Leveling problem in MS Project integrated with TFS

Question

I faced to the following problem trying to use MS Project 2007 with TFS 2008.
I created an empty team project and then an empty project plan in MS Project.
First I filled the project plan with a small set of tasks.
Then I connected the plan to TFS team project and publish the plan (I had to set the type of the plan items).
After that, I created a summary item in the plan for a subset of existing items.

At this moment I noticed that some MS Project features work incorrectly:
- Leveling stops working
- Attempt to create another summary item resulted in wrong start/end dates for this new summary.

Note that in the same scenario without connecting to the TFS team project everything works OK.

Had anyone a similar experience?
What could be a root of the problem?

Thanks,

--Vasiliy

Answer 1

I just descovered that the problem appears immediately after I use Indent or Outdent command in MS Project provided that the project plan is connected to a team project in TFS.

This occurs even if I've never used "get work items", "publish" or "refresh" commadns.

I tend to guess that this is a bug in  TFS plug in to the MSProject.
It's strange though, that I failed to find anything about this issue in the forums...

My environment is:
Vista
MS Project 2007 SP2
TFS 2008 SP1
TE 2008 SP1
TFS Power Tools October 2008.

I will highly appreciate any help on this, because I have to make a decision about TFS usage in our company.
Ability to integrate with MS Project was considered as important benefit of TFS vs other issue tracking software.

--Vasiliy

Answer 2

Hello Vasiliy

We are researching this issue and will update you about our findings soon. Thanks for your patience.

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Regards,
Jialiang Ge
MSDN Subscriber Support in Forum
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Answer 3

Hi Vasiliy,

Thanks for reporting this issue.

Can you let me know what your steps to reproduce this issue?

TFS 2008 has some limitation when integrated with MS Project client. The following link describing them:
http://blogs.msdn.com/teams_wit_tools/archive/2007/02/06/ms-project-client-integration-with-tfs.aspx

 

Hongye Sun [MSFT]
MSDN Subscriber Support in Forum
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact msdnmg @ microsoft.com

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Answer 4

Hi Hongye!

Thank you for quick reply and for the link describing some issues.
Unfortunately, the problem is different, though it is from the same area.

There're a lot of different ways to reproduce the problem, here is the shortest one:
1. Create an empty plan in MS Project 2007.
2. Add three new tasks to the plan: S, T1, T2
3. Assign the same resource Res1 to the tasks T1 and T2 (leave S unassigned). Leave default duration of 1 day for each.
4. Indent the tasks T1 and T2. This makes the task S as summary of T1 and T2. The duration for S is automatically set to 2 days (T1+T2)
5. Now connect to (any) team project in TFS. (no need to do publish, refresh etc).
6. Outdent T2. The durartion of S reduced to 1 day as expected.
7. Indent T2 back. The durartion of S remains 1 day (2 days expected).

Note also that after step 6 the resource leveling stops working. For instance, if you add a task T3 with the same resource Res1 assigned, you'll see that this new task overlaps the task T1. Trying to force the leveling manually gets the error.

Note also that I didn't perform any operations with TFS yet, just connected to a team project.


Regadrs,

--Vasiliy

Answer 5

Hi Vasiliy,

Thanks for reporting this issue to us.

I have successfully reproduce the issue. I couldn't find a similar known bug before, so I created a new one at:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=509465#details

I haven't tested in TFS 2010 yet. I will test it and let you know the result soon. 

Hongye Sun [MSFT]
MSDN Subscriber Support in Forum
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact msdnmg @ microsoft.com

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Answer 6

Hi Hongye,

Today I found a report in the forum about the same problem.
(http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsworkitemtracking/thread/8c860cd7-3e93-4de0-929d-fa8318402184)
It's noticeable that this report is dated by August 02, 2006!

Since that time Microsoft released TFS 2008 and even SP1 after that, but the evident bug has not been fixed!
This is frustrating...

Further investigation of this issue shows that almost any manipulation with a task destroys Project leveling. This is, for instance, task indent, outdent, deletion, cut/paste, move (drag-n-drop).
I can hardly imagine any usage scenario without these operations...

I'm still staying tuned for your test results on TFS 2010...

--Vasiliy

Answer 7

Hi Vasiliy,

Unfortunately, TFS 2010 R2 can still repro the issue. I have updated the connect bug.

I am sorry for the inconvenience. Please vote or leave your feedback or comment in the bug and product group will consider to fix it. Thanks.

 

Hongye Sun [MSFT]
MSDN Subscriber Support in Forum
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact msdnmg @ microsoft.com

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