXS in the Netherlands as a Microsoft Project Consultant. My passion lies in Project Management and everything in the Project Management domain. This article has been cross posted from speakingsilent.wordpress.com/ (original article)

Not so long ago I was talking to a friend of mine who said that while he likes indicators in his project plan he just doesn’t have the time to figure out how to make them. So hé why not blog about it because he is probably not the only one that works with project on a day to day basis and want to get something more out of his plan.

To start of you need to know about the limitations. In standard Project Professional you are only able to make two types of indicators. One for Tasks and one for Resources. If you happen to work for a company that has Project Server you are also able to make indicators for Projects. This feature is mostly used to make nice dashboards.

In this post I am going to focus on what you can do in Project Professional without a connection to Project Server. Ill discuss and make a indicator for a Task.

Ill be using Project Professional 2013 for this exercise. Like always this is still the preview version so changes may still occurred. (My gut says that their won’t be but hé I still need to point it out.)

Let’s start shall we.

So how do I make a indicator?

When you started up Project Professional go to Project and select Custom Fields.

When you click on Custom Field you will be presented by the screen below.

In the top you can see which field you are making something for. Default setting is Task but you can also make one for resources. For this exercise I will be using the field Text1.

For the indicator I renamed the field Text1 to Progress. When you rename the field Text1 it will be displayed like this Text1 (Progress). In essence this will mean that for Project the field Text1 is still there but will display a different name.

As you can see I can do multiple things with this field like a lookup field or just a text field. But for now I am going to stick to making a Indicator. For this indicator I need formula and I am going to use this one:

IIf([Baseline Finish]=ProjDateValue(“NA”);”No Baseline”;IIf([Finish]<=[Baseline Finish]+5;”Green”;IIf([Finish]<=[Baseline Finish]+10;”Yellow”;”Red”)))

The above formula basically does the following: When no Baseline is set it will display “No Baseline”, if a baseline is set and the finish date of the task and the finish date of the baseline is on time with a slack of 5 days it will display the text green. If the task finish date is later then 5 days with a slack to 10 days it will display the text yellow. If it is later then 10 days it will display the text Red.

The reason behind this formula is that I don’t want to have a yellow or red smiley if I am one day late on my task. Because that is not a good representation of the project.

To make indicators I am going to map the text output to a Indicator. No Baseline equals a question mark. Green equals a green smiley. Yellow equals a Yellow smiley and Red equals a Red smiley.

The next thing you need to do is add the new field to your view. In Practice makes Perfect Part 3 – Views I showed how to do this.

However in this post I will just add the column to the default view. To add the field to the view you need to insert a new column. Be aware that you need to add the column Text1 instead of whatever name you gave to your field. When done it will look something like this.

As you can see I didn’t set a baseline yet for this project plan. Let’s change that shall we.

As you can see, after I changed my baseline and modified some days all indicator come out nicely.

This is just one indicator but depending on your needs you can make a few more. If you also seen Practice makes Perfect Part 3 – Views and know how to build a view you can actually make a dashboard with multiple indicators. This you could use to show management for example.

So it is easy to create indicators?

The hardest part of making a indicator is deciding what you want to see. After you decided what do see you have to make the formula. For more then one Project Manager this will be difficult. My advice is to ask around your own department or IT department that knows something about scripting or programming (it is really easy for them).

You can also look onto the internet their is a lot information about formula’s and how to create them.

I hope this post gives a little insight on how to create a indicators for your project. It can be really useful like said for a dashboard or to give a overall indications on your project.

via SpeakingSilent » Robin Kruithof http://speakingsilent.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/practice-makes-perfect-part-4-indicators/

I am Robin Kruithof. I am working at CXS in the Netherlands as a Microsoft Project Consultant. My passion lies in Project Management and everything in the Project Management domain. This article has been cross posted from speakingsilent.wordpress.com/ (original article)

This is a bit more technical post then you are used to. But I find it important to do some of these from time to time.

One of my clients had a problem about editing a list in the datasheet view in a Project Workspace. I also seen this issue coming up on the MSDN forums. A good opportunity for me to make a small post how to correct this.

In SharePoint 2010 or in this case the Project Server 2010 Project Workspace it is possible to edit a list in the datasheet view.

Now my client really wanted to edit the column “Comments” however this was for some reason not possible. The datasheet view didn’t let you edit the column and looked like it was only read-only. Here is what I did to fix this problem.

Go to the list you want to be able to edit in the datasheet view. Go to List Settings.

Go to the columns you want to change and edit it.

As you can see in the picture below it has been set to enriched text.

The only thing you need to do is set it to Plain text.

Now go back to the list and go to the datasheet view. Now go to the column you want to edit. As you can see you are now able to enter text. Just a quick fix if you ever run into this problem.

This is it for me for now up to the next post Practice makes Perfect Part 4 – Indicators.

via SpeakingSilent » Robin Kruithof http://speakingsilent.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/sharepoint-listproject-workspace-list-datasheet-view-edit-problem/

I am Robin Kruithof. I am working at CXS in the Netherlands as a Microsoft Project Consultant. My passion lies in Project Management and everything in the Project Management domain. This article has been cross posted from speakingsilent.wordpress.com/ (original article)