Templates Override PDS Parameters

I had a question from a customer who was creating projects using the Project Server PDS. Within the project every task must have the Fixed Cost Accrual set to "START". To set the Fixed Cost Accrual they were using the option DefaultFixedCostAccrual in the ProjectCreate XML structure.  This had no effect on changing the value.

The key piece of data missing here is the customer was also passing a template name into ProjectCreate.  Therefore the value for DefaultFixedCostAccural is being pulled from the template.  In other words the template overrides the values you put into the ProjectCreate call.  Most information in ProjectCreate will be overridden by the template.  For example if you enter Task information it won’t be shown, the tasks from the template will. 

The best solution is to save the template with the desired accrual method.  And for any other parameter, you should check if you can save it in the template.  This does create some challenges because there is no way to edit the information within a project from PDS.  Today your solution is to write a PDS Extension to change those values after a create.  For Project Server 12, those problems go away.  But that’s another thread, which I can’t comment on till January.  See Dieter’s Project Blog to get a glimpse Project Server 12 technologies.