Christophe Fiessinger's Blog

Upcoming Microsoft Project & Project Server Event Presence–March to July 2012

Christophe Fiessinger — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:21:17 GMT

Happy new year! Yes I’m sure you are all actively making travel arrangements to attend Microsoft Project Conference in Phoenix next march, specially after this key announcement today: Microsoft Project Conference 2012 Full Session List Announced! Since I know you love to plan and budget I have put together a list of upcoming events Microsoft PPM will participate in (sessions, demo booth, etc.) in the next few months (yes there are plenty of other regional events as well) but these are the ones the corporate marketing team will be involved in. If you have any interest to present and or help with these feel free to contact me via this blog. Stay tune for more information on each event in the future!

Event	Start	Finish	Location	URL
Project Conference 2012	19-Mar	22-Mar	Phoenix	http://www.msprojectconference.com
Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit	21-May	23-May	National Harbor	http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/program-management/
TechEd North America	11-Jun	14-Jun	Orlando	http://northamerica.msteched.com
Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit	19-Jun	20-Jun	London	http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/emea/program-management
TechEd Europe	26-Jun	29-Jun	Amsterdam	http://europe.msteched.com/
Worldwide Partner Conference	8-Jul	12-Jul	Toronto	http://digitalwpc.com

Microsoft Project Server 2010 Demo VM with SP1 and December 2011 CU

Christophe Fiessinger — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:18:29 GMT

Right before the holidays and following these two recent announcements from Jan Kalis: Project 2010 Demo Pack Version 2 NOW available to Microsoft Partners! and Brian Smith: Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint Server 2007 and 2010 December 2011 CU Announcement. I decided to upgrade my demo environment to showcase the latest and greatest of Microsoft “strong positive” PPM offering with SP1 and the December 2011 CU. After about one hour I had my demo VM up and running with the latest Service Pack 1 and December 2011 CU for Project and Project Server 2010 as shown below. The new Project Server 2010 version number for the December 2011 Cumulative update is now: 14.0.6114.5000. Happy demoing and selling!

Two ways to check the version number (please refer to TechNet for CU deployment guidance):

run the following query in the Reporting database
go to the farm central admin page

Don’t forget to attend Brian & Adrian’s webcast next Tuesday January 10th at 8am PST to get an overview of this latest update: TechNet Webcast: Information about Microsoft Project and Project Server December 2011 Software Update

SELECT * FROM VERSIONS ORDER BY TIMESTAMP DESC

See you in Phoenix for #PC12!

10 Tasks For the 2011 Holidays

Christophe Fiessinger — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:22:12 GMT

Dear readers I wish you all a restful and peaceful holiday break! Since it’s a quiet time of the year and a great opportunity to catch up on recent product updates and announcement I wanted to provide you a list of tasks to keep you busy if you have spare cycle in the coming two weeks

Register to Microsoft Project Conference 2012 next march in Phoenix Arizona.Yes you can’t miss it! We have great content and speakers, plus it’s a very unique opportunity to network with Microsoft, customers, partners and MVPs. More information on our site: http://msprojectconference.com Also check out the partner pre-event Jan announced you do not want to miss if you are a PPM partner: Celebrate Project 2010 Momentum at Project Conference 2012 during the Project Partner exclusive pre-day!
Update your farms/servers with the latest software updates (SP & CU), for 2010 we released Service Pack 1 (SP1) last June and this week the December 2011 Cumulative Update (CU) below. We have shipped a number of updates based on your feedback and ensuring your users/customers experience the latest and greatest from Microsoft is a great holiday gift ! As usual please read the best practices and guidance documented on TechNet on how to deploy software updates.
1. Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint Server 2007 and 2010 December 2011 CU Announcement
2. Announcing The Release Of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft Project and Project Server 2010
Read the latest product documentation and guidance – yes there is a lot of valuable content we have published throughout the year and continue to do so based on your feedback so please ensure you are on top to optimize your usage or our stack. A great tool to start catching up on documentation is the Enterprise Project Management Content Pivot Viewer. A sample of recent documents for instance are listed below (and yes there are a few more on TechNet and our main product site: http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/articles-white-papers.aspx)
Catch up on recent Project news announced on our main product blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/project . I also recommend that you start following us on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest and greatest. Key announcements recently are:

Deploy our latest Project 2010 Demo Pack V2 as announced by Jan Kalis: Project 2010 Demo Pack Version 2 NOW available to Microsoft Partners! and yes it contains Project Server and scenarios and data to showcase our full PPM functionalities.
Read our recently published customer case studies: http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/customer-success.aspx. For instance in the past few months we released these:
Purchase Project and or Project Server 2010 books – yes another testament that 2010 is an awesome release, is the quantity of books available today listed on your favorite online site. In addition check out our Training and Learning site.
Test out our Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Innovation Process Management (IPM) solutions. A lot more information can be found below:
1. New Feature Pack from Visual Studio Improves Project Management and Software Development Team Collaboration
2. Innovation Management and Ideation Solutions with SharePoint and Project Server
Ramp up on Windows 8, SQL Server 2012 and System Center 2012, key links below:
Sign up for an Office 365 trial, yes its landmark release for our cloud offering and it keeps getting better on a regular basis: official Office 365 site.
Buy a Windows Phone and feel the love! Could not resist to add this 11th task… Seriously test out the Office 365 integration for instance or more fun application like the Skydrive app or the XBox Companion app to name two. It’s a great OS and it has improved by professional and personal productivity a lot. A lot more information here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone.

PS: please find above a poster we used internally recently thanks to a similar campaign done by the Microsoft Germany subsidiary

How to plan your turkey dinner?

Christophe Fiessinger — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:40:13 GMT

Yes you can thanks to Brian and Brian: Impress the family: Make Thanksgiving Day a success with Project 2010

On a separate note check out these recent announcements from Jan:

I wish all of that are based in the US a happy thanksgiving week-end!

Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Multi-Tenancy

Christophe Fiessinger — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:46:45 GMT

Following a session I delivered at SharePoint Conference 2011 in October, as well as few emails received recently, and following the very strong momentum Microsoft Project Server 2010 has, a common topic “du jour” customers are asking: does Project Server 2010 supports multi-tenancy? Hence, the goal of this post is to answer this question.

What is multi-tenancy?

First before I go any further I think it’s important to define multi tenancy since people have different expectations to its meaning and implications. Wikipedia’s definition of Multitenancy is:

Multitenancy refers to a principle in software architecture where a single instance of the software runs on a server, serving multiple client organizations (tenants).

In this SharePoint 2010 document on TechNet: Model: Hosting architectures for SharePoint Server 2010 it says:

Multitenancy refers to the ability to partition data of otherwise shared services or software in order to accommodate multiple tenants. This is in contrast to setting up separate hardware or even running multiple instances of a service.

Spencer Harbar in this post Rational Guide to Multi Tenancy with SharePoint 2010 does a great job defining multi-tenancy in the SharePoint 2010 world, and in particular mentions: “Multi-Tenancy in SharePoint 2010 isn’t a “feature” that lights up. It’s a combination of many things which all together enable the scenario we are interested in.”

Project Server 2010 and multi-tenancy

Can you have multiple customers/business units/departments on the same SharePoint and Project Server farm and infrastructure? YES you can! But please remember these Project Server considerations for multi-tenancy:

Project Server 2010 does not support multi-tenant environments (like SharePoint 2010 does)
Requires SQL Server Analysis Services for reporting (OLAP cubes)
Queue Services: introduced in Project Server 2007 to handle spikes in transactions like users submitting their timesheets on Friday for instance
Resource Pool a key capability of PS which enables to model your capacity and demand and hence figure out shortages or surplus
Authorization/Permission Model: while authentication is handled by SharePoint, authorization is specific to Project Server and has a lot more granularity that the out of the box SharePoint’s
Cross-farm services not supported
Must be installed on each application server and front-end Web in the farm
On-Demand Hosting Services for Project Server 2010

With the above factors in mind, yes again you can have multiples customers and instances on the same infrastructure and farm, and just because we do not support multi-tenant like SharePoint does in 2010, it does not mean you need multiple farms to serve your customers. Clear examples of multi-tenancy today are on-demand hosting companies like Project Hosts and BeMo (more listed here) that offers shared online environment for their customers. We also have customers that have been providing Project Server to internal business unit since the 2007 version (internal multi-tenancy). Please note that I wrote this post last year on the topic of should you have a dedicated farm for Project Server or leverage a central SharePoint farm and infrastructure: Project Server 2010 and SharePoint 2010: one farm or multiple?

Please find below an example of multi-tenancy following feedback from the hosting companies mentioned above:

In summary yes you can have multiple tenant on the same Project Server 2010 farm and infrastructure but it cannot be achieved using the SharePoint 2010 multi-tenancy features. For any additional questions/feedback about this topic feel free to contact me via this blog.

Useful resources:

New Microsoft ALM case study: Revlon - IT Department of Global Cosmetics Company Cuts Time in Meetings by up to 30 Percent

Christophe Fiessinger — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 04:46:46 GMT

Following the recent release of the Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack (Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack has released!) I’m happy to announce this third case study showcasing the integration of TFS and Project Server 2010: IT Department of Global Cosmetics Company Cuts Time in Meetings by up to 30 Percent

Key quotes

First and foremost, with the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack we have reduced the number of project planning and status meetings.
The feature pack allows people to raise flags more quickly and in a more comfortable setting—which means we make fewer mistakes.
With the feature pack, the team leads can take more responsibility for exactly what they are doing and be more accountable to the other members of their team.

Benefits

Up to 30 percent less meeting time needed
Productivity gains of 2–5 percent
Improved risk management
Improved time-recording procedures
Increased responsibility

Other Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) case studies:

Other case studies can be found here: Microsoft Project & Project Server customer successes.

Hello Skype World!

Christophe Fiessinger — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:41:15 GMT

I’m very excited about this announcement this morning: Microsoft Officially Welcomes Skype. I have a fairly international family spread across multiple continents and every time I travel it’s exciting to see how broadly Skype is used and a recognized brand worldwide. This opens up lots of exciting opportunities in the future…
About a month ago I wrote this post Celebrating 10 years at Microsoft and it’s amazing how many major announcements we have made since September, a non exhaustive list below:

More Microsoft Press Releases Archives here.

In the end I’m all fired up about the future and MSFT continuous innovation!

Microsoft Project 2010 Connector for System Center Service Manager

Christophe Fiessinger — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:55:22 GMT

Following this recent announcement last month from the System Center Service Manager team: New SCSM–Microsoft Project Connector Released, I finally got a chance to test out this very nice solution built by Expit’s. In their own word:

Expit has developed a plugin/connector that enables the exchange of information between project planning software (Project server 2010) and System Center Service Manager. The connector allows project server users to convert project tasks into tickets in service manager directly from project server or project professional clients that are connected to project server. Additionally, the connector also updates project tasks to reflect ticket status in service manager and mark tasks as complete once tickets are closed.

Expit has also recorded the following video to demo the product: Expit SCSM Project Connector; and please find below screenshots from my own testing, again it’s a great validation of the Project 2010 momentum and its rich extensibility that helps you meet your project management needs in your favorite planning tool!

See you all at SharePoint Conference 2011 next week!

Christophe Fiessinger — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:12:05 GMT

Following this post from my colleague Jan Kalis: Project 2010 at SharePoint Conference 2011, I’m really looking forward to see you starting this Sunday in California. I visited recently Australia and Korea and it’s amazing to see the Project Server 2010 momentum and obviously the SharePoint 2010 rapid adoption by our customers and hence partners. When I look at the number of attendees we have for the pre-event this Sunday for instance, it’s again a solid case for the interest in this “strong-positive” release (see Gartner’s latest report on our stack: Microsoft is Rated in the Gartner Project and Portfolio Applications MarketScope). I’ll be delivering the sessions below at SPC11 as well as one this Sunday on Project Server 2010 Architecture and Administration Overview.

What I really love about great events like this beside talking about my favorite products, is to meet people, get feedback and learn how they are using our software; or another way to say it is I see this as a great networking opportunity so again I’m looking forward to see as many of you. Beside delivering sessions I’ll also be hanging in and out of the Project booth on the expo hall. I’ll arrive Saturday night and will return to sunny Seattle Wednesday night and staying at the Marriott so if you want to meet don’t be shy and would love to hear your Project 2010 story (email me via this blog)!

PS: Talking about great event, and again for the same reason as above this is one event you do not want to miss: Microsoft Project Conference 2012 Registration Open!

SPC273 – Monday at 2:00pm
SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server
Is SharePoint becoming an important part of your company’s overall IT offering? If so, it's likely that you have a need to better manage SharePoint business requests. Join industry expert Scott Jamison as he discusses the importance of SharePoint Lifecycle Management from an IT governance perspective. In this session we'll demonstrate how business users can make special project requests through a form in Project Web App, and how Project Managers can monitor and assign resources, evaluate priorities, and manage their overall project portfolio more efficiently.
Christophe Fiessinger; Scott Jamison, SharePoint MVP

SPC275 – Tuesday at 3:15pm
Solving Agile and PMO Problems by Integrating Project Server 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010
Do your Project Managers and Developers need to play nicer together? In this session, we'll discuss how integrating Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010 allows you to enable development and project management teams to collaborate and communicate more effectively by using tools that they are most familiar with. In addition, we will conduct demos and share real world stories and best practices from customers.

SPC313 –Wednesday at 3:15pm
Best Practices for Deploying Project Server 2010 on SharePoint Farm
Are you interested in deploying Project Server 2010 but don't know where to start? In this session we will provide you with an overview on how to deploy Microsoft Project Server 2010 in a SharePoint 2010 Farm. Specifically, we will discuss how to deploy Project Server in an existing or separate farm, asses the proper capacity planning, and how to tackle upgrading and migration.

Microsoft Contest: Build your Island

Christophe Fiessinger — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:25:24 GMT

I love the creativity from France (yes I’m objective) with this new contest targeted a students. You basically have 17 billion to build your own island with its hotels etc.… the goal is to have the best return on investment (ROI) all using Project & Project Server 2010, and you get to speak French. Winning team will get a trip to an exotic destination!

Student life is good, isn’t it?

Exciting week: Developer Preview of Windows 8 & Visual Studio 11

Christophe Fiessinger — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:10:46 GMT

What a week so far! Yes in case you have missed it, major announcements were made at the developer-focused BUILD conference this week in California, beside watching the keynote here: http://www.buildwindows.com/ it’s exciting to see preliminary releases (Developer Preview) of Windows 8 & Visual Studio 11 & Team Foundation Server 11. Happy download and install!

More info here:

Microsoft Reimagines Windows, Presents Windows 8 Developer Preview
Building Windows 8: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/
Announcing Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview

Celebrating 10 years at Microsoft

Christophe Fiessinger — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 20:22:00 GMT

Exactly 10 years ago I joined Microsoft on Monday September 3rd, 2001, in the French office outside Paris. While I could write a lengthy post on what happened during the past decade at MSFT, I wanted instead to mention why I really enjoyed the past ten years and why I looking forward to a continued career at Microsoft. This is my humble opinion so please take it with a grain of salt.

First let’s start with a bit of background and what I have done this past decade at MSFT from a career perspective. I basically had two role in two groups during that time: first as a consultant in our Services organization (Microsoft Consulting Services France), secondly as a Product Manager in Microsoft Office Division. I started in 2001 as an Application Development consultant helping customers build e-commerce sites with the beta version of the v1 .Net Framework. It was a very exciting time with tons of learning of the MSFT key products at that time: SQL Server 2000; Windows 2000; .Net Framework v1; Visual Studio .Net; Windows XP, Office XP to name a few. Over time, at MCS, I decided to start shifting my expertise from app. Dev. to server products and looked at Commerce Server, BizTalk and Project Server. I will let you guess which one I started focusing more and more on, helping customers deploy and customize it to their needs. After 6 years as a consultant serving large international customer, I decided it was time to get closer to the product group and learn how we build and ship product and more importantly shift from a very technical role to one with a business dimension and that’s what landed me a Technical Product Manager in Redmond in September 2007. The past four years in marketing have been extremely valuable to date. So what keeps me going to work every day after ten years at Microsoft?

In summary I would say because of its people, products and customers. Let me explain:

People: people matters, whether back in the French subsidiary or now in Redmond, the people I work with and meet every day are just awesome. Yes, I’m serious, the level of talent whether it’s hard core technical expertise or business acumen (vision, strategy etc...) is just amazing. Did I mention diversity? Historically and still today the brightest, passionate, talented individuals come from all over the world to work here; so it’s amazing to see such diversity at work and that keeps it fun every day! I had a career prior to joining MSFT (yes it happens) and I genuinely believe my peers at MSFT are great to work with from an expertise level, diversity level, and intense passion.

Products: for a company that has been around as long as us, and the fact that we ship products that covers the full spectrums of users from consumers using Xbox, for instance, to large enterprises using Project Server to manage mission critical programs; it is simply amazing to see the number of people we help and reach worldwide. Yes, there are plenty of naysayers that criticize us for not innovating but seriously look at what we achieved and show me someone with our legacy to date (interesting post and video from this week alone)? Yes, we missed a few turns in trends, but I believe we have learned from our mistakes and have leapfrogged key competitors in certain areas. I could name drop lots of products but at this point in time two comes to mind: Windows Phone and Windows 8. I just love my “mango” phone, period! Do I need 100,000 app to be happy and productive? No, since it has all the key capabilities I need and more. To be honest, I only use few apps and I keep smiling every day and I’m not jealous of anyone showing off their collection! For Windows 8, I would only point to this blog you need to start subscribing to. OK, I’ll add two more after all J. Xbox/Xbox Live/Kinect – I am an occasional gamer (with a Halo crush, in particular) and have kids who play in the house and we all just love the experience and the latest innovation. Talking about experience, I did not know I have more than one finger until I got a brand new Microsoft Touch mouse this week; I’m now mastering mouse Jedi movements J…

Customers: yes again, it’s a true statement that we have amazing customers whether it’s my 4 year old son using Xbox Kinect, my wife using her Windows Phone; or large Fortune 500 customers using their “strong-positive” Project Portfolio Management software suite from Microsoft. I also have to mention the passionate end-user communities and advocates like our beloved Project MVPs for instance that are great to interact and work with. I also consider customers, partners, large and small, worldwide, selling services or products built on our stack. Again similar to my comment about People above, they are a lot of fun to work with and keep you on your toes every day, 365 days a year.

In summary I learn something, every day, in a fun environment, with great people, products and customers and that’s what keeps me motivated to go to work every day!

I’m looking forward to the next decade at Microsoft.

Yours truly,

Christophe Fiessinger, 10 years after…

Rugby World Cup 2011 Timeline

Christophe Fiessinger — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 05:34:53 GMT

Yes it’s fast approaching, and thanks to Microsoft Project 2010 a nice visualization of the upcoming Rugby World Cup 2011 matches schedule in New Zealand. A lot more information on the official site: http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/home/fixtures/poolstage.html

And yes I will be cheering for a few teams!

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish
Rugby World Cup 2011	36 days	Fri 9/9/11	Sun 10/23/11
http://www.rugbyworldcup.com	36 days	Fri 9/9/11	Sun 10/23/11
Pool A, B, C, D	16 days	Fri 9/9/11	Sun 10/2/11
Quarter-Final	2 days	Sat 10/8/11	Sun 10/9/11
Semi-Final	2 days	Sat 10/15/11	Sun 10/16/11
Bronze Final	0 days	Fri 10/21/11	Fri 10/21/11
Final	0 days	Sun 10/23/11	Sun 10/23/11

Free Microsoft Office 365 eBook and SAP & BizTalk white paper

Christophe Fiessinger — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:33:35 GMT

Quick note to flag two important reading material we have just released. The first one is a free ebook that provides an overview of Office 365 (you should really try it out!): Free eBook: Microsoft Office 365: Connect and Collaborate Virtually Anywhere, Anytime. The second reading is a recurring topic: how do I integrate Project Server with SAP (wrote this already: Microsoft Project Server 2010 Integration with SAP) and it discusses using Biztalk to bridge SAP with another application: Unleash SAP using the Microsoft Platform: Using BizTalk Server to Bring Two Worlds Together

This document describes how to integrate, automate, and simplify business processes using Microsoft BizTalk Server and SAP. Business scenarios are presented involving SAP interoperability and technical patterns for how their solutions can be implemented with an integration platform like Microsoft BizTalk Server.

Happy reading!

PerformancePoint Services for Microsoft Project Server 2010 White Paper

Christophe Fiessinger — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:29:32 GMT

I’m happy to announce the release of the following white paper PerformancePoint Services for Project Server 2010 written by Emmanuel Fadullon, Delivery Architect Microsoft Consulting Services.

This document provides a detailed guide for Microsoft Project Server 2010 users who want to avail themselves of the Business Intelligence (BI) features and functionality provided in the host platform of Project Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition. Specifically, this document covers PerformancePoint Services, which is an inherent service on SharePoint Server 2010.

It is important to note that this document is about the mechanics specific to PerformancePoint Services in the context of Project Server data and not about providing sample EPM reports that are written in related BI tools like SQL Server Reporting Services and Excel Services. The use of reports in the document is entirely incidental and used simply to illustrate a PerformancePoint feature or functionality.

A peek into Microsoft Project Server 2010’s powerful visualization capabilities discussed in the report below. For additional information on Microsoft Project Server 2010 business intelligence & reporting please check out Business Intelligence in Project Server 2010.

Overall Scorecard Page with KPI Details

Work Forecast by Month Page with Decomposition Tree

Attend the dedicated Project pre-event at SharePoint Conference 2011!

Christophe Fiessinger — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:57:06 GMT

As announced by Jan last week, we will have a dedicated Project/Project Server pre-event ahead of SharePoint Conference 2011 on Sunday October, 2nd, 2011: SharePoint Partners – Interested in growing your business with Project 2010? A great opportunity for SharePoint/non Project Portfolio Managers to learn about our stack. More info here.

There will also be plenty of Project sessions during SPC11 so don’t wait and register, looking forward to see you in California in early October:

Download Microsoft Project Server 2010 SP1 and June 2011 Cumulative Update

Christophe Fiessinger — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:26:40 GMT

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:

Service Pack (SP1) for Project Standard, Project Professional, and Project Server 2010 (alongside Office 2010 and SharePoint SP1)
June 2011 Cumulative Update (CU) for Project Standard, Project Professional, and Project Server 2010 (alongside Office 2010 and SharePoint SP1)

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):

Service Pack 1 – 14.0.6027.1000
June 2011 CU - 14.0.6105.5000

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

Project Server 2010 Reporting with Excel Services & Creating Dashboards white papers

Christophe Fiessinger — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:30:27 GMT

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:

Microsoft Project Server 2010 Reporting with Excel Services written by Jean-Francois LeSaux and Steven Haden from Microsoft Consulting Services.
Creating Dashboards for Microsoft Project Server 2010 written Blaise Novakovic, Jean-Francois LeSaux, Steven Haden, Microsoft Consulting Services

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.

Foreword
Introduction
Overview
Build Your First Excel Report against OLAP Data in 10 Minutes
Authoring Reports against Relational Data
Use Excel PowerPivot
Migrating Reports between Environments
Troubleshooting Business Intelligence Features
References
List of Figures

Creating Dashboards for Microsoft Project Server 2010, 115 pages

Overview

Table Of Content

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.

Introduction
Understanding Report Types
Creating Reports
Creating Dashboards using PerformancePoint Services
Creating Dashboard using a Web Part Page
Conclusion
Appendix A – Enterprise Custom Fields
Appendix B – IPMO Stored Procedures
References
List of Figures
List of Tables

Microsoft Project Gets Highest Rating In Gartner 2011 MarketScope

Christophe Fiessinger — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 01:54:55 GMT

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.

Kinect for Windows SDK Beta is live– Unleash Your Creativity!

Christophe Fiessinger — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:05:49 GMT

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)

Dear SharePoint partners where is your PPM competency?

Christophe Fiessinger — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 23:38:13 GMT

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

Automatically Publish Updates thanks to Project Server 2010 SP1

Christophe Fiessinger — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:17:23 GMT

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!).

Microsoft Project Server 2010 Automatic Approvals

Microsoft Project Server 2010 Automatic Approvals with Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft Project Server Content Pivot Viewer

Christophe Fiessinger — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:09:43 GMT

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

Join us for special Microsoft Project Announcement! Introducing "Project for the Masses" and "SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solutions"

Christophe Fiessinger — Tue, 31 May 2011 00:13:18 GMT

Please mark your calendar for this special event/webcast on Wednesday (June 1st, 2011) at 3pm pacific time live from SPTechCon: Special Microsoft Project Announcement! Introducing "Project for the Masses" and "SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solutions"

Join Christophe Fiessinger, Senior Technical Product Manager for Microsoft Project 2010, who will kick off the launch of two new Microsoft Project solutions, “Project for the Masses,” developed by Innovative-e, Inc., and “SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010,” developed by Jornata.

Presenters: Christophe Fiessinger, Sr. Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation, Dux Raymond Sy, PMP, SharePoint Server MVP, Managing Partner at Innovative-e and Scott Jamison, Microsoft Certified Master at Jornata

Christophe is part of the Microsoft Business Division Product Marketing Group and focuses on the enterprise project and portfolio management solution (PPM). Christophe focuses on promoting the value of Project Server by speaking at global Microsoft conferences like TechEd, SharePoint Conference, and Project Conference. He is a major advocate for enterprise deployments and line of business integration of Project Server. He regularly blogs on these topics at http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie

Dux Raymond is a managing partner and the chief evangelist of Innovative-e. Dux is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry. He has earned a reputation as being among the leading experts on leveraging collaboration tools for project management. He is a SharePoint MVP and the author of "SharePoint for Project Management," published by O'Reilly Media.

Scott is a managing partner at Jornata, a premier Microsoft-focused consulting and training firm based in Boston. Scott has extensive experience implementing business solutions using SharePoint technologies, and is one of only a handful of Microsoft Certified Masters for SharePoint in the world. He is a recognized thought leader, teacher and published author with several books, including “Essential SharePoint 2007” and “Essential SharePoint 2010.” You can find his blog at www.scottjamison.com.

Multi-Browser Support for time entry in Project Server 2010

Christophe Fiessinger — Wed, 25 May 2011 23:32:42 GMT

Yes, as announced last week as part of Project Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) on the main Project blog: Announcing Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Project & Project Server 2010 one of the new innovation of SP1 is the ability to do timesheet in your favorite browser as shown below (all tests were run on Windows Server 2008 R2 + SP1). Happy time sheeting!

	Timesheet In Internet Explorer (IE)
	Entering timesheet time in FireFox
	Entering more timesheet time in Chrome and submit

Take you pick!