"You do not have any scheduled work during this week" message when you use the Project Web Access Add-in for Outlook to report the hours that you worked on a task in Project Server 2003 (832595)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Office Project Server 2003
  • Microsoft Project Web Access

SYMPTOMS

In Microsoft Office Project Server 2003, if you install the Microsoft Office Project Web Access Add-in for Outlook and you use Microsoft Outlook to report the hours that you worked on tasks that are assigned to you, you may receive the following message:You do not have any scheduled work during this week;
To override choose "View Options" and set the "Units" to days then enter your hours on a daily basis.You do not have an option to configure the view options when you use Outlook with the Project Add-in for Outlook. You have to use the View my tasks page in Microsoft Project Web Access to configure the view options and to report the hours that you worked per day instead of per week.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs if both of the following conditions are true:
  • In Project Web Access, on the Tracking settings page, the Time period settings setting is configured to use the Resource should report their total hours worked for a week option.
  • You report hours that you worked on tasks in a week where the work is not scheduled.

RESOLUTION

To work around this behavior, use one of the following methods:
  • Set the Time period settings setting on the Tracking settings page of Project Web Access to use the Resources should report their hours worked every day option, and then use Outlook with the Project Add-in for Outlook to report the hours that you worked.
  • To report the hours that you worked on tasks in weeks where work is scheduled, use Outlook with the Project Add-in for Outlook. To report the hours that you worked on tasks in weeks where work is not scheduled, use the View my tasks page in Project Web Access.

MORE INFORMATION

The "locked-down actuals" functionality that was first introduced in Project Server 2003 improves the accuracy of how actuals are reported and updated. Without the "locked-down actuals" functionality, when you have to report the hours that you worked on a weekly basis, the work is distributed across the whole week, regardless of how the work is scheduled or when the work starts.

The following is an example of a situation that may occur without the "locked-down actuals" functionality. In this example, a team member who is named Aaron Lee is assigned a task that is scheduled from Wednesday, September 10 to Thursday, September 18. Aaron Lee sees this task in his timesheet and reports the hours that he worked on this task in his timesheet. He reports 24 hours of work because he only worked Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of that week. The project manager approves the work that Aaron Lee reported, and the project manager updates the project.

However, in Microsoft Project, the updates are not applied to Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of that week. The updates are distributed across the whole week, and may look similar to the following:

     Sun (Sept 7)  Mon (Sept 8)  Tue (Sept 9)  Wed (Sept 10)  Thur(Sept 11)  Fri (Sept 12) Sat (Sept 13)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Task         3.43        3.43           3.43          3.43            3.43          3.43          3.43
Aaron Lee    3.43        3.43           3.43          3.43            3.43          3.43          3.43
Project Web Access distributes and stores the information across the whole week (including weekends) because Project Web Access cannot determine when the work is scheduled. Although a task is actually scheduled to start on Wednesday, September 10, the task appears with an earlier start date of Sunday, September 7. Additionally, if other tasks depend on this task, the other tasks are also scheduled to start earlier than their actual start dates.

This behavior may also cause other changes, including unexpected changes in the schedule and changes in the start dates of other tasks in the timesheet. For example, although the task is scheduled to finish on Friday, September 18 of the following week, the work is again distributed across the whole week. The task may appear to finish early in one week and may appear to finish late in another week.

With the "locked-down actuals" functionality in Project Server 2003, the way that work is distributed across weeks is improved as follows:
  • If you report the hours that you worked on a task in a week where the work is scheduled, the work is distributed based on the days that the task is scheduled. In the example that is discussed earlier in this article, the 24 hours of work that Aaron Lee reports is updated in Project on the days that Aaron Lee worked. That is, the 24 hours are applied to Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of that week, as expected.
  • If you report the hours that you worked on a task in a week there the work is not scheduled, Project Web Access displays the message that is described earlier in the "Symptoms" section of this article to prompt you to change the time interval for reporting from weekly to daily. By doing so, you can specify exactly when you did the work.

    Note When you modify the view options to report the hours that you worked on a task on a daily basis, you also see the work that you previously reported on the day that is defined in the Time Period settings setting as the first day of the week. You can redistribute this work across the days of the week if you manually modify the work that is allocated to each day. When you do so, make sure that you reduce the work that is allocated to the first day of the week to avoid including that work two times.
For more information about Project 2003, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/project/prodinfo/default.mspx

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:1/7/2006
Keywords:kbtasks kbReport kbprb KB832595 kbAudITPRO
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