Overview of Project Server Security

Microsoft Project Web App ships with eight predefined groups: Team Members, Team Leads, Resource Managers, Proposal Reviewers, Project Managers, Portfolio Managers, Executives, and Administrators; additional groups can be created by an administrator. Individuals are assigned to one or more groups. Each group has predefined permissions which govern what they can and can’t do in the application.

Note to users accessing Project Online through Office 365: Your instance of Project Server is usually hosted in an arrangement known as a tenant. A tenant is a separate instance of Project Server that is co-hosted with other tenants (typically users from other organizations that are separated from your instance). Office 365 is designed with additional layers of security that protect access to your organization’s information from users in other organizations. As a result, your default groups may be set up differently. Refer any questions about this to your organization’s Project Online administrator.

Groups are given access to categories, which contain objects such as projects and views. The combination of groups and categories defines the security for information in Project Server. For example, resources in the Team Member group given access to the My Tasks category (the default for team members) will see only the Project Center views given to the My Tasks category by the Project Server administrator; they will not see the Resources link at all on their individual Home pages.

Resources in the Project Manager group will see their own projects (those they have published or are assigned to) in the Project Center page and can view assignment information in the Resource Center.

Project Web App Views

The content and format of views in Project Web App is defined by a Project Server administrator and cannot be changed by users, just as enterprise views in Microsoft Project cannot be changed by project managers. The significant difference is only data appearing in a Project Web App view can be used for filtering and grouping, whereas all data in Microsoft Project is available, whether visible or not. For example, you can filter the data in the Entry Table in the Gantt Chart by cost, even though cost data is not visible.

This means that, especially in the early stages of a Microsoft Project 2019 implementation, solid communication between administrators and users is critical. Administrators of course work to provide the information and organizational tools needed, but often this effort requires estimation on their part. If required information isn’t available, contact your administrator.

Project Center

For this exercise, you will need to launch Internet Explorer and connect to Project Web App.

Checking Assignment Attributes

Before using resource engagements, resource managers have to assign resources that require approval to projects.

Resource engagements look and operate differently depending on the user’s role. The following exercises will show how to request, assign, and manage resource engagements from both ends.

Creating Requests Using the Task and Engagement Inspectors

This exercise uses the file ResourceEngagement.mpp. Be sure this project is open before beginning.

1. 1.
   From Task:View, click the arrow next to Gantt Chart and select the Resource Plan view. If you have, for the selected project, existing resource engagements or migrated resource plans, you can see their status.

   

   When in Project Professional, the Engagements tab is available, as shown in the next figure.

   Note Resource engagements are only available on Microsoft Project Professional 2019 or Microsoft Project Professional for Office 365, connected to Project Online or Project Server 2019. Project Standard 2019 does not support resource engagements.

   

    
2. 2.

   Now it’s time for the project manager to do the planning and assign resources to tasks. The project contains one engagement for user Elea Bailey and two simple tasks. You build your team from the enterprise resource pool. On the Resource tab, click Add Resources:Build Team from Enterprise….

   Or add the resources to your Resource Sheet view as displayed in the following Project resources list.

   

    
3. 3.
   Select two more resources, both requiring approval.

   

    
4. 4.

   Assign Elea Bailey to the first task. Since she is already committed via a resource engagement, there is no specific action to perform.

   Now assign Leo Cullen to the second task. Notice the warning message on the indicators column: An engagement is required for this resource.

   

    
5. 5.
   To resolve this problem, right-click the icon and select Fix in Engagement Inspector.

   

    
6. 6.
   The engagement inspector opens in a pane on the left side of your screen. Click View engagement conflict in Task Usage.

   

    
7. 7.
   The Task Usage screen will display with Leo Cullen highlighted and a message in the Inspector pane that says “This task assignment is outside of the boundaries of an engagement.” This means the assignment of Leo Cullen on Task 2 is not covered by a committed resource engagement.

   

   Note The indicator for “This task assignment is outside of the boundaries of an engagement” [] displayed on the Gantt Chart view is not displayed on the Resource Plan view.

    
8. 8.
   To create a new engagement, you can right-click the icon and select Create New Engagement. Alternatively, you can click the button Create and save new engagement for this assignment’s resource on the inspector pane.

   

    
9. 9.
   Set the engagement information following the example in the following figure. Enter the comment “Need Leo on this project to perform Task 2” for the resource manager who will review the request. Click OK.

   

    
10. 10.
    The request is created as draft and needs to be submitted. Click Submit my engagement for review.

    

     
11. 11.
    After the request is sent, assignment status is updated to “Proposed.”

    

     

Manually Creating Requests

You then have to submit the resource engagement request as usual.

Request Reminders

Creating Resource Engagements to Manage Non-project Time

Now, Leo Cullen is assigned to tasks in the Laptop Deployment for employees project and has a resource engagement for his operational duties linked to the Non-project Time 2017 project.

Project Sites

SharePoint can automatically create a project site when a project is published. The project site provides a focus for project-related functions as well as a cyberspace war room, which allows for the project team to work together. This is especially useful when true co-location is not possible.

For this exercise, launch Internet Explorer and connect to Project Web App.

1. 1.
   Navigate to the Project Center. Click a Project Name from the list to go to the Project Details page for that project. From Project:Navigate, click the Project Site icon. Your screen will resemble the following.

   

    

Just as your Project Web App Home page contains items specific to you, the project home page contains items specific to the project, which can be shared with all members of the project team. When a new project is first published, the project manager is prompted to create a project workspace for the project. This workspace is created from a template setup as part of enterprise configuration, so all workspaces initially look very similar.

As you can see in the preceding figure, the main window provides sidebar options, as well as typically including tiles that provide access to pages that allow you to customize, share, and brand the site. This page by default also allows you to add documents and other information to the site, including links to other web pages of interest.

Risks, issues, deliverables, and documents can be managed from the project SharePoint workspace or from Project Web App. In the following exercises, we will work with them from the appropriate location in Project Web App.

Issues

Now that there are issues associated with your project, you may want to link the issues with a specific task that each impacts. The method for linking list items—such as issues, risks, or deliverables—to a task in a SharePoint task list or enterprise project plan has changed for those accustomed to versions 2013 and earlier. This is due to changes made to the architecture of SharePoint Server and Project Server in the last release.

Risks

Risks are usually inherent to projects themselves. They may involve unavailability of a critical material or skill, lack of experience on the part of the project manager or team, the use of new or untested technology—the list is almost endless.

The Risks page interface resembles that of the issues page, which we just reviewed. The major difference is that Probability and Impact are new fields relating to Risks, and each is a required field.

Also, instead of Discussion and Resolution threaded discussion boxes, Risk fields include Description, Mitigation Plan (how will we decrease the probability or impact or both?), Contingency Plan, and Trigger (what will tell us that it’s time to activate the contingency plan?) fields. Items can be linked to the mitigation or contingency plan, or they can be flagged as affected by the risk or as triggers. Documents can also be attached to a risk entry.

As with issues, if a risk is assigned to you, you will see a reference to it on your Project Web App issues and risks page, accessed from the Issues and Risks link on your home page sidebar.

Editing Issues and Risks

The value of managing issues and risks in a project site is that team members collaborate in their recognition, assessment, tracking, and resolution. Maintaining the status of each open issue and risk is part of the work of the people to whom they are assigned. Team members review and update their issue and risk entries via the project workspace. Reviewing their statuses is a regular part of project management.

Team members view their issues and risks by clicking the Issues and Risks link in the sidebar of their Project Web App Home page.

The Issues and Risks page resembles the following.

Clicking the project link takes you to the Issues page or Risks page for that project, where you can edit the issues or risks lists. You can edit any of your issues or risks by clicking edit this list.

You will see your list (in the case of the preceding example, the list of issues assigned to you) in editable table form, similar to the following figure. Edit the list options as appropriate, and then click Stop editing this list to save your changes and return to the original (issues or risks) list.

List Management

Documents

Document libraries are used to store, organize, and share documents with people. By keeping documents in a central location, everyone who needs one has access at any time. You can also sync documents to your local computer so you have offline access to them.

Projects usually include documents, such as a project charter, statements of work, and closeout reports. Project Web App 2019 uses SharePoint to manage project documents.

Document libraries can either be shared by all who use your Project Web App site or can be specific to a project. In this section we will discuss how to view, edit, and add both types of libraries.

End of Chapter Quiz Questions