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Creating and adding Projects to #ProjectServer 2013 #PS2013 #SP2013 #Office365 Part 1
   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) |
As you are all hopefully aware Project Server 2013 is available to Volume Licensing, TechNet and MSDN accounts. No doubt you have seen may posts already about the great new features, some of which I have also previously blogged about. This post will look at the various options you have for creating and adding projects to Project Server 2013. In this series of posts I won’t cover the options of creating projects programmatically or the options that exist in Project Server 2010 already. These posts will look at the new options in Project Server 2013.
The first option I will cover in this post is creating projects from a list within PWA. For this example I have created a normal SharePoint custom list called Project Ideas with a Title field and Description field as shown below:
As you can see I have already created an example project idea. If I click on the Items tab and select the new project idea,notice the Create Projects button is enabled:
Click the Create Projects button and a new window will appear:
As you can see here I can map my Project Ideas columns with the Project Server fields. As this is an example I have only added a Description to the Project Ideas list and only have the default Project Server fields. These are mapped below:
The next option is to select the Enterprise Project Type. Again, I haven’t created any additional EPTs for this example:
I will set this project to be an Enterprise Project.
On there form there are additional options to create new Project Server custom fields, new EPTs and to reload the form with the new fields. Once the options are completed, click Create Project. The form will refresh to show that the project has been created:
Clicking View Details will display the project name:
Click Close and navigate to the Project Centre, you will see the new project ready to be scheduled:
The Project Details PDP shows the correct description from the Project Ideas list:
A nice and simple approach to transition project ideas to full Enterprise projects.
I will now create another Project Idea but this time select SharePoint Task List, see below.
New Project Idea selected:
Click Create Projects, notice the fields are already mapped:
Update the Enterprise Project Type to SharePoint Task List:
Click Create Project. Navigate to the Project Centre and you will see the new project:
Notice the different icon to indicate it is not an Enterprise Project. Clicking on this project will take you to the SharePoint site Task list:
The project tasks can be created in the task list, this is then synchronised back to Project Server using the “Project Server: Task List Synchronizer for SharePoint Tasks List Projects job for Project Services Application” Timer job.
In the next post I will take a look at the SharePoint Task list and Connected SharePoint sites in more detail. I did write a post on this for the preview version of Project Server 2013, that post can be found here:
I will expand on / review this post for the RTM version of Project Server 2013.
Building a Project Server app
EPMSource have just finished a very nice 4 / 5 part series on how to create an app for Project Online. It even walks through the submission process to the app store.
Here are the direct links to each post
Post 0
Building your first Project Server app – Part Zero–The introduction
Post 1
Building your first Project Server app – Part 1 – Getting Started – Setting up a development env
Post 2
Building your first Project Server app – Part 2 – Getting the basic app up and running
Post 3
Building your first Project Server app – Part 3 – Taking the app to the next level
Post 4
Building your first Project Server App – Part 4 – Submitting to the app store
via Buzz Blog http://paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/building-a-project-server-app/
 Paul is a an expert SharePoint and Project Server developer and is responsible for designing and implementing custom solutions on client systems using the latest SharePoint and .NET technologies.
Paul has extensive experience with SharePoint systems across all sizes of implementation, ranging from small to large farms and has an excellent understanding of all the elements of SharePoint. This article has been cross posted from paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com (original article) |
#SPSUK slides: Transitioning from #SP2013 to #PS2013 for #EPM #MSProject #SharePoint
Thank to all those who attend my presentation yesterday at SharePoint Saturday UK 2012. There were lots of questions throughout and a thoroughly engaged audience.
Presentation Slides
The slides are now uploaded here: http://www.slideshare.net/Ghamson/cps-transitioning-from-sharepoint-to-project-server-2013-for-enterprise-project-management
Via PowerPoint (Office Web Apps / SkyDrive)
Video Demonstration
I also created a video of the demonstration of the day. This is embedded as part of the presentation and is also available here:
Transitioning from #SP2013 to #PS2013 for Enterprise Project Management #SPSUK #MSProject #SharePoint
Just a quick note to say that I will be presenting at SharePoint Saturday UK on December 8th 2012 on:
Project Site to Project Management
Transitioning from SharePoint to Project Server for Enterprise Project Management
Session Objectives:
After attending this session you will understand the different tools for Project Management offered with SharePoint and Project Server, including the advantages / disadvantages of each method.
In addition you will also takeaway:
- A high level understanding of how SharePoint / Project Server work together
- The benefits of enterprise project management
- Project management maturity expectations as solutions become more complex
Agenda:
- What’s Project Server / Project Online
- Understanding Project Maturity
- Supporting Tools
- Transition – Simple to Complex
- Demo
- Decisions – Where to start?
- Conclusion
Where, When, How?
- Conference: SharePoint Saturday UK 2012
- Location: Nottingham
- Date: Saturday, 8 December 2012
- Conference Times: 09:00 to 17:00 (GMT)
- Presentation Time: 13:30 to 14:30
- Presenter: Giles Hamson
- Full Address:
East Midlands Conference Centre
University Park
NG7 2RJ Nottingham
United Kingdom
If you see me during the day, say hello and I hope you all enjoy the conference.
Missing options in Central Admin #SharePoint 2013 #SP2013 #PS2013
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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) |
A quick post to highlight an issue that you might run into. Mange Services on Server link missing in Central Admin when running Internet Explorer on the App / Web Server? New Service Application button disabled?
Missing Manage Services on Server link:
New Service Application button disabled:
Run Central Admin as an Administrator and these options will be available. 
Steps to format a SP2013 site differently depending on the device
This week I was doing some research on how to design to use the new Sharepoint 2013 “device channels” feature which allows designers to show a different MasterPage per device (link), as opposed to just enabling a unique mobile format for all devices.
How to make this
looks like that 
took me a good part of the day !
I found a bit of help in various places and will say that JussionSharepoint probably has the most comprehensive steps however he doesn’t discuss designing the Master Page and Layout Page in HTML which is now the recommended way in SP2013, Sonja’s Sharepoint2013 blog also has some valuable reading, but because my brain tends to think in a bullet list kind-of-way so here are my quisksteps on the subject.
[warning] I was going to describe all the steps to configure so that you can navigate your site with a mobile device. However while I was doing so I couldn’t figure out why it still didn’t work on the homepage of my 2013 environment. So here are the pre-requisite before attempting any design. [/warning]
Pre-requisites
1- only works with Publishing Feature enabled
2- only works with Mobile Brower View Feature disabled (otherwise it takes over)
3- finally (this one too me even longer to figure out!) only works if Wiki Page Home Page feature is disabled.
So now that we got that figured out, we can proceed to the customisations.
My 5 or 6 Steps
| 1) | First of all you need to be able to access your Sharepoint site from an HTML editor (I used Notepad++) , so you need to map your computer to the Sharepoint site as a network drive. |
| 2) |
Open Site Designer
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| 3) |
Create mobile master page
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| 4) |
Create a new Channel for the mobile device (here you can see iPhone)
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| 5) | Edit Site Master page settings  to assign the Channel to the mobile Master page  |
| 6) |
Optionally …. Create new Layout page, however in my case it showed an error in Design Manager:
To fix:
(same as for Master Page use Design Manager to add snippets of code to your HTML file that you will open from your client HTML editor and save again) |
I said Optionally for step 6, because there is not point creating a LayoutPage just for a certain device unless you are designing a site specific for a device OR you are going to create a page for each device.
Now open the site in Chrome or IE9 and you can change the user-agent so that it simulates you browsing from a mobile device. My preference at the moment is “User-agent Switcher for Chrome”.
Other tips to share
A few things I experienced that I would place in the “good to know” :
– rename the alternative MasterPage for a channel and it will break all channel (ie I renamed the masterpage for iPhone only, the home page errored when opening it using the defaut channel (IE or Chrome), until you edit the MasterPage settings and fix the missing MasterPage for that channel you renamed.
– after I edited the HTML of the Master page a few times, for no reason there was a large blank space that would be added between some DIV elements, even though they were not showing in the code. I had to remove the .master, it will get re-created form the .html within the same second but fixing the blank lines.
Conclusion
Now I have to say I am not impressed… Basically it would be great to build a LayoutPage for each device so that when you load the page one device A it will be LayoutPage A that opens. This way the webpart zone that have been defined horizontally for computer devices could be changed vertically for phone devices.
But that’s not the way it works, because each webpage uses a LayoutPage and that one is not dependant on the channel. The Master Page is the one that depends on the channel however MasterPage do not hold Webpart Zones but the Content Place Holder for the Layout Page.
Therefore there is still some good design work to do if you want to have a full any-devices-friendly sharepoint site.
In the meantime I will play more with the Mobile Browser View features that turns a site into mobile as it may just be the answer.
Of course it will not be adapted to all devices, and what would be nice is to use this feature “most of the time” and for a couple of page to create a layout that uses our special channel Master Page, but since both cannot co-exist it’s a no go for now.
via François on Sharepoint http://sharepointfrancois.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/steps-to-format-a-sp2013-site-differently-depending-on-the-device/
 French native Sharepoint Consultant living in London. A crossway between a designer, developer and system architect. Prefers stretching the limit of out-of-the-box features rather than breaking them into code. When not working with Microsoft Sharepoint François is often found on Web2.0 News sites and related social networking tools.
This article has been cross posted from sharepointfrancois.wordpress.com/ (original article) |
Getting changed field values from SPItemEventReceiver
has written a very interesting looking helper function for getting old values out of events.
via Buzz Blog http://paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/getting-changed-field-values-from-spitemeventreceiver/
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Paul is a an expert SharePoint and Project Server developer and is responsible for designing and implementing custom solutions on client systems using the latest SharePoint and .NET technologies.
Paul has extensive experience with SharePoint systems across all sizes of implementation, ranging from small to large farms and has an excellent understanding of all the elements of SharePoint. This article has been cross posted from paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com (original article) |
Creating a Project Server 2013 App
The first in a series of posts about creating a Project Server app.
This will be interesting.
via Buzz Blog http://paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/creating-a-project-server-2013-app/
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Paul is a an expert SharePoint and Project Server developer and is responsible for designing and implementing custom solutions on client systems using the latest SharePoint and .NET technologies.
Paul has extensive experience with SharePoint systems across all sizes of implementation, ranging from small to large farms and has an excellent understanding of all the elements of SharePoint. This article has been cross posted from paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com (original article) |
Technorati: YK3CCGWXYEC9
Service descriptions for SharePoint 2013
This post here http://modery.net/new-service-descriptions-for-office-365-wave-15/
has a list of all the services in SharePoint 2013 and what version they are available in.
The interesting one for me is that SSRS is available in the E3 and E4 Office 365 plans. Not seen anything about that and I am interested as to how it will work.
via Buzz Blog http://paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/service-descriptions-for-sharepoint-2013/
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Paul is a an expert SharePoint and Project Server developer and is responsible for designing and implementing custom solutions on client systems using the latest SharePoint and .NET technologies.
Paul has extensive experience with SharePoint systems across all sizes of implementation, ranging from small to large farms and has an excellent understanding of all the elements of SharePoint. This article has been cross posted from paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com (original article) |
#ProjectServer 2010 #Excel Services Reports fail to Refresh #Office2013 #SP2010
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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) |
A quick post to highlight an issue you may face if you have upgraded to Office / Excel 2013. I recently created some Excel reports for Project Server 2010 using Excel 2013. These reports failed to refresh in Excel Services. After a quick check on the connection string in Excel, the provider is MSOLAP.5 rather than the usual MSOLAP.4 provider when using Excel 2010. See below
Excel 2010:
Excel 2013:
The ULS log error is:
The workbook ‘http://vm730:81/pwa/ProjectBICenter/Reports/Actual Work.xlsx’ attempted to access external data using the unsupported provider ‘Provider=MSOLAP.5
The fix is very simple, navigate to Central Admin > Manager Service Applications > Excel Services > Trusted Data Providers then add the MSOLAP.5 provider as below:
SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans 
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