• Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Content Publishing News

    Project Server 2007 greenbooks available on Amazon.com!

    • 1 Comments

    All of the 2007 Project Server greenbooks from TechNet are now available on Amazon.com, and have been added to the Office IT Pro Bookstore page.  Check them out of you’d like to buy a hardcopy!

  • Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Content Publishing News

    Balancing the Matrix: the latest whitepaper by Chris Vandersluis for the "From the Trenches" TechNet column

    • 0 Comments

    We're excited to announce that we recently published a new whitepaper by Chris Vandersluis in the "From the Trenches" column in the Project Server TechCenter.  The whitepaper is titled  Balancing the Matrix and discusses the challenges of deploying the Enterprise Project Management solution in a matrix environment.  This is the latest in a series of whitepapers by Chris, all dealing with deploying the EPM solution in the real-world based on his many years of experience. Chris is an excellent writer, so I urge you to read this article and previous ones that he has written for the From the Trenches column. You can access them by clicking here.

    Here is some additional information about the author:

    Chris Vandersluis is the president and founder of Montreal, Canada-based HMS Software, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. He has an Economics degree from McGill University and over 25 years experience in the automation of project control systems. He is a long-standing member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and helped found the Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec chapters of the Microsoft Project User Group (MPUG). Publications for which Chris has written include Fortune, Heavy Construction News, The American Management Association's Handbook on Project Management, Computing Canada magazine, and PMI's PMNetwork, and he is a regular columnist for Project Times. He teaches Advanced Project Management at Montreal's McGill University and often speaks at project management association functions across North America and around the world. HMS Software is the publisher of the TimeControl project-oriented timesheet system and has been a Microsoft Project Solution Partner since 1995.

  • Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Content Publishing News

    Learn Project 2007 quickly with the Quick Reference Guide

    • 1 Comments

    This just in from Toney Sisk in on the IW writing team:

    The blog title says it all—Quick. Project management methodology can be a complex jungle of concepts. One way to help you through the jungle is with a reference guide. This popular download maps the features in Microsoft Project 2007 with commonly accepted project management practices and procedures.

    Click the image below to download your copy for easy browsing. Or print it out for easy access.

    clip_image001

  • Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Content Publishing News

    The Project 2010 (Beta) SDK Now Available

    • 1 Comments

    Here is some great news from Jim Corbin in the Developer Docs team:

    The Project 2010 SDK download and the MSDN online release are both published, and the Project Developer Center portal is updated.

    · Project Developer Centerhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905469.aspx

    · SDK Onlinehttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms512767(office.14).aspx

    · SDK Downloadhttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=46007f25-b44e-4aa6-80ff-9c0e75835ad9&displaylang=en

    What's New

    Following are the major content sections in the Project 2010 SDK.

    Articles online:

    · What's New for Developers in Project 2010

    · Project Server Architecture and Programmability (with three subtopics)

    · Workflow and Demand Management

    · Custom Fields in Project 2010 (with six subtopics)

    · VBA Object Model Changes (includes the subtopic, How to: Add a Custom Command to the Ribbon)

    o Tables of VBA Object Model Changes (In the Programming References section – lists new members organized by functional area. Supplements VBA Help in the client, which includes a list of all new objects and members organized alphabetically.)

    · Overview of WCF and the PSI (explains the basics of the Windows Communication Framework interface and the nature of the dual WCF and ASMX interfaces of the PSI)

    · Developing Project Server Workflows (includes subtopics for configuring Visual Studio, developing, deploying, and testing the workflow)

    · Walkthrough: Developing PSI Applications Using WCF

    · PSI Reference Overview (introduction to the namespaces and Web services of the PSI)

    · Project Server 2010 Class Library and Web Service Reference (landing page for the PSI object model reference)

    Note: Some JS Grid articles are currently in the Project SDK, but are updated in the SharePoint Foundation SDK. The basic articles will be removed from the Project SDK in the next update, and we will add Project-specific articles over time. See JS Grid Control and Microsoft.SharePoint.JSGrid Namespace for the JS Grid documentation.

    Download:

    For the first time, the Project SDK download is installed with an MSI, in [Program Files]\Microsoft SDKs – along with the SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Server, and Windows SDK downloads.  The installation also creates entries on the Start menu:

    clip_image001

    Major content in the download:

    · pj14SDK_beta.chm is an HTML Help file that includes the same conceptual topics and managed code reference that is online.

    · pj14ReportingDB_beta.chm documents the RDB schema.

    · OLAPCubeSchemas2010.xlsx

    · mspdi_pj14.xsd is the Project Standard / Professional XML schema for data interchange.

    · WINPROJ.DEV.hxs is an update of VBA Help that includes the latest changes in the VBA OM documentation and (at last) F1 Help IDs that work right. (VBA Help in the Excel 2010 beta has the same issue, but with 6,000 topics, compared to Project's 2800. The DevDocs group will publish a download that updates all VBA Help files for Office 2010 beta clients.)  There are also instructions for replacing the VBA Help file shipped with the Project beta.

    · Intellisense subdirectory: includes updates of the XML files for Intellisense descriptions, instructions for installing, and scripts for creating a PSI proxy assembly using either the WCF or ASMX interface. With a proxy assembly, developers can see Intellisense descriptions for the PSI Web service objects and members.

    · BranchingWorkflow includes the complete Visual Studio 2010 project for creating a Project Server workflow, as described in the online SDK.

    · WCFHelloProject includes a Visual Studio 2008 project that programmatically configures a WCF application for Project Server. It also includes a Visual Studio 2010 project that configures the WCF application using the app.config file, which enables many of the flexible features of WCF (for example, the same app can be configured to run over HTTP SOAP for the Extranet, or with NET.TCP for faster Intranet access – without recompiling).

  • Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Content Publishing News

    New Project Server 2010 Beta content!

    • 0 Comments

    Visit the Project Server 2010 TechCenter on TechNet for the latest published content for the Project Server 2010 Beta. We currently have information on upgrade and migration, planning, deployment and operations.

    image

    As always, feel free to send me any comments, questions, or suggestions – robhoo@microsoft.com.

     

  • Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Content Publishing News

    New Project Fan Page on Facebook

    • 1 Comments

    In our never-ending quest to spread the word about Microsoft Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Project Server 2010, we now have an official fan page on Facebook! Our news feed includes links to articles on MSDN, TechNet, and Office Online, as well as posts on this blog. You can choose to see our posts in your Facebook news feed automatically, or read them only when you want to. Similarly, if you post something on the fan page, you can choose to be notified whenever someone responds to you.

    Here’s a quick walkthrough of how the Microsoft Project fan page on Facebook works:

    Join the Project fan page

    If you already have a Facebook account, sign in, and then follow these simple steps:

    1. Visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/Microsoft-Project/95221953802.
    2. Near the top of the page, click the Become a Fan button. 

    image
     

    Browse through Project wall posts

    Once you’ve joined the Microsoft Project fan page on Facebook, you can begin browsing for posts right away.

    To switch the default view to the page wall, click the Wall tab on the top navigation bar near the Project logo:

    image

    You can now see all of the wall posts by the administrator and by other Project users just like you. Wall posts are shown in chronological order and the newest posts appear near the top of the page.

    Join the conversation! Reply to an existing wall post that interests you, or make your own post to start a new discussion or to share something with the other members.

    Hide automatic Project fan page updates

    Depending on when you join the Project fan page, you’ll probably see automatic updates in your Facebook news feed within a few days. If you like seeing these updates, you don’t need to do anything else. Check out the ones that sound interesting and ignore the ones that you don’t care about on any particular day.

    If you don’t want automatic Project fan page updates to appear in your news feed, you can easily disable them by following these steps:

    1. While signed in to your Facebook account, go to the Facebook home page at http://www.facebook.com/.
    2. Scroll through your Facebook news feed (the center column of your home page) and find any one of the Project fan page updates that have appeared.
    3. Move the mouse pointer over the Project post until you see a Hide link show up near the right side of the post.
    4. When you move the mouse pointer over the Hide link, it becomes a button. Click it.
    5. On the mini-menu that appears below the Hide button, click Hide Microsoft Project.

    Facebook will briefly display a yellow confirmation box, informing you that Project updates will now be hidden from view.

    Tip  Even though Project fan page updates are hidden from view in your Facebook news feed, you can still visit the Microsoft Project fan page at any time by entering Microsoft Project into the Search box near the top of any Facebook page and then clicking the search result. It’s a fast way to return to the fan page whenever you want to check for updates on your own.

    Restore hidden Project fan page updates

    If you previously disabled Project fan page updates from your Facebook news feed and you’ve changed your mind about seeing automatic updates, you can easily restore them by following these steps:

      1. While signed in to your Facebook account, go to the Facebook home page at http://www.facebook.com/.
      2. Scroll to the very end of your Facebook news feed (the center column of your home page) until you see the navigation bar in the page footer:
        The bottom navigation bar in the Facebook stream
      3. Click the Edit Options link.
      4. Near the top of the Hidden from News Feed popup dialog box, click the Pages link.
      5. Scroll down until you see Microsoft Project, and then click the Add to News Feed button.

    When you have completed these steps, you will once again see automatic Microsoft Project fan page notifications in your Facebook news feed.

    Share what you know!

    Post to the wall! It’s just a conversation with like-minded people who enjoy and rely on Project in similar ways as you.

  • Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Content Publishing News

    New performance best practices white paper

    • 0 Comments

    Performance and capacity planning best practices

    This download contains two white papers:

    • Performance testing white paper

    • Performance and capacity planning best practices white paper

    Performance testing white paper

    This white paper contains a description of an actual performance testing lab for Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.

    The first chapter (“Running a Project Server 2007 Performance Test Lab”), describes how to run performance tests against a Office Project Server 2007 deployment by using Visual Studio Team System 2008 and a set of community-based tools built for the purpose.

    The second chapter (“Test Environment”), documents the specifics of the lab environment that was used for the tests we ran for collecting data for this white paper.

    The third chapter (“Test Results”), describes in detail the test scenarios that were conducted, and it summarizes the data collected for every scenario.

    The paper is available from the Microsoft Download Center.

    Download size: 4 MB

    Performance and capacity planning best practices white paper

    The purpose of this guide is to extend the Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Performance Testing Lab white paper by providing best practices and recommendations.

    This paper examines a wide array of system objects, including:

    • Platform-related objects — including the farm, shared service providers, application pools, web applications, databases, disks, network, memory, CPU, logs, and performance counters

    • Data-related objects — including projects, tasks, assignments, resources, custom fields, and security

    • User-related objects — including localization, workloads, queue job processor threads, and interface feeds

    For each system object, the following information is provided:

    • Definition — The definition of the object

    • Guidelines for acceptable performance — The best practices and supporting statements

    • Calculation factors — The performance and scalability calculations to support the best practices

    • Scope of impact — A list of objects affected in the system when best practices are not implemented

  • Page 2 of 4 (89 items) 1234