SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

I am a Project Server and SharePoint consultant but my main focus currently is around Project Server. I have been working with Project Server for nearly five years since 2007 for a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in the UK, I have also been awared with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011. I am also a certified Prince2 Practitioner. This article has been cross posted from pwmather.wordpress.com (original article)

Just a quick blog post to ensure you take care when deleting the project ideas list and to let you know of potential issues with deleting projects that were created via the deleted project ideas list.

This post covers the issues you will see when trying to delete a project from Project Server that was created from a project ideas list after the list was deleted.

Example Project Ideas list:

Project created in Project Server from the Project Ideas list above:

Delete the Project Ideas list from the “List Settings”  > “Delete this list” option.

Now try to delete the project that was initiated from the Project Ideas list, in this example delete the PM Test Project from the Delete Enterprise Objects menu in server settings. Navigate to the Project Server queue and you will notice that Project Delete job fails:

The key error is:

Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.QueueMsg.RemoveIdeaListLinkMessage‘ messageID=’8′ stage=” blocking=’Undefined’

You will see the the project still exists in the Project Center:

But trying to access the project details gives an error:

Checking the Delete Enterprise Objects page shows that the project is not visible when selecting “Delete draft and published projects”:

Change to “Delete only published projects” shows the project:

Attempting the delete again throws the same error.

My advice at this stage is to recover the deleted Project Ideas lists if possible. In this example I still had the Project Ideas list in the PWA site recycle bin. After restoring this deleted list, the subsequent delete job for the “PM Test Project” completed successfully.

With this in mind, I would recommend that you do not delete any PWA lists that have been used to create projects in Project Server.