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Microsoft Project Conference 2012 is the premiere Microsoft-led event to share Project and Portfolio Management best practices and connect with your peers from around the globe. Project Conference will be held in Phoenix, Arizona on March 19 – 22, 2012. Do you have best practices you would like to share on Microsoft’s Project Portfolio Management (PPM) offering? Do you have success stories you would like to share with attendees? Are you passionate about Microsoft Project & Project Server? If you do and are interested in presenting next March, you are invited to propose content for delivery at Microsoft Project Conference 2012! Action Propose titles & abstracts at https://projconfcallforcontent.deregistrationservices.com/ Complete all the required fields carefully so we can better evaluate your entries. Deadline for Submissions: September 30th, 2011 Acceptance Timeline:  Notifications will be sent out by November 15, 2011 Audience Project Conference hosts a mix of audience including audiences including Microsoft PPM practitioners, IT Professionals and Developers, as well as Decision Makers and Business Managers. Breakout Sessions Breakout Sessions are the main content delivery modality at Project Conference other than the keynote sessions. These breakout sessions are lecture-style presentations located in rooms seating anywhere from 100-400 people and are 75 minutes in length. They typically include slides, demos, and a Question & Answer period, and they are recorded and distributed in the MyPC virtual event platform. Content Tracks Business Values & Insights will showcase customers across industries and experienced partners, all sharing success stories and PPM best practices.  Product Session will showcase production information, how to best enhance your project portfolio performance, and solutions that enhance out of the box capabilities and provide integration with line of business applications. Deployment and Administration focuses on deployment, configuration, administration best practice as well as developer sessions on how to extend the out of the box desktop and server products to fits your specific business needs. Travel & Expenses Complimentary passes will be provided for all selected speakers.  Any travel costs including airfare, hotel, etc. will be the responsibility of the speaker. Questions If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the Project Conference Speaker Team at pcspkr@microsoft.com . All proposals will be responded to by November 15, 2011.

I was reviewing a case yesterday and just checking the behavior of SharePoint permissions in Project Web App after an upgrade from 2007 to 2010 – either in place or a 5 database  – thought this might be useful information to blog about.  In 2007 in the Project Web Access site the users would be added directly to the site with SharePoint permissions based on their roles.  These permission levels were identifiable by their names which would be like Project Managers (Microsoft Office Project Server).  In the Project workspaces these same permission levels would be used, and the users again added directly based on their roles within the project.  So this generally be a small subset of the overall user population – just those added as resources on the plan, and potentially others depending on the use of the View Project Workspace permission within categories. Here is the start of the list of permissions on the PWA site – Project workspaces will be similar although the permission levels may be different. In 2010 in Project Web App we now use groups within the /PWA site and the users are added in to these groups rather than directly to the site.  The groups are named Project Managers Group (Microsoft Project Server), Team members group (Microsoft Project Server) etc.   Some individual user accounts will be present in PWA as shown below (blanked out) – these will be site collection administrators and other farm admins. For the Project sites (formerly called workspaces) we still add the users directly, but we have new SharePoint permission levels which are named similarly to 2007, but we have dropped ‘Office’ from the product name – so they are now like Readers (Microsoft Project Server), Web Administrators (Microsoft Project Server). If you upgraded from 2007 to 2010, either in place or 5 DB then you will retain the old permission structure – but also get the new ones too.  So for example you would see all your users individually in the Project Web App permissions, as well as them belonging to the respective groups.  At the Project Site level you would see the users but with both Permission Levels applied – so they might have Web Administrators )Microsoft Office Project Server), Web Administrators (Microsoft Project Server). All of this is the expected behavior and none of this will break anything, although I admit it may look unusual having the two sets of permission levels.  Also it does not leave any security issues as in 2010 if I remove someone from a Project plan then they get taken off the site with both sets of permission levels – and if I inactivate a user they are removed both at the individual level from PWA and also removed from the group that 2010 would have put them in – so all is good.  If you really wanted to then you could delete the permission levels with (Microsoft Office Project Server) in the names, and also remove the individual user permissions on PWA (apart from the site collection admins of course).  Worth checking that the groups contain the members you expect first just in case for some reason the sync hasn’t populated the groups yet.

In SharePoint 2010 when you upgrade to a new Cumulative Update or Service Pack this involves two main steps – first is loading the binaries, and the second is running the SharePoint Server 2010 configuration wizard (psconfig or psconfigui).  SharePoint supports delaying the running of the configuration wizard or even detaching content databases while running the wizard, so that these perhaps slow parts of the process can be managed in a more timely fashion.  If you look at a SharePoint farm that is in this condition you will see in Central Administration, Upgrade and Migration, Review database status, that it says against many of the databases (Content, Config, and Admin Content) – Database is in compatibility range and upgrade is recommended .  However, if you have Project Server installed then you will see against all of its databases (certainly for SP1/June CU) – Database is too old and upgrade is required .  Some other databases such as BDC or PPS ones may just say No action is required if there were no updates for schema in the particular release.  For some CUs you might see this for Project and the SharePoint content databases too. If you ignore this message and try and go to PWA then you will get an error message: Error, Project Web App cannot connect to Project Server. For more information, contact your system administrator. – along with a GUID for tracking the full error in the logs. Looking in the logs you will find the following exception and unexpected level records – which are pretty self explanatory. 08/23/2011 09:46:41.85    w3wp.exe (0x1724)    0x0FC0    Project Server    General    g7ls    Exception    System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Interfaces.DefaultServerFault]: The databases are out of the range of compatibility, upgrade your databases. (Fault Detail is equal to Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Interfaces.DefaultServerFault).    fe5f9380-1f54-4021-a6a2-5fe7d3e321e8 08/23/2011 09:46:41.85    w3wp.exe (0x1724)    0x0FC0    SharePoint Foundation    Runtime    tkau    Unexpected    System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Interfaces.DefaultServerFault, Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Communications, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c]]: The databases are out of the range of compatibility, upgrade your databases.   Server stack trace:      at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.HandleReply(ProxyOperationRuntime operation, ProxyRpc& rpc) … So to answer the question in the title – No, you cannot delay the running of the configuration wizard if you are using Project Server if there are database updates required in the particular patch you have loaded.  Not every CU will require database changes – but rememeber these are cumulative, so the need for the database update will also depend at what level your server is when applying the patch. 

Just for reference – I have added the April and June CU information, and some notes around SP1 versions, to the on-going blog post at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/brismith/archive/2010/09/23/how-to-tell-which-cumulative-update-hotfix-or-service-pack-version-of-project-server-2010-and-project-2010-you-are-running.aspx .

Better late than never.  We realized (with a nudge from Treb) that we hadn’t posted the normal announcement – so now we have – over at Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint 2007 and 2010 June CU 2011 announcement .

A bit of fun for Friday afternoon.  A question came via the forums on the subject of Portfolio Analysis in Project Server 2010 and how a decision would be made on the allocation of resources if the projects had exactly the same priority.  Firstly there is no real optimization logic in the resourcing part of the analysis – most of the heavy lifting happens in the cost analysis – where other metrics can also be taken into account.  In terms of the resourcing this just happens in order of priority – so the top project gets resourced, then the next, and so on.  For any project where there is insufficient of any type of resource then that gets forced out.  But what if you have equal priority projects?  In truth the Portfolio Manager would probably make the call and force in or out appropriately – but it is still technically interesting to know how it happens (well I wanted to know anyway…) I had a play around with this today. So in my scenario I was also interested in seeing how equal cost choices were differentiated as well as equal priority ones chosen to get resourced. And the interesting result is that each appears to make the choice in the totally opposite way! If I have 4 projects of equal cost and equal priority then the order of selection if the budget is not available to do all of them is carried out in the order of their GUIDs (PROJ_UID from the SQL Server database table MSP_PROJECT) – but not in the strict order that SQL might use – that sorts by the lowest order grouping of the last 6 bytes, but in the more straightforward left to right order of the hexadecimal characters. As an example – SQL Server would put D741FE6E-D426-4A41-8BCC-370FDE23A3E4 before 6EDBF314-BFAE-4838-8CBC-6B95E91EC0C5 based on the last group (37.. before 6B..) but the order the Portfolio Analysis uses would take 6E… before D7… So almost random, unless you happen to know (and care) what your GUIDs are. Now on to the resourcing. This happens in entirely the opposite order. So the ‘highest’ value of GUID (still using the full left to right logic) will get resourced first and the lowest gets resourced last. Again – it is really irrelevant how this happens and I’d guess you’d be forcing things in and out based on other criteria rather than some random 32 character hexadecimal string. If you are keeping up – or slightly ahead of me – this opens up an interesting paradox. If I have 4 projects that have equal cost ($20,000 each) and equal priority – and I have a budget of $80,000 – but they each require a resource that I only have one of – then the project with the highest GUID will get selected for resourcing! However, if my budget is just $79,000 then that very same project would be the one that was rejected at the cost analysis stage – leaving the next highest to get resourced!

Quick note to flag two important reading material we have just released. The first one is a free ebook that provides an overview of Office 365 (you should really try it out!): Free eBook: Microsoft Office 365: Connect and Collaborate Virtually Anywhere, Anytime . The second reading is a recurring topic: how do I integrate Project Server with SAP (wrote this already: Microsoft Project Server 2010 Integration with SAP ) and it discusses using Biztalk to bridge SAP with another application: Unleash SAP using the Microsoft Platform: Using BizTalk Server to Bring Two Worlds Together This document describes how to integrate, automate, and simplify business processes using Microsoft BizTalk Server and SAP. Business scenarios are presented involving SAP interoperability and technical patterns for how their solutions can be implemented with an integration platform like Microsoft BizTalk Server. Happy reading!

I’m happy to announce the release of the following white paper PerformancePoint Services for Project Server 2010 written by Emmanuel Fadullon, Delivery Architect Microsoft Consulting Services. This document provides a detailed guide for Microsoft Project Server 2010 users who want to avail themselves of the Business Intelligence (BI) features and functionality provided in the host platform of Project Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition. Specifically, this document covers PerformancePoint Services, which is an inherent service on SharePoint Server 2010. It is important to note that this document is about the mechanics specific to PerformancePoint Services in the context of Project Server data and not about providing sample EPM reports that are written in related BI tools like SQL Server Reporting Services and Excel Services. The use of reports in the document is entirely incidental and used simply to illustrate a PerformancePoint feature or functionality. A peek into Microsoft Project Server 2010’s powerful visualization capabilities discussed in the report below.  For additional information on Microsoft Project Server 2010 business intelligence & reporting please check out Business Intelligence in Project Server 2010 . Overall Scorecard Page with KPI Details Work Forecast by Month Page with Decomposition Tree

There are a lot of questions regarding the upcoming transition from Business Productivity Online Suite to Microsoft Office 365, and we want you to know we’re listening. You can find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions by downloading the transition FAQ , but take a look below as we highlight some of the more pressing questions and concerns. From watching blog comments, forum discussions, and feedback from our customers, here are a few specific questions you’ve been asking: Q. Will I have to pay more for Office 365? No. Office 365 will not change anything related to your subscription pricing or renewal date, with three exceptions: The SharePoint Online Deskless Worker offering will be phased out. Microsoft will contact all customers who are subscribed to the SharePoint Online Deskless Worker and offer them Office 365 Kiosk—which includes both SharePoint and Exchange—for the same price. The Live Meeting Standalone service will be replaced with a Lync service including both conferencing and instant messaging. The Extra Storage offerings will be offered for free to all customers. Q. What has changed between the current BPOS system requirements and the new system requirements of Office 365? The key changes in system requirements are: Office 2003 is not supported Office Communicator 2007 R2 with Office Communications Online will no longer be supported Internet Explorer 6 will no longer be supported Q. How can I make sure Microsoft can communicate with me about my transition? For each subscription that a customer has, make sure that contact details for both the “Account Owner” and “Service Administrator” are up-to-date. “Account Owner” and “Service Administrator” can be checked at the Microsoft Online Customer Portal ( https://mocp.microsoftonline.com ) by clicking the “Subscriptions” tab and “View Subscription Details” in the “Actions” column Make sure that the email accounts specified for “Account Owner” and “Service Administrator” are monitored regularly. Make sure that the domain “@email.microsoftonline.com” is marked as safe, to prevent the possibility of communications from Microsoft Online Services being blocked or filtered.

A very common problem people have when building their schedules is they have more work to do than they have budget for. We hit this problem all the time on the Project team when we are doing feature work (we just have so many good ideas for features thanks to all of your feedback). In the past when building budgets, we’d create multiple plans or even, aak, use Excel. Thanks to Inactive Tasks in Project 2010 Professional, we can now easily do this in Project. Before I get into the details, let me give you a little background. When we are doing budgeting, we don’t look at dates, we just look at how many dev hours are required for a feature and then work to get the rollup number to match our budget. So our initial schedules will often look like this: We’ll schedule all the tasks, once we’ve decided which features and tasks we’re going to do for the coding milestone. Yes, the feature and task names were changed to protect the innocent. Step 1 – Turn on the Project Summary Task. This allows you to see the rollups for your project. You can do this by going to the Format tab and checking Show Project Summary Task. Step 2 – Insert the Work field since this is really what I care about. After doing this, I can see it would take 1,793 hours to complete all of these features. Unfortunately I don’t have that much time. I only have 1,370 hours so I need to do some cutting. Step 3 – Working with my co-workers, I determine the priority of each feature. We track this in a text custom field, Feature Priority. I’ve collapsed the view to Outline Level 1 since right now we only care about features. Step 4 – Inactivate the lowest priority features by clicking Inactivate on the Task Tab – Schedule group. Before:   After: Notice how Work is now reduced to 1,385hrs. The original values are preserved for the inactivated tasks, they just don’t affect the rollups anymore. Step 5 – more cutting since I’m still over my budget of 1,370hrs by 15 hours. I could ask for an exception but I want to see if anything else stands out at this point. I’m going to expand the Medium priority features to get more details. Under feature 2, I see some pri 2 UI work that we could ship without so I’ll cut that. And we are now 1 hour under our budget – yay. At this point, our next steps would be to get the correct devs assigned to the tasks and the work scheduled out. Now clearly I simplified this from the real world experience to make the example fit the blog article but I hope this article shows that you can easily use Project when you are trying to hit an hour or cost budget. If your project is more date driven, you can still use inactive tasks, you’ll just have to adjust your predecessors along the way. From experience the hard part is not using Project, it is getting everyone to agree on the priorities of the various features and agreeing to the cuts. Click here for more info on Inactive Tasks.