One of the exciting new features introduced in Project 2010 is the ability to create Departmental fields. Although the previous version of Project Server allowed for the creation of unlimited Enterprise fields, it was often the case that one group within an organization needed to use certain fields that only applied to their group. Unfortunately, once an Enterprise field was created, all users would see this field, even if it didn’t pertain to their group. In addition, if one group wanted a field to be mandatory, it would be necessary to create a value list option such as Not Applicable for the other groups that didn’t have the need to use this field.

In Project 2010, we now have the ability to create Departments, and an Enterprise field can be associated with a particular department. Using this approach, a user from Human Resources would see a different set of fields than a user from the Accounting department. Additionally, an organization can define global fields that go across departments to capture attributes that are applicable to all projects.

Departments can also be associated with resources and Enterprise Project Types, providing an organization with even more control over the data exposed to its users.