How can I set up a Team Members entity with the related security?

Project Managers often want to record a list of their project team members, specifying who will play which role during the life span of their project. PPO's custom entities allow for a Team Members entity to be set up to assist with managing team members and their respective roles. In addition, the access rights of team members on PPO can be limited to only the projects where they are involved.

This article will explain all aspects of setting up a Team Members entity - from configuring the entity itself to setting up related security for team members and filtering your resource list fields to only show team members.

Part 1: Configuring a Team Members entity

Step 1: Put the entity in use

Hover over the Administration menu, select Entities and activate one of the custom entities available, as explained in the following knowledge base article.

Once the entity name has been specified and the entity has been put in use, configure the Team Members entity as follows:

Recommended fields include:

• Team Member - this is a resource field, showing the name of the team member; and
• Role - this is a custom list showing the various roles making up the project team.

Extra fields can be added as required. For details on how to set up Data Fields, see the following knowledge base article.

Also remember to amend the relevant user groups to allow access to the Team Members entity. For more details on setting up user group settings, see the following knowledge base article.

Part 2: Specify which projects the team member can see

Step 1: Determine each team members' projects

In order to set up access control to allow each team member to only see their own projects, a calculated field needs to be set up on the Projects entity. This calculated field will dynamically check which projects the user (person who is logged onto PPO) is a team member on. This field will show "Yes" for all projects where the logged on user is a team member.

This calculation will be used in conjunction with a user group filter in the next step to define the team members' access rights.

To set up the calculation, set up the field as follows:

The formula to use is the following:

CASE WHEN EXISTS (SELECT *FROM tblCustomEntity5 WHERE MasterKey IS NULL AND CE5ProjectKey = ProjectKey AND V01 = {UserEmployeeKey}) THEN -1
ELSE 0 END

Remember to amend the calculation to refer to the applicable field and entity keys:

• CustomEntity5 - this needs to be replaced by the custom entity key for the configured Team Members entity;
• CE5ProjectKey - this needs to be replaced by the project key for the configured Team Members entity;
• V01 - this is the field name of the team member (resource list field) on the Team Members entity.

For details on setting up calculated fields, see the following FAQ.

Step 2: Set up the user group (security) filter

Using the calculated field created in step 2, the administrator can now set up a user group filter that will allow each team member to see only their specific projects.

To set this up go to the Administration menu, select Filters and select the required user group:

Click on the Add Project Filter button and set up the filter as follows:

For full details on setting up filters, see the following knowledge base article.

This filter will then ensure that all users in the Team Members user group will see only the projects on which they have been selected as team members.

Part 3: Specify which projects the team members are available on

Administrators can set up filters on resource lists to only allow Team Members on the project to be assigned to tasks, issues, risks and other items. By setting up this filter, only resources loaded as team members’ names will appear on the resource lists for the specified project.

Step 1: Determine each project’s team members

In order to set up a filter to allow only team members to be listed in the resource lists, a calculated field needs to be set up on the Resource entity. This calculated field will dynamically check which resources are listed as team members on projects and if the user (person who is logged onto PPO) is a team member.

This calculation will be used in conjunction with a shared filter on the resource entity. This will restrict the user to for example only assign Risks to other users who are team members on the projects. 

To set up the calculation, set up the field as follows:

The formula to use is the following:

CASE WHEN EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM tblCustomEntity5 s1 WHERE s1.MasterKey IS NULL AND s1.V01 = tblEmployees.EmployeeKey AND s1.CE5ProjectKey IN (SELECT DISTINCT s2.CE5ProjectKey FROM tblCustomEntity5 s2 WHERE s2.MasterKey IS NULL AND s2.V01 = {UserEmployeeKey})) THEN -1  
ELSE 0 END

Remember to amend the calculation to refer to the applicable field and entity keys:

• CustomEntity5 - this needs to be replaced by the custom entity key for the configured Team Members entity;
• CE5ProjectKey - this needs to be replaced by the project key for the configured Team Members entity;
• V01 - this is the field name of the team member (resource list field) on the Team Members entity.

Step 2: Set up a Shared Filter

Using the calculated field created in step 1 of Part 3, the administrator can now set up a shared filter for resources that will allow each team member to see only their specific projects.

Hover over the Administration menu and select Filters (The filter will be applied for all user groups)