Introduction

Microsoft Project Professional users sometimes lose their unsaved work due to unreliable or bad internet connectivity. 

Below are the steps which can help to minimize the loss of work while working with Project Professional 2013. 

1.1       Enable Auto Save

1. Auto Save can be enabled and the frequency can be set based on user preference.
2. User might want to enable and set it for higher frequency, if the internet connectivity is extremely unreliable.
3. By default, Auto Save option is disabled to reduce the traffic sent to the server.
4. To enable Auto Save, start Project Professional, then click on File -> Select Options -> Click on Save.

1.2       Check The Status Of Balloon

1. Project Professional offers a balloon feature which provides information whether the Project Client is offline (not connected to the server) or online (connected to the server).
2. The status of the balloon is checked when any activity is triggered from Project Professional to Project Server.
3. If the status of the balloon if offline, it can be changed to Online by clicking on it.

Indication that Project Professional is connected to the server.

Indication that Project Professional is not connected to the server.

If Project Professional is offline, click on the Balloon, then click on Connect to server to connect to the server. Multiple clicks may be required to connect to the server. This option can be used when the internet connectivity is restored.

1.3       Working Offline

1. Open Project Professional. Make sure it is connected to the server.
2. Click on File -> Open -> Select PWA instance Name -> Click on Browse -> Double click on Show me the list of all projects.

3. Click on the Project you want to open. Click on Check-out, if asked.

4. Once the required Project is open, modified, Click on File -> Info -> Manage Accounts -> Work Offline

Note - Please note that the balloon at the left bottom corner has been changed from Online to Offline.

5. When user is done working offline and ready to save back to the Project Server, perform the steps below.

a. If the internet connectivity has been restored, go online by clicking on the balloon and selecting Connect to Server.

b. Status can be changed to online by clicking on File -> Info -> Connect to Server

c. Close Project Plan if the internet connectivity has not been restored. Plan can be synced to the server later when the internet connectivity is restored to the server.

d. In order to Sync Project Plan to the server (assuming that Project application was closed and internet connectivity has been restored), open Project Professional, select the PWA profile which was used last time and click on OK. DO NOT click on Work Offline.

e. Click on File -> Open -> Select PWA profile -> Click on Browse and open the plan from cache.

f. Click on Save, then Publish, and then close the plan click Check-in to check in the Project Plan to the server. The changes made to the Project Plans while working offline, will be synchronized back to the server.

g. Until you save Project Plan back to the server and check it in, Project Plan will not be available for other users to modify.

h. Never save the Project Plan locally on your hard drive and upload it back to the server. Saving the project plan locally divorces the project plan from the Project Server and the enterprise resource pool and is considered bad practice.

Scenarios to save work performed in Project Professional with unrelible internet connectivity.

1.4       User Is Working In Project Professional, Modifying Existing Project Plan, And The Internet Connectivity Has Been Lost. User Is Unaware Lost Connectivity.

1. User will be allowed to modify the plan as much as she wants and as long as she is not trying to retrieve any information from the server.
2. The moment the user tries to the save the Project Plan, Project Professional will automatically turn to Offline Mode and User will no longer be able to save it to the server.
3. Now, she can close Project Professional. User will be prompted below screen. If the user wants to save all the changes made, make sure that user doesn’t modify any settings provided on the screen,

4. The changes made by user will be stored in a local cache of Project Professional and the changes are not lost. Note: Storing projects in this fashion happens automatically and is not the same as saving the project as a local .mpp file.

1.5       Internet Connectivity Has Been Restored - User Wants To Save Changes To Server

1. Follow steps available above in section 1.3, bullet 5, from d to f. 

1.6       User Is Working In Project Professional. Save/Publish Job To The Server Has Been Initiated And Internet Connectivity Is Lost.

1. If the job are properly submitted to the server, no data lost should incur. There is a possibility that jobs need to be re-submitted, if they were not submitted properly, when the connectivity has been restored.
2. If the jobs are not submitted to the server, the user should follow the steps provided in 1.2 to make sure that Project Professional is not offline and can try to connect to the server if the internet connectivity has been restored.  

Hello, Microsoft PPM Community.

This is our monthly blog post about what is happening in the PPM Community around the world.

This means webcasts/webminars, PMI and MPUG chapter events, and all about what you need to know to stay up to date about Microsoft Project, Project Server, and Project Online.

Microsoft Project Webcast Series

Leveraging Scrum/Agile for Project and Project Online

November 18 @ 12:30pm – 2:00pm EST

Some people say that Project cannot be used outside of a Waterfall schedule approach. This is absolutely NOT true. In fact, most of the best scheduling approaches leverage iterative activities, such as Scrum or Agile Planning incorporated into their project. This seminar will address key steps for building an Agile schedule, addressing pros and cons to Scrum features and approaches, while blending a schedule to address the tactical agile needs, while still providing rollup and time boxed reporting to stakeholders. This lively and example-driven webinar should help all who attend understand how they too can build agile, iterative schedules and address the need for having a good schedule that also helps to map, track and report activities, features, story points, backlogs all within MS Project. 

MPUG Events

Agile IS Risk Management
 
November 6 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST

The existence of a heavyweight risk management process is a good indicator that a company has failed to embrace the essence of what agile is. But software development is risky. You’re creating something new, with an uncertain set of requirements, in an often tight timeframe. And, don’t get me started on unknown dependencies, sudden market changes, and personnel shifts! You know that without some sort of risk mitigation strategy, your bright and shiny new project can tarnish quickly, along with your reputation. So, if you don’t have a formal risk management process, what do you do? After all, agile frameworks like Scrum and Kanban don’t explicitly mention risk at all. The solution is a matter of principle–agile principles that is.

In this presentation, Ken Rubin discuss how applying core agile principles can make the development process robust and at times antifragile to the disorder of uncertain events, allowing us to avoid harm and reap the benefits of uncertainty, without the need for heavyweight risk management processes. He will show that our goal is not to eliminate uncertainty, risk, or variability, but to protect ourselves against the variability that harms us and to promote and exploit the variability that benefits us. He will discuss that when appropriate, we should apply simple traditional risk management techniques in a good-enough (barely sufficient) manner. He then discuss how we can manage risk through the product backlog and how we can apply agile principles to avoid the self-creation of inherently risky or uncertain situations. Finally, he will discuss how to apply agile principles to avoid the harm (be robust) and reap the benefits (be antifragile) from uncertain events in the environment.

Tabular Reports to Customized Management Dashboards – Project 2013 Reporting
 
November 19 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST

This MPUG event will pay you back multiple times – in it I’ll show you how to use the new reporting features of Project 2013 so that you never have to manually create a project report in PowerPoint or Excel again. You will learn how to create everything from simple tabular reports to customised management dashboards with drill-through capabilities.  No stone will be left unturned as we review all of the new reporting capabilities in Project and discuss best practise reporting techniques. We’ll discuss the types of information available for each report (Project and task progress, costs, work) and how to customise and personalise the look and feel of each report.  Finally, I’ll show you how to link the link the reports together to create a drill-through management dashboard linking all of your reports together.  The techniques we discuss are equally applicable to a single project or a programme of work, and I’ll show you how to consolidate several project reports into a single programme report.

MPUG Certificate Series

Forecast Scheduling
 
November 12, 13 and 14 @ 12:00 pm - November 14 @ 1:30 pm EST

Renowned speaker and master scheduler Eric Uyttewaal will present three 1.5-hour webinars on his latest book ‘Forecast Scheduling with Microsoft Project 2013’. He will show you how to forecast your project with just the schedule by itself and minimize the effort doing this. Eric will challenge you to forecast the finish date of your project, which is what most stakeholders expect from the project manager. This presentation will show you how to create a dynamic model of the project to forecast it and take scheduling to the next level. The main tenets of Forecast Scheduling are:
•Capture your promised dates … without killing the dynamic model!
•Minimize your effort on creating and maintaining the schedule
•Find the real Critical Path 2.0 instead of an incomplete old Critical Path 1.0
•Incorporate insights from project execution and update the schedule to forecast

Eric will explain these principles of Forecast Scheduling, demonstrate how they would work in practice as well as their benefits. We will run through several checks that you can perform on your own project schedule.

APMG International

Business Relationship Management: A Bridge Between Business Value and Technology

November 13 @ 15:00 GMT

This webinar will introduce the Business Relationship Management (BRM) discipline with a particular focus on BRMP training and certification. The BRMP (Business Relationship Management Professional) certification was developed by the Business Relationship Management Institute (BRMI) and is administered by APMG International. This session will be of interest to training organizations for whom BRMP training and certification may be a valuable addition to their portfolio, and individuals who could benefit from this certification.

If you are aware of some event that will occur this month and it is not listed here, please, leave a comment with the link.