Project Server technical bits

Reporting in Project Server  Yes I know you have PWA for showing a cross-project view of the world, but it's not the most customisable is it. With Project Centre and Project Schedule views being the primary value add of Project Server, it's a shame is just not a bit more... useful!  You could show milestones, have easier filter options (one click not 4) that kinda thing. So lots of people ask "can I have Project Centre, but in a report please". OK, here you go... This is made up of just a couple of components: 1) a simple oData feed to the Project View table 2) some formulas to do the drawing 3) Slicers to drill down into the portfolio 4) Status date grid highlight (where set on the project) - this is done using another grid formula The report shows a couple of example view options (date periods to show), handled by the formulas This can then be published onto any SharePoint site as a Portfolio view, e.g. IT Customer Portal, reducing  enjoy!

Finally!  Microsoft have redesigned O365 into a meaningful portal to all Office Online products However the upgrade does seem to have caused some authentication glitches along the way! And by the way if you have lost your Site Admin bit, its here...

Have I been waiting on this patch :) Project Server August Cumulative Update 2014 looks like a biggy guys.  If you use Timesheets, or Task Status Updates, or even just Baseline, this patch is the place to be.  Looks like the Scheduling/Project Calculation Service has had a rework.... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2883083 Project Pro 2013 August Cumulative Update 2014 also looks significant for anyone saving projects OUT of Project Server or working with Protected Actuals http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2883080

** Update ** Having looked at the data, the general rules are now  Dont use TAP flag unless it is explicitly for the Team Assignments functionality (which no-one uses anyway) And if you want to use Generic Resources on Resource Plans using FTE planning, make sure (for now) that they have some capacity, and design this out of your capacity planning reports. Generic Resource Capacity in times gone by I have picked up the habit of using the "Team Assignment Pool" flag on Generic Resources to avoid setting the Max Units to 0% and still have zero capacity for the resources in the RDB.  This was a throwback to the heady days of PS2007 and its complete lack of stability (0% resources used to cause havoc when using the Assign Resources dialogue in MS Project). It looks as if this is a habit I am going to have to break. Today I have found a new issue in Resource Plans on PS2013 where setting the Team Assignment Pool OR setting Max Units to 0% on a resource has a negati...

This has been painful Project Online reporting has been a fairly significant limitation of the Online experience for me so far.  Besides the complexity in building the oData stream, the fairly fundamental limitations of the data filtering of the URI's has been a major falling down point for me. To digress for a moment, most reports people want are timephased in some way, either Actual Work by period, planned work by period, or timesheet data by period.  All of these reports lead to a "time by day" feed.  Now the thing with timephased reports is you are usually looking for a "last three months, next three months" view (or similar).  Also the thing with the Time By Day feeds is that they are HUGE! Add these things together and you really need a way of limiting your data feed to avoid extremely lengthy refresh times. Easy enough I hear you say.  Just put a timebyday ge '2014-01-01T00:00:00' select statement in your URI before adding it into your Pow...

Scenario: 1x WFE 1x APP 1x SQL Web Front End Service on WFE Project Server enabled on APP so a traditional 3tier scenario.  nothing complicated When deploying new Web features to the Farm, you are unable to create a Project Site based on a custom template. Error: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: The site template requires that the Feature {17843394-988a-4a4e-9d5e-8b419bdc1340} be installed in the farm or site collection Now we know this IS enabled at the SC level.  Only un-installing these features enables the site provisioning to successfully complete.  Redeploying and enabling these features then breaks it again Cause: Well... it turns out the features are required on the server where Project Server is enabled. as these are site features, that means you have two options 1) enable the Web Front end service on the App Server - which seems like a crazy thing to do to me 2) copy the features from /15/Template/Features from WFE to APP - again, mad mad m...

Since MS provided the ability to plan only using PWA, this has been a really useful feature for some users.  However there has always been a (certainly from my perspective) perceived issue, in that the ability to reschedule incomplete work into the future (a key component of the planning cycle) was only available in MS Project client. The other day I was asked by a customer how they could get around this issue.  They use PWA extensively (cost reasons) for planning but were struggling with realising correct resource forecast data as they PM's were not able to re-forecast their remaining work schedule. As we had recently patched the Project Server to 2013 SP1 + 0614CU I thought I would look at the STOP/RESUME fields in the Project views to see if these were editable, and surprise surprise they were. The stop/resume fields are how MS Project handles task splits and the "update remaining work to restart after" component of rescheduling.  The Stop field will indica...

When calculating running totals (for S-Curve/BurnUp reports) I have had to transform the periodic data returned from SQL into running totals in a pivot or used the running value SQL RS command to transform the data. So, fast forward to happy SQL2012 land, and we have some useful script commands that can now be used.  Lets face it, our SQL boxes are usually packed to the brim with RAM and Cores these days so why not use them for what they're built for! The following script calculates the running totals by month by project for all the normal useful measures. I am in no way saying this is an optimised script, it's just my first kick out at this. In all honesty you'd probably want to remove the _userview references and go to the tables.   Enjoy, ignore, laugh at the naivety to your hearts content --SQL Script to return running totals (RTx) for Projects by Month Select p.ProjectName ,data.month ,data.RTAssnWork ,sum(data.work) ,data.RTAssnActualWork ...

** Update ** decided to plump for the ThinkPad Yoga on an i7 and 8GB RAM.  I wish there was a 16GB option, and I will miss Quad Core but my back will be much happier! The final deciders were  1) ability to use it on a train 2) "good enough" screen res (not this stupid high res fad thats going around)  3) its an i7, even if its only dual core.   4) It's a nicely made machine.   Hoping to get it in a couple of weeks My trusty (not) Lenovo W520 is approaching three years old now, and the heft of this machine is really starting to get to me, or should I say get to my ageing back.  So I reckon it's time to look at replacing her. When I chose this beast back in 2011, things we're very different.  If I needed to demo SharePoint, I would have to bring along a Windows Server laptop running Hyper-V with some serious RAM and SSD add-ons, which meant my laptop options were limited.  The main contenders were some nameless HP thing, a Dell...

Quick publish on this one. When creating a project from a template (with templated tasks) in PWA, if you assign resources to those tasks via PWA, the assignments appear in the Reporting Database as Unassigned Resource workaround 1 assign resources via MSP workaround 2 (varying mileage) assign resources Publish remove resources publish reassign resources tested on SP1, April14CU

** UPDATE ** includes notes relating to secondary bug where Timesheet is created without Administrative tasks. Does this ring any bells? This has been bugging me for months, but finally I have a repro for this: Issue Summary:  When a task is deleted from a plan that is approved into a previous or current timesheet - even when there are no actuals on the task - you can no longer view the timesheet The following repro has been proven: - Setup system with Single Entry Mode, with enforced Status Approval before Timesheet Approval - Create resource as own timesheet manager - Create new project - Create two tasks in the same week, starting monday with 5 days duration:  1) Task to assign actuals, 2) Task to delete post submission - Assign Resource to tasks - publish project - as Timesheet User, go to the appropriate timesheet period for the tasks created - Assign actual work to one task (task 1), leaving task 2 with no actual work - Submit timesheet - as Project ...

SP1 came and went, and unfortunately it was a little more about bugs and what we didnt get, than what we did. SharePoint got some Office365/Yammer integration baked in (yet to be played with but i did see Use Yammer for Social during the User Profile Service Creation). Looks like Project Server "On Prem" for bug fixes and no functionality unfortunately.  The big loss for me was the new paradigm added to Project Online some time ago (the three little dots for shortcut menu against each project) that I was hoping to be included in SP1.  Actually I fully expected it, and hoped in addition for some extension to this really useful navigation tool (option to add custom links for reports, embed status indicators, that kind of thing) but no, not this time. It is beginning to feel that on-prem solutions are suffering at the hands of Microsoft's "Cloud First" strategy.  

Interesting - Setting Baseline0  adds values to ALL baselines.  Then editing Baseline0 costs changes all baseline costs Repro: Create task of 1d Add a cost resource Set Task Usage at bottom window Add Baseline 0 Cost, Baseline 10 cost, baseline 4 cost (or some others too) Add some Timephased costs into Cost timephased field Set baseline All baselines are set with a value Edit Baseline0 Cost TImephased entry All Baseline Values change Scream and bang head on table ** UPDATE ** Having looked further into this it appears that this only impacts baseline cost timephased values.  However this is a MASSIVE impact as it could increase file sizes fairly significantly as the Baseline Cost Timephased Values for Baselines >=1 are no longer independent values.  Put simply, BAseline 1-10 Cost Timephased will equal Baseline0Cost, and cannot be set independently. Here is an updated repro Prep: - Firstly create split view with task usage on the botto...

well this is new! When creating a project site, we are intermittently seeing the following: NOTE:  This is Project Server 2013 (not an upgrade)   more to follow (I hope).....

Just a word to the wise... If you are running timesheets in a Project 2013 (online/on prem) solution, you must never set the task level field "Publish" = No Some things that can happen: - you wont be able to view timesheets that include assignments where this flag is in place (web part error) - you wont be able to view Status Approval history where tasks include this flag - General Unhandled Exception in _Statusing.ReadStatusApprovalHistoryForGridJson_ there are other issues... as I catch them I will update the post