Updating task progress for resources without PC access

[Peter_Eng]

Hi All,

I'm using a MS Project Online to manage program of works. In this case, we have a large team of people, many of whom don't have access to computers. These can like electricians, mechanical fitters, etc. Naturally, these resources are unable to do updates in the MS Project Online environment on the task progress. However, they report to a supervisor (team lead), who is responsible for providing the team updates. What is the best practice to track progress for these resources in MS Project Online? Should I use the Team Assignment Function, or Assign the Supervisor to every task so they can see it in My Assignments window?

To provide a scenario example, during a plant shut down, several Labour resources are assigned to different tasks. Their assignments to tasks are important for resource leveling and budgeting purposes. These resources turn in their Work Order sheets at the end of the day to their supervisor. The supervisor then updates the progress on these tasks, but he/she can only see the tasks assigned to themselves.

Thanks!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Peter_Eng --

Excellent question, my friend! Here is how you should handle this situation, using the scenario you describe of the plant shutdown:

1. In the Microsoft Project schedule, add the Supervisor as a project team member using the Build Team dialog.
2. Leave the tasks in question assigned to the Labor resources.
3. Apply the Resource Usage view.
4. In the Resource Usage view, insert the Assignment Owner column to the right of the Resource Name column.
5. In the Assignment Owner column, you will see the names of the Labor resources for the tasks to which they are assigned. Change the Assignment Owner value from the name of the Labor resources to the name of the Supervisor for each of these tasks.
6. Save and publish the project.
7. Ask your application administrator to add both the Status Manager and Resource Name columns to the My Assignments view.

By completing the preceding steps, the Supervisor will now be able to see the tasks on his/her Tasks page that are assigned to the Labor resources. The Resource Name column will help the Supervisor to determine which tasks are assigned to which of the Labor resources. Hope this helps.

[#3]

Dale!

You are awesome, it worked! I would like to also call out the effort you put into your response, making detailed for anyone to follow. That is rare, as a lot of the proposed solutions in forums would just tell you to use Assignment Owner, and leave you to search high and low for actually how to do it. You have saved a lot of my time, as this was the last item I needed to resolve before launching MS Project Online for out team and move away from spreadsheet updates. The spreadsheets became unmanageable as our team is growing significantly.

Note for anyone following Dale's steps and looking for Resource Usage view in online, I performed steps 1 through to 6 in MS Project Desktop client, and the remaining steps in MS Project Online.

[#4]

Peter --

Thank you for your incredibly kind comments, my friend. :) You are more than welcome for the help.