Brian Smith's Microsoft Project Support Blog

Bienvenue sur le Blog de l’équipe francophone de Support Technique EPM

BriSmith — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:54:22 GMT

http://blogs.technet.com/frenchpjblog/

Le Support Technique EPM rejoint aujourd’hui la communauté des blogueurs EPM. Vous trouverez régulièrement sur ce blog les contributions des différents membres de l’équipe et plus précisément des membres appartement à l’équipe Escalation Services.

Sur ce blog, nous allons nous focaliser essentiellement sur 2 types d’informations :
- Des informations et des méthodes de Troubleshooting que nous voulons partager avec la communauté et qui parfois ne sont pas assez documentés dans les articles disponibles sur le web. Ces informations seront souvent issues de notre propre expérience et de nos propres résultats de résolution d’incidents clients.

- Des informations sur les ressources, outils, logiciel, évènements techniques qui vous aideront à utiliser la solution EPM dans votre environnement. Par exemple, nous pouvons créer un article sur la disponibilité des correctifs et des Service Packs disponibles et y ajouter des informations et des bonnes pratiques d’installation sur le serveur et les stations.

Nous attendons avec impatience de pouvoir partager des idées et des informations tous ensemble sur ce blog.

Marc Biarnès

Escalation Engineer, Microsoft CSS - France

EL FARO DE PROJECT SERVER OS DA LA BIENVENIDA

BriSmith — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:52:47 GMT

http://blogs.technet.com/elfarodeprojectserver/

Hola, buen día a tod@s. Desde el equipo de soporte de Project Server en castellano, queremos saludar a todo aquel que esté leyendo estas líneas. Llevábamos tiempo consultando otros blogs de Project Server, y nos parecía que ya era hora de poder disponer de un espacio donde se trataran estos temas, precisamente en la lengua de Cervantes.

En este blog pretendemos dar salida a aspectos y cuestiones que nos parecen interesantes y de utilidad para la comunidad de usuarios de Project Server, intentando ser, en cierta manera, una especie de faro o referencia, para que nuestro día a día de navegación con Project Server resulte más sencillo.

En un principio nuestra intención es tratar asuntos de Project Server 2007, aun cuando nos iremos enfocando posteriormente en la nueva versión, Project Server 2010, así como tocaremos temas de aplicaciones que conviven en el día a día con nosotros como Sharepoint, SQL Server, etc

Sirvan estas líneas de bienvenida para expresaros nuestro agradecimiento por estar leyendo este humilde blog. Muchas gracias por todo, esperamos sinceramente que nuestros artículos, así como la información que podamos incluir os sirvan de tanta ayuda como a nosotros.

Un saludo, estamos a vuestra disposición

El equipo de soporte en castellano de Project Server

Happy (Belated) New Year! – What’s new in Projectland

BriSmith — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:49:12 GMT

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog since the holidays (thanks Ben for giving me the push I needed ;)) – so apologies if I haven’t answered your questions. I did have a bit of a catch up today, so there may be some new answers. I’ve also seen a few direct e-mails from the blog and have answered some – but will re-set expectations here – I don’t always have a chance to respond to these.

I will be making a couple of posts in the next day or two with details of two new local language blogs for Spanish and French – with a German one following soon!

Other news this week:

From the Project Programmability blog – new 2010 impersonation article and availability of a Project Server 2010 VM
Webcast this Wednesday – overview of Project Server 2010

Microsoft Project 2010 Webcast: Project Server 2010 Overview
Pradeep GanapathyRaj, Senior Program Manager Lead, Microsoft
Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 Time: 7:00am – 8:00am PST
Register now for this session!

The Project blog has a new look and continues the excellent 2010 series with an article on the new grid
The Project Admin blog continues with 2010 topics – and also has an article on the new partner community work for the new release.
Christophe has been really busy on the blog, between his various world-wide 2010 training deliveries – and my favorite was the complete list of great RSS feeds for project complete with opml file!

As we approach the home straight on Project 2010 I will be making more frequent posts, as well as some guest appearances on the Admin blog. This release is going to be great!

Technorati Tags: psvr2010,Project Server 2010

Project Server 2007: December 2009 CU Released!

BriSmith — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:14:20 GMT

Thanks to Rob and the Office Sustained Engineering team, and of course the product group, we now have the December 2009 CU for the Office clients and servers, including Project Server 2007.

The biggest area of fixes in this release relate to changes in the handling of administrative time, actual work and calendar exceptions – and this is embodied in fixes on both the server and client. Best to patch both to this release to get the full benefit of these fixes, but this isn’t a requirement and will not break anything if you stagger the loading of client and server patches.

In Rob’s words, first some details of getting ready to apply the CU, with either SP1, or preferably SP2, and then the CUs themselves:

This CU include a number of fixes, so Microsoft strongly recommends that you test this in a test environment based on your production environment before putting this fix live in production.

The article below provides information on how to deploy the Project Server Cumulative Update.

Deploy cumulative updates (Project Server 2007)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239177.aspx

We strongly recommend that you install WSS and Office Servers 2007 Service Pack 2. The KB articles below provide information on how to download and install SP2 if you have not already done so.

Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack SP2

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953338

Description of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 and of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953334

Description of Office Project 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of Office Project Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953326

The server patches require that WSS and Office Servers 2007 SP1 be installed. For clarity, SP1 is required and SP2 is strongly recommended. Here are the links to the SP1 Server Patches for your convenience:

Description of the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 1 and the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936984/en-us

How to deploy the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 1 and Office Server Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945013/en-us

The Server CU is released in two different versions. The first version is in Individual Packages specific to a particular product like WSS and Project Server. These are smaller downloads but they do not include language packs or patches for other products so patches for those products would have to be downloaded and installed separately.

The second version is the Server Rollup Packages. This is a set of two rollup packages which contains all the fixes for WSS, Project Server and MOSS. These packages should be used when MOSS is part of the deployment and/or you have language packs installed. The Server Rollup Packages are much larger (~200MB each) but they will greatly simplify MOSS patch deployment.

You can read about the fixes included in the December CU from the following articles:

Note: This CU contains an important fix for a group of Actual Work issues surrounding Administrative Time and Calendars. There are fixes for this issue in both the Client and Server patches. As such, we strongly recommend that you install both the Client and Server patches from this CU. This is not a patch requirement, however, as there will be no added negative effects if only the server or client are patched. You will just not have the whole fix until both patches are installed.

Server Rollup Packages:

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package (WSS server-package): December 15, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977027

Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package (MOSS server-package): December 15, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977026

Individual Product Packages:

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Cumulative Update Server hotfix package (Sts-x-none.msp): December 15, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977022

Description of the Office Project Server 2007 hotfix package (Pjsrvapp-x-none.msp, Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp): December 15, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977028

Description of the Office Project 2007 hotfix package (Project-x-none.msp): December 15, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977266

Project Server 2010 and 2007 Webcasts this week! (or recorded if you miss them)

BriSmith — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:42:41 GMT

A few webcasts coming up this week – enjoy!

Title	Date/Time	Description	Presenter
Overview of Microsoft Project Server 2010 for IT Professionals	Tuesday, December 15, 2009 8:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)	In this webcast, we provide an overview of Microsoft Project Server 2010 features, requirements, and deployment considerations that IT professionals need to know about the product. Topics we discuss include: system requirements, deployment scenarios, installation procedures, upgrade options, and administration and operations enhancements that help IT professionals.	Christophe Fiessinger, Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Project 2010 Overview	Wednesday, December 16, 2009 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)	Keshav Puttaswamy, Group Program Manager, Microsoft, will discuss and demonstrate core capabilities and features of the upcoming release – Microsoft Project 2010. The webcast will cover the key bets of unifying project & portfolio management, improving execution with effective collaboration, enhancing user experience & appeal, and simplifying deployment & interoperability.	Keshav Puttaswamy, Group Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Project Server Security in SQL Server Reporting Services	Wednesday, December 16, 2009 1:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)	In this webcast, we discuss a method of taking advantage of Microsoft Office Project Server security in Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services reports. We also cover a scenario where a customer has requested a SQL Server Reporting Services report that displays sensitive financial data. The customer only wants executors of the report to see information on projects to which they have access. Join us to learn more.	Stephen C. Sanderlin, System and Software Architect, MSProjectExperts
Project 2010 and Project Server 2010 Programmability	Thursday, December 17, 2009 8:30 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)	In this webcast, we provide an overview of the programmability enhancements that are in the upcoming versions of Microsoft Office Project 2010 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2010. We highlight Windows Communication Foundation, Ribbon programmability, and the new programmability features such as Workflow. We also discuss writing backwards compatibility for Microsoft Office Project 2007 applications	Chris Boyd, Program Manager II, Microsoft Corporation

All will be recorded and available afterward as podcasts in case you miss them.

Project 2010 and Project Server 2010: The Beta is out – some early issues people are seeing

BriSmith — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:45:13 GMT

If this is the first you have heard of the Beta (Where have you been? Can I come next time?) then take a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/project/archive/2009/11/18/now-available-project-2010-beta.aspx for the links to Project and http://blogs.msdn.com/project_programmability/archive/2009/11/19/project-2010-sdk.aspx for great links to the new developer stuff (Great work Jim!).

A couple of early issues or regular questions are:

Can I use Project Professional 2010 against a 2007 server?

No, 2010 can only talk to 2010 Server. You can however still use 2007 against an upgraded (2007 to 2010) Project Server instance as long as it is still set for Backwards Compatibility Mode. Once you switch to native mode you cannot switch back1 Another option available to you is installing 2007 and 2010 side by side (but not running both at the same time). If you have any connectivity issues then usually running a repair on the 2007 Project Professional will resolve this. Be aware that opening Projects from PWA will likely give you issues, as the wrong Pro may try and start.

I get an unexpected error from SharePoint Foundation after provisioning my first PWA site.

This one relates to a bug which we thought we had addressed in the documentation, but it came back to bite us. The docs are being updated as I write, but in case you already ran in to this you can remove your provisioned PWA and the associated databases, carry out these steps:

Open a command prompt as an Administrator.
Navigate to \program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\bin.
Run the following command:

psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b

and then provisioning PWA should work just fine. This issue will also give errors in various places – the event log will show a compatibility issue with the published database, the queue will not start, and then a couple of new pages in Central Admin will also get alarm bells ringing:

The key things here are “Upgrade Required” against the server, and “Database is too old and upgrade is required” against each of the ProjectServer databases.

Project 2007 and 2010: A New Blog on the Block – but familiar authors

BriSmith — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:19:16 GMT

If you haven’t seen the other announcements of the brand new Project Administration Blog then take a look over at http://blogs.technet.com/projectadministration/ and add a link to your browser favorites or RSS reader. Treb Gatte will be the primary blogger, but some of the kind of postings that have come from me and Christophe will in the future be posted via the Project Admin site. I’ll be keeping my usual blog going, as will Christophe and Treb. But the aim is that all things admin will come out via the new blog. Most of the postings in the near future will likely relate to Project 2010 and Project Server 2010, but I’m sure as the need arises we will also be posting Project 2007 stuff.

Project Server 2010: Two great new feature posts on the Project blog

BriSmith — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:14:53 GMT

I’ve been busy supporting our early adopter customers for Project 2010 and haven’t managed a post recently, or kept up with responding to blog comments (trying to catch up now…) But plenty of good stuff to read over on the Project product group blog at Project 2010- Introducing Demand Management and Project 2010- Introducing Portfolio Analysis. Demand Management and Portfolio Analyses are two of my favorite features in 2010. From the support side I think Demand Management might be a bit scary – I am sure our customers will find plenty of scenarios that we never dreamt of! And reproducing the issues in house will take some work – but I am sure we will be very ready for the challenge. For my next post I might give some behind the scenes views of how we in support get ready for a new release such as this.

Technorati Tags: psvr2010

Project Server 2010: New TechNet and MSDN Resources – and 2010 Forums!

BriSmith — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:33:00 GMT

I don’t usually steal all of Christophe’s blog postings but this one is worth it. Mostly planning content at the moment – but expect a ton more as we go through November and the Beta release. Certainly worth bookmarking for future reference. And if I get time I will be hanging out on the forums, along with my European colleague Alex. See you there!

We are pleased to announce the availability of the following Microsoft Project 2010 technical resources, save these bookmarks!

TechNet Project 2010 TechCenter

At http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/projectserver/ee263909.aspx the following areas are covered for IT Professionals:

Planning, Deploying and Operating Project 2010 Environment, including Project 2010 hardware and software requirements and deployment guidance
Upgrade and Migrating to Project 2010 through a brand new “Upgrade and migration” resource center

MSDN Project 2010 Developer Center

At http://msdn.microsoft.com/project/ developers will find a growing list of resources including Project 2010 Beta Software Development Kit (SDK) as we move closer to Project 2010 Beta in November.

Project 2010 Forums

Get all of your Project 2010 end-user, IT Professional and Developer questions answered by product experts from Microsoft and the community (Project MVPs):

Project Professional 2010 General Questions and Answers: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/projectprofessional2010
Project Server 2010 General Questions and Answers: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/projectserver2010

Please note this is the first milestone of a journey, new content will continuously flow to these sites.

Project Server 2007: October 2009 Cumulative Updates (CU) are Available

BriSmith — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:17:37 GMT

Thanks to the Product Group, our partners in Office Sustained Engineering partners and of course Rob – who keeps this all running smoothly from the support side - we now have a new set of Cumulative Updates! One fix that I know Mary is waiting for (we met at the Project Conference) is the ‘loading grid’ issue when updating milestone tasks – Fixed! Details of the CU follow, and also included are more general links regarding application of Service Packs.

A reminder on the download links – just replace the KB number where I have xxxxxx and you will go straight there:

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=xxxxxx&kbln=en-us

You can read about the fixes included in the October CU from the following articles:

Server Rollup Packages:

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package (WSS server-package): October 27, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974989

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package (MOSS server-package): October 27, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974988

Server Individual Product Packages:

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package (Sts-x-none.msp): October 27, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975002

Description of the Project Server 2007 hotfix package (Pjsrvapp-x-none.msp, Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp): October 27, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974990

Description of the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 1 and the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936984/en-us

How to deploy the 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 1 and Office Server Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945013/en-us

and here are the links for SP2

Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack SP2

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953338

Description of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 and of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953334

Description of Office Project 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of Office Project Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953326

Client Individual Product Package:

Description of the Office Project 2007 hotfix package (Project-x-none.msp): October 27, 2009 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975923

In order to install this hotfix, you will need to have Microsoft Project 2007 SP1 installed on the client. The article at the URL below contains information on how install download and install SP1 should you not have it installed already.

Note: We strongly recommend that you install Project 2007 SP2 from the information earlier in the article.

Description of Project 2007 Service Pack 1 and of Project Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937154/en-us

Technorati Tags: psvr2007

Project Server 2007 and 2010: Roundup of the week

BriSmith — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:13:20 GMT

If you are interested in 2010 then the Product Group blog has a brand new article from Bonny on user controlled scheduling. This covers the ability to turn of the scheduling engine for selected tasks (task type changed from automatically scheduled to manually scheduled) and also introduces the new Task Inspector – which is Task Drivers++.

Other recent 2010 posts include a feature I love from Roberto on Sync to SharePoint – a very cool new feature that allows collaboration via SharePoint 2010 directly from Project Professional 2010. This does not need Project Server and works with all versions of SharePoint 2010, including SharePoint Foundation 2010 – the new name for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).

A reminder of some training opportunities for Project Server 2010 – see Christophe’s posting on the Ignite World tour – both technical and sales tracks will be available, and Christophe also posted a reminder of the software requirements stack for 2010. Get ready for 2010 – x64 required for your SQL Server as well as all servers in the farm. x64 also available (but optional) for the client.

Another great addition to the TechNet content this week cam from Michael Jordan, Lead Architect from Microsoft Consulting Services entitled: Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 – Performance and Capacity Planning Best Practices And to plagiarize Christophe: This is a great asset for all customers and partners to ensure they are following deployment best practices to guarantee optimal performance, it is based on best practices learned from hundreds of Project Server 20007 customers engagements as well as scalability labs.

Purpose

The purpose of this guide is to extend the Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Performance Testing Lab (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2f595e22-c9f1-4376-a8b2-7a7eccd2aba5&displaylang=en) whitepaper by providing Best Practices and Recommendations. Further recommendations are made in this guide based on field experience and deployment successes in real world scenarios against the main areas of the system. The emphasis is on Project Server 2007 in a production environment using physical servers. Reference is made to virtualization in the relevant sections. However, for a more comprehensive overview please read the Project Server 2007 Hyper-V guide (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc982157.aspx).

The guidelines and recommendations in this guide present the “what” and “why”. Certain areas are prescriptive providing steps on “how” to accomplish the recommendation. However, the assumption is the audience of this guide is able to understand the reasons behind the guidance and take the necessary actions within their organization to implement optimization that applies to their scenario.

The guidelines and recommendations in this guide cover technical, functional and process related guidance. It’s important to note these are mutually inclusive of each other and present cross-impacts through the system when a design is not balanced across all 3 areas. It’s expected that administrators of a Project Server 2007 deployment will collect regular operational and functional data, and over time trend the system for performance and scalar depth. Optimization in all areas is required on a regular basis to maintain an efficient system and identify remediation steps through operational policies.

Audience

The intended audience includes IT administrators, database administrators, data architects, system engineers, project managers and business analysts who may be involved in implementing Project Server 2007. This document is designed for a reader who has general knowledge of all the required application and platform components that support Project Server 2007.

Additional Project Server 2007 resources for IT Professionals can be found on TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/projectserver/default.aspx

If this interests you then Jan’s posting regarding the EPMU training is also a must-read.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: psvr2010,psvr2007,SharePoint 2010

A Very Special Day for Microsoft!

BriSmith — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:06:30 GMT

In case you hadn’t noticed this is a very special day for Microsoft. Yes, Project 2010 is featured on the Office 2010 blog at http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2009/10/22/introducing-project-2010.aspx!

Oh, and we launched Windows 7 too…

SharePoint 2010: What does it do for Project? Some good ULS log enhancements.

BriSmith — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:10:35 GMT

With the 2010 release Project Server now requires SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise (what we might previously thought of as MOSS) rather than just SharePoint Foundation (previously WSS). This gives us access to all the features such as Excel Services for reporting, but also such things as PerformancePoint Services for Business Intelligence. But as well as these things at the feature level we also benefit from the under the covers changes – such as the great improvements in ULS logging (“unexpected errors” can still happen – but they give you a correlation ID so you can easily find in the ULS logs more information about just how unexpected it was!) The UI for setting verbosity of the ULS logs is also vastly improved and you don’t have to make each change one at a time – you can select whole features or individual sub features and then set the level of logging you require.

Another neat feature is that once you have changed things it is obvious from the UI (Bold) – and this rolls up to the feature level.

And if you do forget and leave logging set at verbose? Well the new health analyzer has a rule for that, and can even alert you!

and automatically fix things too. Sweet!

Technorati Tags: psvr2010,SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 – Read all about it!

BriSmith — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:30:23 GMT

If like me you didn’t get along to the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, then you can find out plenty about the new version on the SharePoint blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/10/19/sharepoint-2010.aspx. Also announced today at the conference was the availability of the Beta of Office and SharePoint 2010 (and of course Project 2010 and Project Server 2010) next month. See http://www.microsoft.com/project/2010/en/us/default.aspx for more details.

Technorati Tags: psvr2010,Project Server 2010,SharePoint 2010

Bing Search now working on my Microsoft Project Support blog site!

BriSmith — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:45:14 GMT

The TechNet and MSDN blogs had an overhaul recently and the search box that has long frustrated me when looking on even my blog has finally been fixed. It now uses the Bing engine and really does find stuff on my blog. (which Bing and other major search engines had been finding anyway.

One thing that others have had feedback on since this change was that for some searches you will see some Sponsored Sites returned along with your results. I will be keeping an eye on these, and we are also reviewing the general idea of having ads on these blog searches. If you have any concerns then please let me know. Potentially these links can add value – and perhaps many of my readers work for partners that would love to be presented as a link to customers that are looking for help on Project Server. We just need to be sure these are relevant and not intrusive.

Some more platform upgrades coming to my blog and there will be some downtime on the MSDN and TechNet blog platform this weekend (from around 3pm 10/9 PST) – so if you are thinking of having Project Server problems over the weekend you’d better get your offline RSS feed from my blog ready!