Sometimes the field Locked cannot be updated in the view Close Tasks to Update in Project Server 2013

Question

Hi,

Following the thread http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/projectserver/en-US/7a5c7968-0c34-40e6-ad39-94753a722d46/how-to-use-in-ps2013-the-previous-ps2010-close-tasks-to-update?forum=projserv2010setup#eafb95c3-683f-43f4-bc59-f425670e97d5, now I know how to do it, but I have one more question regarding this issue:

Why in some cases there is no way to change the value of the 'Locked' field?

It looks ok when I change it through the Close Tasks to Update view, then I press Save, Publish and Close, to check the Project in, but then I open again the view just to check if it has been done properly, and in some Projects it is OK and all tasks are locked (value Yes) but in several of them it didn't pay attention of the changes and the Locked field remains unlocked (value No).

Is there any condition that must be met in order to lock a task?

Thank you for your help,

José Espases

Answer 1

Hi again,

I really need help on this issue, does anyone know why this feature is only working in some cases?

The 'Locked' field doesn't allow to be modified, I've been able to put the value 'Yes' only in two projects, the rest of projects don't pay attention to the update, they get back to the value 'No'.

On top of this I've done these changes (just in case):

• The Project I'm using to make tests has all tasks in Automatic mode
• I've taken out all the constraints, tasks finish As Soon As Possible.  No effect, it keeps getting back to 'No'
• All Tasks finish before 02nd March 2014.  No effect, it keeps getting back to 'No'
• I put all the Remaining Works to 0, for all tasks and Resources. No effect, it keeps getting back to 'No'
• I completed all tasks (100% completed). No effect, it keeps getting back to 'No'

Please, give me some idea to solve the issue.

The only solution I'm thinking about is to inactivate the tasks, but it would be a little bit a dirty solution.

Thank you and regards,

José Espases

Answer 2

Hi José,

I actually didn't answer because I had no clue but since no one answered I'll give a try.

I've heard that the "lock" feature might not work properly for projects created with Project 2010 and imported/migrated to Project 2013. Could it be your case? You said that it was working for 2 projects? What are the specificities of those 2 projects?

Finally a silly question: did you actually published and not just save your changes after locking tasks?

I'd suggest to check the queue to ensure that the publish job was successful.

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Hope this helps,

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Guillaume Rouyre, MBA, MCP, MCTS |

Answer 3

Hi Guillaume,

thank you for your answer.

Yes, this is my case, the projects, almost all of them, were created in PS 2010,  I migrated to Project Server 2013 last february. I will check right now if the projects working fine, regarding the lock field, were created in PS 2013.

And, yes, I Saved and Published everytime, and I didn't move a finger until the jobs were succesfully finished.

Probably the answer will be that the projects were migrated from 2010 to 2013 :(  I'll put the answer here after checking it.

Thank you again for your answer.

José Espases

Answer 4

You're more than welcome José.

I do hope that I'm wrong for 2010 migrated projects. It would mean that any migrated projects will not be able to lock tasks unless they are recreated.

In case you confirm it, you could do some tests like unpublishing all task (with the "publish" column in MS Project Pro) and publish them again. Or saving as xml the projects and save them back as MPP on the server.

Anyway if you confirm it, I suggest you to open a support ticket for this.

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Hope this helps,

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Guillaume Rouyre, MBA, MCP, MCTS |

Answer 5

Hi again Guillaume,

I confirm that this is not the problem, some projects created before the migration have worked succesfully, I did it in four of them at least, but for now I have 5 more that keep the Lock field as not locked. I have to close the tasks to update in 18 projects, so 4 WORK, 5 don't WORK and I don't know yet about the other 9 projects.

All the projects that I'm working with, regarding to lock the tasks, were created before the migration process, so all of them were migrated from Project 2010 to Project 2013.

I'm comparing the projects working vs the projects not working, to see if there is any substantial difference...

Any other ideas?

Thank you for your valuable help!!

José Espases

Answer 6

Hi again,

another detail that I've noticed is that meanwhile the Project is checked-out to me (after saving and publishing) the Lock field remains as YES, but as soon as I execute the check-in it goes back to NO for all tasks.

José Espases

Answer 7

Hi José,

Keep us informed if you're able to spot any differences between projects that work and projects with the issue.

Another though: it might be an IE issue (eventhough it would be weird..). Which IE version do you have? Can you try on another machine? Also do you have admin rights?

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Hope this helps,

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Guillaume Rouyre, MBA, MCP, MCTS |

Answer 8

Hi,

I have the solution for this issue already, I've been obliged to open a case with Microsoft.

The solution is just to open the Project in Project Professional and Save it for Sharing, then you restore it back to PWA, save and publish it itwice (the first one always fails, don't know why) and check-in the Project, using the same Project name (well the name is in grey and cannot be changed when you save).

After that the Project works fine, you can edit the lock field (edit in browser PWA), change it to 'Yes', save the Project, publish and check it in; and the lock fields remains as 'Yes'.

I hope this solution will be useful to you.

Regards,

José Espases

Answer 9

I've had the same problem after migrating PS 2010 to PS 2013.

Thanks a lot Jose.

Best regards,

Marko