Project Server 2013
Project 2013
Project Server 2010
This news is so good I thought I’d get it out through both the blogs I use – there is a great new post over on the Project blog concerning some changes that are just rolling out to our Project Online customers http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/21/performance-scale-improvements-project-online/. A couple of highlight of these performance and scale improvements for Project Online are:
Thanks to Chris and Krishna for the post – and all the folks in the team involved in making these improvements happen.
I am very pleased to announce the release of the October 2014 Cumulative Update (CU) for Project, Project Server and SharePoint for 2013, and Project and Project Server and SharePoint 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 October CU will contain all previous CU releases (at least back to the applicable baseline.
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 October 2014 CU and then run the configuration wizard (if you didn’t already load the April 2013 through June 2014 CU).
The October 2014 CU 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 October 2014 can be found here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3004228 - Office 2013 cumulative update for October 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 October CUs from the following articles:
Project Server 2013 Server Rollup Package
I don’t have any details of a server roll-up package for October 2014.
Project Server 2013 Individual Project Package – (cumulative, but only the Project Server fixes):
Hotfix KB 2889959 for Project Server 2013 October 14, 2014 (Projectserverwfe-x-none.msp; Projectservermui-<Language-Code>.msp)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2889959/
The dbo.Versions table should show 15.0.4659.1001 after applying the October 2014 CU. The version number 15.0.4649.1001 can be used to control the connecting client to the October 2014 level, but only if you are loading the October CU to the server and client. This version also 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
Project 2013 Client Package:
Hotfix KB2889957 for Project 2013 October 14, 2014 (Project-x-none.msp)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2889957/
The client version number will be 15.0.4659.1001 and as this matches the server scheduling engine version this can be used if you want to restrict the client version that can connect to the server – assuming of course that you have upgraded the server to the October CU too. If not then follow the suggested version number for the server patch level you are running. See Project Server 2013- Controlling the version of connecting clients–and PWA edits- for more details.
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 (mine updated today to the same version as above). 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 October 2014 can be found here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3004223 - Office 2010 cumulative update for October 2014
You can read about the fixes included in the Project and Project Server August CUs from the following articles:
Project Server 2010 Individual package (cumulative – but just the Project Server 2010 fixes)
Hotfix KB2899485 for Project Server 2010 October 14, 2014 (Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2899485/
Hotfix KB2880539 for Project Server 2010 October 14, 2014 (Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp; Pjsrvmui-<Language-Code>.msp)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2880539/
The Project Server database version will be updated to 14.0.7134.5000 after applying this or the package hotfix above, and running the configuration wizard.
Project 2010 Client Package:
Hotfix KB2899488 for Project 2010 October 14, 2014 (Project-x-none.msp)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2899488/
The client version number is 14.0.7134.5000, 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.
This was an interesting recent Project Online case, but also applies to Project Server 2013, and I thought it worth sharing. The customer wanted to use workflows on their project sites, and have a task list associated with them for the approvals related to workflows. Should be no problem you’d think? Well that depends what you call the new additional task list. In this case the list was called Approval Tasks – and once a new project was created this list was being taken over as the task list that Project Online would synchronize tasks to – giving a read only list as the editing of the tasks would happen in the schedule web part? So how do I make sure this doesn’t happen and that I can use my extra list for my own purposes? Easy, just make sure it comes later in the alphabet than the default ‘Tasks’ list.
My initial thought was this was a bug – but thinking about the design there isn’t really an easy and foolproof way to do this any better that would still allow customers a degree of freedom to customize the site. We can’t hard code to the tasks list – as it may well be renamed, recreated or whatever. Using some different content type for our specific list would get complicated.
Once customers know that the first task list alphabetically will be the one we will sync the tasks with then they can plan their custom sites to allow for this – and either rename Tasks to something low in the alphabet (Assignments? Although they aren’t really) – or make you one higher in the alphabet for your specific use(Workflow Approval Tasks for example – would work in this particular scenario.
Here is an example:
Here my tasks are not displayed – as they have been sync’d to the Approval Tasks list:
You can always see which list is being used from the Connected SharePoint sites page:
Another thing to note here – for a couple of my large plans I use a template for my project site that does not have a task list – for me it didn’t make sense to use such a long task list so it saves the time of syncing the tasks by not having a list in the template for that EPT.
While we are on the subject of tasks and project sites and syncing – keep your eye out for the new ways to control site creation and task synchronization mentioned in mine and Adrian’s recent webcast. Expect another blog post and the features to be lighting up in the next few weeks.