Background Information
People have reported many frustrations associated with the use of the default Administrative project feature of Project Server 2003. For example, a team member cannot hide an Administrative task on the View my tasks page, even though the task is completed or is irrelevant to that team member.
Administrative projects can be helpful for capturing non-working time (such as vacation or sick leave) and non-project working time (work that is not associated with any project). Because of the issues associated with using the default Administrative project feature in Project Server 2003, however, msProjectExperts recommends that you use a regular project for the same purpose, and that you structure the regular project to work like an Administrative project. For the purpose of this FAQ, I shall refer this type of project as an “administrative plan.”
Resolution
The manager of the administrative plan should complete the following steps:
1. Launch Microsoft Project Professional and log into Project Server
2. Open a new blank project
3. Enter a task list with the types of tasks you wish to track in the administrative plan
4. Create summary tasks to organize the tasks in the plan, if necessary
5. Click Project - Project Information and enter the Start date of the project
6. For each task, enter the same Duration (the period of time during which you want to gather information)
7. Click View - Table - Tracking
8. For each task, set the Actual Start date to the same date as the Start date of the project (this step “anchors” the Start date of each task)
9. Select all tasks in the project and then click the Task Information button on the Standard toolbar
10. In the Multiple Task Information dialog, click the Advanced tab
11. Set the Task Type to Fixed Duration and deselect the Effort driven option
12. Select the first task in the administrative plan
13. Click Window - Split
14. In the lower viewing pane, assign one or more resources to the task with a Units value that represents the percentage of an average working day that each resource will commit to the task
In step #14, do not assign the resources at 0% Units or else they would not be able to see the task on their timesheet page in Project Web Access.
15. Repeat step #14 for each task in the project
16. Save the project as a regular project in the Project Server database
Warning: As your team members enter actuals for the administrative plan in Project Web Access, they should increase the Remaining Work value for each task if the Remaining Work ever reaches 0 hours. Doing so keeps these tasks in the administrative plan as “Current tasks” and makes them always visible in the timesheet.