MSP Interface and Hierarchical Project Structures

[Legacy User]

On 14.2, on-prem.

 

Have a project hierarchy:

 

• Parent A
  • Child 1
  • Child 2

 

When project manager of Parent A opens Parent A in MSP,

• the interface throws an error "You don't have edit rights to Parent A"
• the projects will eventually open
• but changes made to Parent A cannot be saved back to CA PPM

 

Notes:

• Parent A's manager has edit rights to Parent A - so the error message is in error!
• Parent A's manager does not have edit rights to the child projects - the error message should refer to these projects!
• If I give the manager of Parent A edit rights to the child projects, everything works fine

 

Ideally, in our situation,

• the project manager of Parent A should have edit rights only to Parent A, not the child projects, as the child projects belong to a different part of the organization (a part that is fiercely defending their data quality by limiting edit access)
• AND the MSP Interface would not thrown an error
• AND the MSP Interface would only save changes made to projects that the Parent A manager has edit access to

 

But, this doesn't work - so, we have to give the project manager of Parent A edit rights to the children.  Manual methods of granting instance rights or removing child projects temporarily and adding them back after MSP work is done have been rejected.

 

How best to do this?  Preferably, not via Global or OBS - the project manager should get edit rights to the children, not to every project.

 

Question:  Anyone else with a similar problem?  If you solved it, how did you do this?

 

I'm thinking of having an action or workflow process that would grant instance rights for the project manager to edit the child project instances.  Also, an action/process to remove instance rights if/when child projects are removed from the hierarchy.

[Deactivated User]

I can see the logic in that: The project manager of Parent A does not have edits rights to all of it as he does not have edit rights to all of it meaning the child projects.

If all projects eventually open. That is what I should expect.

Yes the error message is not detailed enough.

 

Just wondering if that is also a MS Project problem in saving: If it is possible to save all into a file are the changes in the parent saved?

Do the edits get saved if they are done in CA PPM.

 

If the project has to be edited, I cannot think much other than what you say to work around the problem.

[Legacy User]

Thanks for the feedback, Urmas.  Also, I should mention we are using legacy version of interface on 14.2.

 

Clarity Gantt behaves as desired/expected:  Parent project manager can only edit/save changes to projects in hierarchy that he has edit rights to.

 

Want MSP Interface to work in same manner.

 

This morning, I repeated testing on our DEV system - it behaves a bit different, but still fails to save with an 'unknown exception error.'

 

Better:  Projects open with only one message regarding not having rights to 'at least one of the subprojects' and asking if it should proceed with opening as read-only.

 

Not Better:  Upon saving

• the interface asks  if manager would like to retain locks on projects to which he doesn't have edit access to (but not as clearly stated as I just wrote here)
• upon save attempt, acts like it will work but then fails with 'unknown exception error'

 

So, some differences between our PRD and DEV systems - will check with app support team - perhaps a patch on DEV has not yet been rolled to PRD.

 

To your "MS project problem in saving" question:  Saving of projects to local drive using MSP file save works with no errors, except it allows one to edit all the projects and save changes - no security enabled.

 

Clarity Gantt behaves as desired/expected. 

 

Want MSP Interface to behave the same way as Clarity Gantt.

 

I'll copy this to an Idea.

 

Until then, we must grant child project edit rights to parent project manager.

 

Does XML version of interface behave differently?

[Legacy User]

Also, when saving back to CA PPM, if manager says  "No" to obtaining lock, the entire save process is cancelled.

 

Had hoped the save would continue for the projects that manager had edit rights to, but this is not the case - the whole save process just ends with nothing being saved back to CA PPM.