Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Project Server - Outlook Integration

Microsoft Office Project 2007 — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 23:19:32 GMT

The Program Manager in Outlook (Melissa) and one of our Program Managers here in Project (Jon) collaborated

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Manoj Kumar (Merrill Lynch) — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:02:59 GMT

Jon - I have 2 issues

1. In my Vista RC2/Outlook 2007 B2TR, only the field for Remaining Work was editable. The Task Tracking Setting is set to Hours by Day in Project Server 2007 B2TR. The time-phased grid is not editable either. I switched to %Work Complete tacking setting, published a new test project, synched the tasks, same problem. In PWA, I can edit both the Progress column for tasks set with %Work Complete and enter hours against the pop-up timephased grid for tasks set to Hours by Day tracking. Have you seen this problem?

2. On an Win XP SP2/Outlook 2003 SP2, the add-in barfs with url for Project Server "looks invalid" - check spelling error. On the same laptop, I can go into PWA using IE6 enter %Complete or Hours-by-Day as appropriate against tasks successfully. Have you seen this one? I have .Net Framework v1.1 on this laptop, do I need .Net Framework v2.0? Are there any specific software component requirements for setting up with Outlook 2003 SP2?

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Kalpesh — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:14:18 GMT

Is it to further customised for input data and

Can we integrate it with Outlook Task instead of Calendar for reminder option PWA task should not appear in Caledar it should only be appeared in Outlook Task only

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Alex Angas — Tue, 08 May 2007 03:34:28 GMT

Is there any way you can report the actual start date for a task? This is a big blocker for one of our clients.

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

eOffice — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:31:30 GMT

Hi,

The integration looks nice, but I wonder is it just as nice when combining Project Server 2007 with Outlook 2003?

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Randy — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:14:54 GMT

I've been having trouble for a while now trying to consistently get Outlook tasks to update via the timesheet hours. When I try to update the Project Web Access from the task I get the following error: "Updates were not accepted by the server (Exception 999)" Additionally, it many times hangs Outlook 2003 and I have to restart outlook. I've tried this on a completely fresh, updated install of Outlook 2003 as well as an updated, fresh install of Outlook 2007 with no success. It definitly has something to do with the server but I do not know what. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Project Server Tasks in Outlook Calendar

Tina — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:09:23 GMT

We are having 2 main areas of issues. We use Project & Server 2007, published on SharePoint, going into Outlook Calendar.

1. Project task duration to allow for extra time so resources are not booked 100% each day.

No matter how I try to setup the task type, duration, work, lag etc, the calendar is always updated to book all day each day of the duration.

example, 20 hours of actual work scheduled over 5 days duration. Assign to Resource, it books 8 - 5 all5 days on the Resource calendar.

we want to see only 4 hours per day booked.

2. Resource opens Outlook calander appointment and needs to change the date.

change the outlook date, but is not able to be uploaded to Project. Even if they set one of the project server fields to trigger to send an update, the date change is not sent.

Do you have any suggestions on how to resolve or work with these issues?

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

M. Iannini — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:10:55 GMT

I am trying to use Outlook PWA Add-in (MOPS and Outlook 2007). I went throughout the install process with no problem, imported all my assignments which are showing just fine in

Outlook. I tried both methods Tasks and Calendar and they worked fine.

Now, when I open any Project Task within Outlook I see that many of the fields are grayed out. In fact the only fields I am able to modify are the Taks Health and Remaining Work. I can't enter any time into the grid, and the Copy from Planned button is disabled. Al the buttons in the bottom part of the form are enabled and working as expected.

I have reviewed the security templates in PWA 2007 and I am not able to see anything like the old 2003 setting "allow the user to use Outlook to update projects"; just a setting allowing users to download the Add-in.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook

Beth Walton — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:52:37 GMT

Does anyone use a 3rd party application to track time and integrate with Project? We are looking at Pacific Timesheet (http://www.pacifictimesheet.com), but any other suggestions?

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Martin Kovac — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:59:48 GMT

Hi Tina,

Did you figure out that problem ? We have the same here :-(

If you do, please post it somewhere or send me e-mail to mkovac@wbi.sk

Thanks

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Jill — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:25:12 GMT

My problem is that when I enter my hours for a task in PWA, they don't show up properly in Outlook (I'm using Outlook 2003). When I click on Import New Assignments and then open a task, the hours I entered in PWA populate the Planned Work fields, not the Actual work fields. If I change the Actual work fields to match what's in PWA and then save it to PWA, I get conflict emails. Am I doing something wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated!

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Jon Kaufthal — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:23:18 GMT

Tina (and Martin):

Sorry, but what you describe in your comments is not possible/supported.

Re #1--you CAN change the free/busy settings, via Tools | Options | PWA inside Outlook. I don't know if that helps your issue, but wanted to be sure you were aware.

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Jon Kaufthal — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:26:08 GMT

Jill, when you make conflicting edits to your data in the Outlook add-in and in PWA, the add-in does its best--but with ambiguous situations, the last one in "wins", and then we show you the conflict messages you describe, in case that wasn't what you intended. I'm not totally clear on what order you're doing things, but you might want to try JUST changing things in Outlook (or just in PWA), and then going to PWA to submit your timesheet.

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Jon Kaufthal — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:28:37 GMT

M. Iannini--does your server have reporting periods defined (from PWA server settings)? Are you able to submit a timesheet through the PWA interface?

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Jon Kaufthal — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:29:40 GMT

Kalpesh, there is an option in Outlook (Tools | Options | PWA) that allows you to choose whether your PWA assignments get imported as Tasks or as Calendar items.

I'm not sure I followed the rest of your requests/feedback--if you're still stuck, please clarify...

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Jon Kaufthal — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:30:45 GMT

eOffice - the experience is virtually identical between Outlook 2007 and 2003, except of course to changes in Outlook itself such as the ribbon user interface on the detail forms, and the ability to show tasks on the calendar.

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Jon Kaufthal — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:33:14 GMT

Alex--sorry, this is currently not possible.

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Jon Kaufthal — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:34:48 GMT

Re some of the mysterious conntection/error message issues, I just wanted to cross-post my earlier comments from part 1 of this post series here...

First, thanks for reading, and for all of the great questions and feedback. Keep it coming!

I want be sure you know that we are listening! I apologize for not responding sooner, but please understand that I and others are regularly keeping an eye on your comments. In many cases, the blogs are not well-suited to be an in-depth troubleshooting forum, but just knowing what difficulties folks are running into helps us understand where we need to improve in the future. It’s also great to see the community helping one another in many cases here.

That said, let me take a stab at addressing at least some of the feedback:

1. Along the lines mentioned above—the Outlook add-in can be tricky to troubleshoot in general. There are a lot of moving pieces, when you consider the Outlook COM add-in infrastructure, Project Server’s PSI interface, Project Server security settings, Exchange security settings, Outlook settings, etc. We test our products under a wide variety of configurations, and rely on extensive beta testing to get further feedback—but there may be config-specific issues we haven’t encountered. In most cases these will need to be troubleshooted via product support.

2. Service Pack 1 is coming very soon! Some of the feedback mentioned has been very helpful to us in prioritizing our SP1 release. I can’t promise that all of your issues will be addressed, but I hope you’ll find that some of the most common issues are better with SP1. Here’s a recent story on the SP1 release schedule: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9051238&intsrc=news_ts_head

One key fix in Project Server SP1 is to correct an issue where our timesheet API was not correctly handling custom fields. This single issue caused many problems with the add-in, in some cases making it fail to load or show some of the errors mentioned in your comments.

Other specific comments:

3. Susana—did you try saying “No” to this dialog? It’s hard to understand what’s going on without more information, but in some cases Outlook can fail for unrelated reasons (eg, you pull the plug out of the computer) and give this prompt.

4. Disabled fields—a few reasons why you might see these include:

• Protected actuals

• Invalid timesheet periods / timesheet not created

• Time tracking method settings

• Already-submitted timesheet (as PMRS suggested)

5. Changing the login URL – you can do this from within Outlook’s Tools Options interface, on the “Project Web Access” tab.

6. Lisa, I hope you’ll give this feature a try! We hear a great deal about the issues when they come up, but please realize that there are many customers happily using the add-in. And when things go less than smoothly, your feedback is a key part of helping us improve—both in the short term with hotfixes and service packs, and in the longer term with future releases.

Thanks,

Jon

Cannot connect/invalid URL

Jon Kaufthal — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:58:43 GMT

For more ideas/workarounds/tips, take a look at this discussion:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx?&guid=&sloc=en-us&dg=microsoft.public.project.server&p=1&tid=71bb85ac-8480-4184-b92f-2b31d367abc0&mid=e15447c1-1a77-4a99-ab62-2e0bcfe47a8f

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Greg Sheehan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:19:03 GMT

Will it be possible in the future to update a start\finish time for a task through the outlook addin? (I see that the answer to Alex

s question was ~ not at this time)

Thanks

re: Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

Pierre Le Gallo — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:23:19 GMT

Melissa,

I have searched for an international version of the Outlook add-in (French). I'm getting the famous message:

"The language of the Project Add-In for Outlook must match the language of Outlook. Uninstall the add-in and reinstall a matching language version"

I read about changing the default Office language to US English and editing the registry so the language is set to 1033 decimal or 409 hex, but I still get the message.

Is an international version of the Add-in scheduled some day? Or do I find it in some pack?

Thanks for your help!

Pierre Le Gallo

Paris, FRANCE