Myself and Adrian Jenkins are attending and presenting at the Project Conference 2012, March 19th to the 22nd in Phoenix Arizona and will be delivering a couple of the sessions. The sessions are planned to be one about the February 2012 Cumulative Update for Project and Project Server, and the other one will be a guide to troubleshooting Project Server – looking at some of the tools we use in support to help identify issues. But if there are some specific scenarios or tools that you are especially interested in then we would be delighted to consider these for inclusion in the sessions. The conference is your chance to hear great things from our partners, customers and of course Microsoft – and here is your chance to let me and Adrian know exactly what you’d like to hear from us.
Looking forward to meeting friends old and new in Phoenix!
Sorry for the delay in getting this posting out. Vacation and an unusual amount of snow are a couple of the excuses, and if you missed the webcast then you can view here - https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032493964&role=attend&pw=5A2EBE71
Also if you are thinking of watching this or future TechNet webcasts then I’ll remind you that you will need the Live Meeting client install which can be obtained from here http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/CD010254990.aspx. – but on to the questions – thanks for all of you who attended and for the great questions!:
Q: What is the risk of applying the December Cumulative Update on the server but not on the client? Is it highly recommended to always keep them in sync, or is it acceptable to have some clients that are not patched to the same CU as the server? A: There is no dependency between the client and server, and although to be fully patched you should update both there is no risk (beyond not having some of the fixes) if you update the client or server independently. Once you have patched the client it is also worth ensuring no un-patched clients can connect by use of the Server Setting to set the minimum client patch level that can connect (2010 only) Q: Ref 30900 – the fix relating to custom calendars - is that custom enterprise calendar, or custom calendar in template, or both? A: In this case, it is whether or not the template has the custom calendar associated with it. For example, suppose you have a custom calendar that is the base calendar for some tasks within your project. It is in this case that the PSI method would fail as it attempted to reconcile the calendar. Q: The Save Error 9000 is a very generic message. Can you repeat the exact issue for which this fix was designed? A: The scenario is this. As you save your project from Project Professional, you see the 9000 error and your project does not get saved. We found about four different conditions where duplicate IDs or objects such as views could appear and it's because of these duplicates that the save process failed. We've added fixes on both the client and server to address these various conditions. As Brian states, there could possibly be other conditions that could lead to this issue and so time will tell. As mentioned – you don’t need to install both server and client fixes – they are independent – but to get full protection you will. Q: In regards to Timesheets in Single Entry Mode, if a timesheet is submitted and accepted with actuals against 3 projects, and later one of those projects is deleted, and then someone deletes that timesheet and attempts to create a replacement timesheet, currently that results in an error. (The timesheet line items from the deleted projects still remain and seem to stop the new timesheet from being created.) Does this CU address this? The issue is that there is an "orphan" timesheet line record. A: With the December CU the practice of deleting timesheets should be reviewed within your organization as the behavior changes – but it should not give an error. When the timesheet is re-created it will re-load the current tasks with any current actual work that has been accepted. The deleted project will no longer appear. The specific error mentioned isn’t familiar – so there may still be a risk of it occurring – possibly related to pending actions? Q: You spoke about graphical indicators disappearing occasionally after changes have been made to their enterprise field definitions. Are there other graphical indicator problems.... such as enterprise fields showing incorrect indicators after changes made to their field definitions? I experienced some problems in one of my deployments but I believe the issue was a wrong indicator not a missing indicator. The problem seems to have gone away when I created new fields in the production site. Forum postings gave me the impression the December CU would address this. Any comments on the status? Are all of these graphical indicator problems resolved now? A: We have certainly addressed a number of issues with graphical indicators – it could be possible to see the wrong indicator if a condition of a formula calculation gives an unexpected result and no indicator (or an existing indicator) meets the resultant condition. We’d be keen to hear of any reproducible steps that are still giving bad results. Q: I know that for Project Server 2007 there was a tool (P12ACTool) that could be run against the environment that would check for standard issues behind the scenes and provide steps for resolving those issues. This was used in my past as a preventative step to keeping the environment up to par. Is there a similar tool for Project Server 2010? A: There is a tool that we use for 2010 (P14ACTool). It is used on support incidents under the direction of a support engineer and not publically available. I does require some interpretation of the results and can give false positives which is why we like to be involved with the customer using the tool. We do appreciate that some partners make extensive use of the tool with their customers and are reviewing a version of the tool that we could make more available – watch this space. We are also investing a lot in diagnostics at Microsoft so expect some new automated packages sent to you from CSS to aid in collection of data. Q: What is the status of the fix for the 2010 client issue with "Save and Send" where the data is not actually saved to the Server? A: Although I remember hearing about a condition like this I tried some tests after the webcast and I was not able to reproduce or find a bug in our database. I’d welcome any repro steps so we can address this if it is still an issue. Q: We have a couple of different 2010 client machines running the Oct and Dec CU, and the links between tasks are vanishing and then reappearing, resource usage view is jumping around between resources when modifying planned time phased actual work, and indicators in the status line (at the bottom) are vanishing - is this a known issue? (not seen it prior to August client CU for 2010) A: We have a hotfix request in for the resource usage view jumping – likely to be fixed in April CU – not familiar with the other issues – repro steps would aid our investigation here – and confirmed this was more a display problem than the links really going away. Possibly a UI handle problem? Q: Should you be able to update Actual Start in the Project Center views in edit mode A: This has not been exposed for editing in the web – possibly because of the knock on effect on the task and assignment start dates. Q: Are either of you going to be at the Project Conference? A: We can now confirm that yes, Adrian and I will be at the Project Conference in Phoenix, along with others from the support team: our Manager Larry Block and escalation colleague Aik Chen. Also look out for my next blog post asking what you would like us to talk about at the conference. Q: This is a general Project Server config question: Is there a way to report time a the high level and not at task level because we just record total time of a project? Meaning entering the time A: Reporting in the timesheet is possible at the top level Q: Not really project related but I recently downloaded a few of the past webcasts in wma format. But I can't sync any of these to my Zune. Any suggestions? A: I tried this by downloading and syncing to my Windows Phone 7 and also this didn’t work. I’ll see if I can find a way of doing this – I’m sure using Expression Encoder would allow re-encoding in a suitable format. ***Update - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932614 gives good instructions for doing this with Windows Movie Maker, Expression Encoder 4 or Windows Media Encoder - just trying it now... *** Q: What is the correct way to submit a Design Change Request? Is there a website we can go to directly? A: No web site – usually giving feedback through your account team, or to a support engineer will get through to the right people.
Q: What is the risk of applying the December Cumulative Update on the server but not on the client? Is it highly recommended to always keep them in sync, or is it acceptable to have some clients that are not patched to the same CU as the server?
A: There is no dependency between the client and server, and although to be fully patched you should update both there is no risk (beyond not having some of the fixes) if you update the client or server independently. Once you have patched the client it is also worth ensuring no un-patched clients can connect by use of the Server Setting to set the minimum client patch level that can connect (2010 only)
Q: Ref 30900 – the fix relating to custom calendars - is that custom enterprise calendar, or custom calendar in template, or both?
A: In this case, it is whether or not the template has the custom calendar associated with it. For example, suppose you have a custom calendar that is the base calendar for some tasks within your project. It is in this case that the PSI method would fail as it attempted to reconcile the calendar.
Q: The Save Error 9000 is a very generic message. Can you repeat the exact issue for which this fix was designed?
A: The scenario is this. As you save your project from Project Professional, you see the 9000 error and your project does not get saved. We found about four different conditions where duplicate IDs or objects such as views could appear and it's because of these duplicates that the save process failed. We've added fixes on both the client and server to address these various conditions. As Brian states, there could possibly be other conditions that could lead to this issue and so time will tell. As mentioned – you don’t need to install both server and client fixes – they are independent – but to get full protection you will.
Q: In regards to Timesheets in Single Entry Mode, if a timesheet is submitted and accepted with actuals against 3 projects, and later one of those projects is deleted, and then someone deletes that timesheet and attempts to create a replacement timesheet, currently that results in an error. (The timesheet line items from the deleted projects still remain and seem to stop the new timesheet from being created.) Does this CU address this? The issue is that there is an "orphan" timesheet line record.
A: With the December CU the practice of deleting timesheets should be reviewed within your organization as the behavior changes – but it should not give an error. When the timesheet is re-created it will re-load the current tasks with any current actual work that has been accepted. The deleted project will no longer appear. The specific error mentioned isn’t familiar – so there may still be a risk of it occurring – possibly related to pending actions?
Q: You spoke about graphical indicators disappearing occasionally after changes have been made to their enterprise field definitions. Are there other graphical indicator problems.... such as enterprise fields showing incorrect indicators after changes made to their field definitions? I experienced some problems in one of my deployments but I believe the issue was a wrong indicator not a missing indicator. The problem seems to have gone away when I created new fields in the production site. Forum postings gave me the impression the December CU would address this. Any comments on the status? Are all of these graphical indicator problems resolved now?
A: We have certainly addressed a number of issues with graphical indicators – it could be possible to see the wrong indicator if a condition of a formula calculation gives an unexpected result and no indicator (or an existing indicator) meets the resultant condition. We’d be keen to hear of any reproducible steps that are still giving bad results.
Q: I know that for Project Server 2007 there was a tool (P12ACTool) that could be run against the environment that would check for standard issues behind the scenes and provide steps for resolving those issues. This was used in my past as a preventative step to keeping the environment up to par. Is there a similar tool for Project Server 2010?
A: There is a tool that we use for 2010 (P14ACTool). It is used on support incidents under the direction of a support engineer and not publically available. I does require some interpretation of the results and can give false positives which is why we like to be involved with the customer using the tool. We do appreciate that some partners make extensive use of the tool with their customers and are reviewing a version of the tool that we could make more available – watch this space. We are also investing a lot in diagnostics at Microsoft so expect some new automated packages sent to you from CSS to aid in collection of data.
Q: What is the status of the fix for the 2010 client issue with "Save and Send" where the data is not actually saved to the Server?
A: Although I remember hearing about a condition like this I tried some tests after the webcast and I was not able to reproduce or find a bug in our database. I’d welcome any repro steps so we can address this if it is still an issue.
Q: We have a couple of different 2010 client machines running the Oct and Dec CU, and the links between tasks are vanishing and then reappearing, resource usage view is jumping around between resources when modifying planned time phased actual work, and indicators in the status line (at the bottom) are vanishing - is this a known issue? (not seen it prior to August client CU for 2010)
A: We have a hotfix request in for the resource usage view jumping – likely to be fixed in April CU – not familiar with the other issues – repro steps would aid our investigation here – and confirmed this was more a display problem than the links really going away. Possibly a UI handle problem?
Q: Should you be able to update Actual Start in the Project Center views in edit mode
A: This has not been exposed for editing in the web – possibly because of the knock on effect on the task and assignment start dates.
Q: Are either of you going to be at the Project Conference?
A: We can now confirm that yes, Adrian and I will be at the Project Conference in Phoenix, along with others from the support team: our Manager Larry Block and escalation colleague Aik Chen. Also look out for my next blog post asking what you would like us to talk about at the conference.
Q: This is a general Project Server config question: Is there a way to report time a the high level and not at task level because we just record total time of a project? Meaning entering the time
A: Reporting in the timesheet is possible at the top level
Q: Not really project related but I recently downloaded a few of the past webcasts in wma format. But I can't sync any of these to my Zune. Any suggestions?
A: I tried this by downloading and syncing to my Windows Phone 7 and also this didn’t work. I’ll see if I can find a way of doing this – I’m sure using Expression Encoder would allow re-encoding in a suitable format. ***Update - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932614 gives good instructions for doing this with Windows Movie Maker, Expression Encoder 4 or Windows Media Encoder - just trying it now... ***
Q: What is the correct way to submit a Design Change Request? Is there a website we can go to directly?
A: No web site – usually giving feedback through your account team, or to a support engineer will get through to the right people.
Decided to make this post as we have been getting quite a few questions about this dialog – Operation still processing.
It can occur in various places within Project Web App and in my case I have made it appear in Project Center by creating a new project based on an Enterprise Project Type (called “Large”) that is using a project template which has around 2500 tasks. In this case the full text says
“The Create operation has been queued, but is taking longer than expected to process. To check the status of the creation queue job, visit the My Queue Jobs page. Once the job has completed, the new Large will be listed in the Project Center. Click OK to close the project and return to Project Center.”
This isn’t an error – I wouldn’t even go so far as to say it is a warning – merely an informational dialog that we programmed to appear in cases where whatever you are doing is taking a little while to happen – usually around a minute or so. It could be that something has gone wrong – more likely it is just taking a while – so have a look in the queue. Possibly by the time you have read the message the job has completed. It could be that you are creating a quite large plan from a template – or perhaps there are other jobs in the queue that mean yours is just waiting. So this shouldn’t be treated as an error – unless when looking in the queue you find a bigger problem – like I did when writing this posting…. Possibly more on that in another posting if a reboot of my abused server doesn’t make my issues go away.
*** Update - Turns out in my attempted repro of this condition and using a large template I exposed a bug. If you have a template of around 1600 tasks or bigger (the exact failure point will depend on other factors - could be as high as 4500) then you may experience a stack overflow when this hits the queue in the Project Create stage. It will sit there processing for ever - and if you look in the ULS logs you will see evidence that the queue has restarted -
12/30/2011 07:46:48.20 Microsoft.Office.Project.Server (0x1EF4) 0x2798 Project Server General 8zdb High [SERVICE] ProjectQueueService14: ProcessWatcher signaled 12/30/2011 07:46:48.20 Microsoft.Office.Project.Server (0x1EF4) 0x2798 Project Server General 8zdk High [SERVICE] ProjectQueueService14: ProcessWatcher restarting service for f0bf6473-d0bd-4442-8d28-65466f8f6dc0 PID: 8160
In the application event logs you will see an event 1000 Application Error followed by one or more Windows Error Reporting event id 1001:
Faulting application name: Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Queuing.exe, version: 14.0.6015.1000, time stamp: 0x4d0ffe25
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17651, time stamp: 0x4e21213c
Exception code: 0xe053534f
Fault offset: 0x000000000000cacd
Faulting process id: 0x%9
Faulting application start time: 0x%10
Faulting application path: %11
Faulting module path: %12
Report Id: %13
When the queue restarts it will just attempt the project create again, and after around 4 minutes you will see the same errors repeated. Best open a support incident to let us help you recover from this if you run into it. So far I am not aware of any customers running in to this. ***
This will be the first of a couple of postings about some changes in behavior that you might see once you install the December Cumulative updates. This one is specifically about the client, and the Project Information dialog. In the past if you changed a field value within the Project Information dialog then this would not raise the ProjectBeforeTaskChange or ProjectDeforeTaskChange2 events. The values in Project Information relate to the project summary task (Task 0) and in Project 2007 these events would fire regardless of where the change was made. Now, with the December CU these events are available to you. However, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of:
1. Firstly the event will fire once for the complete dialog, so unlike if you were changing values in the Project Summary task you may need to allow for and have your users prepared for multiple pop-ups (depending what you code does) once they click OK on the Project Information dialog. 2. If you cancel then you will lose all your changes – so make sure users are aware they may need to go back and check the values if for some reason your code rejected one of the changes. For example if you popped up a dialog for each change and accepted a couple then rejected one the values that had been accepted get cancelled too. 3. There appears to be a bug which we are investigating whereby the Project Department field will always raise the event even if it has not been changed.
1. Firstly the event will fire once for the complete dialog, so unlike if you were changing values in the Project Summary task you may need to allow for and have your users prepared for multiple pop-ups (depending what you code does) once they click OK on the Project Information dialog.
2. If you cancel then you will lose all your changes – so make sure users are aware they may need to go back and check the values if for some reason your code rejected one of the changes. For example if you popped up a dialog for each change and accepted a couple then rejected one the values that had been accepted get cancelled too.
3. There appears to be a bug which we are investigating whereby the Project Department field will always raise the event even if it has not been changed.
I know that we didn’t have the issue with the Department field in 2007 – I will double check the behavior of the second bullet and see if that has also changed since 2007 – and if that should be considered a bug too.
*** Update - looks like this wasn't the behavior in 2007 - you could cancel any of the individual events and not roll back other changes - so I'd consider this a bug in 2010. No promises on any fix dates though.
One workaround to avoid cancelling if you thought the Department field had been changed would be to check if the value has actually changed – something like:
If ((Field = FieldNameToFieldConstant("Project Departments")) And (NewValue = vOldValue)) Then Exit Function
should help.
*** Update - you may also see this same issue with the Notes field.
Take a look over at http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectadministration/archive/2011/12/14/microsoft-project-server-and-sharepoint-server-2007-and-2010-december-2011-cu-announcement.aspx for the full details. Also don’t forget the webcast in January giving you the inside scoop on what we are delivering in these Cumulative Updates.
TechNet Webcast: Information about Microsoft Project and Project Server December 2011 Software Update (Level 200) https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032493964&culture=en-us
TechNet Webcast: Information about Microsoft Project and Project Server December 2011 Software Update (Level 200)
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032493964&culture=en-us
A couple of my favorite fixes – the correction of an earlier problem that saw many non-English sites having English headers on the Project Center, My Tasks and Resource Center pages, and a change to single entry mode behavior so that you do not see unexpected changes to your timesheet entered data. More about these and all the other fixes on January 10th Webcast with Adrian Jenkins and me.