Christophe Fiessinger's Blog The latest news you need to know about Microsoft Project
As announced yesterday on the main Project blog: Announcing The Release Of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft Project and Project Server 2010, two major product updates were launched this week:
Plenty of guidance in the post above (including links to TechNet documentation on how to deploy these updates), my 2 cents is not to forget to run PSCONFIG after installing the binaries to ensure your server/farm is actually updated.
I’ve just applied the June 2011 CU (had applied SP1 back in May as shown below) in my favorite PPM demo virtual machine and please find below version numbers from the PUBLISHED database (SELECT * FROM VERSIONS):
Please note that DLL will have slightly different version number as documented in each KB (knowledge base) articles.
I also recommend you attend this upcoming webcast from Brian Smith and Andrian Jenkins next week on July 6th, 2011 at 8:00 am Pacific Time to get an overview of SP1 and the June CU (which will be recorded for later viewing): TechNet Webcast: Information about Project 2010 and Project Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (Level 200)
PS: Exciting Office 365 launch yesterday as well, see this related topic: Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and SharePoint Online in Office 365
I’m thrilled to announce the release of the following two white papers which provide step by step guidance on surfacing key Project Portfolio Management data into insightful reports and dashboards:
For additional information on Microsoft Project Server 2010 business intelligence & reporting please check out Business Intelligence in Project Server 2010.
Microsoft Project Server 2010 Reporting with Excel Services, 71 pages
Overview
Table Of Content
The purpose of this document is to provide enough detail to be able to create and deploy reports which will support the deployment of Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution. Microsoft EPM Solution relies on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2, Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft Project Professional 2010. Although each individual component of the solution is well documented on TechNet and MSDN (for the Business Intelligence), little documentation exists, as of today, which describes a step-by-step approach to building reports specific to Project Server 2010 data with Excel and Excel Services.
This document is not intended to provide an in-depth description of all the features available in Excel 2007 or 2010 and Excel Services 2010 when building a report but rather provide the building blocks required to ‘be up and running’ quickly.
Creating Dashboards for Microsoft Project Server 2010, 115 pages
The purpose of this document is to provide sufficient detail to fully design and implement Business Intelligence Dashboards that will support an Enterprise Project Management Solution (EPM), which consists primarily of SharePoint 2010 and Project Server 2010. It also includes detailed steps on how to replicate reports and dashboards included in the Project Server 2010 demonstration and evaluation pack available on the Microsoft Download Center. The purpose is to help you easily create reports and dashboards for your environment with similar characteristics.
The target audience for this document is the business owner and report developers who are looking for a quick way to develop Dashboards that will support an Enterprise Project Management Solution for their organization.
It’s now official as announced by Arpan Shah on the main Project blog on Monday: Microsoft is Rated in the Gartner Project and Portfolio Applications MarketScope.
Exciting news today about the release of the Beta of Kinect SDK for Windows, I can’t even imagine what developers worldwide will come up with; and really looking forward to the creativity! Check this official post: Kinect for Windows SDK – It’s Here! Who can make this a reality: Microsoft Project 2010 Kinect Edition: You Are the Controller! ?
Start your downloads: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/kinectsdk/
PS: For Project Server developers make sure you attend this upcoming free webcast on June 23: Upcoming MSDN Webcast (6/23): Understanding Project Server Interface (PSI) in Project Server 2010 (Level 300)
Following this recent post from my colleague Jan Kalis How to find information about Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management Partners, this case study feature Innovative-e: Microsoft Partner Boosts Revenues with Project Management Competency as well as attending Tech.Ed and SPTechcon recently this is a great reminder that Project and Project Server 2010 is a milestone release gaining lots of momentum and hence a great opportunity for services and partners!
So my ask to all of you in particular SharePoint partner, since Project Server 2010 and is a great opportunity to grow your offerings and services, where is your Project Portfolio Management (PPM) competency? Plenty more proof that is a great investment can be found in our customer case studies.
Have questions comments, etc.. go here:
PS: on an unrelated topic check this out: Microsoft Analytics for Twitter – using the power of Excel and PowerPivot to surface the Twitter pulse you your area of interest
As Gary Chefetz mentioned last week: One Small Check Box, One Giant Leap for Project Server; basically with the upcoming Project Server 2010 Service Pack (SP1) due at the end of this month you will now have the ability to “Automatically publish the updates” as shown below.
I have been using this feature to demo the integration between Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server in the the case of an Agile Team collaborating with with the PMO, and attendees love this new feature that will improve ease of use (you will obviously need to think before turning this on for all projects, but it might make sense for some!).
Great announcement from Rob this week: Announcing the EPM Content Pivot Viewer. Project and Project Server 2010 is major release of the already long history of Microsoft Project. We have been building content for the 2010 release for about two years (and are continuing to do so) to help you deploy, configure, and adopt Project 2010. Hence we have a ton of content and many of you have been asking for an easier way to discover all of the valuable documentation we have on our site. I think you will enjoy this new solution to help you get answers. The team is always looking for feedback to improve our content, so don’t be shy it’s free and happy pivoting