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)

The Office 2013 April 2014 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1lR8IgH

***There is no Project Server 2013 Server Roll up package for April 2014 CU***
Project Server 2013 April 2014 CU:
http://bit.ly/1g8zmuj
Project 2013 April 2014 CU:
http://bit.ly/1g8zmuk

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install the March 2013 Public update: http://bit.ly/1lR8IgK if installing the April 2014 CU.

The Office 2010 April 2014 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1g8zmul

***There is no Project Server 2010 Server Roll up package for April 2014 CU***
Project Server 2010 April 2014 CU:    
http://bit.ly/1g8zmuo & http://bit.ly/1lR8IgP
Project 2010 April 2014 CU:
http://bit.ly/1g8zkTe
Remember SP1 or SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 April 2014 CUs.

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

For more details see:

http://bit.ly/1lR8JBq

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 second time after first being awarded in April 2013. I am really grateful for the recognition, especially as I enjoy helping out the Project and Project Server 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)

CPS’ 3rd app is now available in the Microsoft App Store. The app is called “Work Viewer” and can be downloaded here:

http://bit.ly/1jP3G4j

The Project Server Plus Work Viewer app will give users instant visibility of resource assignments and availability for the chosen resources over the selected timeframe.

The app will quickly alert the user to over allocations and availability using the customisable colour formatting options which are fully configurable per user and are persistent.

By default, resource plan work and proposed bookings are excluded from the data. However, these assignments can be added back in by simply checking the relevant box to aid accurate resource management decisions. Assignment information is available in the tooltips detailing the availability, remaining availability, project name, task names, the assignment type and the booking type.

At the click of a button the user can also see the resource’s line manager (timesheet manager) and the project owner. The app features a host of additional innovative features including Lync integration. The user can quickly see the Lync presence and easily communicate to either the resource, the line manager or the project owner using the Lync integration feature.

Download today and take a look using the free trial.

To see the CPS app store click the link below:

http://bit.ly/1jP3EJC

Look out for more new apps coming soon.

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)

Following on from my post earlier today regarding the SSIS component that enables you to extract data from ODATA feeds in Office 365, I have created a blog post that demonstrates this new functionality. See the steps below:

Firstly I installed the SQL Server data tools and Integration Services feature on my Test Project Server / SharePoint 2013 box (only server I had available at the time). Once you have access to SQL Server data tools, download and install the ODATA SSIS component from the link below:

http://bit.ly/NSC8fs

Also if this isn’t on a SharePoint / Project Server 2013 server – which in reality it wont be, you will also probably need the SharePoint client DLLs, these can be downloaded here:

http://bit.ly/1dqRowf

When I tried the new SSIS component on the SQL 2012 Server the connection failed and it complained about the SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll:

I didn’t test deploying the SharePoint client components to the SQL Server but I guess this should work.

Once everything is in place, launch SQL Server data tools for SQL Server 2012 and create a new Integration Services project:

Click OK and you will see the following screen:

On the control flow tab, at the bottom you will see Connection managers. Right click and create a new OLEDB Connection to the target database:

Before I created this, I did create a new empty SQL database:

Create another connection to the ODATA feed URL using the New Connection > ODATA option:

Create the ODATA connection to your ODATA tenant:

Specify an account that has access to the ODATA feed. Notice the Service document location is just the base ProjectData ODATA URL.

Click the All button and change the Microsoft Online Services Authentication to True:

Test the connection to confirm it is successful then click ok.

Add a Data Flow Task to the control flow:

Double click the data flow task and you will go to the Data flow tab:

Drag ODATA source from the toolbox to the data flow sheet:

Double click the ODATA source to see the properties:

Complete the details, selecting the ProjectOnlineODATAFeed connection and you will see the Collection property load the collection, in this case it is the tables on the ODATA feed:

Once loaded you will see the familiar ODATA entities:

In this example we will only use the Projects feed:

Click the Columns page on the left hand side and select the columns you want:

Click OK.

Drag the Destination Assistant from the SSIS toolbox to the Data Flow sheet and the new destination window will open:

Select the previously created SQL Server OLE DB connection:

Click OK.

Double click the OLEDB Destination component to load the editor:

Click the New button next to to the table details to create a new table, give the table a name, replace “OLE DB Destination” with the table name you want:

Click OK. At this point if we look at the SQL database we will see the new table and columns:

Back in the SSIS package click the Mappings page, here you can see the field mappings from the ODATA feed to the SQL table:

Click OK and you will see the following flow:

Run the package using the green arrow:

Once run successfully you will see the following:

If we switch back to the SQL server and see what is stored in the table you will see the project data from your Project online tenant:

Now the data is local you can use SQL Server Reporting Services to create reports, you can integrate this data into other LOB systems or create a custom OLAP cube etc. Once you are happy with the package you can set the package to run on a schedule to periodically copy the data down. There are plenty of references on the web for creating SSIS packages so have a search.

This is a basic example but hopefully gives you the idea of what is now possible

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)

Quick post to let you know that the SSIS component to export data via ODATA that was mentioned here is now available for download, see the link below:

http://bit.ly/NSC8fs

This will enable you to copy data from Project Online into a custom SQL database, from there you can easily create SSRS reports, custom OLAP cubes, integrate into other LOB systems etc. Look out for more details soon.

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)

I recently had to bulk delete and then bulk create project sites for a client. Rather than engaging one of our devs I wrote a PowerShell script to do this. This does need PowerShell 3.0 or later to work. This post covers the bulk create script as this is generic, the bulk delete was specific to the client so I haven’t published that. The script can be downloaded from the script galley below:

http://bit.ly/1fZVPN8

The web service proxy URLs will need to be updated for your PWA instance, replace the http://vm753/pwa with the correct URL.

The script can be seen running and creating sites below:

From the PowerShell ISE:

From PowerShell:

Project Sites are created using the correct site template that is associated to the EPT.

If all projects have a site associated, the following is returned:

Test this on a test / dev farm before running a live production farm.

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 Task Auditor app from CPS won first place for the “Most Business Value Project” App at the SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas:

This is a free Project task pane app, go try it out and see what you think

See the links below for details:

App store: http://bit.ly/1n6Ciwu

Product site: http://bit.ly/1dlln6v 

Blog post: http://bit.ly/1dlln6y

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)

Service Pack 1 has been released today for Office 2013, the links can be seen below:

SharePoint 2013 SP1:
http://bit.ly/1c5sXUw

Project Server 2013 SP1:
http://bit.ly/1o3Vc5N

Project 2013 SP1:
http://bit.ly/1c5sVvV

SharePoint 2013 and other server related SP1:
http://bit.ly/1c5sVvX

A list of the fixes for Office 2013 SP1:

http://bit.ly/1o3V9ai

As with all patches, deploy to a non production farm and fully test before deploying to a production system.

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 is part 8 of the “Getting started with Project Online” series. I was hoping to get this post published before now, sorry for the delay. In this post we will look at the various places in the Project Web App that data can viewed and edited. In the last post we looked at populating the enterprise resource pool and various ways to create projects. If you missed the last post, see the link below:

http://bit.ly/LHGQfq

Firstly navigate to the Project Web App homepage:

As you can see there are various ways to get to certain areas in the Project Web App. You can use the quick launch or the tiles. We will look at the Project Center, the Tasks page, the Resource Center and the project site. The first area we will look at is the Project Center, this can be accessed either from the Projects link on the Quick Launch menu (left hand side of the page) or by clicking the Projects tile on the “Track your work” web part. This page will look something the image below:

Different views can be configured for this page, we covered this in part 4, we created a new Project Center view called “Project Status by Programme”. To switch to this view or another view click the PROJECTS tab at the top of the page then click the drop down menu next to view:

Here you will see all the Project Center views that you have access to. Click a different view and the page will refresh:

The data is now grouped by our Programme field. The view filtering and grouping can be changed on the fly using the filter and group by options on the ribbon. You will see there is also a timeline that currently contains no projects. Projects and tasks can be added to the timeline using the two buttons on the ribbon, Add Project and Add Tasks. To add a project, select the project row and click the Add Project button:

To add a task, select the project and click the Add Tasks button. A new window will appear that will allow you to select the tasks:

Select the task or tasks and click OK:

We now have the project and two of the project tasks on the timeline. The timeline can be formatted. Selecting the timeline will show a TIMELINE ribbon tab:

The colour formatting of the bars and fonts can be changed, the data / information displayed and how the information is displayed (callouts etc.):

Clicking the project name will load the project detail pages for that project:

On the left hand side menu you will see the different PDP’s associated with this enterprise project type (EPT’s). We covered PDP’s and EPT’s in part 5. Clicking one of the PDP’s will load different information and display different information that can be edited. Below shows the Project Status Information PDP:

The project plan can be edited on the schedule PDP, click the Task tab then Edit > In Browser to edit in the Project Web App

The project then checks out to you and the ribbon buttons are active:

Once the changes are complete you have the save and publish options.

We will now take a look at the Tasks page, this is where team members see their assignments. Starting on the Project Web App homepage, there are two links to the Tasks page, either the Tasks link on the quick launch or the Tasks tile. The tasks tile will also give a count of new tasks, notice “Tasks: 1 New” below on the 3rd tile on the “Track your work” web part:

Clicking either the Tasks tile or the Tasks quick launch link takes you to the Tasks page below:

Here team members can either just view the assignments using the different views, update progress or even delete assignments. Any changes such as updating progress or deleting has to be approved by the task status manager, they will get notified of the change. Clicking the task name loads the task details page:

Next we look at the Resource center page, from the Project Web App homepage click the Resources link on the quick launch menu. The following page will then load:

Here you can create new resources or edit existing resource providing you have the correct permissions. Different views are available here, we will switch to the “Full Time Resources” view that we created in part 4:

From the Resource center we can quickly see resource availability and assignment details. Check the resource/s that you want to review, in this case I will look at myself:

You will then see the two end buttons on the ribbon become active. Click the Resource Assignments button to see the assignments:

From this page I can also click the Resource Availability button to see the resource availability:

Different view options can be set to see data. Below the graph is a table displaying the details:

The next area we will look at is the project site. There are several ways which the project site can be access. Either from the Project Web App site site cog > Site contents option:

Then scroll down to subsites:

The second method is from the project center, click the ellipsis next to the project then click the ellipsis on the pop up then click “Go to Project Site”:

Another method is from the project details view, click the project site link under the PDPs:

Once on the project site you will see the following:

You will see different lists etc. based on the template you created \ chose, this example site is based on the site template created in part 6. Here you can update the lists and documents related to the project. Below a new Issue has been created, set to active and assigned to myself:

The Issues and Risks list tie in closely to the project in the Project Web App. If I look at the Project Web App homepage I will see 1 Active Issue now:

Notice the 4th tile on the “Track your work” web part. I edited the “Track your work” web part to display Issues and Risks. Clicking the Issues or Risks tile loads the follow page:

You can click the project name to load either the issues or risks lists on that project site.

Also the project center will display an icon next to the project to indicate an issue:

You can click the icon to load the issues list for that project site. The same functionality exists for risks and documents. Issues, risks and documents can also be linked to tasks or other list items, I have covered that previously here.

Next up, we look at creating reports to surface data in Excel / Excel Web App. I have previously covered creating Project Online reports, the links are below:

http://bit.ly/OuoiRB

http://bit.ly/1dq1BDq

The next post will look at creating the ODATA feed URLs then using the same process described in the links above we will create reports.

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 potential issue for many organisations with Project Server 2013 is that users need access to Central Admin if they want to build the OLAP Cube. Usually the PMO / PWA Admins would not have access to Central Admin, they only have access to Project Web App. If they want to build the OLAP Cube on demand, they would need to raise a request to the team that manages SharePoint Central Admin. To get around this, they can use PowerShell! The script can be downloaded from the script gallery below:

http://bit.ly/N5XplB

Once the script is downloaded, the uri will need to be updated to use the correct URL, update the http://vm753/pwa part of the URL. You will also need to update the cube GUID. You can get the cube GUID from the URL in Central Admin when you access the OLAP cube settings page. See the highlighted URL below:

Obviously someone with access to Central Admin will need to get the OLAP Cube GUID for you.

The users running the script will need to correct permissions in Project Server. They will need Manage Cube Build service and Mange Site Services.