October, 2008

The October Cumulative Update was released on October 28th (please refer to this post: Announcing the release of the August Cumulative Update for Project and Project Server 2007 for more information on Cumulative Updates and the first one released last August).

Please read the following TechNet article for deployment guidance:  Deploy cumulative updates (Project Server 2007)

Knowledge Base Articles and Downloads

The Office Service Pack Team announced Service Pack 2 for 2007 Microsoft Office System.  This new service pack will be released between February and April 2009.  It will contain both client and server updates.  At a high level it will contain the following for Project Server 2007: Improvements around processing status approvals from Office Project Web Access into Office Project Professional 2007

For SharePoint specific updates check this initial post: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/10/24/prepare-for-the-upcoming-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-service-pack-2.aspx

Stay tuned for more information.

We announced this week at the PMI Global Congress the date and location of our next Project Conference.

Microsoft Project Conference 2009 will be held in Phoenix, Arizona from September 15 to September 17 2009. Save the date!

Look for further announcements and the ability to be notified when registrations starts on our official site: http://www.msprojectconference.com/

As of November 14th it’s now official:

Steven Haden and I will be making the following presentation on November 7th at Tech∙Ed IT EMEA Professionals:

Deploying Project Server 2007 in an existing SharePoint Server 2007 Farm

Project Server is part of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution allowing the enterprises to create, select, plan and manage projects over their lifespan; it is made up of the following products, Project Professional, Project Server, and Project Portfolio Server 2007.  This session will introduce the EPM solution, then discuss the benefits of deploying it into a SharePoint Server 2007 farm discussing deployment pre-requisite procedures and best practices.

Beside attending our session :) let us know (use blog email) if you’ll attend and we’ll glad to meet.

It seems SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is broadly used today in Project Server deployments to build custom reports and extract all the gold nuggets from our relational and decisional data stores (SQL Server Analysis Services cubes), specially when I see the success on this post: Services Sample Reports for Project Server

This week I was asked this very good question:

We are planning to develop custom reports in SQL Server Reporting Services for Project Server and the data available in custom reports should be based on the Groups , Categories and dynamic rules defined for that resource in Project Web Access. please provide any ways to achieve this.

So in summary how can I leverage the out of the box Project Server security model and authorization mechanism to secure access to custom SSRS reports?

At the last Project Conference in Seattle and Madrid I had a slide on the subject with the following:

Securing Your SSRS Report

• Filter data based on SSRS User!UserID
• Does not support Form Authentication Out of the Box
• Leverage the Project Server security model using a custom PSI extension (web service)
• Refer to Implementing a Security Extension

So in the end it will require some extra work but it can be easily done by overriding the CheckAccess method from SSRS and leverage the standard PSI security class to ensure a user has access to the reports, check this: Authorization in Reporting Services

Come on join us for this free TechNet webcast on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada).

In this webcast, we describe the elements of the Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 solution (Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007, Application Server, Microsoft SQL Server), and we cover Data Flow components and key areas for scalability. This webcast is part of a webcast series targeted at IT professionals. In the series, we present in detail key aspects to consider when you evaluate, plan, deploy, and operate Project Server 2007. We discuss the main considerations when planning for high-availability deployments—when to scale up and out, points of failure, and software/hardware boundaries.

For more information check the following: Announcing the Microsoft Project Server 2007 IT Professionals TechNet webcast series

check out the latest version of The Architecture Journal on Distributed Computing, an excellent read during your spare time: www.architecturejournal.net

Considerations for Designing Distributed Systems Architectural Patterns for Distributed Computing Head in the Cloud, Feet on the Ground Architecture Journal Profile: Microsoft Robotics Group On Distributed Embedded Systems Using Events in Highly Distributed Architectures Caching in the Distributed Environment Distributed Applications in Manufacturing Environments

It’s amazing to see how the CodePlex community has taken off during the past year. There are valuable tools and code samples being posted by products experts everyday. Please find below the latest nuggets I found that are applicable to your Project Server/SharePoint Server deployments:

Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool http://www.codeplex.com/PAL	The PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) tool is a new and powerful tool that reads in a performance monitor counter log (any known format) and analyzes it using complex, but known thresholds (provided). The tool generates an HTML based report which graphically charts important performance counters and throws alerts when thresholds are exceeded.
SharePoint SUSHI http://www.codeplex.com/sushi	SUSHI is a powerful, user-friendly SharePoint application enabling you to accomplish common SharePoint administrative and development tasks. You can think of SUSHI as a Swiss army knife for SharePoint. What does the name SUSHI stand for? SUSHI = SharePoint Utility with a Smart, Helpful Interface
patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance http://www.CodePlex.com/spg	We plan to provide guidance to customers on how to build SharePoint Intranet Applications. This includes guidance on how to Architect, Design, and Develop applications as well as best practices.
SharePoint Logging Spy http://www.codeplex.com/sharepointloggingspy	A MOSS 2007 utility to allow real time diagnostics of multiple servers in a SharePoint farm using a single console view

and for a comprehensive list of EPM tools and solutions on CodePlex, check the following: http://www.codeplex.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?ProjectSearchText=epm

and also check this What's New in CodePlex?

The following article has just been published on TechNet: Planning for fault tolerance and availability in Project Server 2007   This article provides planning guidance for fault tolerance and availability in a Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 deployment.

Sections includes the following topics:

• Availability
• Clustering
• Hardware redundancy
• RAID configurations
• Server role redundancy
• Log shipping
• Standby servers

Following this post: Latest resources for Project Server and PerformancePoint Server Integration, please find below two key content that illustrates the added value for customers of leveraging Project Server 2007 and PerformancePoint Server 2007.

Please find below the summary slide from the deck delivered at the last Business Intelligence Conference.

TechNet Virtual Lab: Enterprise Project Management and Data Visualization using Microsoft BI Tools and Solutions

After completing this lab, you will be better able to understand how to extend Enterprise Project Management (EPM) data using Microsoft business intelligence tools and solutions.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032392279&EventCategory=3&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

This lab was presented at the Business Intelligence Conference last week. This lab is based on our core Project Portfolio Management VPC released last April which contains the following server products: Project and Portfolio Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, PerformancePoint Server and ProClarity Analytics Servers, and SQL Server Reporting Services 2005.

TechNet live webcast: Performance Management Using Project Server 2007 and PerformancePoint Server 2007 Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:00 PM Pacific Time

The Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution allows users in an enterprise environment to create, select, plan, and manage projects over their lifespan. The EPM Solution includes Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007, Project Server 2007, and Project Portfolio Server 2007. Operational systems such as those built with EPM have a point-in-time view of the world for most of their metrics. As the number and complexity of projects rise, it is critical that you are able to create trend analysis and other performance management reports easily. In this webcast, you learn how to use the Microsoft Business Intelligence suite to augment the suite of built-in operational reports in the EPM Solution to deliver a broad range of analysis to the entire organization. This approach uses Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 to integrate data from EPM as well as other internal systems, such as human resources.  We also cover the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services cubes that ship with Project Server and discuss how you can extend their capabilities by adding additional data and analytics.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032391372&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

This is a repeat of session CL204 that was delivered last week at the Business Intelligence conference in Seattle.

For other past and future EPM webcast refer to the following: http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/epm.aspx