Working with external resources on cProjects

[Former Member]

Hi Folks,

I have the following business scenario. We use cProjects (v4.5) to manage artwork and design projects. Some of the project activities / tasks are worked on by external design studios. How can we assign these design studio as resources in cProjects.

I know that I can create business partners of type employee (even though they are not employees) and assign to cProjects roles, but wondering if there is a better way to do this. I tried creating a BP of type organization. Although I can assign this resource to a role, there is no way to associate a user ID with this so the design studio can login. We have not decided at this stage if the external partners will be given generic IDs or named user ID's.

Let me know if this question/requirement is not clear. Appreciate any advise on this is.

Thanks,

Lashan

[former_member225645 · Accepted solution]

Hi Lashan,

Did you consider using BUPA role (Resource) for external resources?

Are you expecting external resources to be updating cProjects Task (that they have been assigned to work on) directly in the application?

Best,

Mathavan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mathavan,

Thanks for the response. What exactly do you mean by "BUPA role (Resource)"? Appreciate if you could elaborate a bit on this.

We have not decided yet if we want external users to update cProjects tasks. We may want to have that as an option, but the main intention was for planning costs from cProjects and to analyze the resource usage of the design agency. For example, before assigning a piece of work to them, we would want to know what other projects from our company they are working on.

Thanks,

Lashan

[former_member225645 · Accepted solution]

Hi Lashan,

Trying to give a very high (30000ft ) view:

-External resources will be created (minimaster) within ECC, so as to report time (CATS).

-These resources will be transferred as BUPA in role 'resource' (or in a role that you can configure yourself) in RPM (enhance the PFAL transfer)

-These resources will have user ids both systems (I am sure your organization is ok with this).

-A 'My Task Dashboard' (and detailed view of task from there) will be available for the external resources to access their task and update (nothing else). (Build a custom role if you are using portal to manage access)

-You will need to enhance staffing screens within cProjects to display if a specific (or group of ) resource(s) is/are used elsewhere in your organization (with their run rate!!)

thanks, Mathavan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Mathavan.. this makes sense.

However, CATS is out of scope. We are using cProjects standalone (and inside firewall, so externals will not be editing or confirming tasks). The way that I am thinking of doing this is setting up a BP of type organization in cProjects system and assigning that BP to the task (which will be linked to cFolders outside the firewall to provide access to vendor). An internal employee will be the "responsible resource" and manage the process of updating the task status and progress.

Do you see any potential issues with this kind of setup given our relatively simple requirement.