Christophe Fiessinger's Blog Updates on Microsoft's Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) and Project Portfolio Management (PPM) offerings
[Updated December 17, 2009: Official HW and SW req are now published in TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee683978(office.14).aspx]
We are happy to the announce the release of the April Cumulative Update (April CU). Cumulative Update (CU) are scheduled every two months, so the next releases will be at the end of June, August, October, December, etc... Please note that the April CU does not contain all the fixes from Service Pack 2 (SP2) which was released on 4/28 (more SP2 info here) so you need to install both SP2 and April CU to have all the latest updates (in either order). We encourage everyone to view the SP2 webcast we delivered last week that discusses the following topics: SP2 Overview (desktop and server), April CU Overview (desktop and Server), Upcoming Portfolio Server SP2 (should be release within the next month), Deployment Best Practices and Next Steps (Windows Server 2008 x64, Project Server 2010, Project Conference 2009); recording and deck will be made available on EPMConnect next week.
Please refer to this TechNet article for deployment guidance: Deploy cumulative updates (Project Server 2007)
After applying the April CU, the database version should be: 12.0.6504.5000 (see article above for instructions on how to verify the installation).
Please refer to this post from the Office Sustain Engineering team for more information about SP2 and the April CU: FAQ concerning Service Pack 2 and the Cumulative Updates for April 2009 for the 2007 Microsoft® Office System and Microsoft Office servers
Knowledge Base Articles and Downloads
Related links:
I am pleased to announce the release of two key assets to assist customers with Microsoft Project Server 2007 capacity planning: a white paper and a Visual Studio performance lab kit. This effort was led by Antonio Gazzeri, Lead EPM EMEA Architect from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS). These performance lab results clearly demonstrates Project Server 2007’s ability to scale to meet the demand of large enterprise deployments.
The white paper answers the following often asked questions:
This white paper contains a description of an actual performance tuning lab for Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. The first chapter (“Running a Project Server 2007 Performance Test Lab”), describes how to run performance tests against a Office Project Server 2007 deployment by using Visual Studio Team System 2008 and a set of community-based tools built for the purpose. The second chapter (“Test Environment”), documents the specifics of the lab environment that was used for the tests we ran for collecting data for this white paper. The third chapter (“Test Results”), describes in detail the test scenarios that were conducted, and it summarizes the data collected for every scenario.
This white paper contains a description of an actual performance tuning lab for Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.
The first chapter (“Running a Project Server 2007 Performance Test Lab”), describes how to run performance tests against a Office Project Server 2007 deployment by using Visual Studio Team System 2008 and a set of community-based tools built for the purpose.
The second chapter (“Test Environment”), documents the specifics of the lab environment that was used for the tests we ran for collecting data for this white paper.
The third chapter (“Test Results”), describes in detail the test scenarios that were conducted, and it summarizes the data collected for every scenario.
The Project Server 2007 Performance Lab Kit contains two Visual Studio solutions/tools to help you test your farm environment for capacity planning purposes: the “EPMTestTools” and the “EPM Stress Test” solution.
Expect an article on Project Server 2007 capacity planning guidance and best practices (learned by MCS for the lab above and during numerous large scale customer deployments worldwide) in the near future.
The Project 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) recorded webcast delivered on April 30 and deck are now available on EPMConnect.
The following topics were discussed during the webcast:
Links:
Following this SharePoint 2010 announcement today: Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements please note the following requirements for Project Server 2010
Please find below two recently published article on TechNet to help you migrate your existing Project Server 2007 farm to 64-bit:
Finally please encourage your customers and partners to attend our upcoming Microsoft Project Conference 2009 in September to learn about Project 2010.
Announced at TechEd this morning; Office 2010 Technical Preview for Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Communicator 2010, Access 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Publisher 2010:
I had a Twitter account for almost a year but never used it, Doug McCutcheon reminded me I should join the trend, so let’s give it a try and see it’s potential value! Follow me at cfiessinger.
I still think blogging is a lot more useful to the EPM community but I might be wrong :)
Please find attached my favorite list (OPML file) of related Microsoft Project RSS feeds. It’s a great way to stay up to date on what’s happening in the Enterprise Project Management world. For instance all the RSS under Microsoft Content contains updates to all key content produced officially by Microsoft whether it’s a Knowledge Base article about Service Pack 2 or the latest “How-To” article on project desktop. Under Non-MSFT blogs you will find a lot of usual suspects, mainly Microsoft Project MVPs.
Last but not least I’m using FeedDemon from NewsGator to track all these and more (I have a large SharePoint list as well).
The Microsoft Project Conference 2009 site has just been updated with the following information:
There won’t be another worldwide Project Conference elsewhere or during the next year so we encourage you to register for Project Conference 2009. Don’t miss the opportunity to “Learn, Connect and Grow” at Project Conference 2009 in Phoenix, AZ from September 14th-17th, 2009.
This year’s conference will exclusively disclose the powerful capabilities included in Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solutions while providing real world guidance on how Microsoft Project 2007 and Microsoft EPM Solutions are helping customers today with Project and Portfolio Management to save money, enhance efficiency and prepare for future growth. With in-depth content and hands-on opportunities to learn about Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft EPM Solutions, obtain unique insights into how the next release will continue to support your business tomorrow.
If you are an EPM Specialized partner register to this pre-conference event to get more in depth training: Get Ready for Project 2010 - Technical Airlift Being Held as Part of the Project Conference 2009.
The Microsoft Project Conference 2009 awards program recognizes customers and partners who have delivered innovative solutions built on Microsoft Enterprise Project Management 2007 technologies. This worldwide event represents a unique opportunity for you to showcase your solutions and to earn recognition from customers, partners and industry influencers. Finalists and winners will be announced on August 15, 2009 and will be recognized at the Microsoft Project Conference 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona, from September 14–17, 2009.
Hope to see you all in Phoenix!
It has been interesting to track the latest Project Management buzz about Twitter during the past few weeks; Tony Zink definitely raised the Project Server bar with this post today: Use Twitter to Track Tasks and Time in Project Server 2007. Please find below a summary of recent blog posts on this topic as well as my feedback so far after using it for the past few weeks. So far I do see value in the Twibe but it will take time to master this new medium. Try it out yourself, it’s fun!
Latest Project Management and Twitter blog posts:
My experience: from Newsgroups, to LinkedIn, to Blog, to FaceBook, and now Twitter…
When I joined Microsoft in 2001, I started to follow and participate in Newsgroups (mainly French newsgroups focused on Microsoft Technologies), then I joined LinkedIn but did not use it much then. In 2006 right before the public launch of Project Server 2007 I saw a need to share knowledge to the outside world about the new version and started blogging on MSDN. Back in September 2007 I moved to Redmond and wanted to keep track of friends and started using FaceBook as a personal networking platform. Since 2001 I have been a frequent user of Messenger to communicate with friends and relatives and since 2005 also a frequent use of Office Communicator to chat with internal MSFT contacts. Then three weeks ago I decided to try Twitter and see how can it help with my day to day job. I’m still mastering Twitter but so far my findings are these:
Where are the Microsoft Project MVPs?
It looks like Twitter is still in its infancies with respect to the Microsoft Project MVP community since not too many have an account (in particular non-US MVPs), Bud Ratliff is leading the pack with 192 updates. The latest addition to the Twibe is Bilal Okour (blog post I am twittering now! follow me or I will follow you).
Other resources I found surfing among many:
Just got released yesterday, time to upgrade your Project Server farm running on Windows 2008 as well as your home computers if you are not running Windows 7 yet :)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/dd262148.aspx
Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista is an update to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It provides customer and partner feedback-driven fixes into a single service pack, minimizing deployment and testing complexity. In addition to all previously released updates since SP1, SP2supports new types of hardware, and adds support for several emerging standards.