Ed Horn our Senior EPM Trainer beats my score with a 911

Ed Horn recently passed the MCTS 070-0632 exam with a 911. Although I feel happy for him and the good job he did with the exam, I am also concerned it will be brought up every time we co-teach a class...;)

Good job, Ed!

Passed MCTS 070-0632 with a 900

The MCTS exam for Managing Projects with MS Project Professional is definately not a trivial exam. This is not a typical "office" exam. The questions in this exam require you to have a deep understanding of MS Project Professional 2007. If you are prepping with Transcendor or other Prep packages you might see some questions on earned value and the expected need to know alot about the formulas behind PV, EV, AC, etc. I personally only had one question on Earned Value formulas. You need to understand how task type settings work and what happens when resources are added and removed. You also need to understand dependency types and their influence when tasks get shifted around.

Overrall, it is a good exam and requires a breadth of knowledge to pass.

Portfolio Server 2007 SP1 released!

Project Portfolio Server 2007 SP1 released.

I think there may have been some confusion about the release of PPS SP1. Some of you may have thought that it was part of the earlier Office Server SP1 release. The update was published on 3/6/2008 and there are quite a few fixes.

The update itself is relatively straight forward compared to Project Server. It can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7cf44f2c-49d5-4431-bd3e-a10035ec1a39&displaylang=en

Its simply a matter of running the update and a Reboot is required.

Clearing the Queue in Project Server

Sometimes the queue in Project Server 2007 appears to be getting hung up and you find that jobs are not completing successfully from Project Professional. The first steps to take are:
1. Click “Server Settings”
2. Click “Manage Queue”
3. Expand the “Advanced Options” section and ensure that the “Cancel jobs getting enqueued” option is checked.
4. Check the box next to the task you want to cancel and click the “Cancel Jobs” button.

If this still doesnt appear to help then you should:

1. Launch Services
2. Stop the Project Queue Service
3. Stop the SharePoint Timer Service
4. Start the SharePoint Timer Service
5. Start the Project Queue Service

Online and Free Project Server Seminars

MS Project Pros has recently announced that it will offer ongoing free online seminars on various topics covering MS Project Server 2007 and the EPM offering. The topics will be 100-300 level depending on the topics. We will cover installation, configuration, troubleshooting and best practices among other things.

Finding the document URL in MS Office

While working with SharePoint and Office 2007 you often want to locate the URL of the document you are working with. In Office 2003/WSS 2.0 that was much easier to find. If Office 2007 they tucked it away.

Here are the steps for adding it to your Quick Access Toolbar.

1. Locate the Quick Access Toolbar
2. Click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar
3. Click More Commands
4. On the Choose Commands from:
5. Choose All Commands
6. Scroll down to find Document Location
7. Click the Add button
8. Click Ok

Now you can copy and past the document URL Location.

Managing Change Requests with Content types

Your team can manage change requests with SharePoint by Using Office templates and Content Types. First learn how to enable and use content types with SharePoint:
Here is a good article on how to do that:

http://www.bobmixon.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=44

You can then add custom workflow to the document library so that every request that get made gets routed to the PMO and Project Server administrator.

Upgrading to SP1 in a medium farm and having a snapshot restored to an earlier instance

We recently had a situation where an environment we support was upgraded to SP1. Everything went as planned. The MOSS admin VM instance then became corrupted. After investigating the log files we got a message related to the Schema being "inconsistent". This told us that the snapshot that was restored was earlier then the one that had the SP applied to it.

The simple solution was to apply the Service pack to the MOSS instance and it worked perfectly. Just apply the SP the same way you applied it the first time.

PS 2007 and Project Professional SP1

Be careful that your Project Professional users are not updating their Project Professional desktops to SP1 before you rollout the Service Pack across the enterprise.

Enterprise Templates and the status manager

Administrators need to be conscious of the status manager designation when saving enterprise templates. When an enterprise template is saved to PS 2007, the status manager and project manager might be two different users. When this happens, the task updates will be sent to the user that saved the enterprise template. You can check and change the status manager by introducing the column into any of your views.

Timesheet Particulars in MSPS 2007

Overview:

There are two aspects of tracking Team Member time in Project Server 2007. The My Timesheet page in PWA is used for time tracking for work, non-project work, and non-working time.

Time entered on the My Timesheet page is submitted for approval to the designated Timesheet Manager, which is by default the team member themeselves unless the Project Server administrator designates another person to be the Timesheet manager.

The My Tasks page is used for tracking project progress only. Progress entered in the My Tasks page is submitted for approval to the project manager. If a team member saves and submits time on the My Timesheet page, they need to import the actuals to the My Tasks page for submission to the PM.

Process:

The Process is as follows:

PM publishes Project
TM Creates new Timesheet
In "My Timesheets" - Team member complete timesheet (assignments and non-working time categories) with actual hrs per week
In "My Timesheets" - Team member submits timesheet for non-working time categories to be approved by resource manager or self-approved (see Overview)
TM clicks the My Tasks link in the Quick Launch menu.
On the My Tasks page, TM clicks the Import Timesheet button.
On the Import Timesheet page, TM clicks the Timesheet pick list and selects the Timesheet in which he/she entered hours
TM clicks the Import button.
On the My Tasks page, select the checkbox to the left of each task in which the system imported progress from the Timesheet (each updated task shows a red exclamation point to the right of the task name).
Click the Submit Selected button.
PM clicks the Task Updates link in the Approvals section of the Quick Launch menu and has option of Approving or rejecting time submitted by TM’s

Next Steps:

PM’s determine Timesheet classifications
PM Administrator modifies settings and adds classifications
PM Needs to re-publish all projects in order to see settings.

Configuring Data Analysis in MSPS 2007

I will be completing the configuration settings for Data Analysis this week.

Installing MSPS 2007 and MOSS

The steps for installing MSPS 2007 and MOSS are very specific. The most desired state for production is that you are using at least three dedicated servers. One running SQL Server 2005 SP1. One running MOSS and the third running MS Project Server 2007. You can follow the deployment guides provided by Microsoft, but the key is when and how you install certain software on each machine.

Follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have created the appropriate accounts for both installations and in order to run certain services.
2. Make sure all machines are patched and running minimal software as instructed by the deployment guides.
3. Make sure IIS is configured on both the MOSS box and MSPS 2007 box.
4. Install MOSS bits on MOSS box using "Complete" installation.
5. Dont run the SharePoint Config Wizard
6. Install MOSS bits on MSPS box using "Complete" installation.
7. Dont run the SharePoint Config Wizard.
8. Run the Config Wizard on MOSS box
9. Create a New Farm
10. Quiesce the Farm
11. Install MSPS bits on MOSS machine using "Complete" installation
12. Dont run the Config Wizard
13. Install MSPS bits on MSPS box using "Complete" installation
14. Run the Config Wizard.
15. Connect to Existing Farm that was created earlier during the MOSS installation.
16. The MOSS box will now recognize the MSPS box running Project Server.

Getting Started with Project Server 2007

This post is going to deal with getting started with Project Server 2007. Ill be posting installation configuration and other issues related to PS '07 . I will also be discussing some of the new features on the client and the server.