Forum Discussion
Use Save for Sharing for Colleagues who Don't have Project Pro?
You need Project Professional to open schedules from Project Server and publish updates/changes. We have individuals in our organization who only have Project Standard, but need to provide input into the schedule. Should we use the Save for Sharing feature so that these people can update the schedule in their version of Project Standard, then the schedule Owner in Project Server can then check in the project with those updates? If we do this, how do we handle the Enterprise Objects (resources, calendar, and custom fields) which the Project Standard user doesn't have access to?
Good question. When Microsoft introduced this feature, it was meant to do exactly what you want to do. At the time, I found that people receiving the shared file MUST HAVE the same version of Microsoft Project as is currently used with Project Online or Project Server. The MPP file that is generated will contain all of the custom enterprise objects from your Project Server system, however, the people using Microsoft Project Standard will NOT be able to see those enterprise objects, nor will the objects be lost in the round trip process. Before you proceed with implementing this with all Microsoft Project Standard users, I would recommend that you run multiple tests with one or two users to make sure that the process actually works, and does not damage or corrupted the shared enterprise project. Hope this helps.
2 Replies
Good question. When Microsoft introduced this feature, it was meant to do exactly what you want to do. At the time, I found that people receiving the shared file MUST HAVE the same version of Microsoft Project as is currently used with Project Online or Project Server. The MPP file that is generated will contain all of the custom enterprise objects from your Project Server system, however, the people using Microsoft Project Standard will NOT be able to see those enterprise objects, nor will the objects be lost in the round trip process. Before you proceed with implementing this with all Microsoft Project Standard users, I would recommend that you run multiple tests with one or two users to make sure that the process actually works, and does not damage or corrupted the shared enterprise project. Hope this helps.
Thank you for the response. With this in mind, we opted to stay within Project Server/Project Professional rather than risk loss of data. It would be great if Microsoft would allow Project Standard users to work with a Project Server schedule without impacting Enterprise custom fields, maybe as a future fix or enhancement. With the ever-evolving field of MS Office applications, scheduling applications, and the need to integrate these applications, the ability to useProject (even Standard version) with multiple applications without losing or corrupting data would be very valuable. But, easier said than done...
