July, 2008

From September 29 to October 2, 2008 there will be an EPMU Developer Training Class; it’s a great opportunity to learn how to customize the Project Server 2007 platform and address you business specifics needs:

Office Project Server 2007 Developer Training

DESCRIPTION

This course is designed for Developers extending, developing and integrating with Project Server 2007. This online, instructor-led course provides a deep dive into using Project Server 2007 as a Developer Platform with numerous code demonstrates and hands-on labs. Concepts and topics include architecture for developers, best practices on programming with Project Server Interface (PSI), extending Project Web Access (PWA), migrating applications and security.

Published last week on TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770224(TechNet.10).aspx

and if you want to see sample Excel Services reports in an EPM context, check the following:

http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2008/04/13/new-excel-services-sample-reports-for-project-server.aspx

This is a major piece of IP if you are doing Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client applications for Project for instance :) : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc707819.aspx 

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides developers with a unified programming model for building rich Windows smart client user experiences that incorporate UI, media, and documents.

Summary

The Composite Application Guidance for WPF is designed to help you more easily build enterprise-level Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client applications. This guidance will help you design and build flexible composite WPF client applications—composite applications use loosely coupled, independently evolvable pieces that work together in the overall application.

The Composite Application Guidance for WPF can help you split the development of your WPF client application across multiple development teams. In this type of application, each team is responsible for the development of different pieces of the application, which are seamlessly composed together. The guidance includes a reference implementation, reusable library code (named the Composite Application Library), documentation, QuickStart tutorials, and hands-on labs.

Intended Audience

This guidance is intended for software architects and developers who are building enterprise WPF client applications. The guidance uses a number of design patterns. Familiarity with these technologies and patterns is useful for evaluating and adopting the Composite Application Library.

Robert Hoover, a Technical Writer on the Project team has recently created a blog that will highlight new technical content for Microsoft's Enterprise Project Management solutions. Start a RSS subscription to that blog to stay up to date!

Office Online Content and Demo Videos

• Connect with other Project users Connecting with the community of Project users has now gotten more interesting with the addition of more community resources.
• Project functions for custom fields Examples have been added to this popular article to you customize Project functions and fields.
• Use Project 2007 on Office Live You can now use Office Live to share Project files.
• Watch this: Create an inter-project dependency Watch the video on creating relationships between groups in your organization through Project dependencies.
• Watch This: Split a view Work like the pros. Learn now to split a few for easy task and resource manipulation.

TechNet Content

• Deploy the Infrastructure Update for Office Project Server 2007 This article describes how to install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.
• Report Data Service optimizations for custom fields This article provides some tips and examples that can help optimize custom reporting solutions built for the Reporting Database (RDB) of Office Project Server 2007. If you are interested in building custom views or applying custom indexes on any views in the RDB, read this article for some helper stored procedures that can be used in conjunction with your solutions.
• Project Server 2007 Infrastructure Update Release This white paper covers the new features and changes associated with the Project Client and Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007.
• Back up and restore your farm (Project Server 2007) With the new Infrastructure Update, the globally unique identifier (GUID) and change log of each content database are retained when you restore or re-attach the database. Therefore, if you are reattaching a recent database version, Search does not need to perform a full crawl to integrate the reattached content database. This is a substantial improvement over the RTM release of the product.
• Best practices for viewing proposals This article describes best practices for configuring the Proposals and Activities page in Project Web Access, including tips for obtaining best performance.

Last content published in June refer to: http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2008/06/14/microsoft-project-content-recently-published.aspx

On July 15th, 2008 Microsoft announced the availability of the Infrastructure Update for Office Servers. The Infrastructure Update for Office Servers is a set of updates to improve platform performance and contain several customer driven fixes. The updates are applicable to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Search Server 2008 & Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project 2007.

There are several noteworthy new features and fixes shipped in these updates for Project Server 2007 and Project 2007; specifically:

Project Server

• Timesheets and My Tasks stability and usability improvements
• Queue Management user interface improvements
• Logging Tracing improvements
• Project Server performance improvements
• Project Server 2003 to Project Server 2007 migration fixes
• Database performance improvements to enhance the cube building process and Project Professional Save/Publish scenarios

Project Professional

• Cost Resources calculation fixes
• Improved Custom Fields stability
• Improved local Project Cache stability
• Fixed Excel Import problem

Please read Project 2007 Infrastructure Update Release for Server and Client to learn about its content in detail.

The Infrastructure Updates are available as free downloads to customers via the download center on http://www.microsoft.com/download.

Before you install the Infrastructure Update there are some very important things to understand.  In this post we'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. 

Full installation instructions and guidance is provided in the Knowledge Base articles linked from the download pages for each update along with existing TechNet guidance for patching Office Servers. The links are also included further on in this Q&A, but for reference, the following products require the following updates to be applied.

• If you are running SharePoint Server 2007 you should install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) first and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) second.
• If you are running Project Server 2007 you should install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) first and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) second. You should also then install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) on all Project 2007 client PC’s.

Read more about the new SharePoint features here

Read more about the new Search features here

Read more about the Content Deployment updates here

Knowledge Base Articles

Installation Instructions

It is strongly recommended that you install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 and Office Servers Service Pack 1 before installing the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695).

The installation process will incur server and farm downtime that you will need to plan for – the updates should be installed on all servers in a farm.

• Deploy Software Updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• Deploy Software Updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007 - This article also applies to Project Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.
• Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
• Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Search Server 2008)

Downloads

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1) a prerequisite or installed as part of this fix?
A: No. Our supportability commitments to customers include providing the ability to install hotfixes on the two most recent versions of a product, in this case RTM and SP1. So installing these updates directly onto an RTM server is not blocked and will install some of the fixes shipped in Office Servers Service Pack 1, but only those that are contained in files that are changed by the Infrastructure updates.

Q: Can I uninstall the server updates?
A: No. The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) cannot be uninstalled. Both updates make database schema changes.

Q: Can I install the “Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)” Project 2007 client update without installing the “Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)” on the server?
A: Yes, the “Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)” includes fixes for both client/server communication and local client features, so if you don’t have Office Project Server 2007 but use Office Project 2007 client this update can be safely installed and you will be able to take advantage of all the client updates.

Q: Where can I find information on Service Pack 1 for Project Server and Project Professional 2007?

A: Please check the following: http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2007/12/12/announcing-the-release-of-epm-2007-service-pack-1.aspx

Q: What if I have an issue that isn’t addressed by this update?
A: If your customer has a specific issue that these updates do not address you should follow the Microsoft Support process to log the issue and request a hotfix.