Project Programmability

Japanese Project Server 2007 SDK

The Project Server 2007 SDK is now available in Japanese:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/library/bb187370.aspx

Chris Boyd

Project Server Developer Bookmarks

Hello,

Christophe posted a great set of Project Server Developer bookmarks:

http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2008/06/03/project-sever-developer-bookmarks.aspx 

Chris

Project at TechED Developers next week

Boris Scholl, Brian Smith and Christophe Fiessinger will be attending TechEd Developers 2008 in Orlando next week.

They will be delivering the following sessions:

Customizing the Microsoft Office Project Web Access User Interface

Line-of-Business Integration Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007

Code Samples

• TechEd 2008 Preview – Part 1 – Project Server 2007 Line of Business Integration with the Business Data Catalog
• TechEd 2008 Preview – Part 2 – Project Server 2007 Line of Business Integration using CLR Triggers
• How to control Lookup Table updates?

Project Initiation Using Microsoft Office InfoPath and Windows Workflow Foundation

Code Samples

• http://www.codeplex.com/EPMIP
• http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ProjectUpdaterForm

They will be around all week attending the Blogger Connect (next to TechEd online / Fishbowl areas) as well as the Office Developer booths.

Grow-the-Server Side Sweepstakes Update

• The random drawing took place on Thursday, May 1 and prize winners have been contacted. 
  
• The Sweepstakes added more than 75 new server-side skilled entries into the Project Server Developers Newsgroup content and drew 6 new developers to the group
  
  Congratulations to Bob Segrest for winning one of the Grand Prizes of a free pass to Tech Ed Developers in Orlando, FL June 3-6.  The date is coming up quick!
  
  The second winner of the Tech Ed Developers free pass has not yet claimed their prize. 
  
  Congratulations also to following for winning the five $50.00 secondary prizes:

o   Fernando Paucar of LMR Solutions

o   Piet Remen of Strategic Data Management

o   Andrew Jacks of Strategic Data Management

o   Hans Hoet of Guidance NV/SA  Buro & Design Center

o   Virendra Sharma of Project Widgets Inc.

For those entering the GROW-THE-SERVER-SIDE SWEEPSTAKES…

For those entering the GROW-THE-SERVER-SIDE SWEEPSTAKES as posted on this blog, please remember not to send your registration for the sweepstakes from an email account that doesn’t allow incoming email messages.  The purpose of providing your email is:

· Uniquely identify you as liked to your display name which is used to partake in the sweepstakes through the PS Developers Community Newsgroup

· Contact you in the event that you win

Microsoft if legally bound by Privacy guidelines not to use your email for any other purpose than to have you register for this sweepstakes.

New SQL Reporting Services Sample Reports for Project Server

Hello,

Christophe just released the reports that ship with the updated EPM 2007 VPC:

http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2008/04/10/new-sql-reporting-services-sample-reports-for-project-server.aspx

Chris

Calling all Project Server Developers from the Expanding the Project Server Developers Community Growth Effort!

Announcing the GROW THE SERVER-SIDE SWEEPSTAKES to be held between April 9 and April 30, 2008.

Enter for a chance to win * a free pass to the Tech Ed North America 2008 Developers Conference in Orlando, Florida June 3-6.

Five other lucky winners will be drawn to receive a Project Server Developers Community plaque and pen prize package.

The drawing for the winners will take place May 1, 2008.

Get your registration in now and begin making your postings to the PS Developers Community Newsgroup to accumulate entries. 

Read the official rules attached for details about entries.

Register by:  sending an email before the close of the sweepstakes period with the subject “Server-Side Sweepstakes” to gssw@microsoft.com with the following information:

• name
• email address
• display name that you will use while making postings to the Project Server Developers Community Discussion Newsgroup

*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open to technology professionals and enthusiasts 21+. Game ends April 30, 2008. Void in Quebec and where prohibited by law. Some geographic restrictions apply. For full rules, see the attached document.

Connection Strings…

Hey,

Here is a great post:

http://projectserver.cz/cms/index.php?itemid=35

It shows how to get the connection string to the Project Server 2007 Reporting Database (and the other three databases which are not supported programming interfaces). This is extremely helpful when creating PSI extensions. Just one caveat, this may break after a hot fix or service pack install.

Chris Boyd

Project Server and Portfolio Server Sessions at TechEd 2008

TechED 2008 – Developers and TechEd 2008 - IT Professionals are two months away!

Please find below the EPM sessions that will be delivered at these events:

TechED 2008 – Developers

• Customizing the Microsoft Office Project Web Access User Interface
• Line-of-Business Integration Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
• Project Initiation Using Microsoft Office InfoPath and Windows Workflow Foundation

TechEd 2008 - IT Professionals

• Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Disaster Recovery
• Best Practices: Enabling Innovation Process Management Using Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management Solution and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Deployment for High Availability and Scalability

Search Project Server data using MOSS' BDC and Enterprise Search - CodePlex Solution Starter

Bonjour,

Do you ever wonder how many projects are in a specific phase? Would you like to know the attributes of a specific resource? Are you looking when a specific milestone ends? Do you have users in your organization that are not part of the Project Server resource pool but still need to access the data? Being able to easily search valuable information is becoming a key feature in any organization. 

This solution starter demonstrates how to leverage SharePoint Server’s Business Data Catalog (BDC) to index project server data and enable users to search the different objects (projects, tasks, resources, lookup tables…) using SharePoint Server’s Enterprise Search, and give you answers to all the questions above.  Out of the box the Project Server data is not indexed (only the SharePoint objects are indexed for instance Issues, Risks, Documents…) and thus users cannot search the content contained in the Reporting database. This solution starter will thus enable you to mine the PS 2007 gold mine and find the nuggets you were looking for very easily!

http://www.codeplex.com/EPMBDC

This solution starter was created for a presentation I delivered last week at the SharePoint Conference to illustrate one of the benefits of deploying PS 2007 with SharePoint Server ( and not just WSS V3).

About CodePlex

CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. You can use CodePlex to create new projects to share with the world, join others who have already started their own projects, or use the applications on this site and provide feedback. A word about Microsoft’s role: Microsoft does not control, review, revise, endorse or distribute the third party projects on this site. Microsoft is hosting the CodePlex site solely as a web storage site as a service to the developer community.

Q&A

Q: Is the tool supported?

A: There is no support in terms of CSS/PSS. We expect the support being a CodePlex community effort. Please note that the customization code uses standard supported web service calls available out of the box in EPM2007.

Q: Is the tool free?

A: Yes.

Q: Can I distribute the tool and the source code to customers and partners?

A: Customers and Partners can use both. Please point them to CodePlex as they have to agree on the license terms

Q: Can a partner distribute the tool and code as is?

A: No, but he can point his customer to the website to download it, so he makes sure that the customer agrees with the license terms.

Q: Can a customer install the customization and use it?

A: Yes the customer can, but he/she is responsible for testing it and running it.

Q: Can I suggest changes to it?

A: Yes, join the CodePlex community or send us an email: epmssdev@microsoft.com

Q: Will this tool be distributed in other ways (i.e. DVDs)?

A: No.

Q: What skills do I need to modify or change the tool?

A: C#, Project Server Interface, and a good understanding of the EPM 2007 data schema.

Q: I’m trying to modify the code and do have questions. Who do I ask?

A: Go to the Discussions forums on CodePlex.

Q: What are all the EPM projects released on CodePlex?

A. Check this: http://www.codeplex.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?ProjectSearchText=epm

Regards,

Christophe Fiessinger

Canceling the Before Save Event

Hello,

A good question came in yesterday; how to cancel the Project Before Save event in Project client:

Public Sub GlobalApplication_ProjectBeforeSave(ByVal pj As Project, ByVal SaveAsUi As Boolean, Cancel As Boolean)
 
         Cancel = True
      
End Sub

(For demonstration and simplicity, this event handler just cancels all saves. You would most likely want to add validation and if it fails, cancel the save)

Unfortunately the above code will not work. Instead, you will want to use ProjectBeforeSave2:

Public Sub GlobalApplication_ProjectBeforeSave2(ByVal pj As Project, ByVal SaveAsUi As Boolean, Info As EventInfo)

         Info .Cancel = True

End Sub

Hope this helps,

Chris Boyd

Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint

Hey,

If you are interested in creating PWA webparts that make use of Silverlight, I suggest you take a look at the "Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint" which was just released last night:

• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/cc303301.aspx
• http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/

For some more general information on SilverLight:

• http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/default.aspx

Chris Boyd

Custom Field and Lookup Table Webcast

Hello,

Attached is my source code and power point presentation of today's webcast on custom fields and lookup tables:

• CustomFieldCRUD - This a very simple application that shows how to create, read, update and delete custom field definitions on Project Server 2007 using the PSI.
• PublishProjects - This is an application that was written for our internal dogfood effort. We use this application to publish all the Project team's project plans on our Project Server. It shows how to read project custom fields and lookup table values from the Project PSI.
• Custom Fields and Lookup Tables - This is a PDF version of the slide deck used for the presentation.

We will be publishing the presentation to the web in the next few days. Once it is available, I will post a link to it.

Chris Boyd

Project Server 2007 Timesheet Data Population Tool

Bonjour,

The Project Server 2007 timesheet data population tool has been released on CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/EPMTSdatapop

The Project Server 2007 Timesheet Data Population Tool enables you to simulate timesheet entries in your farm. This tool can help you perform scalability studies of your PS architecture and validate the sizing of an existing architecture (by measuring timesheet queue throughput for instance). This tool can also be used to test timesheet customization, for instance the Timesheet Tied-mode code sample on Codeplex. This powerful tool should not be run a production environment!

The Timesheet Data Population tool is a console application written in C#.  It uses standard PSI (Project Server Interface) web service methods to populate timesheets.

Please refer to the latest version of the Project Server Software Development Kit (SDK) for more information on the PSI methods and how to use them.

This solution starter was written initially to perform Project Server 2003 vs. Project Server 2007 benchmarks, and has been used since to perform scalability studies and to test timesheet customizations.

A special thank you to Isabel Bernardos and Steven Haden for helping me write and test the tool during PS 2007 scalability studies for large European customers. 

If you are aware of any useful tools/solutions for Project and Portfolio Server 2007 and you would like to share them with the community via CodePlex please send me an email.

About CodePlex

CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. You can use CodePlex to create new projects to share with the world, join others who have already started their own projects, or use the applications on this site and provide feedback. A word about Microsoft’s role: Microsoft does not control, review, revise, endorse or distribute the third party projects on this site. Microsoft is hosting the CodePlex site solely as a web storage site as a service to the developer community.

Q&A

Q: Is the tool supported?

A: There is no support in terms of CSS/PSS. We expect the support being a CodePlex community effort. Please note that the customization code uses standard supported web service calls available out of the box in EPM2007.

Q: Is the tool free?

A: Yes.

Q: Can I distribute the tool and the source code to customers and partners?

A: Customers and Partners can use both. Please go to CodePlex to agree on the license terms

Q: Can a partner distribute the tool and code as is?

A: No, but partners can point their customer to the website to download it.

Q: Can a customer install the customization and use it?

A: Yes the customer can, but he/she is responsible for testing it and running it.

Q: Can I suggest changes to it?

A: Yes, join the CodePlex community or send us an email: epmssdev@microsoft.com

Q: Will this tool be distributed in other ways (i.e. DVDs)?

A: No.

Q: What skills do I need to modify or change the tool?

A: C#, Project Server Interface, and a good understanding of the EPM 2007 data schema.

Q: I’m trying to modify the code and do have questions. Who do I ask?

A: Go to the Discussions forums on CodePlex.

Q: What are all the EPM projects released on CodePlex?

A. Check this: http://www.codeplex.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?ProjectSearchText=epm

Regards,

Christophe Fiessinger

Project Portfolio Server 2007 SP1

Hello,

The Project Portfolio Server 2007 SP1 is now available:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7cf44f2c-49d5-4431-bd3e-a10035ec1a39&displaylang=en

For a list of what is fixed in SP1, check out:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=942722

Chris

Tags: Project Portfolio Server SP1