January, 2008

A new white paper got published on TechNet:

This white paper contains information that can help you plan and manage each stage of your Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment, including:

• A sample deployment plan
• Checklists to guide you through planning the following aspects of your deployment:
• Information architecture
• Development and configuration policies
• Ongoing operations
• Infrastructure

This document can help IT professionals and business managers to ensure that they have considered all aspects of their deployment plan. View it online at White paper: Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment guide and checklists (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108286&clcid=0x409).

FYI, if you are an IT Pro and since Project Server is deployed on top of WSS or SharePoint Server, and if you have time to spare please respond to this survey to help us improve the next version:

Newly published content on TechNet: Plan for data protection and recovery (Project Server)

Data protection and recovery features in Office Project Server:

• Backup and recovery
• Recycle Bin
• Versioning

Additional data protection and recovery tools:

• Site versioning
• Protecting sites from deletion
• Other Microsoft backup and recovery tools
• Third-party backup and recovery tools 

All you ever wanted to know about Project 2007 Certification thanks to Amit Chaudhry:

Overview Microsoft Office Project 2007 Certification Datasheet

Exams

• 70-632 Microsoft Office Project 2007, Managing Projects
• 70-633 Microsoft Office Project 2007, Managing Projects
• 70-634 Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, Managing Projects and Programs

Frequently Asked Questions

(attached, see bottom of post)

Very useful visual tool for developers: Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map

The Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that helps developers visualize the different programs, servers, services, and tools that will help them build solutions. It allows them to drill down to each product and technology and learn about new features, objects, Web services, namespaces, and schemas required to extend Microsoft Office and build custom Office Business Applications (OBAs).

The Project Resource Kit for Project 2007 has been released today. The Project Resource Kit is a collection of tools designed for use by Project Server Administrators.

The Project Server 2007 Project Resource Kit tools consist of the following tools:

• Portfolio Analyzer Views Migration: Allows an administrator to bulk edit the location of an analysis server for multiple data analysis views.
• Project Server Settings Backup and Restore (Playbooks): Allows an administrator to backup Project Server settings and restore those settings to another Project Server.
• Project Server Data Populator: Allows an administrator to populate Project Server with projects, resources and other objects. Useful for helping capacity and performance testing.
• Project Workspace Site Relinker: Allows an administrator to relink the connection between Project Server and Project Workspace sites.
• View Effective Rights: Allows an administrator to query the Project Server to determine the effective permissions of users against projects or resources.

FYI newly released content:

This article describes the activities that are available to you when you have administrative permissions over Microsoft Office Project Web Access. It presents a broad overview of Project Web Access from the perspective of an administrator.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/projectserver/HA102403241033.aspx?pid=CH101477201033

Executive email send by Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft Corporation:

Helping companies build information systems that empower employees to drive business success is one of Microsoft’s most important priorities. Our goal is to deliver technology innovation that provides the foundation for flexible IT infrastructures that automatically align computing resources to strategic business objectives as business conditions change. This is a vision we call Dynamic IT.

Today, virtualization is providing powerful new tools that will play a critical role in helping us realize this vision. Virtualization is already helping companies reduce costs and improve compliance and continuity. Over the long term, it will help us transform business agility for our customers by making IT systems more flexible and more responsive to changing business needs.

Virtualization is an important technology that is creating significant new business opportunities for Microsoft. While we face strong competition in this market, we are the only company that offers a comprehensive set of virtualization products and technologies that can enable businesses to take full advantage of the power of virtualization to transform the way they deploy and manage IT.

For more information about Microsoft Vitalization solutions please refer to this page: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/default.mspx

The Project Initiation phase is different for every customers and organizations. It typically requires a set of custom attribute to be filled in a custom form and then it needs to go through a custom approval process workflow reviewed by all key decision makers.  While preparing for a  session I will deliver on this topic at the next Office Developer Conference I wanted to give you a preview on how to create a custom Project Initiation Form using InfoPath.

This picture shows an InfoPath form that uses the Project Server Interface to populate required attribute to create a project, please note that since this form got deployed to Forms Services it's web based and thus does not require InfoPath to be deployed on the users' desktop in order to use it:

This following picture shows the properties of PRJZ01 after it got created and published using the above InfoPath form:

Expect more to come on this subject in the near future.

An new version of the popular Tied Mode between Timesheet & My Tasks solution starter was published on CodePlex:

Project Server 2007 Timesheet Tied-Mode Service and Event: http://www.codeplex.com/AutoStatusService

This new version give you the ability to import saved Timesheets into My Task in an asynchronous manner. For instance all TS imports could be scheduled during off peak hour at night for instance.

The functionality is the same as the initial solution starter; how and when the updates are processed is what changed. This new version significantly improves the timesheet queue throughput as well as the overall system stability by reducing the load on Statusing.

A special thank you to Mike Shughrue and Steven Haden from the EPM WW COE for creating and testing this solution starter.