Completing the PM Central Project Configuration Checklist

Task Master is configured to define working hours as Monday – Friday, 8AM – 5PM with lunch between 12-1PM, resulting in an 8 hour work day and 40 hour work week.
Working hours will be enforced when the project is Recalculated from the Task Master toolbar.

If your organization officially uses a longer or shorter standard work week you will need to update Task Master’s Work Week Settings.

• Navigate to the Tasks tab, or click this item’s action link to access the main Task page

• Click the gear icon on the right of the toolbar to access Project Schedule Settings.

• Make the necessary modifications and click Update.

  Important:
  The working days and hours defined on the project site must be consistent with the settings defined in Report Center Settings on the Portfolio site.

If your organization is using a “Holiday” list you will need to associate it with the Task Master web part to prevent work being scheduled on the identified “holidays”.

• Navigate to the Tasks tab, or use this this item’s action link, to access the main Tasks page
• Edit the All Tasks web part
• Click the Task Master Web Part Settings button
• Click Holiday List on the left navigation pane
• Enter the URL of the SharePoint site that maintains the Holiday list, then select the list from the drop down.

Note: The same holiday list must be used throughout a PM Central Portfolio and associated sites, and must be created using a SharePoint Calendar list.

Standard templates only

The working days, hours, and holidays specified in Resource & Schedule Settings will be referenced by PM Central when generating the project site’s Resource Allocation and Capacity reports.

• From the PM Central Control Panel, or this item’s action link, access Resource & Schedule Settings and validate the work schedule is consistent with the schedule used in Task Master.

  Important: The working days, hours, and holidays, identified here must be consistent with those defined in Report Center Settings at the Portfolio site.

The Group Email Web Part is configured to send notifications to identified project team members using your email client. This option does not require additional configuration, but it is subject to a limitation that prevents more than 2083 characters being passed across a query string.

If you think the number of characters in the email addresses of project team members will exceed this limit, or if you want to have the email form load in the SharePoint page, make the following changes to the default Group Email configuration:

• Navigate to the Project Home page, or click the action link associated with this item.
• Edit the Send an Email to Project Team web part
• In the configuration tool pane, under Bamboo Group Email, select the Use SMTP radio button
• Enter the SMTP Server Name used by SharePoint, (this information is available from Configure Outgoing Email Settings in Central Administration) and a Notification Email From address

Note: Group Email will not save a history of the messages sent.

Standard templates only

When Standard Rates are associated with user profiles in the Project Resource Pool, and tasks are assigned to Project Team Resources, PM Central can calculate the human resource cost of the project. The calculated Project (Human) Cost can then be compared with the Budget (Estimated) Cost value entered in the Project Health list, and the budget health of the project displayed in the Budget Cost Status KPI.

The Budget Costs Status column is not displayed in the Project Info dashboard by default. To display this column you will need to complete the following steps:

• From the Project Home page (Project Home tab) edit the Project Info web part
• Click the Data-Viewer Web Part Settings button
• Click SharePoint List or Library on the left navigation pane
• Click the Column Display Settings button and check the Budget Cost Status box
• Click Save & Close and OK to exit the configuration tool pane

Note: The Budget Cost Status column was removed from the default display in PM Central 4.3

• From the PM Central Control Panel on this site, or this item’s action link, access Show or Hide columns…
• Under List Name select either the Project Health list or the Tasks list
• Uncheck the boxes associated with fields that should not be displayed in the associated list forms.

  Important: This is the only supported method for hiding fields in PM Central.

You don’t want to have to complete these configuration steps for every site, so consider creating a custom project template.

When the template is available in the Solutions gallery completing the following steps on the Portfolio site will make the project site template available in PM Central’s site creation tool:

• Navigate back to the Portfolio site
• Click the Create New Project/Department button. You will need to be a member of the Owners group to see this button on the page
• Edit the Page to access the configuration tool pane of the Bamboo Site Creation Plus Web Part.
• Scroll to the template selection boxes under Allow user to select … and use the > button to add the custom project template to the display box on the right
• Use the up arrow to position the custom project template at the top of the available templates.

  Important: It is recommended that the template only be used in the site collection where it was created.