Happy Holidays from FluentPro

I am speaking on Project Server Conference 2012

I am speaking on Project Server Conference 2012, in Phoenix. My presentation - "Management of Project Server 2010 environment configurations, migration and documenting of configurations settings"

Deleting Project Sites left after deleted projects

Sometimes, when users delete projects, they forget to check the checkbox to delete Project Site.

Please find a video how to delete Project Sites when projects were deleted and Project Sites are not.

Project Sites in Microsoft Project Server 2010 - What is missing?

In many of our Project Server 2010 Implementations we see that people are not using project sites to the full extent. Most store documents, risks and issues - but usually that's all.

Is that a lack of knowledge how to use sites? Is that a lack of functionality? What is missing there to make Project Site an important and useful instrument for team collaboration?


In next posts I will try to provide a series of posts and videos abount working with Project Sites and Templates, customization and management.

7 products released

We would like to announce availability of 7 products for Microsoft Project Server 2010 developed by FluentPro:

• FluentPro PDP Manager
• FluentPro View Manager
• FluentPro Lookup Manager
• FluentPro Project Dashboard
• FluentPro Status Report
• FluentPro Timesheet Reports
• FluentPro Publisher

Please visit www.fluentpro.com/products.html to see videos on each product and learn more information.

Products are available for purchase from our website.

Cloud. When Project Server and SharePoint will be there?

Found interesting article - http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2011/12/14/10-ways-cloud-computing-will-disrupt-our-businesses-in-2012/

I was surprised by "cloud first" approach for government. This is extremely good push for the cloud companies and if government goes to cloud - big companies will follow as well into both private and public clouds, and we will see decreasing number of on-premise deployments. The problem I see is that every company uses "cloud" as they understand it..and often it is just a marketing buzz for the "reshaped" old infrastructure.

In our practice - we tired of on-premise deployments, permissions, limited access, non-standardized configuration and troubleshooting all that. We want to go to some centralized and standardized model - it will make our life easier and products more stable.

Microsoft goes there with Office365. The question is - when the full versions of Project Server and SharePoint will be cloud-enabled? Will happen? And another big question - what would be the limitations for the products and platform? (current SharePoint in Office 365 is ugly and very limited). Time will show...

2 more product videos available - FluentPro Publisher and FluentPro View Manager for Project Server 2010

Today, we've prepared 2 more videos for our products:

• FluentPro Project Publisher - software that allows to re-save and re-publish all or selected projects

• FluentPro View Manager - this is an update (v.2.0) of our existing product that allows to customize Project Server 2010 and link views to EPT and user security group membership and define default views to load. 

FluentPro Project Publisher





FluentPro View Manager



Enjoy - and we would be happy to hear your feedback!

Silver Project and Portfolio Management competence received

Today FluentPro received Silver Project and Portfolio Management competence in Microsoft Partner Program.

Merge 2 Project Server 2010 PWA with help of FluentBooks

Today, I've recorded sample video to demonstrate how to merge configurations from 2 Project Server 2010 PWA with help of our product - FluentBooks. Enjoy the video!




If you have any questions / suggestions - let us know, we would love to hear your feedback.

FluentPro PDP Manager video

Please find short overview of FluentPro PDP Manager, software that allows to customize look and feel of fields on your PDPs.

You can control:

• - Title
• - Font, color and style
• - Visibility in edit / view mode
• - Read-only state

Software will be available for purchase starting 16th of December on www.fluentpro.com

Updates and new products availability announcement

FluentPro Software, Inc (www.fluentpro.com) , developer of products and tools for Microsoft Project Server 2010 is happy to announce availability of updates of our existing products and release of new products for Project Server 2010 that will become available for purchase during next week:

Updates for existing products:
FluentPro Status Report
Automate project status report generation. Capture all informaiton in project server and send ready report to your manager in seconds.
Change Log:

• We've updated the look and feel of report
• New installer

FluentPro Project Dashboard
Visualize your project status and key metrics
Change Log:

• Updated the look and feel of report
• New installer

FluentPro TimeSheet Reports
Users can print their Timesheets and assignments; Project managers can do the same for themselves and their teammates.
Change Log:

• We've updated the look and feel of report
• New installer

FluentPro Lookup Manager
Software tool to synchronize Project Server 21010 Lookup tables with SharePoint lists;
Change log:

• Software is converted into SharePoint job instead of utility that was run on schedule with task manager.
• New installer

FluentPro View Manager
Ability to define rules for Schedule PDP which view to load automatically depending on EPT and user Group membership.
Change log:

• Update includes support of user group membership
• New installer

FluentPro Publisher
Publish all your projects for accurate and up-to date reporting
Change log:

• New installer

New Products
FluentPro PDP Manager
This is our brand new new product that our beta-testers LOVE; Now you have full control to control look and feel of your PDPs: change field name captions, descriptions, colors, font size and visibility of fields on PDP with support of edit mode / view mode and rules that can be defined to support different EPTs.

FluentBooks
As mentioned in previous blog post, our product - FluentBooks - software to manage migration, merge and comparison of Project Server 2010 configurations will be released for limited Beta-2 testing. If you are interested - we still have 2 open slots.

We will make additional announcement on day you can purchase products from our website.

Alternative to Project Server 2010 Playbook utility - looking for beta testers

Over last 2 years our company participated in over 50 Project Server 2010 implementation projects (small and big ones, clear deployments, upgrades and PWA instances merge) via partners and directly. There are 2 possible hosting scenarios - on-premise and hosted; but there is always a problem no matter where your are hosted: How to migrate configuration from one development environment (at customer or at your development / staging servers) to the test servers and then to the production servers and to make sure that everything is moved correctly.

Microsoft provides a really great and FREE utility - Playbook for Project Server 2010 (included into Project Server 2010 Resource Kit), that allows to do such migrations (backup and restore configurations). There are some issues - first of all warnings on use of Playbook on production environments and secondly - in more than 50% of cases we've used the Playbook we've experienced  errors and exceptions and crashes of different kind when restoring configurations.

To optimize our deployment experience and time we spend on deployment, we've developed alternative to Playbook - FluentBooks, that supports more granular selection of items for migration and migrates items that we had most of the issues with - Fields, Lookups, Views, EPTs and PDPs. We've used it in-house for last 6 month to perform most of our deployments and decided to release it as product for other companies.
Our experience shows that use of FluentBooks allows to optimize process and cut time spent by consultants and PPM partners for configuration migrations between servers (we estimate savings over  hundred of hours for "busy" Project Server 2010 consultant within 2-3 years period) and will remove significant amount of "pain" associated with those migrations and deployments.

Quick overview of our FluentBooks functionality:

• FluentBooks support migration of Custom Fields, Lookup Tables, Views, EPTs and PDPs between Project Server 2010 environments the same way as Playbook does but we allow user to select elements that he wants to migrate (not just custom fields)
• FluentBooks is build with using PSI calls only, no database read / write operation.
• FluentBooks provides functionality for comparison of environments for difference - for example Dev and Test and you can visually see the difference and generate difference configuration.
• One great features that users can benefit from is migration of data and projects from external sources (Excel, SharePoint lists) -  FluentBooks support migration of projects (without schedules) with attributes from one environment to another (all projects with all values in project level custom fields).
• FluentBooks support import of project information with attributes and fields from Excel; it will create enterprise custom fields and lookup tables as well. It means that you can import projects from/to EPM Live, ATTask and other systems
• FluentBooks implements 2 level of validation of elements - same element UID or just same Name (in addition to other matching attributes to element)
• You do not need to deploy solutions remotely anymore - send a free version of utility and configuration to customer and they can deploy configuration without your participation
• FluentBooks work over internet (if Project Server 2010 is available via HTTP); Only NTLM authentication is supported as well as Kerberos authentication.
• FluentBooks will be licensed per user and will be tied to machine.
• Migration of Security Settings, Workflows, Timesheet / Tasks settings and other settings are not supported at this version (we plan to add Security Configuration and resource migration later functionality later but we will not replicate 100% of Playbooks functionality).
• FluentBooks is not replacing process of creation of configuration, development and customization in Project Server 2010 PWA via Server Settings - it helps to move and deploy configurations and data.

Possible usage scenarios:

• Migrate configuration from development server to test server (Project Server 2010 PWA)
• Compare 2 PWAs
• Merge configurations of 2 PWA
• Migrate projects and project information (without schedules) between PWA
• Import and export projects from Excel or from SharePoint list to PWA

We've done the internal testing and  Beta 1 testing with our partners - limited number of Microsoft PPM partners. Right now we are looking for about 10 more companies / consultants to participate in Beta 2 testing. Every company / consultant  selected to participate will receive one free license of the software for use after commercial release (we plan to release FluentBooks end of December 2011).

Please leave your comment on this blog post with your company name and email and we will contact you on your participation in Beta 2 testing.

How to repair broken PDP in Project Server 2010 / SharePoint 2010

Sometimes there are situations when you have a web part that you cannot delete or it gives you errors so you even cannot see your PDP.
There is a tiny trick: add "?contents=1" or "&contents=1" (depending where you are) and you will see a page with list of all web parts on your page. And you can delete web part that creates all those issues

Lookup error after update to SP1 + June 2011 CU

We've upgraded one server to SP1 and CU. As result - when clicking on any field with lookup table receive unexpected error:  http://screencast.com/t/tOoIionuv

Project Server 2010 - One or multiple PWA instances?

In our Project Server 2010 practice we work with various customers and see their deployment strategies, problems and great things. Today, I wanted to cover one of the major issues that big companies without centralized PMO are facing.

The problem (challenge) is - Should organizations create one PWA for entire organization or several PWA per business unit or department?

Our recommendation is ONE PWA.

One of our customers had 2 departments that started implementing project server about the same time but independently. Now - the challenge is to merge the data. 150 projects total, project sites, duplicated custom fields and names, different document library structure. It is a significant effort that is way more complex now than to have several joint meetings to discuss the approach, attributes and structure.

If fact, this was driven by requirements to isolate data between departments and this is a task for Project Server 2010 consultant / consulting company or qualified Project Server 2010 Administrator to configure security in a way that it will isolate data.

Analysis of pros and const for one PWA:

Pros:

• Executives can see all the information in one place.
• In future, departments that will start using PS (for example HR) will re-use existing approaches, practices. This significantly reduce time and investments required to start using Project Server
• Ability to overview entire resource pool in the organization and do cross-departmental resource planning
• Ability to do the cross-departmental dependencies in projects.

Cons:

• Slightly more complicated security configuration
• Anything else?

I would recommend using additional PWA for test / staging environments if there is no additional hardware available (recommendation is still to have staging / development environments as separate farms).

Feel free to comment or ask questions - I will be happy to answer.

Related blog posts:

Distribute templates to multiple PWA: http://www.projectserverblog.com/2012/02/distributing-project-templates-in.html

Merge PWAs with help of FluentBooks: http://www.projectserverblog.com/2011/12/merge-2-project-server-2010-pwa-with.html

PowerShell and Project Server 2010

FluentPro released PowerShell snap-in for FluentPS library that allows you to manage and perform actions with most of the objects in Project Server 2010 with the Powershell. Project, Tasks, Resources, Workflows, Security - just write code in PowerShell and you can automate project server activities.

You can see sample code on http://www.projectserver2010blog.com/2011/08/projectserver-2010-psi-from-powershell.html and download it from http://fluentps.codeplex.com/releases

SSRS Reports Client Side printing

From time to time we are facing customers who cannot print SSRS reports on their PCs from SharePoint or Project Server.

Solution: Install the RSClientPrint.cab file.

You can find detailed description at http://www.kodyaz.com/articles/client-side-printing-silent-deployment-of-rsclientPrint.aspx

Project Server 2010 Quick Launch shows project sites

Some of our customers complain that they can see list of all Project Sites that is added below the Libraries / Shared Documents on the left navigation in PWA.

To disable this please go to Server Settings -> Look and Feel section  (on the right) -> Quick Launch -> and uncheck the "Show menu items from MicrosoftSharePoint Foundation" checkbox.

This should solve the problem

BeMo Lite for iPhone V1.1 just released

Yesterday we released small update for BeMo Lite for iPhone – Every BeMo Lite for iPhone users will be get their application updated via App Store with this latest fix (v1.1)

Please continue to send us your feedback we are starting to be working on some new requested features for next release

Blank Installation of Project Server 2010 with SP1 - Excel Services not working

Today faced problem described in several other blogs about problem with Excel Services not working when you upgrade Project Server 2010 to SP1 (exisiting or new).

The reason for the error is if there is no root site collection in "yourdomain/" (that was my case, I created just PWA) Excel services in not working and giving the JavaScript error starting with  "http://<your_domain>/_layouts/EwaStringsHandler.ashx/en-US?......."

To resolve - go to Central Administration and create blank site collection at the root of your SharePoint Server and refresh the excel report - it will start working immediately.

BeMo Project Intelligence and FluentPro launch the world’s “first-ever” iPhone App - client for Microsoft Project Server 2010

FluentPro (www.FluentPro.com) and BeMo (www.bemopro.com) are proud to announce the launch of the world’s “first-ever” iPhone App for Microsoft Project Server 2010 – bringing the power of the world’s most versatile Enterprise Project Management platform to the palm of your hand, now available on Apple’s iPhone and iTouch.

FluentPro, together with our partner, BeMo, leading Microsoft Project Server 2010 hosting provider, have taken EPM to a new level of personalization by expanding from web-based to wireless.

Now project managers and project team members can connect to their Microsoft Project Server 2010 instance without the need of a browser.

In addition to the new iPhone application, FluentPro and BeMo are also working on similar apps for iPad, Android and Window’s 7 mobile platforms, making wireless access available to a wider range of EPM professionals.

App can be purchased from App Store for $9.99 only.

Project Server 2010 SP1 is available for download.

Microsoft just released Project Server 2010 SP1.

MS also recommends to install the June CU after SP1 since it has number of fixes.

Please read carefully all instructions and test your applications in test environment before installing it to production servers. 

SP1: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/project/archive/2011/06/28/announcing-the-release-of-service-pack-1-sp1-for-microsoft-project-and-project-server-2010.aspx

SP1:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2460047

SP1:http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/06/28/announcing-office-2010-and-sharepoint-2010-service-pack-1-availability.aspx

June CU: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2536586

FluentPro.com is live

After almost 3 month working on design, contentent and structure, we are happy to announce that our webisite www.fluentpro.com is live.

We've changed a focus of out company more to product development and hope that tools and products that we have will be a great addition to market.

We announce availability of number of products and we will cover it later in separate blog posts.

I hope you will enjoy FluentPro's products for Project Server 2010!

Few advises to customers installing Project Server 2010 in-house with internal IT

Quite often we handle situations when customer's IT department is installing Project Server 2010 internally using their general IT specialists. From time to time this leads to errors that hardly discovered but easy to fix.

One organization simply deleted farm admin from local admins group on servers in farm - it is unsecure from their point of view (disregarding that MS clearly states that this has to be done). As you can imagine you cannot make any change since you get access denied and other errors.

Another organization is not caring about configuring administrative backup daily schedule and resulting in loosing data because of change.

other organizations install Reporting services in DB server and insist that this is the way it has to be and it is our problem how to configure this.

Customers - if you install project server - PLEASE follow the guide from Microsoft and please do not change any configuration / setting after that. IF you have a chance - order an audit / assessment of configuration by one of the partners and follow their recommendations.

Troubleshooting Project Server 2010

This week was kind of crazy - 2 clients with major problems. Both on RTM, DB + APP + WFE.

One of the client got the PWA in test environment corrupted. SharePoint pages inside PWA work fine but not all PS related pages and the problem is that ULS is not giving exact picture what's going on.
tried re-provisioning, deleting PWA and re-provisioning with same DBs into the same name. Ended up with restoring from day-before crash and installing Feb CU. Went well, but we've lost like 2 days and thanks that it was just a test environment.

Second client is also on RTM. But in test environment the Search application was corrupted somehow and when someone tried to delete DBs were gone but service left and it is still impossible to delete it from either   Central administration and PowerShell.

Hoped that CU will fix but on step 9 in SharePoint configuration wizard gives the error on that service since cannot do anything with it.

Will try delete it from Config DB and see if it will be gone and will tyr re-run configuration wizard. If not successful - will have to re-build the entire test environment.

Also, fixed few problems -  CLR was not enabled in DB and Taxonomy picker has the #&44; instead of ",". Small one but logs have errors and it looks ugly.

Found a strange error - SP was giving error that farm admin cannot run reconfigure on master DB and he has server wide role sysadmin. After giving explicit permissions to DB this was fixed.

This was a fun week in Houston, TX - interesting tasks, good people good food and excellent outdoor swimming pool :-)

Also, I'm almost done with content for FluentPro.com website - we go live next weekend!.

Just passed 070-177 exam

Discovered some gaps in my knowledge (migration from 2003 and 2007). Some questions are stupid, made not for knowledge, but for reading the questions.

Merging 2 instances of Project Server 2010 into one instance

Right now I am working on merging of 2 instances of Project Server 2010 into single one.
2 departments started PS2010 trials independently; were running it for about 6 month and performed number of customizations:

• customer fields (project and task level). Some fields have matching name and different meaning / values and some fields have different name but same purpose
• different EPTs
• different Project Site templates (that's the most easiest problem to solve)
• one is using Single Entry, second one is using Free Form for progress reporting and no time sheets.

Beside custom fields, the biggest challenge is that both instances have over 50 projects that are actively being used and so far it looks that this will be the most time consuming operation.

Proposed strategy is to pick one instance that is more "clean" and less "messy" and have it as "master" instance and merge another instance into this one.

So approach will look like:

1. Backup instances
2. Pick one instance as master (I1).
3. Export project site template from I2
4. Import site template into I1
5. Unify custom fields
6. Try applying Playbook from I1 and then from I2 into 3rd instance to see the conflicts, rename fields /lookups in I2 if required. If not working out - move it manually
7. Export project from I2 as will be described below
8. Import projects as described above
9. Have PMs to edit new projects to have same project ECF values as in old system (This can be automated with FluentPro's ECF Migrator tool)
10. Copy resource pool from I2 via Project Pro into I1
11. Import resources
12. Replace resources in project 
13. export project sites from I2 with STS-ADM
14. import project sites into I2
15. Point projects into new sites
16. Verify everything :-)

The easiest workaround for moving projects between instances is to save all task level custom fields into standard local column (Text1..., Number1...) using Copy-Paste of columns, save a local copy, upload to destination server and copy values back to Enterprise custom fields.

I will update this post if will find one missing steps.

Update: We've developed a product - FluentBooks that allows configuration migration, merge and documenting. You can learn more here or watch a sample video in another our blogpost.

Reviewing Project Server 2010 Implementation

Today was on a call with company that had implementation of PS by quite big EPM partner. This was ugly.

• To display milestones on Project workspace they put schedule control.
• On Status Report page instead of displaying information they have a mix - data entry and some display.
• Status Report is not printable and like 1500 pixels wide
• To create a page to display risks and issues from all projects they read from number of sites but display just name.
• In custom fields there are like 30 extra fields that never were used - looks left from 3rd party solution.

It was really bad; Partner simply stepped out after a while not completing solution but getting paid. Nice.

Project Server 2010 Solution Starters - feedback from customers

After being involved in Project Server 2010 Solution Starters development, we are always pleased to see that companies who are implementing / using Project Server 2010 utilize some of the solution starters. From our experience, most popular ones are Dynamic Workflow, Bulk Edit and Bulk Import.
Here I wanted to share some ideas / problems from customers who are using them.

Dynamic workflow

• ability to send email when moving between stages

Bulk Edit

• Works slow on big number of projects (over 50) (we have customizations with reading data from RDB but writing via PSI)
• Some customers want projects to be checked-in after editing
• Correct handling of session end (we heard one comment from user on this and it is more our guess

Bulk Import

• using custom fields with lookup tables and populating values.

Maybe community should ask MS to implement some of those changes?

Portfolio and Programs in Project Server

In this post I will cover how we can create a support of Programs and Portfolio Functionality in Project Server 2010.

By definition, project is "a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result". Program can consist one or more Projects that are delivering within one initiative; Portfolio can consist one or more Programs or Projects and is more strategic grouping.

Usually, Program can have its own schedule ignoring the fact that it can contain more than one project which can define the duration, start / end dates; Logic behind giving ability to have own schedule is based on fact that there might be activities that has to be tracked on Program level.
We can use the same logic for Portfolio, but in reality portfolio is a more a matter of "grouping" projects for reporting / structuring projects within organizational strategy.

My suggestion is to have 2 lookup tables and 3 custom fields on Project Level:

Lookup tables:
  LT Program
  LT Portfolio

Custom fields:
  Is Program (Flag)
  Program (Referencing LT Program)
  Portfolio (Referencing LT Portfolio)

Program is defined as project with Program field empty and Is Program field checked; Program can have value in Portfolio field.

Project has Is Program field unchecked; Project can have values in both Program and Portfolio fields.

Portfolio is just grouping value;

As significant improvement for managing lookup tables is to develop event handler on project save that will populate LT Program lookup table dynamically, otherwise you have to maintain it manually.

As part of effort, I would recommend to create several reports:

• Programs Overview (list of programs in Program with indicators
• Program Details 
• Portfolio Overview (list of projects / programs in Portfolio with indicators)

Every report can incorporate links to drill down.

FluentPro Reports Pack

After working on number of customer engagements and developing over 100 reports, we've decided to kick-off "assembly" of our own report pack. This report pack will include set of reports and set of custom fields that customers will have to add to the system in order to be able to use reports.
Report pack will contain approximately 20 reports:

• Several Executive dashboards
• Timesheet reports (weekly and monthly views)
• Status update reports (weekly and monthly views)
• Portfolio and Program overview
• Project overview
• Milestones overview
• Capitalization reports

Reports are based on SSRS.

Update:

We have several available reporting packages:

1. Project Status report:  http://www.fluentpro.com/productsstatusreport.html
2. Project Dashboard: http://www.fluentpro.com/productsprojectdashboard.html
3. Timesheet reports:  http://www.fluentpro.com/productstimereports.html 

Russian / Ukrainian community - Project Server 2010

Our company started re-design of www.projectserver.com.ua to make it more community oriented site related to Project Server 2010. In Russia and Ukraine market is very small and it is close to impossible to find nice content that easy to use. So, we've decided that during next 3 month our company will do:

• Re-design site and make popular content with videos available
• Arrange about 10 free web seminars about project server (hopefully will get some support from Microsoft)
• Publish our videos and guides
• Create a section with best practices / workflow samples

Project Server 2010 Reporting

Microsoft published nice document on Project Server 2010 Reporting at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/gg188101.aspx


It covers Excel Services, SSRS, OLAP, Performance Point.

We've started working on a check lists, guides and videos for configuring Excel Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services for Project Server 2010 and plan to publish it for English and Russian content within next 30 days.

Strange error in Project Server 2010 formulas in custom field

Today, we've found strange error that disappeared after restarting IIS. We had a project level custom field (Flag) referencing task custom field as [Task Field Name].

For some very strange reason we were able to change value of Project Custom Field with formula in Project Pro (Server and PPro are with December CU). This was possible only in P Pro, not in PWA. After restarting IIS this behavior was gone;  Very odd.

Workflow development - sharing our experience

I would like to highlight several items that we've learned after developing several complex workflows for our customers.

• Start with workflow design, email notifications and email templates definition, define PDPs and fields that are required / visible on every stage
• Create fields dynamically if possible, so your workflow can work on different environments (dev, staging, production)
• Send notification emails on every change of control or change of ownership
• Change Project Owner if your workflow expects more than just and approval
• Check-in project when change ownership
• Use SharePoint mail for sending emails (Project Server Notifications could be disabled)
• Use event log for logging every steps in your workflow (helps to debug it); Log emails sent by workflow (who, when, where). More you log  - more stable and tested your workflow is since debugging is not an easy one.
• Use automated deployment scripts for installing workflow
• Backup previous versions of workflow before installing new ones

Our team is using FluentPS (http://www.projectserver2010blog.com) (we are developing and maintaining FluentPS) for workflow development and deployment, access to Project Server 2010 data, field info access / value modifications. Sounds like an advertisement - but FluentPS saves us a lot of time; you still can do everything with pure PSI.

One more workflow design

In current time, many organizations require process/project initiation process. In other words, every project that is created in organization has to meet not only business / financial requirements but also meet criterias defined by Project Management Office.

This workflow defines a simple workflow that can be implemented in  Project Server 2010. Compared to previous workflow, the only approver is PMO director, and persons is responsible for  making sure that projects meet required standards and only approve ones that meet or reject  / request a change for one's that do not meet it.

This workflow also assumes change of ownership of project from Submitter to Project Director  and then to Project Manager.

In few next posts we will provide modification overview of current workflows for Portfolio Analysis integration.

Problem Project Professional 2010 - Workflow enabled fields and multiline fields

For some reason, workflow-enabled fields are not visible in MS Project Pro as well as multiline text. I can find logical explanation why MS did this; But - why not to go one step ahead and make them visible and read-only?

Transfer of Values between custom fields

Working on number of Project Server 2007 to 2010 upgrades, out team faced number of issues with clearing metadata, especially custom fields. We also met these issue few times doing customizations / audits of Project Server 2010 implementations.

Typical problem is that some fields at customer's systems were using custom lookup tables with custom values - for example Yes, No, TDB (or different set of values); Then customer decides to move to Flag type for this field; or customer was using description field for capturing project summary but then decides to move to special field.

It sounds quite easy - delete fields and create ones; But if you have over 1000 projects, that becomes quite complicated, since efforts to update / transfer those fields manually is quite big.

Second option - go to DB (published) and do SQL update ( Strongly not recommended by Microsoft).

3rd option - create tool and do it via PSI.

So, we've developed a tool that allows conditional transfer / conversion of fields using PSI. It is not fast (it takes about 5 to 300 seconds) for full cycle depending on project size / farm or single WFE / event handlers, but you usually run tool just once.

Case: Field Enterprise project type has values - Enterprise Project, Non - Enterprise, TBD. Field is not required, no default value. Idea is to create new field Enterprise Project - Flag, rename old field, update all projects and set:
1. if Value = Enterprise Project, set Value = 1
2. if Value =TBD, Non-Enterprise or Empty Set Value = 0.
3. Save and publish project.

Tool is developed as WinForms application that allows to define number of such rules applied for the project. Tool iterates all projects (can specify Draft or Published only or all) and applies rules, saves and publish projects, so all data become visible.

Side effect - sometimes projects that sit in Draft for months become published :-)

Tool is available for purchase.

Project Server 2010 - Dynamic Approvals Workflow

In February 2010, our team completed  migration of Project Server 2007 system to Project Server 2010 platform with additional customization work. Original system contained over 1000 projects with about about 300 active projects in execution phase.

As part of the migration, our client wanted to perform number of improvements in their current project initiation process, so we designed and implemented a workflow for that.

There are number of nice features that I wanted to highlight:

• Ability to define up to five approvers and dynamically specify if their approval is mandatory. This is done by utilizing 10 custom fields for approvers and requirement for approval with some front-end javascript code for making all fields as required.
• On every change of ownership / action required system sends emails to all parties notifying of required actions.
• Most of the approvals have 3 states - approve, reject, request for more information.
• We've implemented detailed log trail for audit and maintenance using Event Log.

Challenges

• Dynamic project permissions management - since there are several owners during project life cycle plus number of additional key resources that need ability to access specific project only, we are dynamically give permissions for this project for specific users, this is done by workflow.
• Customer wanted Auto ID  (user friendly of-course) generation - done with event handler and SharePoint list.
• There are number of project types (EPT), and depending on selected EPT, workflow routes project to specific manager in PMO. This is done with special routing table.
• Force check-in on ownership change: When workflow changes owner, it should do force check-in and publish, so another user can edit / provide information.

FluentPS v.2.0 is available

We are happy to announce release of FluentPS v.2.0 - open source library for Project Server 2010 development and customizations.

Please find more details at htp://www.projectserver2010blog.com