Author: Jean Lieverman

Jean Lieverman is an experienced project management consultant who enjoys sharing her knowledge with others. She has created project and program management systems and has expertise in pharmaceutical R&D. A PMP, she has been active in several PMIĀ® groups as well as MPUG. Additionally, Jean has an MPH in Biostatistics, MS in Bioengineering, and BA in Psychology. Contact her at jean@lieverman.com.

3-Step Bulk Editing in Project Server

Project Server is a great tool for showing data from multiple projects. In fact, that’s what makes it so good to use when you’re working with a portfolio of projects. In Project Server 2010 there were open source tools you could install called “Solution Starters,” extensions to Project Server that provided additional functionality. One extension was the “Bulk Edit Tool.” This tool allowed the user to select multiple projects in the Project Center View and then click a button and have the ability to edit multiple project-level fields in a datasheet interface. For anyone who has used Project Server, having a bulk edit capability for projects is a great thing. However, (and, yes, there is anĀ however), using the Bulk Edit Solution Starter is quirky at best and can be frustrating and just not helpful at worst. So, I have a little trick to help you do bulk editing. And this can be done in Project Server 2010 or 2013 and uses out-of-the-box functionality. Here’s the trick! 1. In Project Server, in the Project Center View, select the projects you want to bulk edit, and then click on Open in Microsoft Project for Editing. These selected projects will now open up in Microsoft Project Pro as subprojects in a new Master Project. 2. Create a Table/View definition in Microsoft Project Pro that exposes all the fields you’d like to edit. Now you can “bulk edit” all the projects and fields you want. 3. Once you’re done editing, you simply close the Master Project Plan (Project2 in this case), which will also close all the subprojects. The key thing is to answer two questions: You have just bulk edited all your project plans with all the edits you made in Microsoft Project Pro!

Slick Trick: A Spin on Syncā€™ing with SharePoint

Situation Microsoft Project 2010 now has the capability to sync a project plan with a SharePoint task list.Ā  Therefore, project team members do not need to have a desktop version of Microsoft Project in order to view project tasks.Ā  This is great functionality ā€“ except in one area.Ā  If the project you are syncā€™ing with SharePoint has a WBS that includes multiple outline levels, the SharePoint list will convert all summary tasks into a hierarchical folder structure.Ā  Then you need to navigate throughout the folder structure in order to see all your project tasks and corresponding Gantt charts.Ā  There is also an option of creating an additional view that allows you to see all tasks without folders.Ā  However, this will only give you the ability to see non-summary tasks.Ā  You will get a Gantt chart of all these specific tasks but no outline breakdown in the tasks themselves. I have a slick trick to help out with this problem.Ā  I have developed a macro that you can run on your project plan in MS Project to reformat your plan a bit prior to syncā€™ing with SharePoint.Ā  Then, sync your project with SharePoint and you can see your whole project in SharePoint with a full outline structure and Gantt chart!Ā  Then when you sync back to MS Project from SharePoint, you can run another macro to reformat the project back to its original form. These macros are simple and extensible and include some not-so-obvious tricks.Ā  Let me show you this in action! Here is the initial Project Plan ā€“ subset of one of the standard Microsoft Project templates Sync the project with SharePoint All the summary tasks are converted to folders and you need to navigate through the folder structure to see all the tasks.Ā  No total view of your project!   Create a View Without Folders A View Without Folders shows you only the non-summary tasks.Ā  So still not a total view of the project!   My Trick Run the following macro, ChgTaskName, on your project plan:   The original project reformats from this:   To this:   There are some differences (i.e., auto scheduled converted to manually scheduled tasks) but for all appearances, the plan looks the same. Now Sync the Project with SharePoint The SharePoint list created from your project plan now looks like this:   Outline structure is maintained and there are no folders.Ā  Now you can get a total view of your project!Ā  Your team members can easily see the full project in all its beauty.Ā Ā  How cool is that!!!   Lastly, at some point you will want to reformat the project back to its original form.Ā  There is another macro for that process. Now run the following macro, ChgTaskNameBack, on your project plan:   Your project reformats from looking like this:   To now looking like this:   Your plan is reformatted back to how it looked initially, auto scheduled tasks and all! Ā  All this from 2 simple macros!Ā  As I said before, these macros can be extended to handle more complex situations.Ā  (And Iā€™ll tell you a little secret about these macros that may not be obvious.Ā  The macro code appears to be adding and removing spaces to the Task Names in order to preserve the outline structure.Ā  Those arenā€™t spaces.Ā  They are actual non-breaking spaces that you can copy from Windows Character Map application.) Good luck!