Christophe Fiessinger's Blog

Please find an important announcement from the SharePoint team that impact the Project Server 2007 world as well: Update on Licensing and Virtualization Support for SharePoint Products and Technologies

• Project Server 2007 Service Pack and later is now officially supported on Windows 2008 Hyper-V: Microsoft server software and supported virtualization environments (KB 957006)
• Except a Project Server Hyper-V Guide to be published on TechNet in the next few weeks
• Read the licensing update which applies to volume licensing, more info here: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/volbrief.mspx (Application Server license mobility)

A reminder of couple posts I did on the same topic, how cool Hyper-V is!

• How to upgrade Microsoft Project VPC to Hyper-V
• How to upgrade your laptop/desktop to Windows Server 2008?
• Microsoft Hypervisor Technology (Hyper-V) is RTM
• I love my Hyper-V!

Happy Hyper-V!

Today we released the source code for the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint—based on the Silverlight Beta 2 release. The Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint provide a way for developers to better understand how to integrate Silverlight applications with SharePoint. Silverlight is an incredibly popular technology and with the increase in SharePoint adoption we’re finding an increased call for integrating technologies like Silverlight with SharePoint.

In this release, you’ll find five blueprint samples:

1. Hello World
2. Media Player
3. Slider Control
4. Custom Navigation
5. Colleague Viewer

Included in the release are documentation for each of the samples and the source code (go to the Releases tab of the CodePlex site). Also posted to the site is an FAQ document. In the coming days and week, we’ll publish additional screen-casts and any other supporting documentation we create or that is provided to us through the developer community.

The links to get to the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint are:

1. http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/   --or direct at the CodePlex site
2. http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP

The following useful article was published for SharePoint: Sample code acceptance checklist for IT organizations

Checklist covers the following areas (also contains a printable version):

• Security
• Session management
• Validation
• Sensitive data
• Exception handling
• Web parts
• Documentation
• General software development best practices

This article also contains a great list of Resources for SharePoint development best practices

Since Project Server 2007 is built on top of SharePoint most of the content discussed in that article is applicable to PS customization.

The associated Infrastructure Update KB (953750) article was recently updated with two know issues, as mentioned during the Webcast these two issues will be fixed in the August Cumulative Update. To request a Cumulative Update go to the following site.

As a reminder, if you have any issue with our product, please let us know so we can fix them! Work with Microsoft Premier Support to open an incident.

Check the following for a recap of resources on the Infrastructure Update.

The slide deck with an overview of the Project and Project Server 2007 Infrastructure Update has been posted  on EPMConnect: A briefing on the released Project Infrastructure Update - the quality has just got even better

This 53 slide deck contains the following:

• Introduction
• Infrastructure Update Walkthrough
• Known Issues
• Deployment Best Practices

The demo image used during the presentation is our standard Project Portfolio Management virtual image (email proj2007@microsoft.com to get a copy) with the IU applied in it (check the blog post below on how to do it).

Related links:

• Deploy the Infrastructure Update for Office Project Server 2007
• Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
• Announcing the availability of the Project and Project Server 2007 Infrastructure Update
• How to deploy the Project Infrastructure Update on a virtual image (VHD)?

In case you missed we just shipped both SP1 for VS 2008 and SP1 for the .Net Framework 3.5: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533447.aspx

Time to update your development machines.

Thanks to Boris Scholl :)

Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 is built on top of Windows Sharepoint Services, so you might think you can develop AJAX Web Parts as you do in Windows Sharepoint Services, right?

Unfortunately it’s not that easy. Actually the Web Part development process is the same, but you need to configure Project Server 2007 for AJAX support.

Here’s what you need to do:

You must configure the Project Web application and the Shared Services Provider Web Application to support calling Web services from script. In the Web.config file for the application, you must register the ScriptHandlerFactory HTTP handler, which processes calls made from script to .asmx Web services. For Web service calls that are not issued from ASP.NET AJAX script, the handler delegates the call to the default handler.

You need to add the following lines to the web.config located in:

C:\Program Files]\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\WebServices\root

   1: <httpHandlers>

   2:   <remove verb="*" path="*.asmx" />

   3:   <add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory,    System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>

   4: </httpHandlers>

You also need to add the following line to the web.config of your project server installation which can be found here:

C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\[PSweb app directory]

   1: <httpHandlers>

   2:   <remove verb="*" path="*.asmx" />

   3:   <add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory,    System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>

   4: </httpHandlers>

After making those changes to the config files the client runtime is now enabled for AJAX and you can start building AJAX Web Parts.

Have fun!

A related article : Optimizing custom Web parts for the WAN

Bob Segrest from BSegE LLC has recently published the following project on CodePlex: Project Reportcard (http://www.codeplex.com/ProjectReportcard)

The Project Reportcard was developed as a tool to help Project Managers assess their projects based on organizational standards implemented by their PMO. Understanding what the organizational KPIs are going to look like before their project update is published, can help a project manager avoid non-compliance issues and prepare to address real project challenges. Most PMs find value in being able to see their Project Reportcard before it is visible to the PMO and management team.
The Project Reportcard also makes it easier for the PMO to verify compliance with organizational standards.
Master projects, projects based on enterprise project templates and non-template projects are supported.
The Project Reportcard is written in VB.Net using Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) and built in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. It is deployed as an Add-In for Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007. Full functionality requires a Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and the creation of several custom enterprise fields.
Community and author support is provided on a time available basis. Please select the Discussions and Issue Tracker tabs in this forum for Project Reportcard support. Polite dialog is always appreciated.

This solution contains full documentation as well as source code. Feel free to provide solution feedback via CodePlex or email.

If case you have missed it, there is a useful TechNet article that describe how to deploy the Infrastructure Update for Project Server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc671413.aspx

The equivalent SharePoint article is here: Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

and in case you missed it: Announcing the availability of the Project and Project Server 2007 Infrastructure Update

The blogging community is growing thanks to the Project Experts team, want to find out how to modify timesheet views and more check it out:

RSS Subscription

On July 15, 2008 we released the Infrastructure Update: Announcing the availability of the Project and Project Server 2007 Infrastructure Update

Please find below the procedure to update a standalone virtual image (VHD).

Depending on what data you have in your VPC you might require additional disk space (don’t forget to clean ULS logs for instance) to deploy the Infrastructure Update, please refer to this post on how to do it: How to extend the size of a virtual image (VHD)?
Create an image (ISO file) with the Infrastructure Update bits and any other updates you’d like to deploy (PerformancePoint Server Service Pack 1 for instance) (I used CDBurnerXP, free of charge on my Windows 2008 x64 machine). At the minimum you’ll need the following three (WSS, Office Server since it includes the Project Server update, and the Project desktop update): infrastructureupdateformicrosoftofficeproject2007-kb951547-fullfile-x86.exe infrastructureupdateformicrosoftofficeservers-kb951297-fullfile-x86.exe infrastructureupdateforwindowssharepointservices3.0-kb951695-fullfile-x86.exe Infrastructure bits can be found here
Start your virtual image, log in as the farm administrator and mount the ISO created above
Within the image navigate the the files above and execute the Windows SharePoint Services EXE first Once the Infrastructure Update has been installed DO NOT RUN the Wizard (just run it once after the Office Server installation in the next step)
Execute the Office Server EXE, after the installation run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard this time (could take at least 20min)
Execute the Project EXE
Ensure the Infrastructure Update got deployed properly using the following references to verify version numbers: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951695 (WSS) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951297 (Office Server/Project Server…) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951547 (Project desktop) and Steven’s post: Migrated to MOSS 2007 SP1 or EPM 2007 SP1 .. checking your database schema version overall the lucky number you should be seeing is: 12.0.6318.5000
and voila! It took me about one hour to do it all (which is quicker that downloading an updated 25GB VPC). This is also a good opportunity to run Microsoft Update and apply our latest recommended product updates (SQL, Visual Studio, security…)

William Brown from Symmetry Corporation and I will be giving the following session at the upcoming Business Intelligence Conference next October in Seattle:

Performance Management for Projects using Microsoft Project and Office PerformancePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution allows the enterprise to create, select, plan and manage projects over their lifespan; it is made up of the following products (Project Professional, Project Server, and Project Portfolio Server 2007). Operational systems such as those built with EPM have a point-in-time view of the world for most of their metrics. As the number and complexity of projects rise, it is critical to be able to easily create trend analysis and other performance management reports. In this session you will learn how to use Microsoft Business Intelligence suite to augment EPM’s suite of built-in operational reports to deliver a broad range of analysis to the entire organization. This approach uses PerformancePoint Server to integrate data from EPM, as well as other systems such as Human Resources. The session will cover the SQL Server Analysis Services cubes that ship with Project Server and how to extend their capabilities by adding additional data and analytics: • Learn how to create PerformancePoint KPIs targeted to project management, exception reporting, and guided analytics. • Discover how to implement a PerformancePoint application using Project Server that can be rolled out to the entire organization. • See how easy it is to create trend analysis reports using PerformancePoint, enabling business users to look at all KPIs over time.

If you have not done so yet, join us at the event: Registration

It’s official: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-06SQLServer2008PR.mspx

Check out the official site:

Why consider SQL Server 2008 for your EPM farm?

Before upgrading your EPM production farm please wait for the official supportability statements (will also blog about it as usual :)) in the meantime happy testing in a DEV environment.

Do you ever wonder how long we support our software and software updates such as Service Packs for instance? For instance how long will Project Server 2007 Service Pack 1 will be supported? All the answers can be found on this site: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/

Some useful links:

or check these links for more:

• Support Lifecycle Index
• Lifecycle Supported Service Packs