Multiple user access to common project

If your EPM security/access rights is configured to allow Project Managers (Owners) to view and edit their own projects only, then this may help you. There may be instances when you may want other users/PMs to update your project.

This can be achieved by adding additional Status Managers on the same project.

In summary the process for adding additional Status Managers is as follows;

a) The ownership of the project is first passed on to the other user(s).

Note: the original owner will still be able to access the project plan as they will be setup as Status Managers for the tasks on the project.

b) The new ‘temporary’ owner then sets themselves as the Status Manager for either an existing task or a new ‘dummy’ task.

c) The new ‘temporary’ owner then re-assigns ownership to the original user via PWA > PC > Edit Project Properties.

Note: It is recommended that ownership is passed back to the correct owner responsible for the project.

d) Repeat the above steps for other users.

(click picture to enlarge)

It is important to understand that when multiple users have access to the same project, they could infact modify the contents of the entire project so there has to be some degree of ‘trust’ between the users of the common project.

Note: there is no way to prevent a user from modifying a sub-section of the project or a phase. Access to the project schedule is all or nothing. If security is paramount, then the option would be to split the components/work packages in main project into sub-projects so that specific users have rights to edit their own components/work packages only.

Applies to: EPM2007