I am pleased to announced the release of two Microsoft Project Server 2010 reporting solutions on TechNet Gallery: Project Burn and Forecast Report and Project Spend Report. Both solutions can be deployed and tested with the Microsoft Project Server 2010 v2 Demo Virtual Machine. These reporting solutions leverages Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services and were created by Emmanuel Fadullon, a Principal Consultant for Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS).

• The User Guide for the Contoso Project Burn and Forecast Report demonstrates how to use the Project Burn and Forecast Report to estimate the projected spend rate (“Average Monthly Burn Rate”) based on the current spend plan, and it also allows you to forecast a spend plan based on a what-if spend rate in a budget-reduction scenario.
• The Contoso Project Spend Report User Guide walks you through using the Project Spend Report particularly the use of a key concept -- a unifying Expense Code, to track Project Total Actual Cost.  The Total Actual Cost is then categorized into its component costs by project work alongside sustainment and common services activities maintained in associated projects in lieu of Administrative Time and Timesheet entries in order to facilitate cost categorization by Expense Code.

Please note that these reporting solutions are not supported by Microsoft Premier Support and instead are meant to demonstrated the rich reporting capabilities of Project Server 2010. We recommend working with Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Partners or MCS to modify these solutions to meet your specific reporting needs.

PS: while on the reporting topic, I also recommend to check Alex Burton’s recent post: SQL Server 2012 & Project Server, Part 2– Business data visualisation with PowerView

Following yesterday’s announcement on the main Microsoft Project blog: Microsoft Project Conference 2012 Session Recordings Are Live! please find below the full list of sessions (by code, presenter’s company and title). I have also attached an Excel spreadsheet with this list to this post (navigate to the end).

Grab you favorite beverage and snacks and enjoy the shows!

PS: there are four outstanding recordings we are still in the process of publishing and I will update this list once they are live.

Now that Project Conference 2012 is behind, I’ve just deployed he recently released April 2012 Cumulative Update (see this post from Brian Smith: Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint Server 2007 and 2010 April 2012 CU Announcement). I’ve put below a few screenshots of the updated products versions. Don’t forget to attend the webcast tomorrow:  TechNet Webcast: Information about Microsoft Project and Project Server April 2012 Software Update

Central Admin view: 14.0.6120.500	Winproj version: 14.0.6120.500
Reporting database version: 14.0.6119.500

Following an awesome Project Conference 2012 (#mspc12) first day yesterday in Phoenix, please visit the Project Conference virtual press room.  

There are lots of great stories I’d like to share with you regarding this week, so please stay tune for future posts!

PS: if you want to get a feel for the event’s pulse and news, please look at the following tag on Twitter: #mspc12

With less than a few days away, it’s hard to share my personal excitement for next week’s Microsoft Project Conference 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s been a busy past few weeks and days preparing for this event, and it’s now almost showtime! It will be the best Project Conference ever, do not miss the two keynotes on Tuesday and Wednesday at 9am and obviously attend as many sessions as possible. I had the privilege of reviewing lots of them and the hardest decision you will have to make is which one to attend! The two sessions below summarizes well the breadth and depth of the event and our products hence my post title:

• 8 Billion Reasons why ARM chose Project Server 2010 
• Closing the Status Loop with Windows 8 Metro and Project Server’s Task Update Feature

I’m looking forward to see you next week! Safe travel.

Exciting day, a few links to get started: Microsoft Announces Availability of Windows 8 Consumer Preview (press announcement) Welcome to Windows 8 – The Consumer Preview (building Windows 8 blog) http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview (product page)

PS: less than three weeks until Microsoft Project Conference 2012, don’t miss it and see you soon!

Following a recent discussion with a consultant, I wanted to re-iterate the quality, depth and number of technical session dedicated to IT Professionals and Developers at Microsoft Project Conference 2012 next month in Phoenix (March 19-22). One easy place to browse technical content is to navigate the session agenda and filter by each audience, or the filter using the Deployment, Administration & Developer track as shown on the right: Beside key topic that all Project & Project Server developers and IT Professionals should know, there is an all-star list of speakers from Project MVPs, SharePoint MVPs, SharePoint Certified Masters, Microsoft SharePoint & Project experts, partners and customers.

To wet your appetite here is a sample of in depth topic of interest with brief comments delivered by Microsoft and outside experts:

•  Best Practices Troubleshooting Project 2010 Deployments – two part series with  Brian Smith & Adrian Jenkins with a combined 35 years of Project experience!
• Tracking Historical Project Activity Data using the Microsoft Business Intelligence Suite – great in depth BI session by Gabriel (a customer) for something customers asks often
• Integrating Data from LOB Systems (SAP, ClickSoft) for Strategic Resource Planning – another popular topic by Tim one of our MVP on how to integrate with SAP
• Extending and Customizing the Project Server 2010 Timesheet to Drive Adoption and Achieve Business Results – everyone wants to customize their timesheets!
• Planning and Executing a Multi-Instance, Multi-Version Project Server Migration – real life feedback and best practices from Brian
• Leveraging Project Server 2010 in SharePoint 2010 Extranet Environments – Ram is a SharePoint expert
• Everything You Wanted To Know About Administering Project Server 2010 But Were Afraid To Ask – another MVP lead session by Rolly, expert and professional trainer
• Integrating SharePoint and Project Server 2010 – Deployment Approaches, Integration Options and making the most of the SharePoint Enterprise Features. – reviewed Giles session yesterday and again this is another must attend for any architect
• Closing the Status Loop with Windows 8 Metro and Project Server’s Task Update Feature – say no more  
• Leverage the capabilities of SharePoint to light up Microsoft Project Server – Keenan is a colleague on the SharePoint team and has a great story for you!

Hard to stop enumerating sessions, but you will hopefully get the point that WE HAVE TECHNICAL CONTENT FOR YOU! The beauty of all these topics is that I believe in sense they are version agnostic and hence it’s never too late to strengthen or fill knowledge gaps on the 2010 platform.  But wait there is more (!), you feel like you know it all, how about taking certifications on site? How about attending the dedicated partner pre-event which will have in depth technical sessions delivered by experts (agenda is here from Jan’s blog); how about attending PC12 post-event training). A master at all of the above then how about learning about ALM, PLM, IPM, and Dynamics/ERP integration?

In summary as a consultant, IT Pro. or Dev. you have no excuse not to attend #MSPC12 and get ignited again!

See you soon!

With less than a month away before the start of the Microsoft Project Conference 2012 (#MSPC12), March 19-22 in Phoenix Arizona, I wanted to take a moment and re-iterate why this is the event you cannot miss next month. As the all-up content owner for this conference I have had the pleasure to review about 170 submissions during the Call For Content phase; and lately I have started doing content reviews with speakers, and trust me there are so many great stories that I just can’t wait to see attendees excited about the quality of sessions we’ll have in Phoenix.

To date we have 97 sessions (including instructor lead labs) and these alone are 97 reasons you need to come to #MSPC12!

Dux did a great write-up on his Top 7 Reasons You Should Attend #MSProject Conference 2012 #mspc12 #pmot, in particular I completely agree this is a unique opportunity to Network with customers, partners, MVPs (experts) and last but not least with Microsoft employees that build, support, sale, deploy and market your favorite product everyday. I personally have made a lot of marketing projects decisions following face to face meetings with attendees, and expect to do many more for the coming year…

As Dux mentioned mentioned in his #5 reason: Keeping up with the Joneses, trends and news is also a very strong reason to attend. Some of you might argue that staying in the office in front of a computer is sufficient to hear and see the pulse, I actually think events like this will give you a much better vision of trends and news with respect to PPM/PM etc… Another fact to support this point, is look at these sessions we’lll have from the two leading PPM analysts: Dan Stang & Matt Light from Gartner: The Gartner perspective: PPM Industry Trends and Adoption Best Practices and Going Beyond PPM – Effectively Manage Your Entire IT Portfolio Decisions with Project Server 2010.

I also think considering the above plus free certifications, training etc. it’s a relatively cheap event with a very strong ROI (return on investment) to one should consider for their business (if you are a partners for instance) or as a career if you are an individual. As my colleague Brian mentioned in this post: To All Aspiring Project Ninjas “Project Conference won't be hosted every year and there won’t be another worldwide Project Conference elsewhere”, so register today instead of regretting tomorrow! And yes we’ll also also lots of fun at the event, stay tune for more information

The first Project Conference I attended was back in January 2006, and I have attended every single one since (October 2007, September 2009) plus dozens of Microsoft lead events like (SharePoint Conference, TechEd, Summit of various sorts etc…) and I truly believe next month will be very unique Project Conference and I expect to see you all there! A bientot!

PS: an adaptation of the #MSPC12 theme I did during the last Seattle snow storm, feel free to use it in your email signature/blog posts etc…

I have seen a few questions recently in the Microsoft Project Server Forum and other in other social platform about the integration of Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Dynamics CRM 2011, and since I delivered a session on this topic at an event a few months ago, I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject. Before I go any further I think it’s important to understand the Microsoft Dynamics CRM offering, hence I recommend you look at our official CRM product portal for a basic understanding of our offering: http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/home At a high level Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers the three solutions:

• Sales Force Automation
• Customer Service
• Marketing

The goal of the session I co-delivered with a CRM consultant was to investigate integration scenarios between the two line of business applications (CRM & PPM) and showcase integration options between the two extensible platform.  We introduced and demonstrated the following two scenario during that session:

Sales to Project Delivery – once an opportunity reaches 80%, a project is created in Project Server	Marketing planning to execution – marketing campaigns are imported in Project Server to leverage the Portfolio Analysis engine to choose which initiatives are align with the objectives based on cost & resources constraints
Demo screenshots:	Demo screenshots:

Due to not only the rich extensibility of both products but also to the ease programming of both, even a marketing person like myself (!) with the help of a CRM trained consultant we were able to built these demos in a few days (including a CRM workflow creating a Project Server project using a standard PSI call). For more information on the extensibility of each please refer to the Developer centers on MSDN:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/Project
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm

If you do not have programming experience on MSFT CRM or Project Server I highly recommend you engage Microsoft certified CRM & PPM partners or Microsoft Consulting Services to help your with the technical aspect of the integration.  The two scenarios/use cases presented above are by no means exhaustive and more can achieve between Microsoft CRM and PPM offerings. In summary integrating Microsoft Project Server and Dynamics CRM offers a strong line of business application and integration is possible today using custom code thanks to their respective rich extensibility. Happy integration projects and see you next month at Microsoft Project Conference 2012 in Phoenix!

Happy new year! Yes I’m sure you are all actively making travel arrangements to attend Microsoft Project Conference in Phoenix next march, specially after this key announcement today: Microsoft Project Conference 2012 Full Session List Announced! Since I know you love to plan and budget I have put together a list of upcoming events Microsoft PPM will participate in (sessions, demo booth, etc.) in the next few months (yes there are plenty of other regional events as well) but these are the ones the corporate marketing team will be involved in. If you have any interest to present and or help with these feel free to contact me via this blog. Stay tune for more information on each event in the future!