Brian Smith's Project Support WebLog

When you create custom formats for bars, either by using Format Bar or Format Bar Styles, the border of the bar may not render in the preview, nor does it show up in the final print out. 

This problem will occur if you select a bar shape that is not equal to the full height available for the bar.  Basically, if you select any shape other than the first one in the Shape dropdown, you'll see this behavior, but it's more obvious if you select a pattern other than the solid fill.

Here's a screen shot of the options I selected in the Format Bar dialog box.  These settings will cause the problem to manifest:

Note that the Shape setting is smaller than the full bar height. Although the border fails to print regardless of the pattern chosen, I selected a non-solid pattern as a better demonstration of the behavior.  Here's the Print Preview where the bar styles for tasks 1 and 2 are set to a size smaller than full bar height.  The bar for task 1 has a solid pattern while the bar for task 2 uses the Pattern setting in the image above.

You can see how, with the non-solid pattern and no borders, the second bar practically disappears across the non-working time.  This issue appears to be a problem with the rendering of the 3-D bar styles.  You will see this behavior regardless of the printer or printer driver you use. 

The MS Project product team knows about this one, and at this point, the best way to work around it is to disable to 3-D bar styles.  To do this, go to Tools and then Options.  On the View tab, uncheck the option Bars and shapes in Gantt views in 3-D as shown below.

Now if you look at the print preview again, the borders are rendered, but the bars will have the flat appearance from legacy versions of Microsoft Project. 

If another solution to this issue becomes available, I'll update this post.  In the meantime, the workaround should help in most situations.

I replied to a comment on this topic – but think it warrants a new posting so I have polished my reply and added some stuff.  I am aware customers are still having some issues with check-in pending and I think it may be a timing issue around closing and opening Project.  I haven’t been able to repro this so would love to hear some consistent repro steps based on the August Cumulative Update – if anyone out there can make it happen to order.

However, I have some ideas what might lead to the issue.  When you close Project we now give a message to ensure any saves that are in progress get a chance to complete.  However this only waits for the save from client to the queue to complete - then the "real" save from the queue to the database happens - then any publish and check-in jobs.  So the client may be closed when the check-in completes and so doesn't get the message – and will still think the check-in is pending.  On opening it takes a little while for the communication to the server and the responses for any updates on pending check-ins etc – and you may see a message Offline changes - and if the user does a File, Open immediately then they may see Check-in pending for a project that is really checked in.  This will not get updated while the dialog is open.  Either closing the dialog and re-opening - or opening a "pending" project (read only) and then closing should flush things through and get the project available. This is by far the best approach rather than clearing the cache as it does not risk any data loss.  The above symptoms may never appear on a very fast network, and may appear more often in a WAN situation where there is high latency between the client and server.

But as I say, I haven’t been able to repro, even from home, where I have to traverse my home wireless network, then another wireless link a few miles across the valley before getting on to a T1 link and the internet.  Another few hops and I get to my server.  The ping time is a pretty respectable 50ms across 9 hops.  Just to add a little load to my server I set all my projects publishing from ProjTool too – but I never see check-in pending.  Perhaps I need to be saving a much larger project and have lots of custom fields at the task level?  So for any repro I’d also like to know project size, custom fields, network parameters such as a ping and tracert to the server.

Hello everyone!  And thank you, Brian, for making me feel so welcome here!  I'm incredibly excited to be returning to my roots at Microsoft by re-joining the MS Project support team!

For long-time Project users, there's a remote possibility that you may remember me as I have a long history with Project support.  I started supporting Project back in 1997 when there was no such thing as Project Server and the only collaboration tools were the workgroup mail options.  Those were the days! 

I was a member of the Project support team until September of 2004 when I took a position in our Global Content Delivery group, managing the Knowledge Base for the Microsoft Great Plains products in Fargo, North Dakota.  This change of jobs allowed me to relocate "home" to North Dakota where both my family and my husband's family are originally from.  Now, four years later, through various twists of fate, I find myself back with the Project team while getting to stay in Fargo and having the best of both worlds! 

I'm amazed at the changes MS Project has undergone in the last four years, and am truly thrilled to be a part of it again.  I've always found our customers to be some of Microsoft's best!  You are so passionate and well informed about our great product, and you are always willing to share opinions and ideas for how we can become even better. 

In the coming weeks and months, I look forward to sharing technical news with you through the blog, getting to know the blog readers, and maybe even reconnecting with a few previous (I won't say "old"!) Project acquaintances!  I'll be back soon with my first technical posting!

I am delighted to announce that there will be another voice to the Project Support blog!  LaDonna Carpenter will be joining me in posting blogs on all things Project.  LaDonna has recently returned to our team having left shortly before I joined (Hmm – was that just a coincidence?)  I know we are all very pleased to have her back!  Rather than steal LaDonna’s thunder I will let her introduce herself in her first blog – coming shortly…

This was a problem that had several of us racking our brains earlier this week and all the usual reasons of lack of permissions in PWA, missing setting the credential properties on the web service were found not to be the cause – Colby Africa had found a KB that sounded very similar and we had an answer.  See Colby’s posting at his new blog site http://blogs.msdn.com/colbyafrica/.

This same problem then appeared through an e-mail contact from my blog so thanks to Colby I could give a quick answer!  In this customer’s case the issue was due to host headers being used – KB 896861 saved the day.

Hopefully most readers will have seen these from the other Project bloggers – but in case you missed it:

From Christophe’s blog (and also Chris Boyd’s)

Ameya Bhatawdekar has posted the following video on Visual Studio Team System 2010 and Business Alignment his blog today:

• Achieving Business Alignment with Visual Studio Team System 2010
• Agile Planning Templates in Visual Studio Team System 2010
• Enterprise Project Management with Visual Studio Team System 2010 (you can find the associated SilverLight demo on EPMConnect)
• Requirements Management and Traceability with Visual Studio Team System 2010

And again from Christophe

The following guides have been published for Project Portfolio Server 2007:

• Environment Migration Guide - This guide describes how to migrate Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 from one environment to another one. This scenario is frequently used to duplicate a production environment as a QA or Development environment. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C08DDEAB-4F0E-4E2A-96E8-1322D5E61AF5&displaylang=en
• Gateway Guide - This guide describes the Gateway functionality for syncing Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 with Microsoft Office Project 2007. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2A9A5E37-83EA-4C9F-9C41-E116D7A770CA&displaylang=en
• Understanding Workflow - This guide describes the workflow functionality and configuration for Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 and provides examples for the workflow setting. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5BA15962-4A47-4FAB-806C-92FE74EBFED2&displaylang=en

And finally from Heather

Roaming around Project Web Access just got a little easier for team members: the Quick Reference Guide is here! This guide is designed to assist team members (not just project managers) with using Project Web Access to report on the progress of project tasks, view task details, record vacation time, and view other project information. You can download and print  the guide for easy assistance while you work.

Note: We used Word 2007 to create this document, so you'll need to use that program to view and print the file.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC102880551033.aspx?pid=CT101441451033

We have now published the code that Boris Scholl demonstrated at TechEd 2008 – showing an AJAX web part feeding from a PSI Extension and showing the location of each project on your server – where the city of execution is held in a custom field.  The end result looks like this:

Hovering over the pushpins shows details for the specific project – also returned by the PSI Extension.

The code is on the MSDN Code Gallery at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/PSVR2007AJAXWebPart so go along and try this yourself.  The document there covers the creation of the web part – and the code for the PSI Extension is also included.  You will probably need to also reference the SDK for PSI Extension deployment details.  Enjoy!

I have updated the previous posting but for you RSS readers worth putting this in a new blog.  After import I wasn’t seeing the active issues alert on my home page showing the issues in the imported sites.  Inclusion of the –includeusersecurity flag on both the export and import ensures the user settings are maintained and then the active issues are correctly identified for users.  Therefore the full command line looks like:

stsadm -o export -url "http://brismithv0832:8080/CAL/Project1 with Workspace in PWA" -filename "C\backup\savesite.bak" –includeusersecurity –nofilecompression

With the import just having a different port – and possibly PWA instance name.

I am still investigating the fact that I am unable to add new task links to issues after the import – and that I do not see existing links.  For sites migrated to a different port from PWA therefore avoiding export/import I do not see this issue.  It could be my server is sick – but at least one reader has experienced the same issues.  I will keep you all posted.

Back in June I flicked a switch on my blog that meant that after about 4 lines you would get a “read more” link and if I had grabbed your attention you might even click and read the rest. Today I have flicked the switch back again after feedback that people prefer to get the full post rather than having to go look for the rest of it.

The reason I had set it this way was that it did at least give me some indication of what was being read – because I could see the visits to the pages.  The RSS hits don’t really give me that information.  However, I appreciate that many readers may consume these posts offline – or even if you are online it is extra clicks and time to get the full story.  In return for my setting this back to the way you want it I ask that if you like or don’t like a posting – let me know!

The stats I get from adCenter break down into 3 groups in terms of inbound referrals to the pages – search, direct traffic and referring websites.  For September so far I am running at just over 61% search, around 24% for direct traffic, and the final 15% from referring websites.  I am guessing that much of the direct traffic is from RSS readers hitting the “read more” link – and probably a few that have links saved – it will be interesting to see how the figures change over the coming weeks and months as the changed setting comes into play.

Do let me know how you feel about this change.

Christophe has a great blog with full details of the KB’s for WSS (KB956057) MOSS (KB956056) and Project Server (KB956061) which are now available.  Everything you need to know about the August Cumulative Update is there – links to articles, links to the hotfixes and some guidance on installation!

I will be going deeper in this posting, particularly on the scenario of moving just the databases and then re-provisioning the site.  But don’t expect me to be mentioning every single dialog box and permission that you require.  I will be writing at a level whereby if you don’t understand what I am saying then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing this – or at least you need to read around a bit and then come back.  For permissions see this blog posting, and for full details of full farm restore go here.  Remember that any additional Process Accounts added to the SSP must still exist and be verifiable in the new system.  Forgotten this one?  Then go here.

So the only extra I intend to say about full farm backup and restore is that it does not keep such things as LDAP forms based authentication extended sites and settings (Thanks Boris Bazant for this tip!).  As I mentioned in my part 1 post – some external customization will need to be re-applied (e.g. additional web parts, server side event handlers in the GC).

The scenario for the main part of the post is moving from my Production Server (BriSmith620) to my test system (A Hyper-V image called BriSmithV0832).  I already have a working site which I don’t want to break, so this is a partial move – and the projects in my Production Server have workspaces both in the root site under PWA (the instance I am interested in is actually called CAL – created to troubleshoot some Calendar issues)  and in another web application at Port 94.  So I will be moving over 4 project databases and 2 content databases.  I can’t move my port 80 to port 80 as it will break existing stuff – so I will move 94 to 94 and 80 to 8080.  I have Issues lists with items in several projects – the aim will be to see these still working post migration…

I’ve already backed up my 6 databases – and restored them with names Blog_Archive etc for the Project ones and Blog_80_Content and Blog_94_Content (actually on the same server with different names) so on with the restoration of my PWA site and content.  First I just provision a site against the 4 databases.  If you have restored the content db at this point it will fail – if you use the same name for the site – as a collection will already exist.  And if you delete the site away goes your content – Catch 22.  So we are leaving the content stuff for now…

Usual stuff is entered for creation of a site

Click OK and wait for it to be provisioned…

And here we have it!  (Must get round to those timesheets)  Any customizations we had made in SharePoint would be gone (themes, top links etc.) but customizations in PWA would be retained (Notice the My Timecard edit to the menu name in the left nav bar).  But of course none of the workspaces are found, and the issues and risks link also find no active issues for me.

Next I will add the port 94 content db to a new Web Application on Port 94.  I create a new Web Application and name the database the one I have restored.  Didn’t bother with a screen shot, just changed the port to 94, put in a suitable account for the new application pool and put in the Blog_94_Content database name.  Once this is active I can browse to the workspaces (assuming I know the names) and the issue is there – but clicking through to the issue detail gives a File Not Found SharePoint error.

The workspaces listed on the home page don’t link to port 94, but port 80, and the Project Workspaces page shows blank for the sites.  By going to the Edit Site Address option the site can be entered for the project.

Once this is set and the workspace provisioning setting matched to the port 94 address that was in use on the other server the home page then shows the correct links and sees that I have active issues.

If I follow the link to the workspace, then the issues and click through to the issue detail it works – the file not found is resolved!

For larger jobs than this simple set of Projects the RelinkAllWSSSite tool from the Project Resource Kit comes in very handy.  Now we have our port 94 sites all sorted – and we could just do the same for our ones that were on port 80 – and leave them on port 8080 – but that doesn’t get them back were they started.  Stsadm export and import comes to our rescue.  First I will add a new web application on port 8080 and use the port 80 content database from the original server.  At this point we can browse to the sites just substituting http://brismithV0832:8080 for http://brismith620 to confirm they are there.  To export and import we use stsadm –o export –url <full url> –filename <path to save site> –includeusersecurity –nofilecompression.  In this case

C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsadm -o export -url "http://brismithv0832:8080/CAL/Project1 with Workspace in PWA" -filename "C\backup\savesite.bak" –includeusersecurity –nofilecompression

***UPDATE*** Flag –includeusersecurity was not in the original posting.  This ensures the same security applies to the site and this then means any assigned issues, risks will be flagged on the users home page.

If on Windows Server 2008 then your command prompt will need to be running as administrator to avoid an Access Denied.

You will get a long listing of progress (or you can use the –quiet flag) and hopefully it should finish with success!

Now we can import, just using the default port 80 address to get our site where we want it (just change the URL and export to import.  In my case I can also change CAL to Blog in the URL as my PWA site has changed.  Once this is complete we have the site where we want it – we edit the site address as we did earlier and all should be working!

Along the way with the export/import we lost the task links – I will dig into this a bit more but I guess you might expect this as the export probably has nowhere to keep that information, and also I see my Active Issues count isn’t picking up the moved workspace issues.  The best approach is certainly keep the workspaces away from your PWA site to start with.  But the issue is still there – it still understand which project it belongs to.

I’ve stepped through with a single project so you understand the idea – you can speed things up with Powershell or just creating a batch file.  If you go this route then stsadm –o enumsubwebs –url <url where sites are> >> c:\sitelist.txt will enable you to get a quick list of sites into a text file.

Every requirement will be slightly different – full farm backup/restore will hopefully work for most, but the details I’ve given here should help when you want perhaps a partial move of single instances.  Always consider customization too – usually you will need some manual steps for those.

Let me know how this works for you.

Time for me to steal back from Christophe – see his blog posting at http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2008/09/24/announcing-the-microsoft-project-server-2007-it-professionals-technet-webcast-series.aspx.

Brief introduction here – full story, details and dates on Christophe’s blog

Starting October 1^st, 2008, Michael Jordan (Lead Architect – MCS EPM Global Practice | WW COE for EPM) will present a series of Project Server 2007 webcast on TechNet targeted at IT Professionals. 

These 60 minutes webcasts will present in details key aspects to consider when you evaluate, plan, deploy, and operate Project Server 2007.

Treb and Dave are working on a series of Silverlight video blogs around task statusing and timetracking – and specifically what the administrative options do, and the first is live at http://blogs.msdn.com/project/archive/2008/09/23/video-review-of-project-2007-task-settings-and-display-administrative-options.aspx and as you can guess from the URL it covers task settings and display settings in the Server Settings page.

Enjoy!

Fresh from the pens (or keyboards) of our UA team are the following articles.  Thanks to Efren, Robert, Mike, Sonia, Jim and David.  And the mention of Britney Spears isn’t some cheap trick to get more hits on my site – the podcast actually exists – and for my US readers the date of the article isn’t January 4th…

GPS Assistance in Roadmapping an EPM Deployment: How do you create a roadmap for an EPM implementation? This is the latest white paper by Chris Vandersluis in the "From the Trenches — Deploying the EPM Solution in the Real World" column on the Project Server TechCenter page.

Database maintenance plans for Project Server 2007  This topic describes best practices for creating database maintenance plans for Project Server 2007 databases.

Project Server 2007 Hyper-V guide This downloadable, 37-page document provides IT administrators with information about how to set up Project Server 2007 in a Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environment. This guide includes technical information, procedures, and recommendations regarding planning a Project Server 2007 deployment for a Hyper-V environment in areas such as architecture, deployment, configuration best practices, system resource cost, and measuring virtual system performance.

Create a custom field   Use this article to learn how to create, import, insert, and rename a custom field.

Watch this: Create a custom field  This video walks you through the process of creating a custom field that is associated with a list, and that uses graphical indicators.

Work with the Gantt Chart view  This article provides information on how to use each part of the Gantt Chart view.

Project Server Quick Reference Guide for project managers  This quick reference guide displays all the tasks a project manager is likely to do with Project Server. A team member version is due out soon.

Podcast: Britney Spears, the ultimate project manager This is a link to an external podcast about Britney Spears as the ultimate project manager. It is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but makes good points about project management skills in general.

What’s all this talk about Web 2.0 This Office Hours article discusses Web 2.0 and software plus services model.

This is a request I have had a few times, most recently from Dan, and I have decided to do this in two parts.  The first here, is a high level view, and I will follow this, hopefully within a week or so, with a more detailed description of the steps involved.  Ever system has its own idiosyncrasies and customizations so no guarantee that these steps will get you exactly where you need to be, but it should get you pretty close.

I will present a couple of options, the first based on the SharePoint full farm backup and restore – then the second based on taking the 4 project databases and the content database containing the project workspaces and provisioning a new site against the project databases and linking to the sites in the content database.

The key to both is having an image (Hyper-V would be ideal) ready to accept the restore method which works best for you, then always return to this image when you want the next transfer of production to test.  Obviously the image needs to be kept up to date with patches etc. to at least match the production system.

Full Farm Backup and Restore

This really offers the best option to get almost all of your farm across in a way that matches your production system.  Any basic customizations will come across with the backup – such as tailored menus, change of theme etc.  Problems will be encountered if you use host headers.  In this case you receiving image should just have Project Server installed and the SharePoint configuration wizard completed to the point that Central Administration is available – from here you just do you restore, and substitute the URLs and database server names for your test system.  This assumes the same user names will be accessible from your test environment – if not see Part 2 for some workarounds we use when recovering customers’ systems for testing.

I have never seen partial farm restores work for me – so when you next want a snapshot of production do the whole thing again – starting with a saved image ready with Central Administration ready to go!

Database Copying and Re-Provisioning

If you can live without the project workspace functionality (Issues, risks, documents and deliverables) then this is really easy.  Just restore your 4 project databases to the test system then provision a new site and point the provision job at the 4 databases you have restored.  The user you name will get created, so no issue with different domains – then with this user you can update any others you want to test with.

If you do need workspaces then this fits into the “I wouldn’t start from here” type of directions.  The default location of workspaces will mean they are created in the same content database as the PWA site itself.  So if you copy the content db from production to test you have all workspaces readily available – but of course PWA will not work as the site is not plumbed into all the right places until you provision a site.  The action of provisioning the site needs /PWA to be removed first – so goodbye to all the workspaces if they happen to be under /PWA (which by default we lead you into this bad situation).  Options here are to provision the site somewhere else – but then it doesn’t match production so isn’t a good test platform.  So better to start from the right place – on the production server have the workspaces in a different content DB from the site itself – then both the workspaces and the /PWA are independent and can be brought together in test without breaking anything. 

With this type of restore and re-provision you will not maintain any WSS customizations on themes etc. but Project customizations will be kept (menu changes etc.)

Gotchas

Some things don’t come across with either of these approaches and will have to be handled manually.  A couple of examples are server side events, which will need to be re-installed in the test environment, and  any custom web parts will also need to be re-installed.

I will get into more detail with Part 2 – but hopefully this has given you some ideas of the best approach – and both are approaches we do on a daily basis for those cases where we need to reproduce customer’s problems with the customer’s actual databases – either full farm or limited set of databases.