Luka Gospodnetic - Microsoft Project 2007 Blog

Problem linking resource pool to large existing project plans

lugospod — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:36:00 GMT

Here is a quote from a mail that I recieved from James Terris from UK:

"The problem is... the project plans and the resource pool have different working hours. When I try to associate the plan to the pool all the start/finish dates are shifted. I've tried setting all tasks to "fixed duration" before linking to the resource pool but the dates still move. Is there any way I can link the two together and have the dates in the project plans remain the same?"

To answer this question we have to know how MS Project handles calendar times.

MS Project has a couple of levels of working times: project, task and resource. One could have a problem because when you map the resource from the pool to your existing project, MS Project takes the working hours (Calendar) from the MSPS (resource pool). If you want to disable that you could try the following:

Go to each of the tasks where you want to add a resource from the resource pool
Click on the Task information (right mouse button on the task, or select the task and then go to Project->Task information).
Since you have specified a different default calendar for the project, you should select it in the Calendar dropdownlist. Your MSPS administrator probably declared a couple of default working hour calendars (for each of you subsidiaries or departments) and you obviously have your own calendar for your project
Now you should select (check) the checkbox right to that dropdownlist

This way the MS Project will ignore the resources calendar for the task that was selected.

Of course this has a downside (as always :)). Each task, by default, inherits the project calendar. This way you will override the task, to use, in your case, the same calendar as the project (this way the checkbox field get enabled). Now if you change the projects base calendar, it will not affect the tasks :(

But, in my experience, I have never changed the initial base calendar in the middle of the project.

HTH,

Windays 2008 - I'll Talk There

lugospod — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 07:32:00 GMT

I'll be attending Microsft Windays 2008 Conference from 20^th till 25^th of April 2008. On the preconference day my colleague Dražen Penzar and I will be holding a whole day workshop (project simulation, Microsoft Enterprise Project Management tools).

Also on Friday 25^th, I will be holding a case-study lecture about a system for ordering and distribution of free school books for all the schools in Croatia. This system was created for Narodne novine d.d. whose three main businesses are: Publishing Activity, Printing Activity and CommerceThe main topic of the lecture will be the know-how for developing high performance Web system.

I hope that you find this interesting and that I’ll be seeing you on Windays 2008 Conference...

Luka

Protecting you project plan from unauthorized access or change

lugospod — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:41:00 GMT

In my last post, I mentioned that I will describe the plan protection. So... here it goes...

First of all, there are two ways to protect your project plan:

1) Protecting from unauthorized access

2) Marking the plan as "Read-only"

Both ways require that you enter a password before saving the project plan (Save as->Tools->General options).

You can also check the "Read-only recommended" checkbox (as show in the picture) if you would like that users get a read-only recommendation windows when they open the project plan.

Sharing Microsoft Project - Mark Walhimer

lugospod — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:44:00 GMT

This morning I received an email from Mark Walhimer. I'll copy/paste his text, 'cause I'm lazy :)

Quote: "Thanks for the great blog, lots of good information. Do you have any suggestions about sharing Microsoft project schedules with multiple people without using sever edition? Thanks for the great blog!, Mark"
First of all, thank you Mark. It is very nice to hear that this blog actually helps people.Sharing the project plan is something that everybody figures out for themselves (unless you have the Project Server). I use to do it either by using some kind of version control system (VSS, CVS etc.) or by communicating with my project teammates (verbal, email…).

Of course, if you don’t other people to mess up your project plan, you can always set the password on write permission. This way nobody can edit the project plan without entering the password. (I’ll write a blog post about this as soon as can).

I hope Mark, that this helps you in some way. If not, leave a comment and we can discuss it further. Of course, if anyone else has a better way (there must be someoneJ) please speak J

HTH,
L.

Resource availability in resource information only influences the overtime calculation

lugospod — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:37:00 GMT

If you tried to set the resources availability in the resource information dialog (see the picture) you might have thought that it will influence the task duration, but it doesn't.

One might think that if you set the resource availability to 0% it will automatically prolong the resources tasks (depending on the task type) but it will not. The task will have the same date of start and the same end date. The only thing that will change, is the over allocation, that will be reported with an appropriate report.

When you want to make the resource unavailable, you have to click on the Change working hour button, and set an exception.

Turning project summary task on by default

lugospod — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:55:00 GMT

I read on Microsoft project blog, that you can make the project summary task show itself on every new project plan that you create. This way you don't have to add it each time through the Project menus. The downside is that you will have to do it through Windows registry, but if you are fammiliary with Microsoft products, than you know that this is a normal process :)

So, here is the walkthrough:

-    Start->Run->Regedit (this opens Windows registry editor)
-    Got to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\MS Project\Options\View
-    Right click on View
-    Select New->DWORD Value
-    Put the following text for value: Show Project Summary
-    Set the name to Show Project Summary
-    Click off Show Project Summary
-    Doubleclick on Show Project Summary
-    Set the value to 1

Out of memory - MS Project 2007

lugospod — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:12:00 GMT

I suppose not many people experienced “out of memory” message from the MS Project 2007. While doing some reading, I came across a Microsoft article which lists MS Project 2007 limitations. These limitations are supported only if you are running Project on Vista or on XP Service Pack 2. So for the rest of the operating systems you could get slightly different numbers. Also, limitations can depend on your computer configuration.

Attribute	Maximum
Resources per project	700,000
Resource units per assignment	60,000,000 units or 6,000,000,000%
Resource availability dates	100
Tasks per project	400,000
Task dependencies per project	No limit
Predecessors per task	50,000
Successors per task	50,000
Outline levels per project	65,535
Consolidated projects	998
Open project files per consolidated project	998
Sharer files connected to a single resource pool	997 (That is, the maximum number of open project files, minus 1 for the resource pool itself.)
Open windows	50
Base calendars	Tested to 30,000+
Calendar exceptions per calendar	Testing was able to add more than 15,000 exceptions to a base calendar.
Rate tables to support varying pay scales and rates	5 per resource
Variable rates per rate table to support rate increases and decreases	25
Cost value in a currency field	999,999,999,999.99
Work value	1,666,666,666 hours
Assignment work values for work assignments	999,999,999 hours
Assignment work values for variable material assignments	999,999,999 units
Assignment work values for fixed material assignments	60,000,000 units
Custom cell formats	64,000
Print scaling adjustment range percentage	10%-500%
Page header text	5 lines
Page footer text	3 lines
Page legend text	3 lines
Page legend text box width	5 inches (12.7 centimeters)
Filter tests per filter	40
Filter tests per AutoFilter	2 per column
Earliest date allowed for calculation	January 1, 1984
Latest date allowed for calculation	December 31, 2049
Discontinuous selections in a sheet view	10
Baselines	11
Characters in a text field	255
Characters in an outline code field	255
Values and characters in an Enterprise Resource Multi-Value (ERMV) field	255 values, each of 255 characters
Value in a number field	9,999,999,999,999.

Accessing MS Project 2007 programatically

lugospod — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:40:00 GMT

Yeah, I know that it's been a while since my last post...You know how it goes Christmas...Birthday, New year etc. :)

So to make it up to you, I went and investigated how to access MS Project 2007 programatically. Why? A lot of people asked me if they could get a standard report from all of their projects without opening each one of them. In this post I will not go into report building or anything complex. We will keep it simple. Let's just open an project file and extract task names and durations.

This example was created using C# in VS2008. Here is the project (download) and if you have any questions, leave a comment.

Hope this helps,

Influence of Microsoft Office 2007 SP1 on Microsoft Project 2007

lugospod — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:29:00 GMT

While downloading the new SP1 for Microsoft Office 2007 SP, I tried to find out the changes that it brings and its influence on the Microsoft Project 2007. I was happy to find out that they actually did some work to improve it :) Not much, but still, it is nice to know that they are working on it :)

Many of you didn't notice the problem that I will list below, but still... Have a look:

The 2007 Office system SP1 eliminates instances when either Microsoft Office Project 2007 or the accompanying Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 crashes due to a software error.

Office Project 2007 no longer crashes when users click to view Windows account or Details in the Resources Information dialog box and then perform any other action.
Office Project 2007 does not produce an error message when a link from one task accesses a task in a different project stored on Office Project Server 2007. This error only occurred when the linked project was renamed.
Microsoft Office Project Web Access now makes task IDs available and allows users to enter a work estimate when creating a new task.

Changing the project calendar / custom working times Part II

lugospod — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:48:00 GMT

A friend of mine emailed me about a problem with changing the project calendar. To make a long story short I'll jump right to the point. He said that his Gantt chart is still showing Saturdays and Sundays displayed as nonworking (dotted gray background) even thaw he set them as working days in his project's calendar.

The answer is.... (There is a nice set of knifes for the lucky candidate :P ) … you have to change the Gantt charts nonworking time calendar. You have to right click on the Gantt chart and choose Nonworking times. After that you can change the calendar from Standard to your new project calendar.

Here is a screenshot of that menu:

Hope this helps,

Changing the project calendar / custom working times

lugospod — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:10:00 GMT

A lot of people are having trouble changing the calendar for their project in MS Project. Most common problems are:

they create a new calendar but they don’t select it as a project calendar
they create a new calendar but the week still starts with Sunday
they create a new calendar during the project and the task that are already entered still have the default calendar

Those are just a few examples, but no point in blabbing about problem when I could talk about the solution J

Tools->Change working time
You can choose from one of predefined calendars or create a new one from scratch or based on an existing calendar. Let’s click on the Create new calendar button
Enter a new name for the calendar and click on Create new base calendar
In the Exceptions tab you can enter holidays in your country, your company’s holidays or a predicted earthquakeJ. After you enter an exception you can set working time and reoccurrence of this exception by clicking on the Details button.
In the Work Weeks tab you can set numerous periods, with different working times. By clicking on the Details button you can set the working hours for each day (Sunday to Saturday)
Now we can set Monday as a first day of the week and default time values by clicking on the Options button. One thing that you should be aware of (it is really strange J) is that when you enter a task duration in, for example days the MS Project will take the value that equals Number of days * Field Hours per day. So you have to remember that when you enter date without time the MS Project will not calculate these values but it will use them from Option dialog (Calendar tab).
Project->Project information – here you must select the new calendar as a projects default calendar

If you want to have a different calendar for some tasks (Task information->Advanced->Calendar) or resources (View->Resource Sheet) you can apply a new calendar for them. But be aware that when you change the projects default calendar, you will not change the calendar for existing tasks and resources, so you will have to do that by hand.

Microsoft Office Visio 2007 WBS Modeler

lugospod — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:26:00 GMT

I have some good news for those of you that would like to create your project WBS using graphical representation of elements. Microsoft has enabled this feature using Visio / Project integration tool available as a free download.

The Application enables effective integration of Microsoft Office Visio 2007 with Microsoft Office Project 2007. It provides an approach to visually and graphically create, edit and modify project plans using Visio 2007. The WBS Modeler can either be used to visualize and edit an existing project plan or to create a new project plan in Microsoft Office Visio 2007 and then export it to Microsoft Project Professional 2007 to carry out the next planning steps. The WBS can be exported back to Microsoft Office Project Professional into a new project plan. It is also possible to update an existing plan. However this update process is limited to deleting, renaming or adding elements. Moving elements is not supported at the current stage.

So give it a try and let me know what you think...

SQL/Dev UG Zagreb - Microsoft Project 2007 Lecture

lugospod — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:31:00 GMT

Yesterday I held a lecture about MS Project 2007 on SQL/DEV user group Zagreb in Microsoft Croatia office. There were about 30 people present. We started with a short introduction and proceeded to a more interesting part - Live demo. Because I didn't have too much time, I had to skip some (interesting) parts. Eh... like the movie says: "Tomorrow is another day..." so maybe next time :)

All in all I am very satisfied with the yesterday's event. I wasn't expecting so many people, so it was a quite lovely surprise when I saw such a "crowd" :) I would like to thank Vatroslav Mihalj for organizing the event and Microsoft Croatia for allowing us to use their premises for the lecture.

Since the session was recorded, Vatroslav was kind enough to make my video and presentation available to the public. The link is: http://www.mscommunity.net/Default.aspx?tabid=1130

If anyone has any questions regarding the lecture or MS Project please post a comment, post on the Microsoft private newsgroups or e-mail me.

Lecture about Microsoft Project 2007

lugospod — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:57:00 GMT

Tomorrow evening I will be holding a lecture about Microsoft Project 2007 in Microsoft Croatia office. We will glance over the basics, proceed to the demo project and wrap up with tips & tricks from my experience. My main goal is to promote and make this tool more popular in the Croatian community. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by...

Here is the link: http://www.mscommunity.net/Default.aspx?tabid=1129

Passed the Microsoft Office Project 2007, Managing Projects (70-632) exam

lugospod — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:00:00 GMT

I know I've said that I would take the exam two weeks ago, but then I got sick (read: hospitals etc.) so I had to reschedule it for a while :(

The exam was registered through Prometric test center. And after this experience, I have to say that they should really look up to VUE test center.

First, the registration procedure on Prometric web site is not user friendly (you have to select the exam, schedule, location...and than you register for the exam), you have to enter your MCP ID every time you register exam. And finally, the worst part, is the test taking software. It froze 5 times during the exam (2-5 minutes), and one time I had to call the supervisor to intervene. Not to mention that it took 5-10 seconds each time I clicked on the next question. I am saying this, so you can be prepared if it happens to you.

By passing this exam you receive the following credential: Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007.

Now some info about the exam, and the materials I used to study for the exam:

Some of the questions can be passed using your project experience in handling resources, budgeting, defining tasks. You eliminate all the stupid answers (usually two of them), and then you are left with two or three which you can answer by using your experience.
I read the Microsoft Project 2007 Bible (Wiley & Sons) and Microsoft® Office Project 2007 Step by Step. Both of them have a lot of beginner stuff in them (step by step, click by click) that you can glance over, and concentrate on new 2007 features and features that you haven't used in MS Project yet.
Use the Project 2007 help. Unbelievable, but it has some nice info in there :)
Get to know all of the menus and the options in them. They like to ask the little detailed question like: how would you do this... And it is a multiple answer question... Example: How would you disable (some type) error message for appearing again? The answer would be something like: Click don't show this message again and go to the project options and disable messages.

There were a lot of questions about budget and cost resources and at least 10 out of 55 were about defining the task (fixed units, fixed duration, fixed work, effort driven) so I recommend you take some time to study these parts (easy points on the exam).

I hope this post helps you in some way since this is a new Microsoft exam. If somebody needs some more info, please use the post comment (so everybody can benefit from it)