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Following the recent worldwide Project Ignite tour my colleague Jan Kalis organized as well as presentations at events like SharePoint Conference 2012 last week, please find below a summary of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Microsoft Project Online I have been asked by customers and partners. Before I start please note that this is a journey and I’m sure you have plenty more questions and yes we will have plenty more answers and content to help you understand the value of Project Online and how it can bring value to your organization. Also please note that the 8 questions below are not sorted in any specific order, and yes if you have additional questions please leverage the Project Online forum on TechNet . Delivers full Project Portfolio Management (PPM) in the cloud Yes Microsoft Project Online delivers full project portfolio management capabilities in the Office 365 cloud. Project Online delivers all key scenarios/functionality expected from a PPM solution such as demand management , resource management, financial management, time management, collaboration & social, etc. As mentioned during the Ignite tour the product team only built and shipped one product called Project Server 2013 which gets delivered in different channels like online in Office 365 or on-premise like TechNet & MSDN subscribers. So yes there is full PPM functional feature parity in Online and on-premise whether you want to be firing on all 12 cylinders with a maturity level 3 or if you are just starting with a PPM system. We are also working on document that will be published on TechNet that describes some of the technical differences. Achieve on-premise to Online migration A very common request from many customers, how can I move to Project Online from my existing PPM system whether it’s an older version of Project Server or whether it’s from a online competitor? Again we will provide guidance, but at a high level you can either do it manually once depending on the amount of data, or you can automate the process using third party tools such as: FluentPro Cloud Migrator Pro ( Want to test-drive Project Online? How to migrate data from on-premises to Online? ); please also remember that you will also have to migrate the SharePoint content to SharePoint Online (plenty of tools available today to help you achieve this, BING them!). Connect Online to on-premise Line Of Business Apps Moving to Project Online does not isolate you from your mission critical on-premise line of business applications such as an ERP, CRM, ticketing, etc. SharePoint Online and Project Online provide a very rich extensibility model to help you connect the two world regardless of your needs. It could as simple as leveraging existing API such as OData or CSOM, or you could leverage Business Connectivity Services for instance. We are working on whitepaper that will get published early next year that will demonstrate the integration (how to push data from on-premise to Online and how to retrieve data on-premise from Online) and provide starting points to enable it. Track using ODATA and customize using CSOM In an Online world we cannot give you direct database access for obvious security reasons! and hence the protocol/mechanism to access all your beloved PPM data (yes including timephased data) is via the OData protocol. To build apps and do any custom code the API of choice is CSOM, please check the Project & SharePoint Software Development Kit (SDK) on MSDN to learn about each. Preview is for temporary use only (see Preview FAQ ) The preview has been available since July 16th 2012, when Steve Ballmer disclosed the new version of Microsoft Office (which Project desktop, Project Server and Project Online is part of!). The Preview is free but it’s for temporary use only until the commercial service is available, you read the Preview FAQ and navigate to the very end which says: “the Preview will expire approximately 60 days after the next version of Office becomes available in your market. As the date approaches, you will receive notifications in the Office applications alerting you to the pending expiration. Once the Preview has expired, the applications enter read-only mode, which means that you can view or print documents only, it isn’t possible to create new documents, edit, or save them. You must uninstall the Preview version of Office before installing a newer version of Office.” So yes, please kick the tires, try it out, check out some some of the cool new scenario and features (I love this one …: Microsoft Project Online on Xbox ) but please remember that at the end of the Preview all the data will be lost unless you save it locally. With that in mind and specially with a PPM system, a lot of learning and processes needs to be put in place before a production rollout, so treat this as a free proof of concepts environment! Office 365 is an evergreen service. Customers need to stay current What started with a Preview in our Office 365 worldwide data centers (aka a beta/pre-released version of Project Server 2013), and since the RTM announcement last month and the availability of the products on TechNet/MSDN/Volume Licensing/Trials, the online service has been updated with the RTM products during the past month. So yes it’s a Preview offer but with the latest version of the product! Yes we are still all learning and we are continuously updating the services until it’s ready for general availability (GA). So back to my point earlier, please try it out because it contains the latest fit and polish not to mention the latest bug fixes. In the end, one of the key value of online is that it will always have the latest and greatest version of Microsoft’s PPM, and that includes Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, Office, hence think of the “evergreen PPM”! Azure VM (IaaS) vs. Project Online (SaaS) Azure Virtual Machine (VM) which a preview was disclosed last May, is an upcoming offer from the Windows Azure team which will give you the ability to purchase CPU, memory, and storage in the cloud to run your application in a virtualized environment such as  SharePoint and Project Server for instance. As announced last may, SharePoint 2010 is supported on Azure VM (see SharePoint Deployment on Windows Azure Virtual Machines ), and yes Project Server 2010 will also be supported initially and later 2013 will be. The question one need to think about is whether to go with Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or other options such as software as a service (SaaS) or partner hosted or on-premise. Bottom line, Microsoft PPM is about choice and we will provide plenty of options to deploy and use it! Again we are working on a white paper and guidance on these options and how they can fulfill your needs today and tomorrow. Use the Project Online Forum and Wiki for Questions & Answers As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I’ve only covered a few question above and I’m sure you have a few more based on some the answers provided above and also based on other Project Online questions you might have so from this point forward I want you to start leveraging the following resources to get answers: Project Online forum , yes it’s monitored by Microsoft product experts, by Microsoft support personnel, by Microsoft Project MVPs and many others so don’t be shy, it’s free! Project Online Preview Wiki Portal , going forward our wiki will get richer and richer with key service information. Other valuable Microsoft Online resources : Steve Ballmer’s letter on October 9, 2012:  TO OUR SHAREHOLDERS, CUSTOMERS, PARTNERS AND EMPLOYEES Global Foundation Services (and their blog ) Office 365 Trust Center (check out the industry standards for instance) Service Updates for Office 365 for enterprises (check out monthly updates)

Have you ever gotten a call from someone you know whose Outlook client is having trouble connecting to their email server?  Don’t you just wish you had a tool that you could send to them that would walk them through a connectivity test and provide a simple way for them to send the results back to you? Or perhaps you’re an administrator that has been using the Remote Connectivity Analyzer for years to verify email configuration, but wish you had a way to verify the same tests from within your organization, that provided the same diagnostic details as the RCA website?   We’ve heard these requests, and we have some big news. For full details, see our blog post on the Exchange Team Blog . 

The release of the Project Server 2007 Cumulative Update for October 2012 appears to have a problem with the digital signing of one of the files and the installation will fail.  This issue affects both the Project Server 2007 – Project Server 2007 hotfix package (Pjsrvapp-x-none.msp; Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp): October 30, 2012 – KB 2687536, and also the SharePoint Server roll-up package – SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update server hotfix package (MOSS server-package): October 30, 2012 KB 2687533.  It also affects both the x86 and x64 versions.  This DOES NOT affect the individual SharePoint Server 2007 CU – KB 2760381, or the WSS 3.0 CU KB 2687535 – so if you need to update WSS or SharePoint Server then these packages can be used – but this will still leave Project Server un-patched. Thanks to Stéphane Deschênes of gp3 in Quebec City for bringing this to my attention. The problem file is the DATAEDIT.dll (assembly dataedit.dll.x64 or dataedit.dll.x86) and the message you will get will be “The installation of this package failed”: The KB in the title bar will be either the Project Server one here Hotfix for Office (KB2687536) – or Hotfix for Office (KB2687533) if you are trying to load the SharePoint Server roll-up. In the Application event log you will see two Error events, 11937 and 1023 both with a source of MsiInstaller.  The text will be: Log Name:      Application Source:        MsiInstaller Date:          11/14/2012 8:33:32 AM Event ID:      11937 Task Category: None Level:         Error Keywords:      Classic User:          DOMAINUser Computer:      Description: Product: Microsoft Office Project Server Application Server — Error 1937. An error occurred during the installation of assembly ‘DataEdit,fileVersion=”12.0.6668.5000″,version=”12.0.0.0000000″,culture=”neutral”,publicKeyToken=”71E9BCE111E9429C”,processorArchitecture=”MSIL”‘. The signature or catalog could not be verified or is not valid. HRESULT: 0x80131045. assembly interface: IAssemblyCacheItem, function: Commit, component: {AD9A0847-F41E-41F3-9B3C-CA9952D6D7E2} Log Name:      Application Source:        MsiInstaller Date:          11/14/2012 8:33:34 AM Event ID:      1023 Task Category: None Level:         Error Keywords:      Classic User:          REDMONDbrismith Computer:      BriSmith2007.redmond.corp.microsoft.com Description: Product: Microsoft Office Project Server Application Server – Update ‘Hotfix for Office (KB2687533)’ could not be installed. Error code 1603. Additional information is available in the log file C:Users AppDataLocalTemppjsrvapp-x-none_MSPLOG.LOG. The log file mentioned in the second event will give more information – the key piece will be the following: …. MSI (s) (3C:88) [08:40:11:480]: Assembly Error:Strong name signature verification failed for assembly ‘%1’.  The assembly may have been tampered with, or it was delay signed but not fully signed with the correct private key. MSI (s) (3C:88) [08:40:11:480]: Note: 1: 1937 2: {AD9A0847-F41E-41F3-9B3C-CA9952D6D7E2} 3: 0x80131045 4: IAssemblyCacheItem 5: Commit 6: DataEdit,fileVersion=”12.0.6668.5000″,version=”12.0.0.0000000″,culture=”neutral”,publicKeyToken=”71E9BCE111E9429C”,processorArchitecture=”MSIL” MSI (s) (3C:88) [08:40:11:480]: Note: 1: 2205 2:  3: Error MSI (s) (3C:88) [08:40:11:480]: Note: 1: 2228 2:  3: Error 4: SELECT `Message` FROM `Error` WHERE `Error` = 1937 Error 1937. An error occurred during the installation of assembly ‘DataEdit,fileVersion=”12.0.6668.5000″,version=”12.0.0.0000000″,culture=”neutral”,publicKeyToken=”71E9BCE111E9429C”,processorArchitecture=”MSIL”‘. The signature or catalog could not be verified or is not valid. HRESULT: 0x80131045. assembly interface: IAssemblyCacheItem, function: Commit, component: {AD9A0847-F41E-41F3-9B3C-CA9952D6D7E2} …. At this time I don’t have any details of when the packages will be rebuilt – I will update this posting as soon as I have more information.

When: Monday, December 10, 2012 at 9:30 AM – Friday, December 14, 2012 at 5:00 PM (GMT) Where: Technology House 1 Shottery Brook Office Park Timothy’s Bridge Road CV37 9NR Stratford Upon Avon United Kingdom Hosted By: Technology Associates Technology Associates is one of the leading IT solutions companies specialising in Microsoft Project and Enterprise Project Management Solutions. Since 1990, Technology Associates have provided deployment, consultancy, development and training services to more than 500 organisations including some of the world’s leading companies, and we have an international presence in countries in EMEA, USA, and APAC.     Technology Associates have deployed hundreds of EPM solutions and deployed more than 2,000 Microsoft Project solutions. The company holds Microsoft Gold Competencies in Project & Portfolio Management, Application Integration and as an ISV, along with eight other silver competencies. With such a stong technical tour-de-force we have built a solid reputation for delivering high quality services and solutions, and providing exceptional value for money. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, with Offices in New York, San Francisco, India and Barcelona, and a strategic partner network covering AsiaPac, Middle East and ROW, we work internationally in delivering IT solutions to our customer base in over 39 countries. Find out more at www.techassoc.com Follow us on Twitter – https://www.twitter.com /TechAssoc   Register for this event now at: https://talmanagingps2010101212-rss.eventbrite.com Event Details: Course Description The goal of this five-day instructor-led course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively plan, deploy and manage Microsoft Project Server 2010. Target Audience This course is intended for Administrators, Systems Engineers, PMO Managers, Project Managers, Consultants and other people responsible for the deployment and management of a Microsoft EPM Solution using Project Server 2010 in medium to very large computing environments that use the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 operating system. Typical environments in which they work have the following characteristics: Supported users ranging from 50 to 2,000+ Multiple physical locations Typical products and technologies include Windows Server 2008, Active Directory, Network Internet Information Services (IIS), Load Balancing, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Analysis Services, Failover Clustering, Microsoft Exchange 2007, Microsoft SharePoint Technologies, Microsoft Project Server 2010, Microsoft Office Project Professional 2010, Microsoft Office Outlook 2010, Office Web components, messaging and collaboration platforms, and network security products and technologies. Pre-requisites: Students should have a working knowledge of the following: Microsoft Windows Server 2003/2008 networking. Microsoft Office Project Professional. Basic project management concepts. Course Outline:        Module 1: Planning to Deploy Project Server 2010 Module 2: Installing and Configuring Prerequisites Module 3: Deploying SharePoint and Project Server 2010 Module 4: Configuring Project Server 2010 Module 5: Configuring Project Server Clients Module 6: Defining Project Server Settings Module 7: Managing Project Server Security Module 8: Managing Time and Task Management Settings Module 9: Customizing Project Workspaces Module 10: Administrating Project Server Tasks Module 11: Configuring Demand Management and Portfolio Analysis Module 12: Configuring Project Server Business Intelligence Module 13: Backing up and Restoring Project Server 2010 Module 14: Upgrading and Migrating to Project Server 2010

There appears to be an error currently on our TechNet documentation at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662106.aspx indicating that the version of the Analysis Management Objects required when building an OLAP cube from Project Server 2013 depends on the version of SQL Server you have running Analysis Services.  In fact it does not – and like previous versions of Project Server we actually require a specific version that our code talks to – regardless of which version it will actually be building the cube on.  For Project Server 2013 we require the ‘10.xx’ release so anything from RTM SQL Server 2008 Analysis Management Objects – version 10.0.1600.60 through to the SP2 of the SQL Server 2008 R2 10.50.4000.0 will work.  The only one that does not work in my testing is the SQL Server 2012 version. If you have the 2012 version, or if you haven’t loaded any Analysis Management Objects then you will see the following error when trying to build a cube.   [11/12/2012 10:17 AM] Failed to build the OLAP cubes. Error: The attempt to build the OLAP database on server BriSmithSQL failed, the SQL Server Analysis Services Analysis Management Objects (AMO) client software may not be installed on this server, please install/update the client on this server and retry. The underlying exception was: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.AnalysisServices, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. The SLQ Server 2008 R2 SP2 version is the most recent and can be found in the feature pack at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30440 and you are looking for SQLSERVER2008_ASOLEDB10_amd64.msi (which is the x64 version).  Direct download link is here . I haven’t tried building a cube against a SQL Server 2008 instance – that may need to use the earlier SQL Server 2008 feature pack – most recent is SP2 if you find the R2 version above doesn’t work. For those still having a hard time finding where we have hidden the cube building option (I admit it – it took me a while…) can find it either by going to Central Administration, Manage Service Applications, Project Server Service Application (or whatever you have called yours) and then use the drop down for the specific PWA site you are interested in and click Manage which will take you to the following page – and OLAP Database Management is the link you need: Or Central Administration, General Application Settings, and click Manage under the PWA Settings header. If you go this root you may need to change the PWA site in the upper right hand corner. And if you are using the preview of Project Online (or you are reading this after the full release) and can’t find the link to OLAP cubes it is because that feature isn’t available in the online version.

The Project 2013 SDK download is updated for the RTM release of Project 2013. In addition to articles, references, and code samples that are updated from the July release of Project 2013 Preview, the SDK also includes a local copy of VBA Help for Project Standard and Project Professional. You can install the downloaded Project2013SDK.msi file on computers that are running Windows 8, Windows 7 (and a couple of earlier Windows releases), Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2012. When you install the SDK on a Windows 7 machine, the SDK contents are accessible from the Start menu. Figure 1 shows, for example, that the Microsoft SDKs folder contains the Project 2013 SDK folder, which contains links to three files. From the hierarchical context of the Start menu, it is clear that the Documentation node is contained in the Project 2013 SDK folder. Similarly, if you install the SharePoint 2013 SDK download and the Apps for Office and SharePoint SDK download , they each create a folder in Microsoft SDKs , and each SDK has a Documentation node within its folder. Figure 1. Using the Project 2013 SDK from the Windows 7 Start menu The problem Windows 8 does not have a Start menu, it has two related Start screens. After you install the Project 2013 SDK download, and scroll the main Start screen to the links for the installed files, you can see the same three links as in Windows 7. (To see the Welcome Guide on the Start screen, you can search for Welcome.rtf , open it in Internet Explorer, and then pin Welcome Guide to the Start screen.) But , the Start screen in Windows 8 is not arranged in hierarchical folders. In Figure 2, it is not clear what the Documentation link is for. Figure 2. Using the Documentation link to the Project 2013 SDK, on the Windows 8 Start screen The problem is worse if you also install the SharePoint 2013 SDK and the Apps for Office and SharePoint 2013 SDK. You would then have three Documentation links and three Welcome Guide links, each of which goes to a different SDK. If you right-click one of the Start screen icons, the icon shows a check mark, and the Start screen shows options at the bottom (see Figure 2). If you choose All apps at the bottom right of the screen, Windows 8 shows lists of installed apps within top-level groups. For example, the Microsoft SDKs group contains links for all of the Office, Project, and SharePoint SDKs that you install; there are no subfolders to distinguish which links go to which SDK. In Figure 3, only the Project 2013 SDK is installed, and the links have the same names as in Figure 2. Figure 3. Using the Project 2013 SDK links in the Apps view, in Windows 8 The workaround (for now) On a machine with Windows 8, you can install one SDK at a time, and then rename the links on the Start screen, before installing another SDK. To install Office, Project, and SharePoint SDKs on Windows 8 Log on to Windows 8 as an administrator. Install, for example, the Project 2013 SDK. On the Start screen, right-click the Documentation icon, and then choose Open file location at the bottom of the screen. On the Windows Desktop, rename the Documentation link as Project 2013 SDK Documentation , and then choose Continue in the File Access Denied dialog box (see Figure 4). Figure 4. Renaming the Project 2013 SDK links in the Desktop view Similarly, rename the VBA Reference link as Project 2013 VBA Reference , and rename the Welcome Guide link as Project 2013 Welcome Guide . With the mouse pointer in the lower-left corner of the screen, choose the Start pop-up icon, and then scroll to the Project 2013 SDK icons (see Figure 5). Figure 5. Using the renamed links in the Start view Install the Apps for Office and SharePoint 2013 SDK, and similarly rename the Start screen links. Install the SharePoint 2013 SDK, and similarly rename the Start screen links. Figure 6 shows the Microsoft SDKs group with the renamed links in the All apps view. Figure 6. Using the renamed links for all three SDKs in the All apps view In future releases, the Office, SharePoint, and Project SDK downloads will be reconfigured so that they install with non-conflicting link names on Windows 8.  

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises   Lync and Learn is an online session led by Office 365 Product Managers and Community  Grid members .  Lync and Learn sessions address different Office 365 subjects and scenarios and is beneficial to anyone who wants to learn more and expand their knowledge of the Office 365 suite. View past Lync and Learn sessions  here .        Many users move to Office 365 for its convenience and reliability of email. But Office 365 comes packaged with other products that can help greatly increase anyone’s productivity and collaboration.  One of the most powerful Office 365 tools is SharePoint Online. Some users may not  be aware of the potential of SharePoint Online, or may want to brush up on some SharePoint best practices. If this sounds like you, then be sure to join our next  Lync and Learn Session . Join  John Ventry  for an informative session detailing what SharePoint Online is and how it can instantly improve productivity and collaboration for you and your organization.   John Ventry  is a 17 year technology professional, currently working as an Office 365 and SharePoint consultant for St. Charles Consulting Group. John works with clients on developing SharePoint solutions, creating mobility strategies around SharePoint and Office 365, SharePoint migration strategies and Office 365 administration.   To join this webcast please join us on  Thursday November 15 th , at 10:00 AM Pacific Time  and  see the Lync information below.  Download and save the calendar invite  on this blog post. We are excited to see you there!  Interested in being our next Lync and Learn presenter?  Learn how to join the Office 365 Grid  and become an Office 365 Lync and Learn presenter. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————— Presenter:  John Ventry , Office365/SharePoint Consultant for St. Charles Consulting Group, and  Office 365 Grid member . Date/Time: Thursday May 15 th , at 10:00 AM Pacific Time . (1 Hour presentation) Live Meeting Information: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Join online meeting https://join.microsoft.com/meet/v-joshto/F00T8BQY Join by Phone  +14257063500         +18883203585           Find a local number   Conference ID: 27579341     Forgot your dial-in PIN?   |    First online meeting?      [1033])!] ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Audience: Live@edu; Office 365 for education Editor’s Note: Please be sure that the contact information for your institution is up to date to be alerted to key Live@edu to Office 365 upgrade information. Sign in to the Service Management Portal (SMP)  and update the critical notification field with all updated contacts for your institution.  The upgrade to Office 365 for education is happening! By September 2013, all Live@edu customers will need to complete the upgrade to Office 365 for education. Microsoft will start scheduling more academic institutions for the upgrade soon, but you don’t have to wait. Sign in to SMP  and see if your institution is ready to upgrade, or contact Live@edu  support to initiate the upgrade.   Get started today. Download the upgrade planning worksheet and start planning. The Office 365 upgrade builds on your existing Live@edu deployment, and we provide the tools and guidance at each stage—including the new upgrade planning worksheet . You can use this tool to track the tasks required before, during, and after the upgrade.   To get started Download the upgrade planning worksheet and start by selecting the scenarios that apply to your Live@edu deployment. Prepare for the upgrade. Visit the upgrade center to better understand each step in the upgrade process. Start the upgrade to Office 365. Remember, after the upgrade your domain will be subscribed to Exchange Online Plan 1 automatically – which is free. You can then change your subscription to any of the Office 365 academic plans to give your students, faculty, and staff access to more services. Check out all the Office 365 academic plans .   Live@edu administrative changes coming December 2012 While Live@edu accounts are being prepared for the upgrade to Office 365, a few administrative features will not be available beginning December 3, 2012 until your institution’s upgrade to Office 365 for education is complete:  Add or remove accepted domains to your institution subscription. Change your institution mailing address and phone number within the SMP. Modify co-branding. Note Co-branding is not supported in Office 365 for Exchange Online. If you need to take any of these actions, consider doing so prior to December 3 . Once your institution completes the upgrade, you’ll be able to make these changes on Office 365.   Regards, The Live@edu to Office 365 team

We have some guidance out on TechNet about the recommended settings for SQL Server for our various versions – so for example we recommend for 2010 at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662107.aspx that you set AUTO_CLOSE to OFF, and AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS_ASYNC to ON.  But we don’t always make a show of telling you what NOT to change.  A good guide is to leave things at the default settings unless we recommend otherwise.  For example, in 2013 we don’t recommend the UPDATE_STATISTICS settings because we, like SharePoint in 2010 and 2013, now have a timer job for that purpose. One good example of this was a case I worked today with my colleague Vikram.  The customer had an issue connecting from Project Professional to PWA – the error was “The following job failed to complete.  Job Type: Load, Error ID: 42(0x2A), Error Description: An internal error occurred.  My apologies if you are reading this having searched for that error – it has many causes and this one is probably way down the list of likely ones…It usually means it couldn’t get the enterprise global from the database.   In this case we could reproduce the issue with the customer’s database, and soon found the SQL error that was being thrown (The ‘More Info’ button in the dialog, the ULS logs and SQL Profiler helped here)  – “Arithmetic overflow error converting numeric to data type numeric” as a result of executing the stored procedure MSP_WINPROJ_READ_ENTERPRISE_CUSTOM_FIELDS, which also has an set of GUIDs passed in that represent the custom fields of interest.  However, all the data looked OK, and it even gave the same error with a NULL parameter indicating no custom fields.  After trying a few things it was obvious from debugging the stored procedure that it had some issue with the eglobal version number – which should have been ‘14’ but was showing blank. The value in the database being queried was just fine – 14.1461140000, the same as on a working system I was comparing with.  But it got me thinking – it turns 14.1461140000 into 14 – I wonder if some DB options would make that give an arithmetic overflow?  Sure enough – the database had an option set to True for Numeric Round-Abort – so this implicit cast was being aborted. I thought I’d also look to see how 2013 behaved with this wrong setting – and as I expected it also failed, but with a slightly different (but no more helpful) error on the client side (please click the link if you too see a message that you feel could be more helpful – I did…) – though to be fair the failure is slightly different just caused by the same root cause. But at the back end it is very much more helpful!  In the ULS logs I saw: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): Error 1934, Level 16, State 1, Procedure MSP_UPDATE_USER_ACTIVITY, Line 14, Message: UPDATE failed because the following SET options have incorrect settings: ‘NUMERIC_ROUNDABORT’. Verify that SET options are correct for use with indexed views and/or indexes on computed columns and/or filtered indexes and/or query notifications and/or XML data type methods and/or spatial index operations.  This is a great example of the improvements to logging we now have in 2013 to try and ensure that the log will give us the full answer – rather than just being a clue as to where we should go and look next.

In Project Server 2010, Project developers were able to create Project Workflows using Visual Studio 2010. In Project Server 2013, we enabled creating the workflows with SharePoint Designer , which makes it much easier and faster to create Project Workflows. In that blog post , we showed how we have simplified the workflow creation for Project using SharePoint Designer 2013. We are, however, still supporting creating Project Workflows with Visual Studio for the more complex set of workflows, and in fact, have also made it easier to create Project Workflows with Visual Studio 2012. Below, we are going to use a sample two-stage workflow to show how you can create workflows with Visual Studio 2012: 1. Creating the Workflow solution: File Menu> New> Project> Office/SharePoint> SharePoint solutions > SharePoint 2013 Project. Give this project a name, and hit OK: In the customization wizard, enter the address of the PWA web you’d like this workflow to be published to. Then, pick the sandboxed solution option to limit this workflow to this particular PWA web: 2. At this point, the project you’ll see the empty canvas. In the Project Menu, click on the Add New Item, and from the Office/SharePoint tab, select Workflow, enter a name, and hit Add: Then, in the customization wizard, pick Site workflow: Then, pick the history list and the workflow tasks list from that site. We recommend that you use the default lists since a number of PWA UI entry points, use these default lists. Then, hit Finish: 3. Now, we need to set up the environment to use the Project Server activities. In the toolbox, right click and click on “add tab”, and call the new tab “project server”: Then, right click on the “project server” tab and click on “choose items” from the menu, and you’ll see this dialog: In the dialog click on Browse, and navigate to where the workflow dlls are located. They are usually located in C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions15TEMPLATEWorkflowActivities You’ll see two activities dll there. Open the project server one (Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.WorkflowActivities.dll), and hit OK. You are now taken back to the “toolbox items” dialog, and highlights the selected corresponding activities. Hit OK to continue. 4. You might see a “sequence” in the canvas. Delete that, and from the toolbox, pick Flowchart and add it by dragging it into the main area. This flowchart will be the main container of all the stages of the workflow: In the toolbox, click on Control flow, and add the sequence inside that flowchart. Throughout this sample workflow, we will use sequence to represent workflow stages in Visual Studio. This is similar to how SharePoint Designer handles each stage, i.e. each stage is equivalent to a separate sequence in Visual Studio: Rename the sequence to “Create_Stage” by clicking on the “Sequence” and start typing to change the name. Drag the line from start to “Create_Stage” to connect them together:   5. Double click on the “Create_Stage” to drill into this sequence a. Under project server in toolbox, add the “EnterProjectStage” and “ExitProjectStageGate” activities to the sequence. These two activities are required in any of the PWA stages in Visual Studio. b. In the properties of “EnterProjectStage”, change the StageID to the Stage ID of the particular stage you’d want this sequence to represent. You can find the stage ID in the URL of that stage, and is available if you navigate to that stage in PWA Settings > Workflow Stages, and then click on the particular stage. Since stageID is a string, the ID should be provided in quotation marks. c. Put another sequence between “EnterProjectStage” and “ExitProjectStageGate”. Essentially, everything in this sequence is what is represented in the text-based designer in SharePoint Designer stage definition. d. From project server item in the toolbox, drop the “waitForProjEvent” activity in that sequence: e. Change the EventName property to “OnProjectSubmit”. The other supported Event Names are “OnProjectCommit” and “OnProjectCheckIn” 6. In the breadcrumb, click on Flowchart to go one level up. Add another sequence after Create_Stage and call it Finished_Stage, and connect the wire from Create_Stage to the Finished_Stage: 7. Similar to the Create_Stage, add the EnterProectStage and ExitProjectStageGate activities to the sequence as well as the WaitForProjectEvent activity in the middle, and set the properties accordingly:     8. This completes building the workflow in Visual Studio. However, in order to make sure that the workflow can be properly published to the PWA, we need to make a few more changes in the xaml files of the project: From solution explorer, pick “Elements.xaml” under the workflow node a. Replace the WSEventSourceGUID with the following so that the workflow is correctly identifies as a project workflow: b. Inject the following properties under the “Url = WorkflowStartAssociation”:                         9. Now that everything is set, and the workflow is ready for publishing, click on the “Build Solution” under the Build menu, and then click on the “Deploy Solution” under the Build menu. The wsp file is now deployed to the site. You can also find a copy of the wsp file in the file system, under [project name]> bin> debug Now, the workflow will show up in PWA. If you navigate to PWA Settings > Enterprise Project Types, and create a new Enterprise Project Type, you will see this workflow as one of the options in the workflow dropdown list. For more information, see Getting started developing Project Server 2013 workflows in the Project 2013 SDK.