Found a bug? Adding alot of resources to a task creates a local resource on the server.

Question

Hi Guys,
I'm working with a client on building a Project Server 2013 environment and I came cross something that struck me as odd. I hope some of you will be able to reproduce the issue and maybe point me into the direction of a hotfix or
a report that say's it’s a known bug?
Currently the client is working with a Project Server installment 15.0.4420.1017 and I have reproduced the issue in a 15.0.4481.1005 (March 2013) environment AND on a Project Online tennent.
I have these resources, all are enterprise resources without any custom fields active (all are specific work resources):
ABC EDIT Manufacturing Technology HBO
ABC EDIT Manufacturing Technology JRACAD
ABC EDIT Manufacturing Technology JRHBO
ABC EDIT Manufacturing Technology LBO
ABC EDIT Manufacturing Technology MBO
ABC EDIT Manufacturing Technology PROM
ABC EDIT Manufacturing Technology SRACAD
ABC EDIT Manufacturing Technology STAF
Now I build a new Project using the standard Enterprise project template that comes with the product.
I start with a single task that takes me 2 months (or any duration actually). The task is set to fixed duration after this. Now I add all the 8 resources in one go using the dropdown box in the Resource names column in the Tasks summary
view. I save and publish the project. After this I check the project in and open it with Project Professional.
When looking at the Resource sheet I see that the following resource is now created as a local resource “ABC EDIT Manufacturin” and not all resource assignments are on the task anymore. The resources ending with “SRACAD” and “STAFF” don’t
appear to have any assignment anymore.
Help me out here, am I missing something? Can you reproduce the situation in your environments?
Kind regards,
Erik

Answer 1

Hi Prasanna,
I am aware of the character limit. However, that pop up doesn't show up when using the situation as described in my post. I did get the message when I added one resource at a time
and after a while it did tell me I had too much resources on that task. The web version then came with the message:
"The resource list is too long. A resource list that contains more than 256 characters cannot be edited or deleted on the To line of a message. Use the resource information dialog
box to edit long resource names."
However it did not come up in the situation as described above.
Regarding your suggestions:
1) Shorter resource names would help for only a short while. Because adding more resources to a single task will again generate the issue. For instance: if I add 30 resources to
a task, with all a character length of 10 I will run in the same issue. Best practices set aside of course, I know that adding 30 resources to a task is bad mojo.
2) Project Pro cuts the assigning of resources also, with giving the error message similar to the one above. But rather than creating a new local resource, Pro just assigns the
task to 6 out of the 8 resources I have added to the task. Which is better, if only the client worked with Project Professional...
I hope you come up with something during your tests…