Project Server 2013
Project 2013
Project Server 2010
A great new post on Power BI for Office 365 and how this can improve your reporting experience with Project Online - http://blogs.office.com/2014/02/27/power-bi-for-office-365-with-project-online/
There is a try before you buy offer, and you can look at the scheduled data refresh, larger workbooks and also some natural language queries – although I guess queries isn’t natural enough – so I’ll say questions instead… Take a look – you will not be disappointed – or corrupted.
*** Update 4/22 SP1 re-release
Stefan's blog has the full download links for SP1 http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2014/04/22/sp1-for-sharepoint-2013-has-been-rereleased.aspx
And patch again to avoid the lost resources issue - unless you also load April CU. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2933444
***
*** Update 4/3/2014 - as a precaution both the SharePoint and Project Server SP1 downloads have been temporarily made unavailable - more information when I have it. The KB articles have been updated with:
We have recently uncovered an issue with this Service Pack 1 package that may prevent customers who have Service Pack 1 from deploying future public or cumulative updates. As a precautionary measure, we have deactivated the download page until a new package is published.***
Today sees the launch of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Project 2013, Project Server 2013 as well as the rest of the Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 families.
*** Update 2/26 I should also mention that unlike previous SharePoint and Project Server Service Packs - there is no roll-up - the Project doesn't include SharePoint and the SharePoint doesn't include Project - if you want both you need to install both. Thanks for the reminder Laksh! ***
*** Update 3/4/2014 - The slipstreamed installations are announced - http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2014/03/03/announcing-availability-of-slipstreamed-office-2013-and-sharepoint-server-2013-with-sp1.aspx - this means you can install on Windows Server 2013 R2. Before this slipstream version the pre-requisite installer would fail configuring IIS ***
The following links are probably the ones you are interested in most:
Also there is a full list of what is in SP1 which can be downloaded in Excel format from here. basically SP1 is a roll-up of all Cumulative and Public updates up to and including the December 2013 CU and the January 2014 PU, as well as some other stability, performance and security improvements.
The blog from the Office Sustained Engineering team has all the information at http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2014/02/25/announcing-the-release-of-service-pack-1-for-office-2013-and-sharepoint-2013.aspx
Project Online and Project Pro for Office 365 users do not need to worry about SP1 – you are automatically kept up to date.
Thanks to all the engineering teams, as well as the customers, partners and MVPs who were involved in Beta testing of this release!
Errors I saw when trying to control the version of the client at15.0.4569.1504:
02/25/2014 15:38:27.58 Microsoft.Office.Project.Server (0x3338) 0x1E04 Project Server Active Cache Load 3oh1 Medium Error is: ActiveCacheUnsupportedProjectProfessionalVersion. Details: ActiveCacheUnsupportedProjectProfessionalVersion Attributes: 15.0.4569.1000 . Standard Information: Project:163a4fe7-6f9e-e311-9408-00155d745a04 Project:75cdd7db-1b68-4b70-a8d6-2fe52da83acd 6cd9779c-fc06-2036-19ca-0b08b1721dff
02/25/2014 15:38:27.58 Microsoft.Office.Project.Server (0x3338) 0x1E04 Project Server Project Calculation Service (M) ai2no Unexpected PWA:, ServiceApp:Project Server Service Application, User:i:0#.w|redmond\brismith, PSI: CalcServiceManager can't read PreReadProject2 for projectGuid 75cdd7db-1b68-4b70-a8d6-2fe52da83acd. Project:163a4fe7-6f9e-e311-9408-00155d745a04 Project:75cdd7db-1b68-4b70-a8d6-2fe52da83acd 6cd9779c-fc06-2036-19ca-0b08b1721dff
02/25/2014 15:38:27.59 Microsoft.Office.Project.Server (0x3338) 0x1E04 Project Server Project Calculation Service (M) ai2mv Exception CalcServiceManager : Processing Error while opening project guid: 163a4fe7-6f9e-e311-9408-00155d745a04 Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.PcsEngine.PcsManagerException: CalcServiceManager : ReadProjectData : CalcServiceManager can't read PreReadProject2 at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.CalcServiceManager.ReadProjectData(IPlatformContext siteContext, WinProj winprojActiveCache, Guid ProjectGuid, Guid sessionGuid, UInt32 flags, Int32 lcid, String versionStamp, Boolean fNonCoreData, Boolean fEglobal, Boolean keepWriteLock, Byte[]& coreData, Byte[]& noncoreData, PSError psError) at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.CalcServiceManager.LoadProjectData(IPlatformContext siteContext, Guid projectGuid, WinProj winprojActiveCache, Guid globalGuid, Int32 lcid, IPCSPipe pipe, Guid sessionGuid, String oldVersion, String globalOldVersion, Boolean keepWriteLock, PSError psError) at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.CalcServiceManager.OpenProjectRemappedProject(CalcServiceCallState callState, Guid realProjectGuid, Guid remappedProjectGuid, EngineSessionState& sessionState, EngineSessionType sessionType, PSError& psError) StackTrace: at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Native.dll: (sig=6ea170d1-988e-4153-9f1d-0305c0ea0309|2|microsoft.office.project.server.native.pdb, offset=3C1E) at Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Native.dll: (offset=1255D) 6cd9779c-fc06-2036-19ca-0b08b1721dff
In just a few short weeks, on 8th April 2014, we get to say goodbye to support for Project 2003 and Project Server 2003, as both products, and the rest of Office 2003 reach their end of life. Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 support ended last month – 14th January. For full details of the Support Lifecycle on any Microsoft products see http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/.
Hopefully if you are using Project 2003 or Project Server 2003 you are well on your way to migrating to something new – but if this is news to you then the following links to migration paths to Project Server 2010, 2013 and Project Online will help you make the transition. Personally, unless you have a desire to keep your own servers, the option to go to Project Online may make most sense, depending what you already have in 2003.
Information that will assist you when upgrading from previous version to 2013:
Here is the Project home page for additional information and options available: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/ Support for Project 2003 versions will end on April 8, 2014 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=Project+Server+2003&Filter=FilterGA&gadate=0 Support for Windows SharePoint Services will end on January 14, 2014 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=Windows+SharePoint+Services+2.0&Filter=FilterGA&gadate=0
As always, we are here to help you in support – but for Project and Project Server 2003 - ‘always’ finishes April 8th 2014. After that you are on your own… 2003 was the current release when I joined the team, having joined Microsoft shortly after 2002 released. I’ll try to hold back the tears (of joy) for the big party - 10/10/2017.
Following on from my previous post on Project Server timesheet line status and project plan and assignment deletions, this blog covers another scenario that can catch you out – the relationship between the assignments and the timesheet with regards to status updates, and the idea that this was worth blogging about came from reading the comments in that previous post – and the thread in the forum referred to in the comment where Treb and Elli had discussed the ramification of this issue. I had explained it in the thread – but will post here to hopefully reach a wider audience.
Imagine you have 4 timesheets, and one assignment that happens to span all of them. The first week – and lets call this one w/c 2/17/2014 – has been submitted and approved. The timesheet line status is 1, and for all other timesheets the line status is 0. We have a handy table in the reporting (dbo) schema called MSP_TimesheetLineStatus and this shows us that one line is Approved, and all the remainder are Pending. So far so good.
Now I have entered time in the next 3 timesheets – and some of these happen to be in the future – so not always a good thing to get ahead of yourself – but this could equally happen if they were in the past. The key issue is having multiple timesheets in progress at the same time – but I appreciate it isn’t always easy to keep this from happening. To visualize this better here is a representation of where I stand – with Timesheet 1 approved and time entered in the other 3 as follows:
Next I go to Timesheet 2 and submit status. Once I do this then I see that each of my three timesheets says Awaiting approval against my assignment.
As an example, here is a screenshot of Timesheet 3 – for w/c 3/10
But I didn’t click send anything on this timesheet? Taking a look directly in the database we can see what is going on. The line with the comment and the status of 1 is our approved timesheet 1 – and the status of 4 (pending approval) is for timesheet 1. But why do the other 2 say 0 (Pending) and not 4?
This is a little like the issue of the deleted tasks in the previous posting – if I go to Timesheet 3 for example, and add a vacation and just save – I then see this…
I have an extra row of course, but my previous line with 0 is now showing a 4. So once I opened my timesheet I can see awaiting approval, but only when I save (and I need to make a change such as adding a line or changing time) does this get persisted back to the database.
This scenario is often commented on in the approval center where it is more obvious that time from multiple timesheet periods is being presented. And if I scrolled right I would see more red 7’s.
And if I now approve? Hmm – I now see I have 3 approved lines from timesheets 1 to 3 – and my vacation on timesheet 3, but still don’t see approval of the 4th.
Even though this ‘said’ awaiting approval on the timesheet, as I hadn’t saved it, it was really still in the Pending status (as seen in the DB) – and if I look in the timesheet now it says Not Submitted, as no part of this assignment is actually in the awaiting approval status.
So the question that started all this was how do I check to see what has been submitted even if it isn’t approved – and without using timesheets per se – and overcoming the scenarios above. One thought I had was to use planned work – assuming that was somewhat accurate – then do a left join to see if there is matching submissions. In the forum thread Elli had another approach – and I can’t think of a better way – that uses the fact that a comment is present as indicative of submitted time. I’d be interested on any other workarounds or issues people are experiencing with this behavior. This was 2013 – but same for 2010 and Project Online.
Take 2 – just in case you thought you saw this post coming earlier…
I’ve had a few questions recently around the behavior of timesheets in Project Server 2010 and 2013 (and Project Online) when projects, tasks or assignments are deleted. Some of this relates to bugs – other behavior is expected, and it is different if single entry mode is enabled. Thanks to Shazeb Khan, Michael Wharton, Elli Johnston and Randy Slycord for some of the questions and answers that led to this posting – and skip to the And finally section at the bottom for a timesheet status bug we are looking to fix..
Firstly it is worth reviewing the article on TechNet Best practices for submitting and reporting on actual work, which, although written for 2010 is still applicable for Online and 2013. That suggests using Single Entry Mode – but I will go on to explain what happens if it is enabled or not.
First with Single Entry mode, and I’m looking specifically at Project Server 2013 – I’ll mention where 2010 differs from this behavior... For this example I have just a couple of projects, three timesheets; one approved, one submitted and one saved. Each has lines from each plan – then I delete one of the plans…
What happens next is a little like Schrödinger's cat – the lines in some of the timesheets are still there – as long as you don’t try to observe them (well not a perfect analogy as you can look in the database – but mentioning a cat in the blog must push this up the page ranking!). In the database (reporting schema) we see that the Approved lines are still there (TimesheetLineStatus = 1), the pending lines are still pending (0) and one of the Pending Approval lines is now rejected (2) with a comment of “The timesheet has been rejected because it contained at least one task from a project that has been deleted.”
If I look at the MSP_TimesheetActual table I still see all 30 rows (5 entries for each of the 2 plans for 3 weeks). Now I’ll open my timesheet…
Remember I mentioned a bug? Well here it is. Clicking OK gives ‘An unknown error has occurred’.
This will be fixed in the April 2014 Cumulative Update for Project Server 2013. This will also cause an issue in the Approval Center – giving an error ‘One or more categories of approval could not be loaded’. Thanks Michael Wharton for asking about this message – the term categories is not referring to anything like the Project Server categories – just being used generically.
I can recall my timesheet and then remove the Rejected line and resubmit.
For the timesheet that was just saved I currently see slightly different behavior between 2010 and 2013. In 2013 I still see the line for my assignment to the deleted project. And I can re-save – but if I submit my timesheet then I get an error. This is also related to the April 2014 fix.
In 2010 the database almost looks the same, but I did notice something I hadn’t seen before – and haven’t had a chance to check for any different settings – but I have 42 actual lines rather than 30 – I see line entries for the weekend – zero hours as I might expect – but these aren’t seen in 2013. If I look at the timesheet that was saved and not submitted the assignment to the deleted project no longer shows, but it is not until I save that the line is removed from the database (this is the Schrödinger's cat part). So if you are reporting on the timesheets you may still see lines for plans that have been deleted – if the user has not opened and saved the current timesheet after the plan was deleted. The lines are still there – unless you look at them. Even the pending approval lines can appear to disappear – as the change in status to rejected may also throw out your reports for lines that had not been approved – if you are using the TimesheetLineStatus field. This was a conversation from the Project Conference with Elli Johnston as it appeared from reports that we were deleing lines – but it was just a change in status (and this was not single entry – so I’ll look at that next…).
The main difference in single entry mode (apart obviously that the submission of the timesheet does not send status updates) is how the deleted assignments are handled. First 2010. If I follow the same steps as above then instead of the timeline disappearing it get changed, and in place of the project name I see Personal Tasks. Again, not until I save this do I see any change in the database – which still shows the line as pending…
Once I do save however, I will see the TimesheetLineStatus change to a 3 (Not Applicable). This was the specific change that was occurring in Elli’s scenario making it look like line were disappearing from reports – but it was the status had changed. If the timesheet has been submitted or approved then the project name is kept and the status stays good (1).
In 2013 currently the deleted assignment is still present in the timesheet and has a status of 4 (Pending Approval) – this feels like it is part of the bug mentioned above as I’d expect the same behavior as 2010 – I’ll review once I have the April CU loaded and update this posting.
And finally…
Another condition we have seen with timesheet status (not line status) in Project Server 2013, not related to deletion of projects, is that you can get the wrong timesheet status value in the reporting tables under certain conditions. An approved timesheet should show the status of 3, but this is being reset to 0 when status is accepted against tasks in the timesheet. It is a timing issue, and if the status update is processed before the timesheet approval then all is good – so this could be a workaround if you are hitting this problem. This only happens in Single Entry Mode. This doesn’t affect the display of the timesheet status in Manage Timesheets (which gets its status from the pub schema) – just reporting (coming from the dbo schema). Thanks to Randy and the Sensei team for pointers on this one, and to Shazeb for suggesting the topic worth blogging. This is in the queue for a hotfix but I don’t have a schedule yet.
Cats were neither harmed nor not harmed during the preparation of this blog post.
I thought this Project Server 2010 issue with categories was worth a blog post just in case other people are seeing it. The symptom is that you edit a category (Server Settings, Manage Categories), then add extra projects or resources, or views – click Save - and then you find that they were not added! One tell tale sign that it hasn’t worked is that the save appears to happen very quickly rather than taking a few seconds to respond (we are talking big categories here). Re-opening the category will show that none of the additions happened. No error is thrown. The problem will only happen when you have very large numbers of projects and resources added to the category – and it isn’t an exact number – but will be around 13,000 total items.
In my investigations I used Fiddler and could see an error returned from the web service call to <PWARETURN><DATA ID="idError">-1</DATA><DATA ID="idMessage">Error</DATA></PWARETURN> when the content length was around 510 to 520K. It is possible to overcome this by editing the web.config of the PSI web services and adding a specific value for httpRuntime maxRequestLength – but as this is an untested scenario this would be considered ‘unsupported’. The best workaround would be to use another category – basically a mirror of the failing one – to add the new projects and resources as required. The usual scenario we have seen where this can happen is for ‘archiving’ plans – where you want to deny access but keep them in the system. This can obviously grow quite large and the workaround of having a second (or third) category should be workable. In other scenarios, perhaps where automation is involved in populating the categories, this may not be as useful a workaround – so apologies if this is your scenario.
You might be thinking why does this give such a high content-length if I am only adding one plan to the category? In fact a change actually re-writes the entire category with the plans, resources and views – so we are sending quite a bit of data back. I guess this was seen as easier and possibly more efficient than doing a diff of the changes you had made to the category in the web dialog.
This isn’t something that will likely get fixed anytime soon – and if we do fix it the likely solution would be to handle the error properly rather than extend the capacity of the category. The good news is that this doesn’t occur at the same levels for Project Server 2013 – I have successfully added 30,000 items to a Project Server 2013 category.
Thanks to Shirene and Subhadip for their patience as we investigated this one – and sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet up at the Project Conference – maybe next time?
We have now published a Knowledgebase article - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2933444 which gives the SQL command to update the stored procedures in a Project Server 2013 database to avoid the ‘lost resources’ condition described in the recent blog post - Project Server 2013 and Project Online- What happened to my resources-. The KB article also contains a script that will assist in detecting if any of your plans are affected by this condition. This KB is only applicable to Project Server 2013 as Project Online has already been patched.
*** Update 2/18 - Looking to get the KB updated - but we incorrectly refer to the upcoming April 2014 CU as the April 2013 - hope this didn't confuse anyone too much - and thanks to Mike Wahlman of Project Hosts for pointing this out to me ***
If you have any questions then don’t hesitate to open a support incident. Thanks to Aik, Adrian and Rogério for all their work on this issue.
I am very pleased to announce the release of the February 2014 Cumulative Update (CU) for Project, Project Server and SharePoint for 2010. Feel free to open a support case if you have any questions around this or need assistance getting these patches deployed. Remember that this release for the 2010 products, like all CUs since the August 2012 Cumulative Update, has a hard requirement on Service Pack 1 – see notes below. In most of the KB articles the term hotfix is used in place of Cumulative Update. They tend to be interchangeable terms – a Cumulative Update is just a hotfix built to a schedule. I should also point out that the individual Project Server packages are only ‘individual’ in the sense that they do not include the SharePoint patches – they are still cumulative and the December CU will contain all previous CU releases (at least back to the applicable baseline Service Pack (SP1 for 2010). There aren’t any Project or Project Server 2013 patches this February due to the impending release of SP1 this quarter.
This include a number of fixes, so Microsoft strongly recommends that you test this in a test environment based on your production environment before putting this fix live in production.
The article below provides information on how to deploy the Project Server Cumulative Update.
You can read about the fixes included in the Project and Project Server February CUs from the following articles:
Server Rollup Package(Recommended):
Description of the Project Server 2010 cumulative update package (Project server-package): February 11, 2014
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2863917
Individual Project Server Package (Cumulative – but only the Project Server patches):
Only required if you do not install the Server Rollup.
Description of the Project Server 2010 hotfix package (Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp): February 11, 2014
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2863927
Description of the Project Server 2010 hotfix package (Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp; Pjsrvmui-<Language-Code>.msp): February 11, 2014
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2863934
The Project Server databases will be updated to version 14.0.7115.5000
Project 2010 Client Package:
Description of the Project 2010 hotfix package (Project-x-none.msp): February 11, 2014
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2863931
The client version number is 14.0.7117.5002, in case you want to limit the connection of certain patched release to Project Server 2010.
More information on deploying the Cumulative Update:
Updates for Project Server 2010
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/projectserver/gg176680.aspx
As Project Server 2010 is now based on SharePoint Server 2010 we strongly recommend that you install the Project Server 2010 Server Rollup Package as there are a large number of individual server packages for SharePoint Server. The Project Server 2010 Server Rollup Package contains all the patches released in this Cumulative Update for SharePoint Foundation Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 and Project Server 2010.
As mentioned above, and at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brismith/archive/2012/07/18/project-server-2010-from-august-2012-cumulative-update-onwards-you-will-also-need-to-load-sp1.aspx – the August Cumulative Update requires your client and server to already be at the Service Pack 1 (SP1) level – if you get a message saying the patch does not apply to your system then this may be the reason.
SP1 for the Project Server 2010 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26636
SP1 for the Project Professional 2010 client can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26635 for the 32-bit and http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26627 for the 64-bit.
Client Installation:
The instructions for installing the client patch are below.
NOTE: Microsoft strongly recommends testing within a NON-Production environment prior to rollout.
1. Download the hotfix from the link in the KB Article.
2. Extract the patch package by running the .exe file that you downloaded.
3. Run the extracted .exe file to apply the patch to your Project Professional/Standard client.
*** Update 2/13 - please also see Knowledgebase article - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2933444 for published details on this issue - including a detection script and a SQL command to correct a stored procedure to avoid this problem - only applicable to Project Server 2013 - Project Online is already patched ***
We have been working on this Project Server 2013 and Project Online ‘Lost Resources’ bug for a little while and we finally have it nailed, and already have the fix deployed to Project Online to ensure it cannot have any further effect there. Now we wanted to share more information – as we have something actionable. The scenario is that you open a plan and find that your resources appear to be gone. Depends where you look, but you either see them as apparent material resources in the resource sheet – with no name, or in the Gantt you see numbers where you expected to see names – and similarly they are material resources in the resource form. So imagine your plan looked like this:
You could open the plan and you find it is looking like this instead – with the resources missing. In this case two look like material resources – just one remains. The numbers (8) in this case is coming from the hours of work.
The resource sheet will look like this:
There are some variations on this theme – if all resources are removed from a task – or if you carry on using the plan, and try to add the resources back through build team, or publish the plan – then the symptoms can change and the resources can show as multiple <unassigned resource> placeholders – so best if you see the original issue to just close and don’t save – and follow the advice below. The unassigned resource condition looks like the following.
If you experience this then we can certainly help you if you open a support incident. We do not charge for support incidents that are bugs – so you will either be refunded if you open a fixed cost incident, or you will not be decremented if this is a Premier incident. Use your normal channels, either Premier or any of the options at http://support.microsoft.com – or in Project Online get one of your Project Online/Office 365 administrators to go to the Office 365 Admin Center, click the Support link in the left navigation (https://portal.microsoftonline.com/Support/SupportOverview.aspx) and then click new service request – middle right on the page.
In Project Server 2013 the easiest recovery is to just restore from the administrative backup (the timing of my recent reminder to make sure it was running was not an accident - Project Server 2013- Check your administrative backups before you need them).
For Project Online one option is to open from the Published store – and then overwrite the working store – assuming you haven’t published. If you are time tracking then this isn’t a good idea as GUIDs change and assignments won’t match the current timesheet. We can help with the recovery if you open an incident.
The good news is that we have a fix to stop this happening again which, as I mentioned, we have already applied to all our Project Online customers. As with most fixes, this addresses the original problem but does not correct the downstream issues. Due to the nature of the issue we can address some of this correction in the database. For on-premises customers we are pushing hard to get this into the next available fix package – but it will certainly be in the April Cumulative update for Project Server 2013. And we are able to assist any customers who open an incident with the means to stop this happening again right now.
There could be some variations in the steps that lead to this issue – but in basic terms saving a plan over another plan after having removed some resources may also remove those resources from other plans they are assigned in. It takes them out of the team – but their assignments still exist. One scenario, and the one used to produce the screenshots above was to create an enterprise project plan that included some of the resources in the plan (Project1), then use save-as to overwrite another server plan that also includes those resources (Project2). You will then find that the removed resources are also removed from other plan too (Project1 in this example).
So to summarize:
Some people may remember a similar sounding issue with 2010 – but this isn’t the same thing or same root cause. This wasn’t and isn’t a problem that could occur in 2007 or 2010. Also this was in Project Server 2013 and Project Online since the release – so don’t be afraid to apply cumulative updates – this wasn’t introduced by any of them.
If you have hit this issue then we are very sorry for the inconvenience and frustration that bugs like this can cause – we have been pushing hard to both get this fixed and make sure we can assist with any clean-up that you need.