Project Server 2010 : Working with Master Projects and Sub-projects from PWA programmaticaly

Recently, we had one project that required ability to create master and insert multiple sub-projects from PWA.

Unfortunately, PSI in Project Server 2010 does not support this functionality at all (you can read more here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee767706.aspx )

So there are 2 options:

• Manual insertion: Let user insert it in Project Pro. It can be problematic if we are talking about inserting let's say 35 sub-project
• Automate it

Both scenarios require user to have Project Professional installed.

To eliminate any manual work and reduce the human factor, we've developed a solution that does this as listed below:

1. When user click on a button on ribbon in PWA, window to capture user input for projects is shown;
2. User input is captured and "normal" projects are created using PSI based on specific EPTs; Special metadata (set of project level custom fields with XML data) is updated to provide instructions for add-in to build a relationship.
3. Master project automatically opens in Project Professional from PWA; Project Professional has add-in installed that using metadata inserts projects as sub projects, does save and publish for all projects. 
4. Biggest problem for Project Pro add-ins  that try to automate operations is suppressing the different dialog windows from Project Pro so it is an automated process with minimum or no user interaction required.

Not ideal solution (dependency on Project Professional and cost of license) - but worked out for us to solve the problem.

If you have similar problem direct your developers to this post so they can follow the "flow" or contact us and we might be able to help you.