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)

If you want want to disable the Lync / Skype for Business presence in Project 2013, see the steps below.

Lync / Skype for Business Presence enabled:

Lync / Skype for Business Presence disabled:

To do this, install the April 2015 Cumulative update for Project 2013 (fully test on a test machine before using in production): http://bit.ly/1Od9oGX

Then create the registry key as detailed in the KB article.

You can either do this manually or via PowerShell, an example PowerShell command can be seen below:

This will create the following key:

Always back up the registry before making any changes (manually or via PowerShell etc.)

To enable Lync / IM presence again update the DisableIMStatus key value data to 0 and restart Project.

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)

The Office 2013 April 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1Od9mi2

Project Server 2013 April 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1EE7M8n

Project Server 2013 April 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1Od9oGW

Project 2013 April 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1Od9oGX

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install Service Pack 1 http://bit.ly/1uorn2C first if installing the April 2015 CU.

The Office 2010 April 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1Od9mi2

Project Server 2010 April 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1Od9oXa

Project Server 2010 April 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1EE7MoG

Project 2010 April 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1Od9oXc

SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 April 2015 CUs.

As always, fully test these updates on a replica test environment before deploying to production.

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)

One issue or query that has been raised a few times is that when reporting on manually scheduled tasks and auto scheduled tasks the Start / Finish date fields do not show the same data that they do in Project or PWA for the manually scheduled tasks. For example, take a look at the example project plan below:

If I generate a reporting for this project using the equivalent fields from the OData API, see below:

As you can see all tasks have start and finish dates. The Manually scheduled tasks that are either blank or have text displayed in Project Pro contain dates in the report. These default to the Project Start date. The OData query used is below:

Tasks()?$Select=ProjectName,TaskName,TaskStartDate,TaskFinishDate,TaskIndex

This can be quite misleading from a reporting point of view. There are two options (probably more but two documented here!), these are detailed below in order of preference:

Option 1:

The preferred option would be to create a calculated field in the report, in this example, as I am using Excel I will create this in Power Query. I have my dataset in the Power Query Editor like below:

The OData query used is below:

Tasks()?$Select=ProjectName,TaskName,TaskStartDate,TaskStartDateString,TaskFinishDate,TaskFinishDateString,TaskIsManuallyScheduled,TaskIndex

Now click Add Column > Add Custom Column:

Give the column a name then create the formula:

Click OK to add the new custom column, repeat for the finish date:

After re-ordering and removing some columns my dataset now looks like this in the Query Editor:

The final change is to update the Data Types of the columns, in this example I updated the TaskStartDate and TaskFinishDate columns to Date/Time and my calculated DisplayedStartDate and DisplayedFinishDate columns to Text:

Now I am happy with the query I click the Close & Load button on the Home tab:

This will load my data into Excel:

As you can see the data displayed in my calculated columns on my report match the data in the fields on my Project Plan:

Option 2:

The other option is to create new Enterprise Custom Fields in Project Online that are calculated. Using Start date as an example, create a task level text field that is based on  formula, the formula would be =[Start]. I have called the field “DisplayedStartDate”. In Project Pro:

In my updated Excel Report:

The OData query used is below:

Tasks()?$Select=ProjectName,TaskName,TaskStartDate,TaskFinishDate,DisplayedStartDate,TaskIndex

As you can see this also gives the correct data but does introduce two additional calculated task level fields in your Project Online configuration. It is recommended to keep the task level calculated fields to a minimum – ideally below 5 for performance reasons hence this option being the least preferred. 

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)

Some good news, I’m very pleased to announce that my Project MVP award was renewed for the third time after first being awarded in April 2013. I am really grateful for the recognition, especially as I still enjoy helping out the Project and Project Server / Project Online community so much. It is kind of a hobby of mine I guess, or maybe just an obsession!

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)

The Office 2013 March 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1L0zdNX

Project Server 2013 March 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1xfwhBw

Project Server 2013 March 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1L0zfW3

Project 2013 March 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1xfwjJQ

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install the March 2013 Public update: http://bit.ly/1lR8IgK or Service Pack 1 http://bit.ly/1uorn2C if installing the March 2015 CU.

The Office 2010 March 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1L0zdNX

Project Server 2010 March 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1L0zfW4

Project Server 2010 March 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1xfwjJR

Project 2010 March 2015 CU:
<no update this month>

SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 March 2015 CUs.

As always, fully test these updates on a replica test environment before deploying to production.

For more details see: http://bit.ly/1L0zdO0

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 just to highlight a difference between Project Server 2013 on-premise and Project Online regarding being able to deselect “User can be assigned as a resource” from the Edit User page.

For Project Online this option is disabled as you can see below:

For Project Server 2013 (on-premise) this option is enabled:

For Project Server 2013 on premise where you can deselect this check box it is recommended that you don’t use this option as un-checking it can potentially cause issues in some scenarios hence this option being disabled in Project Online. I imagine that there will be a change for Project Server 2013 on-prem soon that will bring this inline with Project Online.

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)

This script will enable users to display the project cost and work on a column chart. The projects displayed are filtered by the selected Enterprise Project Type (EPT). The script can be downloaded from the script gallery below:

http://bit.ly/17YbzQ2

To get the script to work you will need to download the following jQuery library: jquery-2.1.1.min.js – jQuery download Another version of this library may work but this was the one I used / tested with. Upload this library to your PWA site collection then update the script file with the correct location. I uploaded this file to the site collection document library as you can see in the code below:

The script also makes use of a charting library called Highcharts. Highcharts is available from a company called Highsoft. Highcharts is only free for non-commercial use, see the link below for details:

http://bit.ly/17YbBY6

If you do use this library in scripts or applications that you sell / anything commercial you will need to purchase the correct licence to do so.

Other charting libraries can be used, just update the code based on the requirements of your chosen charting library.

This script also uses the ProjectData Odata API so users will need access to this API for the report to work.

Once the script is downloaded, upload this to the PWA site collection, in this example it was uploaded to the shared documents library. Choose where you want the script to be accessed, in this example I created a new page, added a content editor web part on the new page then referenced the uploaded script using the content editor web part:

Once loaded, the page will look like this:

The selection menu will contain the Enterprise Project Types (EPT), selecting an EPT will then update the two charts with those projects and display the cost and work.

A quick video can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1vzh4Qr

This only uses intrinsic fields so should work for any Project Online environment but do test it thoroughly first. You might want to improve the error handling, data filtering etc. before deploying to a production environment. Also remember this does require the user to have access to the ProjectData API for this to work.

The script is provided "As is" with no warranties etc.

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)

The Office 2013 February 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1Fjqq64 

Project Server 2013 February 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1CBxdBW

Project Server 2013 February 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1Fjqoem

Project 2013 February 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1CBxg0O

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install the March 2013 Public update: http://bit.ly/1lR8IgK or Service Pack 1 http://bit.ly/1uorn2C if installing the February 2015 CU.

The Office 2010 February 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1Fjqq64

Project Server 2010 February 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1Fjqoep

Project Server 2010 February 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1CBxdBZ

Project 2010 February 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1Fjqoew

SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 February 2015 CUs.

As always, test these updates on a replica test environment before deploying to production.

For more details see: http://bit.ly/1CBxgh7

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)

Something I have been meaning to blog about for a while now is Power Query. There is nothing revolutionary in this post but hopefully it will give the readers some idea of how powerful Excel Power Query can be if they have not seen / used it before. We will only touch the surface here in this post but there is plenty of information available already.

So firstly, what is Power Query. In short, Power Query is an add in for Excel that enables you to work with many different data sources and transform that data as required. An intro can be seen here. Power Query is formula based but this is different formula syntax to what you use in Excel. The Power Query formulas are based on what was known a “M” language, an intro to the formulas can be found here.

Now we will look at creating a simple Excel Power Query report for Project Online using the OData API. The first report we will create will be a simple report that allows you to dynamically filter the data based on a text value in a cell. The dynamic filtering is useful when you are looking at large amounts of data such as time phased assignments in Project Online. The example we create below doesn’t really benefit from the dynamic filtering as the data set is small but this is only an example to show you how this works.

Get your Project ODATA url, for this example and am using the following:

https://<URL TENANT>/sites/pwa/_api/ProjectData/Projects()?$select=ProjectName,ProjectOwnerName,ProjectWork,ProjectCost,ProjectDuration,ProjectPercentCompleted,ProjectDescription,EnterpriseProjectTypeName

Launch Excel and click the Power Query tab then From Other Sources > From OData feed:

Paste in the URL:

Click OK. You will then be presented with an authentication window. Select “Organizational account” from the left hand side navigation and click Sign In. In the new window that appears enter the credentials for an account that has access to the ProjectData API.

Once authenticated you will see the Power Query Preview window load with the data:

You can see the formula used in the formula bar:

If you can’t see the formula bar, click the View tab and check the Formula bar check box:

We now have our Project Online data in Power Query ready to be used as a data source. In this example I have already selected the columns I wanted, but if you just used the Projects feed with no select (http://..pwa/_api/ProjectData/Projects()) you would see all of the columns displayed. At that point you can then easily chose which columns you would like in your data source by selecting the columns you don’t need then right click and chose Remove Columns.

Then you can see those columns have been removed. The formula bar has been updated with the latest steps:

You will also see another step appear in the applied steps, see it has the “Removed Columns” step:

At any point in time you can switch back to a previous step or even delete a step. If I click back on the source step I see the original data set with the two columns I deleted:

For the purpose of this post I will delete the “Removed Columns” step but before I do I want to show the Advanced Editor screen. This is available from the View tab:

This editor enables you to type the query yourself rather than using the UI menus. Some things you might want to do might not be possible from the UI and you are required to type / update the query. I will now delete the “Removed Columns” steps and you can see the query has been updated:

I can manually update the query update the data set, for example I can manually update the query to remove columns:

You will then see the data update and an applied step appear:

Now I am happy with my simple data set, but before I do anything I will update the query name to “Projects”:

Now chose “Close & Load To…” from the Home tab:

Then chose “Only create the connection” also check the check box to load the data to the data model:

You will then see the Excel sheet with the Workbook Queries window that allows you to preview the data:

Before we create the Excel report, I want be able to filter the data based on the Project Owner. Next insert a table like below:

Enter any Project Owner name for now, I used he MOD Administrator in this example as that user is the Project Owner for a few projects. Give the table a name, in this example I called it ProjectOwnerTable.

Now click the Power Query tab then “From Table”:

The Power Query editor will load with the following:

Switch to the advanced editor to see the query:

Update the query to change the type and select the record:

The record will then be displayed:

Now click the “Close & Load To…” from the Home tab and chose the “Only create connection” and check the check box to add the data to the data model.

Now load the first Projects query that was created in Power Query and switch to the advanced editor:

This needs to be modified to filter for the Project Owner in the new table that was created. See the updated query below:

You will need to enable the data in privacy option:

Click Close and load to save the changes in the Power Query editor and you will see the Excel worksheet:

Now you can create the Excel report, for this I will add a Pivot Table using an External Data source then selecting my data model:

Then update the pivot table with the fields:

Change the layout etc.

This is filtered to the projects where the owner is MOD Administrator, if I want to see other projects, update the Project Owner on row 2 and refresh the data:

A very quick and simple intro the Power Query for Excel with Project Online data using the ProjectData Odata API.

I hope to give more examples in the future.

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)

Firstly Happy New Year to all, I think by now we are all in 2015! I hope that 2015 is a great year for all.

A quick review of my blog for 2014 can be seen below.

The blog was viewed around 90,000 times in 2014 with 618 views being the highest for 1 day with the most popular post that day being the Project Online Reporting Pack post.

The top five most visited posts in 2014 were as follows:

1. http://bit.ly/1wEOs1z
2. http://bit.ly/1yaU4HI
3. http://bit.ly/1wEOs1C
4. http://bit.ly/1pw7ROI
5. http://bit.ly/1yaU4HL

I look forward to creating more Project / Project Online / Project Server related posts in 2015!

Don’t forget the biggest event in 2015 – Microsoft Ignite, May 4th – 8th 2015 in Chicago – it will be an awesome event – I can’t wait to be there!