Forum Discussion
Generic Resources - Team Assignment Pool Yes or No?
Our On-Prem Project Server environment was set up with Generic Resources marked "No" for Team Assignment Pool. It seems we would want this to be a "Yes", so that tasks assigned to a Generic resource would be visible by Project Server users with the same role, and those users could then self-assign those tasks and provide updates. Our generic resources are meant to represent a "pool" of people in different labor categories, so that we can look at potential areas of under or over utilization. It seems that marking them as a Team Assignment Pool would reflect our intended use. For most of our generic resources, we don't plan to replace them with a specific person (such as production work). However, for some resources such as engineers, we would like them to be able to self-assign tasks and give updates in Project Server.
Is there a particular reason to keep our Generic Resources marked "No" for Team Assignment Pool? Does changing to "Yes" affect their capacity, availability, or Work/Cost values?
1 Reply
Brett --
It's been a long, long time since I used the Team resources and Team assignments in Project Online and Project Server. The first thing you need to do is to create a lookup table for the built-in Team Name field, such as Team Names, or something like that. Then you need to create a list of teams in the Team Names lookup table. Then you need to create a Generic resource that represents each team, and select the correct value in the Team Name field, and select the Team Assignment Pool checkbox. You will also need to specify a Team Name value for every resource as well. So, there is quite a bit of setup required to even get the thing working.
The Team assignments feature is meant to allow for "pick up work", where you assign a Generic resource to a task, and then members of the team represented by that resource can pick up the task and self-assign the task. To use the Team assignments feature, your organization will need to be using the Tasks page in PWA. On that page, your team members will need to click the Add Row pick list button in the Tasks ribbon, and then select the Add Team Tasks item on the pick list. The Team Tasks page will display a list of tasks assigned to their team, from which they can select one or more tasks, and click the Assign to Me button. These tasks will now appear on the Tasks page for that team member.
Believe me, it is plenty of work to set up for the app admin, but I think is it really clumsy for team members to use. In fact, I have never had a single client with either Project Server or Project Online use this feature. But if you want to try it out, go for it! Hope this helps.
