Project Web Access Administration

All administration functions to set up Project Web Access are under the Admin tab of Project Web Access. This tab will only display for those who have been given administration authority. Under this function you will set up

• Users of Project Web Access and their access rights.

• Overall organization data rights (called permissions) allowed for your enterprise.

• Groups for all of Project 2003, and their rights to data.

• Categories, which further define what kind of data the groups may access.

• Views, which define the format of the data for the groups and categories you define.

• How you want your Project Web Access pages to be formatted, such as for Gantt Bar format and group intervals. You will also be able to change the default menu and home page appearance.

• How you want to track actuals (time reporting) for your project schedules.

• How you want to set up email and Windows SharePoint Services.

• The OLAP cube, which sets update timeframes and range of data needed for the Portfolio Analyzer reporting view.

You will also perform some data management functions, such as checking in projects and resources, and deleting project tasks , status reports , resources, and projects from the database if needed.

Users, Groups, and Permissions

Users are set up in Project Web Access to establish their authorization into Project Web Access. Their usernames and other access information are established to help in the authorization. This is different than establishing them as resources for projects. That is done via the resource pool in Project Professional. Each user is then assigned to a group, such as project manager or administrator (although each user is assigned to the default group of team member).

You can now integrate more easily with Microsoft Active Directory. Active Directory is a feature in Windows Server 2000 or Server 2003 that establishes security objects, such as users and groups for system networks. If your organization uses the Active Directory in Windows Server, Project 2003 now allows your organization to sync up the users and groups established in Active Directory to the users and groups in Project Server. This way, you only need to create security in one location: Active Directory. You can also use the Active Directory to sync up resources that you want to add to the resource pool.

Each of the groups established for the organization has permissions assigned to them. For instance, the project manager group permissions may be set so that project managers may view only their own projects in Project Center, but not others. At the same time, they may not be allowed to see Portfolio Analysis reporting or use the function called "delegate tasks." Each group, also, may be associated with a category which defines what set of data they may be able to view. For instance, the My Projects category may be set to allow project managers to view only the projects they own or are assigned to, or may be set to allow them to see all projects in the organization.

For detailed information about users, groups, categories, and security via permissions, see "Customizing and Administering Microsoft Project Server" on the CD accompanying this book.