Christophe Fiessinger's Blog The latest news you need to know about Microsoft Project
Following Joel Oleson's 12 Things to do over the Holidays from a SharePoint perspective, here is my list from an EPM perspective. In no particular order:
Happy holidays!
A common question asked after successfully installing SP1 is how do you verify the version numbers of the components updated.
To verify individual Project Server 2007 DLL (and Office Servers) please refer to this knowledge base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936984
Overall after you applied SP1 versions are either: 12.0.6211.1000 and 12.0.6218.1000 for Project Server.
For more information of Service Pack 1 for Project Server 2007 read this.
Thank you to Jim Corbin for helping out put this together.
Pick up Office 2007 power user tips from Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates himself.
People are often curious about which applications and technology I use, and if there are features in the new version of Office that have changed the way I work. Without a doubt, the 2007 Microsoft Office system enables me to get my work done more easily and quickly than before.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102402071033.aspx
Handy tool for your WSS/MOSS/EPM deployments.
Brief Description
Tools to help database administrators manage the performance of Microsoft SQL Server.
Overview
Do you know which databases or applications are using the most resources on your server? How will a service pack upgrade, configuration change or application change affect your production SQL Server? The RML Utilities for SQL Server provide you a set of tools and processes to answer these questions and much more.The RML utilities allow you to process SQL Server trace files and view reports showing how SQL Server is performing. For example, you can quickly see:Which application, database or login is using the most resources, and which queries are responsible for thatWhether there were any plan changes for a batch during the time when the trace was captured and how each of those plans performedWhat queries are running slower in today's data compared to a previous set of dataYou can also test how the system will behave with some change (different service pack or hotfix build, changing a stored procedure or function, modifying or adding indexes, and so forth) by using the provided tools to replay the trace files against another instance of SQL Server. If you capture trace during this replay you can use the tools to directly compare to the original baseline capture.
FYI two important updates from the SharePoint world:
Steve Peschka, SharePoint Ranger and notable guest blogger here who has posted several widely read and referenced entries about authentication, is the primary author of 3 just published authoritative technical articles on forms based authentication in MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0: Forms Authentication in MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 (Part 1 of 3): Introduction Forms Authentication in MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 (Part 2 of 3): Forms Authentication Samples Forms Authentication in MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 (Part 3 of 3): Differences Between Forms Authentication and Windows Authentication
Steve Peschka, SharePoint Ranger and notable guest blogger here who has posted several widely read and referenced entries about authentication, is the primary author of 3 just published authoritative technical articles on forms based authentication in MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0:
Check these two links for more information: What's New in the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SDK What's New in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK
Check these two links for more information:
Subscribe to this new blog to stay up to date with SharePoint developer documentation: The official blog of the SharePoint Product Group
FYI I have just completed the install of Project Server 2007 + Service Pack 1 (and Office Server 2007 + SP1 as well) using Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) from MSDN.
I used this two great posts from Bill Baer to complete the install:
Two screen captures to prove it (check bottom right corner :)
Expect more posts in the future about the advantages of running PS 2007 on W2K8 (IIS7, hypervisor-based virtualization ...).
In the meantime for more information about Windows Server 2008, please check the official Microsoft site here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/default.mspx
Two new Project Server 2007 tools have been released today on CodePlex:
EPM 2007 Log File Report tool
EPM 2007 Queue Watch tool
The Project Server 2007 Queue Watch Tool will help you monitor all queue activities for a specific Project Web Access (PWA) instance. This tool leverages the standard Project Server Interface publically documented web services to query and retrieve jobs in the Project Server queues, further you can configure the tool to filter the information retrieved by Message Types and Job types.
The Queue Watch Tool is available as a WinForms application. It was written by EPM World Wide Center of Excellence (WW COE) to efficiently monitor and troubleshoot queue activities for Project Server 2007 farms.
A special thank you to Mike Shughrue from the EPM WW COE for creating these useful tools, as well as Boris Schollfrom the Product Marketing Group for reviewing the code and documentation.
If you are aware of any useful tools for Project Server 2007 and you would like to share them with the community via CodePlex please send me an email.
About CodePlex
CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. You can use CodePlex to create new projects to share with the world, join others who have already started their own projects, or use the applications on this site and provide feedback. A word about Microsoft’s role: Microsoft does not control, review, revise, endorse or distribute the third party projects on this site. Microsoft is hosting the CodePlex site solely as a web storage site as a service to the developer community.
CodePlex Questions and Answers
Q: Will this tool be distributed in other ways (i.e. DVDs)?
What’s New?
Following are new topics in the December 2007 update of the Project 2007 SDK.
The Project 2007 SDK download includes the following new and updated content:
Thank you Jim Corbin!
On December 11th, 2007 Microsoft released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for the 2007 Microsoft Office System. SP1 addresses the issues of most concern to customers: stability, performance, and security. The service pack includes previously released updates and fixes.
Since Project Server, Project Professional and Project Portfolio Server are all part of the Office product family their respective SP1 was also released at that time.
Before you install the service pack there are some very important things to understand. In this mail I'll try to provide you with the resources you need to be successful in your updates. It is essential that you understand the appropriate links, and thoroughly read the guidance and test out the patch in a separate environment prior to a production rollout.
Overview and What's Included in SP1
For a description of SP1, please refer to the following knowledge base articles on http://support.microsoft.com/ (please note not all KB are online yet but should be shortly):
For a list of issues fixed in SP1, please refer to the following knowledge base articles on http://support.microsoft.com/ :
Critical Planning and Deployment & Installation Information
Next before installing read the following documents which will help you understand the deployment procedure as well as tips tricks and troubleshooting steps:
How to obtain and install SP1?
Patches for all products are available on Microsoft Update (recommended), Office Update and the Download Center with a few exceptions. Windows SharePoint Services and the WSS Language Packs are live on Windows Update and Microsoft Update. For those customers with low bandwidth, CDs will be available for order after January 15th for a small shipping and handling fee from a link off the Download Details page.
For additional information on each release, please see the download details page, in English, for:
Must read before deploying any software update (Service Pack 1 for instance!) to your EPM farm:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/c3b86049-7cba-4b9c-8335-e37fb6e7518a1033.mspx
This article is designed to provide guidance that IT professionals can use to deploy the Service Pack 1 (SP 1) update to a Project Server 2007 deployment. It covers what to do before you begin installation, the installation steps, and how to verify the installation.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 is built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Before installing the Office Project Server 2007 SP 1 update, you must first install the SP 1 update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. See Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 for detailed information about applying the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP 1 update across various deployment scenarios.