projectified : Project Server 2007

New Version of Help File version of Project Server Tech Articles

brianken — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:27:04 GMT

There is a new version of the help file that contains all the Project Server technical articles. Great if you need to review one while you are away from your internet connection.

Server-Side Calculation of Custom Field Formulas

brianken — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:21:39 GMT

So I have a PSI application that pulls data from Oracle Financials and correlates it to specific projects in Project Server. using a key field it brings over 6 fields and writes it to 6 Project level Enterprise Number fields. It updates the fields and then calls QueueUpdateProject which should trigger a recalculation of custom field formulas. I also have several custom fields that use the original 6 fields in their formulas.

My problem is that the fields with formulas were not getting updated. If I opened the project into Project Professional then they calculated just fine.

It turns out that there is a problem with the calculation ‘engine’ in Project Server that causes it to stop recalculating these formulas if any one of them returns an error. In my case the error was caused by this formula: [Capital Actuals]/[Capital Plan] because for some of the projects the Capital Plan field was 0.

The solution is to make sure your formulas cannot return such an error. In my case it was changing the formula to this:
IIF([Capital Plan]>0, [Capital Actuals]/[Capital Plan], 0)

Similar issues can possibly be caused by a formula like [Field A]+[Field B] if either A or B have been deleted.

So if any of you are having issues where your field formulas are not refreshing properly go and check all your formulas and see if any of them are returning errors.

Merry Christmas\Happy Holidays\Have a Happy Next Two Weeks :-)

To RBS or Not to RBS?

brianken — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:58:25 GMT

There can be confusion among those deploying Project Server about if they need to define and use an RBS as part of their security structure. There is lots of information and a lot of opinions. Here is more information and one more opinion. Hopefully one that rings true in your experience.

When you Need RBS

In my experience the use of an RBS is only needed if you need to limit access to project or resource data based on some kind of structure. This structure is almost always an organizational structure.

Organization 1

1.1.1
1.1.2

1.2.1

Organization 2

2.1.1

2.2.1

For example if you need to make sure that a Project Server user who sits at 1.2 on the org structure can ONLY see Projects that are managed by or worked on by users at or below 1.2 or a user who sits at Organization 2 cannot see Projects inside Organization 1 then you need to have an RBS in place.

When you Don’t Need RBS

If your security needs are based on role rather than on organization then your don’t need RBS. An example of this is when Project Managers need Write access to their own projects and read access to all other projects and other roles such as managers need read access to all projects. So if the organization a user is in does not have a direct impact on the projects or resources they can see then you don’t need an RBS.

For sure there are shades of several colors here but this is the gist. I look forward to your comments.

Video Blog Post on Task Options in Project Server 2007

brianken — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:25:19 GMT

Treb has posted a great video of the options that effect My Tasks.

Check it out.

New Disaster Recovery Info on TechNet

brianken — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:31:57 GMT

If you deploy or manage a deployment of Project Server 2007 you should read this new content:

No Thanks, I’ll Be Having the Crow

brianken — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:43:12 GMT

File this under reason 467 why I don’t make my living as a full time developer.

Yesterday I posted some code for parsing out a comma delimited text field, such as a multi-value enterprise field in Project Server 2007.

Today a real developer pointed out that there is a function that does the same thing as my code. DOH!

So here is the new code, most of which is just there to display the results of the function.

Sub Doh()
Dim count As Long

Dim Values As Variant

Values = Split(ActiveProject.Tasks(1).Text1, ",")

'just for display
For count = 0 To UBound(Values)
Debug.Print Trim(Values(count))
Next count
'----------------
End Sub

Deployment Practices: Configuration >< Process

brianken — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:46:06 GMT

It is easy for users new to a system like Project Server to see the configuration of fields, views, reports and security as the whole picture of doing a deployment of Project Server. It is also easy to see why there might be this confusion. On the surface it makes sense. You look at the processes in an organization and then you look at security, reports, views, and fields, etc and then configure the tool to match. Easy, right? Not so much.

Doing a deployment of project management software well is not that simple. You need to examine how the tool will be used, how projects get managed, how tasks get estimated by PMs and how resources are assigned. If several PMs define their tasks very tightly (short durations with high resource units) while others define theirs more loosely (longer durations with low resource units) it has an impact on how the data can be analyzed across projects. With the tighter scheduling there can be higher risk of slip but with the looser scheduling the data provides less certainty about where you can put new tasks or projects into the system. I’m not passing judgement on either method there are pros and cons to both. My point here is that this is an example of how the way the tool will be used needs to be taken into account when helping the customer understand how other areas of the tool can be used to make decisions about things like resource allocations or the adding of new projects to the mix. A good configuration is about more than just a few fields and setting up AD sync. It is about having the tool match how the organization works.

This brings up the even bigger part: what if how they do it now is not how they want to be doing it (or even harder, how they want to be doing it but not how they SHOULD be doing it?) Now comes the rough job of helping them understand where changes can be made and how those changes can be broken down into small, more easily digestible changes and road-mapped. More later…

VBA Code For Parsing a MultiValue Text Field

brianken — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:43:03 GMT

If you are in Project Server 2007 you can have an Enterprise Text using a lookup table that can contain more than one value. If you then need to work with that field data in code (VBA or VSTO) you can use the GetField function to get the value of that field. The catch is that it is returned as a comma delimited string with all the values in it. So if your field had three values selected (Value1, Value19 and Value26) it gets returned as “Value1, Value19, Value26”.

The code below shows how to parse this into an array where it will be easier to work with in code.

As always, take this code and make it your own. This includes doing testing to make sure it does what it is supposed to do. It worked for me on a very limited set of test data. Don’t just throw this into production. ;-)

Sub Parse_Comma_Delimited_Field_Into_Array()

Dim Char As Integer
'Char is used to hold each character in the string to see if it is a comma

Dim WholeField As String
'Wholefield is a string that holds the entire value of the field to be parsed

Dim Values() As String
'Values is the string array that will contain the parsed values

Dim NumberofValues As Integer
'NumberofValues holds the number of values in the 'wholefield'
'so that the 'Values' array can be redim'd

Dim StartofLastValue As Integer
'holds the number of characters from the left of the string where the last
'word started so the value can be pulled from the wholefield string and
'placed into the array

StartofLastValue = 1
NumberofValues = 0

'---Setting value of WholeField to be parsed
WholeField = ActiveProject.Tasks(1).Text1
'---
If Len(WholeField) > 0 Then
    For Char = 1 To Len(WholeField)
        If Mid$(String:=WholeField, Start:=Char, Length:=1) = "," _
        Or Char = Len(WholeField) Then
            NumberofValues = NumberofValues + 1
            ReDim Preserve Values(1, NumberofValues)
            If Char < Len(WholeField) Then
                Values(1, NumberofValues) = Trim(Mid$(String:=WholeField, _
                Start:=StartofLastValue, Length:=Char - StartofLastValue))
            Else
                Values(1, NumberofValues) = Trim(Mid$(String:=WholeField, _
                Start:=StartofLastValue, Length:=Char - (StartofLastValue - 1)))
            End If
            StartofLastValue = Char + 1
        End If
    Next Char
    '-------------------------
        'this section just loops through and shows that the array
        'contains the correct data.
        'Remove after you are finished testing
        Dim count As Integer
        For count = 1 To NumberofValues
            Debug.Print Values(1, count)
        Next count
    '-------------------------

End If
End Sub

Project Server Infrastructure Update

brianken — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:43:58 GMT

<This is a reposting of content from the Official Project Blog but since it is a pretty important item I am reposting completely.>

Introduction

On July 15th, 2008 Microsoft announced the availability of the Infrastructure Update for Office Servers. The Infrastructure Update for Office Servers is a set of updates to improve platform performance and contain several customer driven fixes. The updates are applicable to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Search Server 2008 & Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project 2007.

There are several noteworthy new features and fixes shipped in these updates for Project Server 2007 and Project 2007; specifically:

Project Server

Timesheets and My Tasks stability and usability improvements
Queue Management user interface improvements
Logging Tracing improvements
Project Server performance improvements
Project Server 2003 to Project Server 2007 migration fixes
Database performance improvements to enhance the cube building process and Project Professional Save/Publish scenarios

Project Professional

Cost Resources calculation fixes
Improved Custom Fields stability
Improved local Project Cache stability
Fixed Excel Import problem

Please read Project 2007 Infrastructure Update Release for Server and Client to learn about its content in detail.

The Infrastructure Updates are available as free downloads to customers via the download center on http://www.microsoft.com/download.

Before you install the Infrastructure Update there are some very important things to understand. In this post we'll try to provide you with the resources you need to be successful in your updates. It is essential that you understand the appropriate links, and thoroughly read the guidance and test out the patch in a separate environment prior to a production rollout.

Full installation instructions and guidance is provided in the Knowledge Base articles linked from the download pages for each update along with existing TechNet guidance for patching Office Servers. The links are also included further on in this Q&A, but for reference, the following products require the following updates to be applied.

If you are running SharePoint Server 2007 you should install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) first and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) second.
If you are running Project Server 2007 you should install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) first and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) second. You should also then install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) on all Project 2007 client PC’s.

Knowledge Base Articles

Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

KB951695 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951695

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers

KB951297 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951297

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007

KB951547 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951547

List of Fixes

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007

KB953751 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953751

Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

KB953749 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953749

Installation Instructions

It is strongly recommended that you install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 and Office Servers Service Pack 1 before installing the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695).

The installation process will incur server and farm downtime that you will need to plan for – the updates should be installed on all servers in a farm.

Deploy Software Updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Deploy Software Updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007 - This article also applies to Project Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.
Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Search Server 2008)

Downloads

	x64	x86
Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3A74E566-CB4A-4DB9-851C-E3FBBE5E6D6E&displaylang=en	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=256CE3C3-6A42-4953-8E1B-E0BF27FD465B&displaylang=en
Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6E4F31AB-AF25-47DF-9BF1-423E248FA6FC&displaylang=en	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3811C371-0E83-47C8-976B-0B7F26A3B3C4&displaylang=en
Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)		http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F385ADB8-0425-4BA4-BECE-7664B8F49D12&displaylang=en

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1) a prerequisite or installed as part of this fix?
A: No. Our supportability commitments to customers include providing the ability to install hotfixes on the two most recent versions of a product, in this case RTM and SP1. So installing these updates directly onto an RTM server is not blocked and will install some of the fixes shipped in Office Servers Service Pack 1, but only those that are contained in files that are changed by the Infrastructure updates.

Q: Can I uninstall the server updates?
A: No. The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) cannot be uninstalled. Both updates make database schema changes.

Q: Can I install the “Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)” Project 2007 client update without installing the “Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)” on the server?
A: Yes, the “Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)” includes fixes for both client/server communication and local client features, so if you don’t have Office Project Server 2007 but use Office Project 2007 client this update can be safely installed and you will be able to take advantage of all the client updates.

Q: Where can I find information on Service Pack 1 for Project Server and Project Professional 2007?

A: Please check the following: http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2007/12/12/announcing-the-release-of-epm-2007-service-pack-1.aspx

Q: What if I have an issue that isn’t addressed by this update?
A: If your customer has a specific issue that these updates do not address you should follow the Microsoft Support process to log the issue and request a hotfix.