A couple of questions about MSProject

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    • #411824
      Maureen Klovers
      Guest

      I am trying to decide if MS Project 2016 is the best PM software for us.

      Here are a couple of questions that I can’t seem to find the answer to:

      1. Is it possible to have different project owners create subprojects under a single master project? The master project will have a PM, but the individual subprojects will be led by other staff and so I would like them to be able to create and update their mini-project plans, but have their changes ladder up to the master plan. Can the master project PM assign staff to create and update the subprojects?

      2. Is there a way to allow people to access the project file in View Only? How do you designate who can see it in read-only and how do you designate who can edit it?

      3. Is there a way to link some of these tasks to draft documents on Sharepoint or a shared file?

      Thanks for your help!

      Maureen

    • #411825
      Daryl Deffler
      Participant

      Hi Maureen;
      I’ll see if I can answer your questions. I’m an MS Project Server 2103 user.
      1. Is it possible to have different project owners create subprojects under a single master project? The master project will have a PM, but the individual subprojects will be led by other staff and so I would like them to be able to create and update their mini-project plans, but have their changes ladder up to the master plan.
      Generally, the answer is yes. In Project Pro, you can create three schedules (A-C), and within Schedule A, create tasks that link to sub-projects B and C. B and C can be opened and updated individually by their owners and if Schedule A is opened, it opens schedules B and C as well. B and C will be displayed in Schedule A as WBS levels either summarized or showing all detailed tasks. While the sub-project task links actually store the full network path to the sub-project, you might want to consider having all schedules in the same network location/directory.
      Can the master project PM assign staff to create and update the subprojects? In server yes this could be done. All schedules would need to be owned by the Master Project PM who could then assign access permissions to other resources. I’m not certain if this can be done in a Stand Alone Project Pro environment.

      2. Is there a way to allow people to access the project file in View Only? How do you designate who can see it in read-only and how do you designate who can edit it? The answer to this depends on if you’re using Project Pro stand alone or Project Server. Project Server (which I use) stores all schedules in a common database and with each schedule I (as the owner) can define permission rules to define who can read, update my schedule. As an administrator, I can also move schedules into a “Read Only” category to prohibit anyone from opening the schedule other than as read only.
      I don’t think standalone Project Pro provides any type of access control capability, but since I run Project Pro within the Server environment, I could be wrong.

      3. Is there a way to link some of these tasks to draft documents on Sharepoint or a shared file? Yes, if you double click on a Task, it opens a Task Information window which contains a Notes tab. In that tab, you can write anything you want, insert objects, or paste in document links.

      Don’t know that I could definitively answer all your questions. Hope that helps.

    • #411826
      Jigs Gaton
      Member

      Maureen, as mentioned above, Q1 and Q2 can best be addressed by project server, but I’ve written an article here on MPUG that might help if you are all MS Project 2016 standalone users: https://www.mpug.com/articles/pmo-in-a-box/. This article addresses all three of your questions I believe. The elephant in the room is access control, as there really is none to speak of, outside of self control and what say Dropbox does when two users try and save the same open file: a conflict file is created that must be sorted out manually later. Hope this helps!
      Jigs

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