Christophe Fiessinger's Blog The latest news you need to know about Microsoft Project
Exciting day, a few links to get started:
PS: less than three weeks until Microsoft Project Conference 2012, don’t miss it and see you soon!
To wet your appetite here is a sample of in depth topic of interest with brief comments delivered by Microsoft and outside experts:
Hard to stop enumerating sessions, but you will hopefully get the point that WE HAVE TECHNICAL CONTENT FOR YOU! The beauty of all these topics is that I believe in sense they are version agnostic and hence it’s never too late to strengthen or fill knowledge gaps on the 2010 platform. But wait there is more (!), you feel like you know it all, how about taking certifications on site? How about attending the dedicated partner pre-event which will have in depth technical sessions delivered by experts (agenda is here from Jan’s blog); how about attending PC12 post-event training). A master at all of the above then how about learning about ALM, PLM, IPM, and Dynamics/ERP integration?
In summary as a consultant, IT Pro. or Dev. you have no excuse not to attend #MSPC12 and get ignited again!
See you soon!
With less than a month away before the start of the Microsoft Project Conference 2012 (#MSPC12), March 19-22 in Phoenix Arizona, I wanted to take a moment and re-iterate why this is the event you cannot miss next month. As the all-up content owner for this conference I have had the pleasure to review about 170 submissions during the Call For Content phase; and lately I have started doing content reviews with speakers, and trust me there are so many great stories that I just can’t wait to see attendees excited about the quality of sessions we’ll have in Phoenix.
To date we have 97 sessions (including instructor lead labs) and these alone are 97 reasons you need to come to #MSPC12!
Dux did a great write-up on his Top 7 Reasons You Should Attend #MSProject Conference 2012 #mspc12 #pmot, in particular I completely agree this is a unique opportunity to Network with customers, partners, MVPs (experts) and last but not least with Microsoft employees that build, support, sale, deploy and market your favorite product everyday. I personally have made a lot of marketing projects decisions following face to face meetings with attendees, and expect to do many more for the coming year…
As Dux mentioned mentioned in his #5 reason: Keeping up with the Joneses, trends and news is also a very strong reason to attend. Some of you might argue that staying in the office in front of a computer is sufficient to hear and see the pulse, I actually think events like this will give you a much better vision of trends and news with respect to PPM/PM etc… Another fact to support this point, is look at these sessions we’lll have from the two leading PPM analysts: Dan Stang & Matt Light from Gartner: The Gartner perspective: PPM Industry Trends and Adoption Best Practices and Going Beyond PPM – Effectively Manage Your Entire IT Portfolio Decisions with Project Server 2010.
I also think considering the above plus free certifications, training etc. it’s a relatively cheap event with a very strong ROI (return on investment) to one should consider for their business (if you are a partners for instance) or as a career if you are an individual. As my colleague Brian mentioned in this post: To All Aspiring Project Ninjas “Project Conference won't be hosted every year and there won’t be another worldwide Project Conference elsewhere”, so register today instead of regretting tomorrow! And yes we’ll also also lots of fun at the event, stay tune for more information
The first Project Conference I attended was back in January 2006, and I have attended every single one since (October 2007, September 2009) plus dozens of Microsoft lead events like (SharePoint Conference, TechEd, Summit of various sorts etc…) and I truly believe next month will be very unique Project Conference and I expect to see you all there! A bientot!
PS: an adaptation of the #MSPC12 theme I did during the last Seattle snow storm, feel free to use it in your email signature/blog posts etc…
I have seen a few questions recently in the Microsoft Project Server Forum and other in other social platform about the integration of Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Dynamics CRM 2011, and since I delivered a session on this topic at an event a few months ago, I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject. Before I go any further I think it’s important to understand the Microsoft Dynamics CRM offering, hence I recommend you look at our official CRM product portal for a basic understanding of our offering: http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/home At a high level Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers the three solutions:
The goal of the session I co-delivered with a CRM consultant was to investigate integration scenarios between the two line of business applications (CRM & PPM) and showcase integration options between the two extensible platform. We introduced and demonstrated the following two scenario during that session:
Due to not only the rich extensibility of both products but also to the ease programming of both, even a marketing person like myself (!) with the help of a CRM trained consultant we were able to built these demos in a few days (including a CRM workflow creating a Project Server project using a standard PSI call). For more information on the extensibility of each please refer to the Developer centers on MSDN:
If you do not have programming experience on MSFT CRM or Project Server I highly recommend you engage Microsoft certified CRM & PPM partners or Microsoft Consulting Services to help your with the technical aspect of the integration. The two scenarios/use cases presented above are by no means exhaustive and more can achieve between Microsoft CRM and PPM offerings. In summary integrating Microsoft Project Server and Dynamics CRM offers a strong line of business application and integration is possible today using custom code thanks to their respective rich extensibility. Happy integration projects and see you next month at Microsoft Project Conference 2012 in Phoenix!