As Gary Chefetz mentioned last week: One Small Check Box, One Giant Leap for Project Server ; basically with the upcoming Project Server 2010 Service Pack (SP1) due at the end of this month you will now have the ability to “Automatically publish the updates” as shown below. I have been using this feature to demo the integration between Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server in the the case of an Agile Team collaborating with with the PMO, and attendees love this new feature that will improve ease of use (you will obviously need to think before turning this on for all projects, but it might make sense for some!). Microsoft Project Server 2010 Automatic Approvals Microsoft Project Server 2010 Automatic Approvals with Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Great announcement from Rob this week: Announcing the EPM Content Pivot Viewer . Project and Project Server 2010 is major release of the already long history of Microsoft Project. We have been building content for the 2010 release for about two years (and are continuing to do so) to help you deploy, configure, and adopt Project 2010. Hence we have a ton of content and many of you have been asking for an easier way to discover all of the valuable documentation we have on our site. I think you will enjoy this new solution to help you get answers. The team is always looking for feedback to improve our content, so don’t be shy it’s free and happy pivoting

Please mark your calendar for this special event/webcast on Wednesday (June 1st, 2011) at 3pm pacific time live from SPTechCon : Special Microsoft Project Announcement! Introducing “Project for the Masses” and “SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solutions” Join Christophe Fiessinger, Senior Technical Product Manager for Microsoft Project 2010, who will kick off the launch of two new Microsoft Project solutions, “ Project for the Masses ,” developed by Innovative-e, Inc., and “ SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010 ,” developed by Jornata. Presenters: Christophe Fiessinger, Sr. Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation, Dux Raymond Sy, PMP, SharePoint Server MVP, Managing Partner at Innovative-e and Scott Jamison, Microsoft Certified Master at Jornata Christophe is part of the Microsoft Business Division Product Marketing Group and focuses on the enterprise project and portfolio management solution (PPM). Christophe focuses on promoting the value of Project Server by speaking at global Microsoft conferences like TechEd, SharePoint Conference, and Project Conference. He is a major advocate for enterprise deployments and line of business integration of Project Server. He regularly blogs on these topics at https://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie Dux Raymond is a managing partner and the chief evangelist of Innovative-e. Dux is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry. He has earned a reputation as being among the leading experts on leveraging collaboration tools for project management. He is a SharePoint MVP and the author of “SharePoint for Project Management,” published by O’Reilly Media. Scott is a managing partner at Jornata, a premier Microsoft-focused consulting and training firm based in Boston. Scott has extensive experience implementing business solutions using SharePoint technologies, and is one of only a handful of Microsoft Certified Masters for SharePoint in the world. He is a recognized thought leader, teacher and published author with several books, including “Essential SharePoint 2007” and “Essential SharePoint 2010.” You can find his blog at www.scottjamison.com .

Yes, as announced last week as part of Project Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) on the main Project blog: Announcing Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Project & Project Server 2010 one of the new innovation of SP1 is the ability to do timesheet in your favorite browser as shown below (all tests were run on Windows Server 2008 R2 + SP1). Happy time sheeting! Timesheet In Internet Explorer (IE) Entering timesheet time in FireFox Entering more timesheet time in Chrome and submit Take you pick!

Following this post: I am speaking at SPTechCon in Boston June 1-3, register! @SPTechCon , I’m happy to announce that in addition to the sessions we will be having a special next Wednesday (June 1st) from 5:15 to 7:00pm. Beside a great presentation & demos from Dux Raymond from Innovative-e and Scott Jamison from Jornata , we’ll be giving away great giveaways including 10 copies of Project Professional 2010 (yes we can!), books, 16GB USB keys and more… More information can be found here: https://www.sptechcon.com/Boston2011/specialevents.html So don’t miss out and register!

For those of you that did not attend Tech.Ed last week in Atlanta (it was an awesome week!), please note the following two key dates next year: Tech.Ed North America 2012 : June 11-14, 2012 in Orlando, Florida Tech.Ed Europe 2012 : June 25-29, 2012, in Amsterdam Please see below two session that are publically available delivered last week: SharePoint Governance and Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Project Server 2010 Application Lifecycle Management: Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010, Better Together   PS: I really like the car above for some reason

We have released recently a number of videos on the recently released Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack, providing an overview of the solution and demonstrating its key capabilities: Top-Down Planning of Business Requirements within an Enterprise Project using Team Foundation Server and Project Server Managing Project Details in an Enterprise Project Plan Mapped to a Team Project in Team Foundation Server Making Agile Team Progress Visible to the Project Management Office Managing Field Mappings for Integration of Team Foundation Server and Project Server Application Lifecycle Management: Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010, Better Together (Tech.Ed session delivered last week) Last but least, please book your calendar for this upcoming webcast on the subject on June 8, 2011 at 8:00am Pacific Time : TechNet Webcast: Implementing Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack from Siddharth Bhatia and myself.

I am excited to announce the release of SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010 produced by Jornata . Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 provides a vast number of capabilities that empower both business users and IT to create solutions quickly. For this reason, many organizations consider implementing SharePoint as a central platform to address a wide array of business solutions. For those organizations, it is likely that they will need a good way to track, manage, and prioritize those business requests. The SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010 provides a framework and guidance for managing SharePoint business requests and includes two white papers and a sample dataset. This no-code solution includes: Business Decision Maker/Technical Decision Maker white paper containing a business evaluation of how Microsoft Project Server 2010 can be employed to help manage your SharePoint Lifecycle through enhancement requests and project proposals. Technical white paper contains step-by-step instructions on how to install and customize the SharePoint Lifecycle Management solution, along with basic instructions on how to use it. Project Server 2010 sample databases and templates that can be used to illustrate concepts. The sample dataset requires a farm that has a working installation of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Project Server 2010 fully configured (please refer to Project Server 2010 Tech Center ); and the Dynamic Workflow and Workflow Visualization web part solutions from Microsoft Project 2010 Solution Starters . For an overview of the solution, please watch this recent recording from Tech.Ed last week: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/OSP202 Last but not least do not forget to check out other existing white papers on Microsoft Project Portfolio Management offering on our Project site at https://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/articles-white-papers.aspx Christophe Fiessinger Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Project https://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie

In Project 2010, we added the ability to create and edit project plans through Project Web App ( blog post ). One of the limitations though was that the only way to edit projects that contained Fixed Work or Effort Driven tasks was to use Project Professional 2010. We knew this was a shortcoming when we shipped and from the feedback we’ve received, we know this shortcoming puzzled many of you. Let me explain, essentially as we were getting late into Project 2010 development we realized that we weren’t able to stabilize editing projects that contained those kinds of tasks in the web environment. Rather than risk project plans getting corrupted, we chose to block the functionality and then stabilize it for SP1. I’m happy to announce that with Project 2010 SP1 you can now edit project plans containing Fixed Work tasks and Effort Driven tasks in Project Web App. Before SP1: After SP1: And proof that I can actually edit the plan: You can learn more about task types and effort driven tasks here . You can learn more about SP1 here .

In Project 2010 we introduced a new concept called “User-Controlled Scheduling” which is a collection of features designed to give you more control over how tasks are scheduled. Project’s powerful scheduling engine is still there if you want to use it but you also have the flexibility to override it. Click here for the original post. One of the key features in User-Controlled Scheduling is manually scheduled tasks. These tasks, just as the name implies, are not affected by the scheduling engine and they will only move if you manually update them. This gives you more control over your schedule but one of the areas you didn’t have control was editing timephased data for them. For example, you couldn’t edit work values in the Task Usage view or report timephased data in task statusing for manually scheduled tasks. Based on your feedback, with Project 2010 SP1 you can now edit timephased data for manually scheduled tasks on the Project Client and Project Server. Prior to SP1, the circled areas are read-only for manually scheduled tasks: With SP1, you can now edit the timephased values for Manually Scheduled tasks just like you can for Auto Scheduled tasks. This is being demonstrated in the My Work view on Project Server and Task Usage view in the Project client: Key Takeaways: Project Server – If you are using timephased tracking (Hours of work done per period) in My Work or Single Entry Mode (a setting on Timesheets), all tasks can be tracked this way, not just auto scheduled tasks. Project Client – You can edit work contours for all tasks now. You can learn more about Project 2010 SP1 here .