Friday, December 11, 2009

Dont forget to "Remember Me"

Scenario: Project Managers working with Data-Analysis in Project Server 2007.

Issue: Two users with the identical user rights attempting to view and work with Data-Analysis views. One user is able to access views without issue while the other gets a message regard a "Transport Layer" issue. Micrsoft Knowledge Base points to similar issues arising when attempting to connect to Analysis Services when working in a Workgroup setting. The blogsphere and community see a similar issue when have the wrong or missing component like MSXML 6.0 or lack of SP1. None of these situations applied to this issue.

We concluded that the user had the proper rights and that Data-Analysis was properly configured based on our testing. The one caveat was that the users would log into their machines locally (due to a policy on their client site) when accessing the Project Server environment.

As we worked through the troublshooting, we focused on the fact that the users were being prompted to login into PWA, because they were logging into their machines locally. One of the users checked off the "Remember Me" option when logging on while the other user left it unchecked when coming into PWA and that was the solution to the issue. The credentials were not being passed to Analysis Services and therefore throwing an error, even though the client was able to see all other areas of PWA.

It was the perception of the client to realize this subtle difference and recognize the solution was just a check box away. "You rock Kathy!"