Project Server 2013
Project 2013
Project Server 2010
*** Update 8/13 - May have jumped the gun on the requirement for SP1 (but not a bad idea anyway) - just without the uber packages everything looked smaller - confirmation shortly... ***
*** Update2 8/13 - SP1 is not a pre-requisite, but the lack of a 'coreserver' patch made me think the patches had shrunk - sorry. See Stefan Gossner's post for more details on the SharePoint patches - and his guidance to load July and August CU to be sure of being fully patched for SharePoint. For Project the patches below will get you fully patched for Project and Project Server - no need to install the July CU for any Project patches, the will all be included in the August CU. And although SP1 isn't required yet, it is certainly worth getting that loaded as it will become a pre-requisite soon. ***
I am very pleased to announce the release of the August 2014 Cumulative Update (CU) for Project, Project Server and SharePoint for 2013, and just Project and SharePoint Server for 2010 – no Project Server 2010 fixes this month. Feel free to open a support case if you have any questions around this or need assistance getting these patches deployed.
Project and Project Server 2013 have a new baseline (no, not a new feature, a pre-requisite) – and to install the August 2014 CU you will need your client or server to be patched to Service Pack 1 (SP1). Links below. The good news, if you have installed SP1 then the August patch is really quick. I installed Project, Project Server, SharePoint Server and ran the configuration wizard in less than 20 minutes!
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 August CU will contain all previous CU releases (at least back to the applicable baseline Service Pack (the respective SP1’s for both 2010 and 2013). The August CU for Project and Project Server 2013 does not include fixes that were included in SP1 – hence the requirement to have SP1 installed first..
Another important point to add here is that there was an issue early last year running the SharePoint Configuration Wizard on a server with Project Server 2013 installed – this is fixed by applying the April 2013 or later– so a good practice would be to load SP1, then the August 2014 CU and then run the configuration wizard (if you didn’t already load the April 2013 through June 2014 CU).
The August 2014 for Microsoft Project 2010, can be installed with Microsoft Project 2010 SP2 – and overcomes the issues seen with the August 2013 CU under certain conditions where the database upgrader would fail.
Project and Project Server 2013
An overview of all the Office 2013 releases for August 2014 can be found here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2989078 - Office 2013 cumulative update for August 2014
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 August CUs from the following articles:
Project Server 2013 Server Rollup Package
Still waiting for news on the rollup package – more soon. *** Update 8/13 - I understand there will be no uber packages this month - see Stefan's link above ***
Project Server 2013 Individual Project Package – (cumulative, but only the Project Server fixes):
Hotfix KB2883083 for Project Server 2013 August 12, 2014 (Projectserverwfe-x-none.msp; Projectservermui-<Language-Code>.msp)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2883083
The dbo.Versions table should show 15.0.4639.1000 after applying the June August 2014 CU. The version number 15.0.46314641.1000 can be used to control the connecting client to the August 2014 level, but only if you are loading the August CU to the server and client. This version relates to the server side scheduling engine and can be different from the database level.
SP1 for Project Server 2013 can be hound here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2880553
If you want SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Foundation 2013 patches as the roll up is not yet (and may not be) available – see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2989078 where they and others are all listed.
Hotfix KB2883080 for Project 2013 August 12, 2014 (Project-x-none.msp)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2880493 Corrected - thanks Jules! http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2883080 ***
The client version number will be 15.0.4641.1001. However, use 15.0.4641.1000 if you want to restrict the client version that can connect to the server. See Project Server 2013- Controlling the version of connecting clients–and PWA edits- for more details – assuming of course that you have upgraded the server to the August CU too. If not then follow the suggested version number for the server patch level you are running.
We are working on the specific CU installation documentation for 2013, but the process hasn’t changed from 2010 – so if you are familiar with 2010 patching or read the 2010 instructions below you should be good to go.
SP1 for Project Professional 2013 can be found here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2817433
Also note that Click to Run installations will be automatically patched, usually within a month. Installations in Enterprise Environments that have been modified will be deployed based on the schedule determined by your Administrator.
An overview of all the Office 2010 releases for August 2014 can be found here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2987238 - Office 2010 cumulative update for August 2014
No Project Server 2010 CU release this month – see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2987238 for details of the available SharePoint Server patches if you need those.
Project 2010 Client Package:
Hotfix KB2883021 for Project 2010 August 12, 2014 (Project-x-none.msp)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2883021
The client version number is 14.0.7130.5000, 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 (when available) 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 or SP2 from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39657
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 or SP2 can be found at Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Project 2010 (KB2687457) 32-Bit Edition and Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Project 2010 (KB2687457) 64-Bit Edition.
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.
We have a few changes we are working on, and as promised in a previous blog we are looking to get the information out there before the changes happen. The first of these changes may be on a Project Online Project Web App (PWA) site near you soon – probably over the next few weeks – depending how the roll out progresses through our internal farms. It is a feature I am very pleased to see come to the Project Online space, and those of you familiar with Project Server 2010 and 2013 will already be acquainted with it. You will soon have the ability to control the version level of the connecting Project Professional 2013, or Project Pro for Office 365 clients. This will be surfaced under Additional Server Settings on your PWA (Server) Settings page. And I would suggest that the number you put in here be at least 15.0.4615.1000 (at the time of writing anyway (Aug2014) – the June CU fixed a bug you would really be best avoiding). Obviously you’d also need to make sure you patched your Project Professional clients to that level – and the Project Pro for Office 365 clients should already be there unless you have disabled the automatic update.
The error you get if you try to connect with a lower version is still not all it could be, but I understand we might also be working on that. The first screen will show
“The following job failed to complete. Job Type: Load, Error ID: 12015(0x2EEF), Error An Internal error occurred”. I’ve clicked More info and scrolled down to get to the meaningful bit – ActiveCacheUnsupportedProjectProfessionalVersion – and in this case I had set my server above the July CU level of 15.0.4629.1000 just to trigger the error. The next error you see will mention failure to get the enterprise global.
If you have read my other posts on controlling versions you may have remembered that you can break server scheduling if the version you are controlling is higher than the running server scheduling engine version. This shouldn’t be an issue for you on Project Online as the version of the client you are controlling, either Project Professional 2013 or Project Pro for Office 365, will have a lower version number than the server scheduling engine (which you have no visibility of anyway). But if you type something bad in – expect to see the ‘Loading’ spinner just go on spinning, if you try and edit a plan…
The other changes coming down the line – and no dates (or promises) for these yet - are the result of listening to our customers and hearing that you want more control over the creation of project sites, the syncing of permissions for these sites and syncing of the task list from the project to the site. More detailed information when these proposed changes get closer.
Thanks Marc Boyer and Diane Diaz for the new document and demonstration package that shows how to do incremental downloads of assignment time phased data from Project Online Project Web Apps into a SQL Server database table. This makes use of the SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) OData feed that was introduced earlier in the year for SQL Server 2012, and is included in SQL Server 2014. The demonstration uses a local SQL Server as the destination – but you could modify to use SQL Azure or any other OLE DB destination.
I downloaded the package and had a quick play about just in case extra questions come via the blog that I might need to answer. The download can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43736 and contains two files, a PDF with instructions and a zip file of the SSIS package itself. If you happened upon this last week you might not have seen the PDF – so worth going back and downloading.
Of course I didn’t read the pre-requisite piece and thought I already had them all (I didn’t) – so you will need at least the shell of Visual Studio 2012 and the Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools - Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012 - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36843 or the 2013 version is out there too - Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools - Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2013. If you don’t have these then you will not see the Business Intelligence section when you click on New Project in VS:
Once you have that part working you can follow the PDF to add the sample package using the right click menu on SSIS Packages:
If you haven’t loaded the Microsoft® OData Source for Microsoft SQL Server® 2012 then you will get an error like this, saying Error at Odata AssignmentsTimephased (): The connection type “ODATA” specified for connection manager “OData Assignments Feed is not recognized…
So head off to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42280 and download it!
Once you have that then you are good to go! Set the parameters in the package (I decided I wouldn’t show you my password…) and you can start pulling data from your Project Online Project Web App. It worked as advertised – don’t forget if you add new assignment information it will not get downloaded until the project is published and the package is executed again – but as noted in the PDF – I found the subsequent data loads after making a few project updates and adding new projects to be pretty quick (YMWV - my demo dataset isn’t huge).
With the default settings you will get a new database called ODATA with a couple of stored procedures and tables. The main table called AssignmentsTimephased that will be the target for the downloaded data – and another table called Synced, which keeps track of the date and time the last sync happened.
I hope this will help a lot of our Project Online customers get started with OData in an efficient and useful way.