Did you know that Microsoft recently introduced two powerful new features in both Project Online and in the most recent updates to Microsoft Project Server 2013? These new features allow an organization to do the following:
For example, suppose that our organization wants members of the IT department to track second-level software support on each IT team member’s timesheet in PWA. In addition, each time a team member provides second-level software support, our organization wants the IT team member to list the occurrence as a separate Administrative time line on the user’s timesheet. Furthermore, our organization does not users in any other department to see the Administrative time line for second-level software support.
The first requirement for using these new features is to populate the Department lookup table with the departments in our organization. Figure 1 shows the Edit Lookup Table page in PWA with the Department lookup table open for editing. Notice that our Project Online administrator initially created six departments for our company: Engineering, Finance, IT, Marketing, PMO, and Quality Assurance. Although our company includes many other departments, these are the only six that use Project Online to manage projects.
Figure 1: Edit Lookup Table page – Department lookup table
The second step is to create the Administrative time categories and tie each of them to a department. Figure 2 shows the Administrative Time page in PWA. Notice that the data grid includes two new columns: the Allow Multiple Lines and Department columns. Notice that I created a new Administrative time category named 2nd Level Software Support, assigned it to the IT department, and checked the option to allow for the display of multiple lines of this type.
Figure 2: Administrative Time page shows new features
Once our organization has met these two requirements, members of the IT department can begin using the new Administrative time category named 2nd Level Software Support in their PWA timesheets. For example, Figure 3 shows the PWA timesheet for a member of the IT department. Notice how this timesheet takes advantage of both of these new Administrative time features. The user is not only entering time for the new 2nd Level Software Support line, but the user has also entered three of these new lines, indicating that he worked three incidents of second-level software support during the week.
Figure 3: Timesheet of IT department user
Figure 4 shows the PWA timesheet for a member of the Marketing department. Notice that this timesheet does not display the 2nd Level Software Support timesheet line because this user is not in the IT department.
Figure 4: Timesheet of a Marketing department user
