To all that have written and visited in the past months, I thank you for stopping by.  I've been basically ignoring this blog due to other projects.  As I'm now a bus commuter, hopefully I can use that time to do better care and feeding of this blog. 

On to the letters....

LETTER #1

I just read your blog entry on leveraging custom fields in Project Server 2003 and I hope you can give me some advice. Our organization has been using the Project Properties metadata for reporting in Portfolio Analyzer for some time now with success, but now they want to start reporting against custom fields applied at the Task level. As you state in your article, custom fields aren't available to Portfolio Analyzer. Do you know how I can solve this problem? Would upgrading to 2007 be an option?

EDPC> Yes, upgrading is an option.  In 2007, custom fields can be added to the cube structure using the cube configuration options. 

As for 2003 cubes, check out these SDK articles on extending the OLAP cubes:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/aa168479(office.11).aspx (general overview of OLAP extensions)

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/aa208428(office.11).aspx (includes how to add enterprise task outline codes in the sections for Extending Task Earned Value)

LETTER #2

...For us the separation of tasks & timesheets is an annoyance (I thought 03 handled that just fine). But the real problem is that 07's timesheets have completely eliminated the totals column!  I was hoping SP1 would correct this fairly glaring error, but apparently not.  Providing totals by task and by project for the timesheet period seems like such a basic feature of a timesheet -- why was it removed?  And how can it be put back in?  And how are people managing without it? 

EDPC>In Project 2003, we installed several ActiveX controls which desktop administrators did not like.  In Project 2007, we had an initiative to remove the ActiveX and move to DHTML grids.  In the transition, every function was not migrated.  Why totals didn't make it, I don't know since I wasn't involved in this area at the time.

As for totals, I've seen people exporting to Excel to sum the results.  This is obviously not well integrated but it does work. 

By Office definitions, adding totals would be considered a new feature which creates numerous downstream implications (documentation, support, localization, etc.)  As such, we usually don't add new features in Service Packs.  Service Packs are designed to address issues which improve the stability of the product. 

The separation of tasks and time sheets was actually a very significant request by many customers.  If you plan 30 hours of work per person but your internal billing requires 40 hours to be billed, the split entry handles this much cleaner.  One of our internal business units, who does time entry, updates the My Tasks first.  Then, they import this into the time sheet and log whatever time is remaining. 

We also have some which use the My Work view to see a calendar representation of the assigned tasks.  This can be used to update your tasks on a daily basis.  Click on the My Work header in the left hand navigation to view this page.  If people update their tasks daily and log time weekly using the import, time entry accuracy should improve.  Otherwise, we are all fiction writers at the end of the week.  I usually can't remember everything I did Monday on Wednesday!

LETTER #3

Very useful article. http://evildoctorporkchop.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!88E61D218103A246!620.entry  But what about the remainder of the workflow? Once the task has been re-assigned, it doesn't actually get into that persons task list. Any idea what steps need to be taken further?

EDPC>  All task changes have to be approved by the Project Manager of that project and the project has to be republished for the new team member to see the change.  So, have the Project Owner take a look in Task Updates, Select All and Accept.  Then have them republish the project.