old projectified

Reactivating www.projectified.com

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:09:02 GMT

Effective immediately I will be blogging again at www.projectified.com

Dynamic Workflow Solution Starter = Project Nerd Candy

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:45:06 GMT

This thing is SO cool. Using this tool you can create simple sign-off type linear workflows without having to write any code!

Example scenario:

I have a customer that wants to allow any users to enter new project proposals. Then they want to require that a member of a certain security group approves before it moves to the next stage. Then in that stage some more information gets added and then again members of a specific group need to approve before it moves to the next stage.

This tool walks you through setting up this exact scenario without even having Visual Studio installed! Sure you need Visual Studio and developer skills to do the complex stuff but this makes sure that you can do the nice clean linear ones by yourself.

So here is how to install the tool and then use it to create a workflow for the scenario above.

Installation

Download the ‘deployment.zip’ file and unzip it to the location of your choice
Find the DynamicWorkflow folder. Within it open the Deployment folder
Right click on the DeployPowerShell.cmd file and click Edit
Change the site url parameter to the url for your Project Server 2010 instance. In my case http://project.contoso.com/PWA/
Close and Save
Double click on the DeployPowerShell.cmd file
Once it is complete your command prompt window should look like this:

If it does then you are finished with the installation.

Configuring a New Workflow

Now we can use this new tool to create our workflow. But first remember that you need to have created your stages and PDPs first. The tool will be asking you to place your stages in a specific order and then setup several properties for them that will control how the workflow will work. So, you need to set them up first.

Create your Enterprise Project Type (EPT), Phases, Stages and Project Detail Pages to create the basic stage flow for your workflow.
Navigate to this url: http://server_name/pwa_name/_layouts/WrkSetng.aspx or in my case im using the demo virtual machine so I will be using this url: http://project.contoso.com/PWA/_layouts/WrkSetng.aspx
Click “Add a workflow”
In the Workflow section select “DM Dynamic Workflow”
In the Name section give your workflow a unique name. You will select this name in the Enterprise Project Type definition page when you associate it with a workflow
In the Task List and History List select which SharePoint list to use for the approval task list and the history list. The defaults used by Project Server are “Project Server Workflow Tasks” and “Project Server Workflow History”. I, personally, would generally pick these so that all the workflow tasks from all the workflows show up in the same list. If your particular deployment calls for different EPT workflow tasks to show up in separate lists then you can specify them here.
The Start Options section lets to specify how the workflow can be started.
Click the Next button to start laying out the actual steps and how they are ‘workflowed’ together.
From the Stage Selection drop down pick the first stage that should appear in your workflow. In my sample I have created a stage called Stage 1.
Stage Status message lets you provide some text that will be displayed on the status web part. It can be instructions or some other text of your choice.
Force Submit on Stage: if this is “Yes” then the user MUST hit Submit. If it is ‘No’ then once the required fields are filled in and the project is saved it is automatically submitted. For my needs I want ‘No’ so that the user that is entering the proposal does not have to any special actions other than hitting save.
Approval Settings. Here is the cool part. Here you get to specify a group, number of groups or specific users that need to approve before the project can make it to the next stage. You can also specify three types of approval.
1. First Response
  Here once the very first person approves, the project is moved to the next stage
2. Majority
  Here a majority of those specified need to approve. So if you specify a group that has 14 people in it then once 8 people have approved then the project is moved to the next stage
3. Consensus
  This one means that ALL of the specified users need to approve. So all 14 users would need to approve.
Filter Approves by Department
This is also cool because it means that if you specify a department in the stage and then specify a group like Executives that only executives that are in the same department as the project will be counted among the approvers.
You can now hit the Add Stage button and repeat this process for all your stages.
Once you have all your stages in place hit submit and the solution creates all the code for your selections.
Now you need to go to your Enterprise Project Type and specify the workflow you just created as the Workflow for that EPT.
You are done. You have an awesome approval workflow without having to be a developer.

The main page for the solution starters also has links for some great videos. Two that walk through the different elements of the solution starters in general. Then four others that do detailed code walkthroughs.

Check this thing out. It could save you a HUGE amount of time and trouble if you need a simple workflow.

Project Server 2010 Solution Starters are HERE!

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:22:02 GMT

The product team has put out some very cool solution starters for Project Server 2010.

The solution starters include:

A tool to import and export Demand Management (workflow) items (EPT, Phases, Stages, PDPs, custom fields, lookup tables). It moves all the items associated with a given EPT and packages it up as a single object for easy redeployment.
A tool for doing bulk editing of project level custom fields
A tool for creating a linear workflow without any actual coding
Several tools for working with and visualizing EPT and workflow items
A variety of webparts for inclusion in PDPs and project workspaces for viewing and editing such things as InfoPath forms, SharePoint lists, and project cost capture items.
A tool that helps you build SSRS reports

There are also videos that go over the starters and do detailed code walkthroughs to get you started.

Remember, these are starters meant to get your own custom development efforts off and running quickly. They are NOT directly supported by Microsoft Tech Support.

Interactive Command Finder for 2010 Ribbon

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:53:00 GMT

Technorati Tags: Project 2010

I almost forgot to share this!

Let me start by saying that I LOVE the Fluent UI (“Ribbon”). I was not so sure about it at first when started using Office 2007 but after a short time I was pretty happy. Now in 2010 you can add your own buttons it is even better.

I have to admit that in Project I was SO used to the menus that it has been tough. But the Office user ed team came up with a VERY cool set of interactive guides. You open this page, select your Office application and point to a toolbar button or menu command and it visually shows you how to navigate to it in 2010.

So how do you find the Organizer in 2010? Open the Project 2010 app from the page above and then HOVER on Tools | Organizer. It pops up a small note saying how to get there.

CLICK on Tools | Organizer and it animates the clicks required to get there:

You can hit this from the web or choose to install it on your local machine for quick offline help.

Risk Mitigation vs Risk Contingency

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:56:16 GMT

Technorati Tags: Project Server 2010,Risk Planning

Glen Alleman has an interesting post here on his thoughts about how risks are handled. He talks about Risk Retirement as the process of taking steps to stop a risk from happening. He references a post elsewhere from Brad Egeland that talks about Risk Mitigation as the process of lessening the impact of a Risk once it does actually happen.

In Project Server (All Versions) we have risks and issues as part of the standard SharePoint workspace template that is used to create workspaces for each project. Our Risks list has fields to track probability, impact, (a derived “Exposure” score based on probability and impact), mitigation plan and contingency plans (and other fields as well). We keep these fairly general so as not to paint us into any specific corner with regard to process since we have to fit into many organizations. For us Probability is just that: the chance that we think the risk will actually occur. Impact is a 1-10 subjective measure of how bad it would be for the project if it did occur. Scales for impact are something like 1 equals “less than a $500 change order or 10 hour scope change” to 10 equals “close down the project” or “someone goes to jail for compliance issue”.

When I work with customers that have not had a sustained risk management process before I suggest to them a bit of a hybrid of what Glen and Brad have said. I tend to think of Mitigation as a combination of avoidance (actions to take that will lower the probability) and what Brad calls mitigation (actions to take to lower the impact.) Contingency is then the plan of action that should be in place (generally only for high Exposure risks) in case the risk actually occurs.

Project Server has a few features that aid in this planning. Of course the Risks list has the rich text fields for laying out the high level plans for both mitigation and contingency but we also provide the ability to link tasks from the full project schedule to the risk. This link can be marked to show that the “Task Mitigates the Risk” or “Task is in risk contingency plan” (as well as a few others that do not concern risks). In this way you can insert tasks into the schedule and show that they are part of the planning for a specific risk.

The new “Inactive Task” feature in 2010 can also play a role for contingency plans. Using this feature you can insert sets of tasks into your schedule, assign resources, make estimates, and anything else you would do for any other tasks in your schedule and then mark that whole set of tasks as “Inactive”. This ‘greys them out’ in Microsoft Project but they are still there in the plan. It also removes them from the Tasks or Timesheet pages for the resources assigned to them. Then as risks actually occur you can mark the appropriate set of tasks as “Active” and your schedule now reflects the actions in your contingency plan for that task.

Here is the introductory post about Inactive tasks from Heather on the Project Team. In a later post i will show specifically how I use Inactive tasks in my risk planning.

Back to Basics: Groups and Categories

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:37:55 GMT

Project Server security is something that is very flexible once you get used to how it works but it can be a bit confusing when you first look at it.

Here are the basics as I explain them to my customers:

The Group

Groups contain sets of users and they define the system level permissions that those users have the rights to perform. These include: Logging in, performing certain admin functions, create a new project, create a new resource, etc.

The Category

Categories provide access to projects, resources and views. The projects and resources that the category provides access to can be specifically called out by name or they can by dynamically included based on a set of rules within the category itself. For example a category can provide access to all projects where the user is the project owner or a status manager on a task, or all the projects where the Project Owner is ‘below’ the user in the RBS structure. I refer to this set of projects and resources as the “Scope” of the category.

Categories can be shared by many groups because of the dynamic way the scopes can be defined. The dynamic options for project and resource scope are dependant on the user and their relationship (via the RBS structure) to either the owner or team members on a project or to the resources themselves. I often, for simplicity, create a role based group and then a corresponding category. It sometimes means that there are technically more categories than is absolutely required but it does make the whole security model a bit easier to follow.

The Group\Category Permissions

This is the part that people often overlook.

A group and a category can be ‘linked’ or joined. When this happens there is a set of permissions that sit at that join. This set of permissions defines what the members of that group can DO with the projects and resources within the “Scope” of the category.

If you open a Group and you see the list of Categories that are associated to group there is one of these grids for each category. If you select one of the Categores associated with the group the grid pertains to THAT pairing of group and category. If you select a different category the grid changes and is now pertaining only to THAT pairing. The same is true if you open a category and select the Groups that are associated with it. The grid pertains to the pairing. It can be edited in both places but it remains the same.

GREAT ULS Log viewing tool

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:43:04 GMT

I posted this originally over on the COE blog but wanted to make sure it was visible to those that are not reading that one…

Someone on the SharePoint team took some time and built a VERY cool application for viewing ULS Logs. It lets you filter by any of the ‘fields’ in the log and format certain lines based on filter criteria.

Of course it lets you point the viewer at any ULS log file but it even lets you stream in the live ULS Log activity as it is happening and have it color code lines on criteria you determine.

If you find yourself looking at ULS logs for any reason then you will want to download this application

Get it here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer

I’m Back

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:11:10 GMT

OK, first off I will get the obligatory list of excuses for why I have been absent from blogging for so long: work out of the way up front and spare you the boring details: work, travel, family, more work, east coast work travel, more family and then more work. The last 6 months has been a blur to say the least.

But on with the good stuff. During these past few months I have been doing a lot of work around SSRS reporting against Project Server 2007 and 2010 so I will have some things to say on that front as well as maybe some sample reports. I’m working on on 2 different 2010 deployments right now so I will also have some things to share about my experiences doing that as well as some coverage of how my customers are making use of some of the new features.

So over the next few weeks I hope to get some posts up on the following subjects:

Lessons Learned around SSRS and Project Server
including using a SharePoint document library as your report center instead of using SSRS Report Manager

Expansion of Christophe’s work on Program Level Issue Reporting
A while back Christophe wrote this post on the subject. I had a similar need for both issue and risk reporting across sets of projects. I will write something up on how I did it and share my SSRS Reports.

SSRS report for showing the ‘health’ of Deliverables across projects
A report that examines the relationship between the “source” task dates, the published deliverable date, and the “receiving” task dates and uses color coded formatting to provide visibility of if the deliverable is up-to-date and if the '”receiving” task is scheduled to start before the deliverable is scheduled to deliver.

Use of Inactive tasks feature for contingency planning scenarios
Inserting a set of tasks that will only be used if a certain risk or other event occurs. We can have the whole set of tasks in place, with resource assigned and with links in place but have them marked as Inactive so that the schedule ‘collapses’ around them until they are needed.

Fiscal Period setup in the OLAP cube
Nothing exactly new here but I want to cover it anyway for those that have not done it before

Using Excel 2010 workbooks against Project Server 2010 OLAP cubes
Again, not new but a good thing to cover for those that have not done it before.

Some posts about how my deployments are going
I will share tidbit and things I find as I’m doing my deployments so that you can have some insight to how things are going in real-world deployments of 2010

MCS EPM Center of Excellence Team Blog

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:36:36 GMT

Inside Microsoft the EPM COE has always had a strong reputation but outside of Microsoft it was not as well known. This team, which I am very proud to be a member of, just started a team blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/wwepmcoe/ where we will all be sharing our real world, field tested thoughts, opinions and guidance.

This is a team that is humbling to be a part of because they are some of the smartest and best EPM consultants on the planet and have taken part in the most complex and largest EPM deployments. I have always felt lucky to have been on this team because it meant having access to what they know. Now they are going to share with everyone and we will all benefit from what they have found in the field.

If you reading this blog you NEED to be reading that one as well. :-)

RE-Updating the Projectified RSS Feed-This time to the Right Feed! LOL

Brian Kennemer, MVP — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:41:29 GMT

I am moving my RSS feed off of Feedburner and back to the standard feed from blogs.technet.com.

Please update your readers to use this url: ~~http://blogs.technet.com/rss.xml~~ http://blogs.technet.com/projectified/rss.xml

The Feedburner feed will stop working in few days.

Again, the right feed is: http://blogs.technet.com/projectified/rss.xml :-)

Thanks