Understanding the “Load Summary Resource Assignments” option in Microsoft Project
This is a feature of Microsoft Project Profession.
This option appears within the Login dialogue box each time you open Microsoft Project. It looks like this:
How to configure your accounts.
In order for this option to work properly, you must correctly configure your Project Server Accounts. You will find detailed steps on how to properly configure your accounts this from this link. But ultimately, in order for the “Load Summary Resource Assignments” option to be editable (and not grayed out), a Project Server Account must have the default value set to “Yes” (NOT Computer). Also select the option to “Choose an account”. Like this:
When launching Microsoft Project, if the option is:
Unchecked – You will see Assignments for each resource on the opened project only.
Checked – You will see Assignments for each resource on your project as well as their assignments from “Other Projects and Commitments”.
Let’s demonstrate!
In our first demonstration, we want to inspect our project to ensure that we do not have any over-allocations within our project only (Project 1). We launched MS Project and unchecked the “Load Summary Resource Assignments”.
From the Gantt Chart view, we see two red characters in the Indicator column. This is Microsoft Project telling us that the tasks have a resource(s) assigned that is over-allocated.
If we switch to the Resource Usage view, we see Brian Smiths name appearing in Red. This means he is over-allocated. Looking at the timephased allocation of Work on the right, we can see that Brian is being asked to do 16 hours worth of work within one 8 hour day (note that we are using all out of the box settings like Calendar, Max Units, etc.)
In order to resolve this over-allocation, we changed the logic of our schedule. Notice how the red characters no longer appear within the Indicator column:
Moving back to the Resource Usage view, we can see that Brian is no longer over-allocated:
With the over-allocation from within this project solved, we will now Save, Publish and Close this project schedule. AND…we will exit out of MS Project.
We now launch MS Project and enable (or Check) the “Load Summary Resource Assignments”:
When we open the exact same project (Project 1), we now see over-allocations on all three tasks!
But what is causing these over-allocations to appear now? If we switch to the Resource Usage view, we can see that Brian is again over-allocated:
But now we see an entry that says “Other projects and commitments”. Expanding this summary assignment shows that Brian has work assigned to him within “Project 2″, “Test Project” and even an entry from “My Timesheet” (which is 8 hours of planned Administrative time on Thursday 6/19/14)
We will now have to work with Brian and the other project managers to in order to resolve these over-allocations!!
You may also find this article of value:
9 Tips for Dealing with an Over Allocated Resource
Note: You may find this book helpful: