Preparing Custom Field and Outline Code Data

The second hurdle in preparing your resource data after you’ve gathered the logon information is staging the custom outline code data. As previously mentioned, this is likely to be new to your organization, so plan for the time it takes to assign these values manually.

When importing the resource pool, Project will only map outline codes in the project to outline codes for enterprise resources. The code structures and values must match completely and exactly; however, you can map any available outline code to any available outline code, so the name you give the code and the code you select is inconsequential beyond identifying the code for your own recognition. Getting the enterprise outline code values into your source file has the added benefit of being useful when you’re assigning nonrelated values as well. For instance, the skill outline code may be useful in manually setting resource cost rates, as you can use this code in your current view to sort the resources by like values. Generally, costs are consistent within these classifications.

To help build the outline codes in your file-based resource pool, you can copy the value lists from the corresponding fields that you created in your enterprise global file. Although you can’t copy from one field list to another directly, you can use an intermediary application to hold the values between copying them from one outline code to another. In Project Professional, connect to your Project Server. Then open the .mpp file in which you’re building your resource pool and start Microsoft Excel. After opening the enterprise global, you can view the value list of an enterprise resource outline code, copy its contents using Ctrl+C or the Copy button in the interface, paste it temporarily into Excel while you close the enterprise outline code, and open the destination outline code. Then copy the list from Excel and paste it into the destination field. The indenting of the value list is lost, so you must re-create this; however, you guarantee that your values are import-worthy during the process.