Project 2013: Error: One or more categories of approval could not be loaded

Question

We recently upgraded to 2013 from 2007.  Now some of my Resource mgrs who are also PM's are getting this message on the approval screen: 
Error: One or more categories of approval could not be loaded
I figured out it's the timesheets that are not displaying, but even deleting and resubmitting them does not change the message.  Has anyone else encountered this issue?  It seems to be related to the security, but I haven't figured out which permission
is missing.

Answer 1

Hi there,
This is a
currently unfixed known bug with Project Server 2013 at least up until Oct 2013 CU caused when PM's delete tasks/assignments after the task has already been added to a user's timesheet.
You could turn off single entry to make this go away - but many people actually rely on actuals from timesheets coming through to their projects.
The other way to fix this (temporarily) is to delete and re-create the affected timesheets.
When you navigate to the approval center and receive the "Error: One or more categories of approval could not be loaded" message, check the ULS log you will see a message like this:
Node Consistency Error: Exception loading Assignment. Uid=6c5a411f-1f80-e211-a2cb-001e37e5967d
Selecting from the database with this Uid will tell you which user's timesheet is corrupt.
Personally I use a SQL script like this:
SELECT
ts.TimesheetName,
tsr.ResourceName,
tspe.PeriodName
,tsp.ProjectName,
tst.TaskName
  FROM
[ProjectServer].[dbo].[MSP_TimesheetLine]
tsl
inner join
MSP_Timesheet ts
on tsl.TimesheetUID
= ts.TimesheetUID
inner join
MSP_TimesheetResource tsr
on ts.OwnerResourceNameUID
= tsr.ResourceNameUID
inner join
MSP_TimesheetProject tsp
on tsl.ProjectNameUID
= tsp.ProjectNameUID
inner join
MSP_TimesheetStatus tss
on ts.TimesheetStatusID
= tss.TimesheetStatusID
inner join
MSP_TimesheetTask tst
on tsl.TaskNameUID
= tst.TaskNameUID
inner join
MSP_TimesheetPeriod tspe
on ts.PeriodUID
= tspe.PeriodUID
inner join
[ProjectServer].[pub].[MSP_TIMESHEETS]
pubTs
on pubTs.TS_UID
= ts.TimesheetUID
  where
tsl.AssignmentUID
= '6c5a411f-1f80-e211-a2cb-001e37e5967d'
and pubTs.TS_STATUS_ENUM
= 1
I then create a delegate as that user - go and take a screenshot of the timesheet, delete it, and recreate it.
Undelegate, go back to the approval center, if the error is still there, then look at the ULS log, rinse and repeat.
(As you can tell - this is part of my weekly routine)
Cheers,
   James.
James Boman - http://www.boman.biz Software Consultant for IPMO - http://www.ipmo.com.au