Microsoft Office Project 2003 Inside Out

Overview

To implement the workgroup and enterprise features provided by Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003, Microsoft Office Project Server 2003, and Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003, a project server administrator must configure Project Server 2003 and set up users, permissions, and other options pertinent to your organization.

The project server administrator might be a lead project manager with a good working knowledge of systems and databases. Or, the administrator can be an IT professional with a good working knowledge of project management. In either case, the project server administrator needs to be dedicated and available when Project Server and Project Web Access 2003 are first being set up. This person also needs to be available whenever project managers, team members , or other system users need to change their setup.

Specifically, the project server administration functions include:

• Identifying enterprise and workgroup options.

• Adding users and setting their permissions.

• Establishing the enterprise resource pool and associated resource information.

• Configuring projects for multiple project portfolio review, analysis, and modeling.

• Standardizing project elements included in the enterprise global template.

• Customizing team member timesheets for the requirements of a particular project.

Depending on whether you're implementing enterprise features with workgroup, or workgroup features only (without enterprise project management), you might carry out all or some of these tasks .

Although this chapter is targeted for project server administrators and portfolio managers , it's not a bad idea for project managers to review this chapter as well. This chapter can help project managers understand the enterprise and workgroup capabilities available, as well as the effort required to implement certain features.