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!
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.
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.
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 Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905469.aspx
· SDK Online: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms512767(office.14).aspx
· SDK Download: http://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:
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).
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.
As always, feel free to send me any comments, questions, or suggestions – robhoo@microsoft.com.
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:
- Visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/Microsoft-Project/95221953802.
- Near the top of the page, click the Become a Fan button.
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:
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:
- While signed in to your Facebook account, go to the Facebook home page at http://www.facebook.com/.
- 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.
- Move the mouse pointer over the Project post until you see a Hide link show up near the right side of the post.
- When you move the mouse pointer over the Hide link, it becomes a button. Click it.
- 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.
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:
- While signed in to your Facebook account, go to the Facebook home page at http://www.facebook.com/.
- 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:
- Click the Edit Options link.
- Near the top of the Hidden from News Feed popup dialog box, click the Pages link.
- 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.
Performance and capacity planning best practices
This download contains two white papers:
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:
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Platform-related objects — including the farm, shared service providers, application pools, web applications, databases, disks, network, memory, CPU, logs, and performance counters
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Data-related objects — including projects, tasks, assignments, resources, custom fields, and security
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User-related objects — including localization, workloads, queue job processor threads, and interface feeds
For each system object, the following information is provided:
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Definition — The definition of the object
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Guidelines for acceptable performance — The best practices and supporting statements
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Calculation factors — The performance and scalability calculations to support the best practices
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Scope of impact — A list of objects affected in the system when best practices are not implemented
We're still heads down in working to get Microsoft Project Server customers great prescriptive guidance documentation for Beta 2 and the Project Server 2010 launch.
We'd still like your feedback! Are there any things you’d like to see that you didn't see in the documentation for Project Server 2007? Are there any things you’d like to see more of or less of?
For any comments, requests or suggestions please email me at robhoo@microsoft.com.
Here in Office Content Publishing we are working hard to be able to provide you –our customers with the best set of documentation possible for the next release of Microsoft Project Server.
With that in mind, we’d like your feedback! Are there any things you’d like to see that you didn't see in the documentation for Project Server 2007? Are there any things you’d like to see more of or less of?
If you have any comments, requests or suggestions please email me at robhoo@microsoft.com.
Published the week of July 27, 2009
The Project Management System Maturity Model: white paper This white paper describes how as organizations mature, they can be more effective in the use of their project management systems. This white paper was written by Chris Vandersluis of HMS Software, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Other white papers from Vandersluis include The Challenges of Selecting Enterprise Software, Resource Management, GPS Assistance in Roadmapping an EPM Deployment, A Phased Approach to Deploying EPM, and Being a Solutions Buyer.
Published the week of July 20, 2009
Extract Project Web Access site data to a new content database This article describes how to extract Project Web Access (PWA) site data from a content database that also contains non-PWA sites, and then restore the PWA site data to a new content database. The resulting configuration, in which a content database is used solely for PWA site data, is recommended for avoiding problems with operations such as backup and recovery, migrating data to a new farm, or migrating to a newer version of Microsoft Project Server in the future.
Updated the week of July 20, 2009
Office Project Server 2007 Technical Library in Compiled Help format (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=130451&clcid=0x409) All Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 documentation found in the TechNet library is available in downloadable .chm format. This download has been updated to include all content in the library as of July 16, 2009.
Published the week of July 13, 2009
TechNet webcast: Virtualization (Office Project Server 2007) This webcast covers best practices for deploying virtualization by using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology, with detailed discussion of the optimum architecture configuration and how to architect a high-availability virtual farm.
TechNet webcast: Active Cache processes and architecture drill down (Office Project Server 2007) This webcast covers processes and key messaging between Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 and Office Project Server 2007. It describes cache folder structure and registry settings in detail. It also explains enhancements made to increase client/server communication scalability and reliability.
Updated the week of July 13, 2009
Plan groups, permissions, and categories for Project Server 2007 This article describes groups, permissions, and categories in Office Project Server 2007. It has been updated to correct some incorrect data and clarify each of the components described.
The following articles have been updated to include a link to the PowerPoint presentation the instructor used in the webcasts:
Updated the week of July 6, 2009
Configure Office Project Server 2007 client connectivity This article describes how to configure a connection between Office Project Professional 2007 and Office Project Server 2007. It has been updated to clarify what URL to use when specifying the connection.
Downloadable books: Deployment and migration for Office Project Server 2007 An updated version of the downloadable book "Deployment for Office Project Server 2007" is now available. Downloadable books contain content from the TechNet technical library, which is revised regularly. The updated book includes the most recent version of this content as of July 2009.
Chris Vanderluis, president and founder of HMS Software, submitted his latest article to the From the Trenches column on the Project Server 2007 TechCenter on Microsoft TechNet. This article,"The Project Management Maturity System Model", describes how as organizations mature, they can be more effective in the use of their project management systems. When a company implements a project management system, their is sometimes a desire use every feature available. This article describes how it might be more effective for companies to elect to use only certain aspects of a new project management system to a level with wich they are comfortable with. As the company continues to mature, their use of the project management system features can mature as well. All of this is explained in a way that only Chris knows how. If you haven't read any of Chris's articles, I recommend that you do.
To download and read this article, click here.
To see more of Chris Vandersluis's articles in the From the Trenches column, go to the Project Server 2007 TechCenter.
This update addresses some issues customers commonly have with the View Effective Rights tool in the Office Project Server 2007 Project Resource Kit (PRK) and includes work-around methods for operating it properly.
This article describes options associated with the Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) in Office Project Server 2007. It has been updated to correct errors in the descriptions of the available RBS options.
This article has been updated to include an important note about a known issue: installing the 2007 Office Servers Service Pack 2 (SP2) causes a trial version to be activated. The note explains how to resolve the issue.
This white paper describes an actual performance tuning lab for Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, including how the lab was done and what results were achieved.
This white paper outlines the recommended setup and configuration approach that will focus on best practices for an EPM-focused Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Intranet farm with a set of validated and tested best practices for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and EPM coexistence. A logical architecture diagram of an EPM-focused Office SharePoint Server 2007 Intranet farm is also provided for reference. The diagram is in Microsoft Visio file format.
This article outlines the process of moving Office Project Server 2007 Project Web Access data from one Project Server farm to a new Office Project Server 2007 farm.
The entire library for Office Project Server 2007 is now available as a downloadable .chm file. This download includes all content in the library as of May 7, 2009.
This helpful topic just came across from Toney Sisk in the Project Professional IW writing team:
Back To Basics: Find the task quickly
If you roam around in the Gantt Chart, sooner or later you may get lost. It can be a jungle in there, especially as projects get more complicated, and the bar side of the chart begins to show a large number of lines that seem to go nowhere after a while. Or worse, as the Gantt View may not show any bars, and you’re left wondering: Where did my project data go? What you want is something like a Here You Are button.
In Project, this button is called the Scroll to Task button, and even advanced project managers somehow don’t know the button is there to be clicked when all else fails.
Here’s an example. The bars have disappeared from the right side of the chart of a complicated project with a zillion task dependencies:
But when I click the Scroll To Task Button on the Standard toolbar 
(or Ctrl + Shift + F5), the bars come into view:
You may find this the most used command in Project, because, like I say, it can be a link-line jungle in there.
The new Office IT Pro Bookstore lists a number of books and book excerpts about Office suite and desktop programs, including Project Server and Project Professional. The audience is primarily the IT administrator, but also included are titles for project managers, programmers, and power users. Links to Amazon.com makes this a convenient experience to easily find and purchase the books you want. Additional titles and excerpts will be regularly added.
The following note has been added to the TechNet article Deploy Service Pack 2 for Project Server 2007:
Important:
Known issue: During the installation of 2007 Microsoft Office Servers SP2 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=148351), a product trial expiration date is inadvertently activated that would cause the product to expire 180 days after installation. This issue is resolved by following the detailed steps in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article here (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=153131).
