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)

There are no cumulative updates for any of the Office 2013 products this month as SP1 is due this quarter.

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

http://bit.ly/1b05m70

Project Server 2010 Server Roll up package February 2014 CU (Recommended):
http://bit.ly/1g2ynwn
Project Server 2010 February 2014 CU (Included in the Server Roll up package):    
http://bit.ly/1b05m75 & http://bit.ly/1g2ynwq
Project 2010 February 2014 CU:
http://bit.ly/1b05m78
Remember SP1 or SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 February 2014 CUs.

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

For more details see:

http://bit.ly/1b05m79

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 Project Server 2013 solution starters are now available, take a look here:

http://bit.ly/1eUTjDL

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 am pleased to announce that whilst I have been at the Project Conference in Anaheim the second App CPS developed has been approved and is now available in the SharePoint App Store:

http://bit.ly/1c1NQu0

This app will escalate Risks to Issues at the click of a button and update the risk item to indicate it has been escalated. The risk item is updated with an escalated date and the default Status column is set to closed providing you have “closed” somewhere in one of the choices. If you don’t have closed in one of the choice strings, the Status column is not updated. Some of the data from the risk item is mapped and copied into the new issue item that gets created, the mappings are below:

The new issue item doesn’t get created straightaway, the user has the option to edit / update the data in the issue item columns. Some screen shots can be seen below:

Ribbon button:

A project selected and the risk/s displayed:

Issue form:

Successfully escalated:

The app can be added to a project site in the Project Web App, the same functionality exists, the only difference is that the associated project is pre-selected and it can’t be changed.

A full user guide can be found here.

A free trial exists, go try it out today!

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)

Interested in Project Online and you’re at the Project Conference, come to the labs this afternoon in 205 AB. I will be helping out, see you there!

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 update on the Project Conference. Great keynote this morning with some exciting changes coming to Project Online.

Firstly a new SKU for team members is coming to Project Online in the next few months. This will cost $7 per user and give users access to key areas of Project Web App. This includes Tasks, Timesheets, Risks, Issues, Documents etc.

There are also improvements around resource management and SSRS. Reporting is a big area for any PPM product as you know. The default reporting technology is Excel – this is a great tool but SSRS does have its advantages over Excel. Microsoft have been working on a solution to make the Project Online data available for SSRS reports. This will be possible by a SSIS package to copy your Project Online data via the ODATA feed into a custom database in SQL Server. SSRS can then be used to surface that data. There were no dates mentioned but the new SSIS components will be available in a SQL 2012 feature pack and SQL Server 2014. Watch this space.

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 7 of the “Getting started with Project Online” series. If you have been following this series you will hopefully by now have an understanding of how you can configure your new Project Online Project Web App instance to meet your requirements. There are other configuration options that I haven’t covered, but the core or basics have been covered. In the last post we looked at project plan and project site template creation, the link to that post can be seen below:

http://bit.ly/1bPjJWB

Now we have the basic configuration completed we can start to populate data and start making use of the system. Firstly we will look at populating our enterprise resource pool / adding users to the system then an overview on creating projects.

Let’s look at some of the options we have for populating the resource pool. Firstly we will look at the Active Directory Resource Pool Synchronisation option, this is found on the PWA Settings page under the Operational Policies heading:

Clicking this link loads the following page:

Here you can type the name of a security group that contains all of the users you want as resources in Project Web App. For Project Online, the security groups are set up on the Office 365 tenant as are the user accounts. To show you this we will navigate to our Office 365 Admin Center. To get to this site click the Admin menu then click Office 365:

You will need a tenant admin account to access this site. Once the site is loaded click Users and Groups then click Security Groups:

As you can see, I have already created a group on this tenant (and the users already exist, to add users click the active users link then the + button). To create a new group, click the + button then complete the details on the page:

Give the group a name, I have called this “Test Group”, add a description if required then add the users by clicking the + button. Once complete just click save. After few minutes this group will be available to use in the Project Web App. Switching back to the Project Web App Active Directory Resource Pool Synchronisation page we can enter our AD security group information:

As you can see, start typing the name of the group and your group will be available to click without having to type the exact name. Once selected, click the Save and Synchronise now button. After a few moments you will see that the users from the chosen security group will appear in the Resource Center in the Project Web App:

The users above will be available to projects as resources. Currently, even though these resources are users in Office 365, they are not yet users in the Project Web App, they wouldn’t be able to log in to the Project Web App. Before we go on to add a users, I just want to detail the differences between users and resources. So you can have users that can log in to the system but might not necessarily be available to be assigned on a tasks, to be able to be assigned on a task the user needs to also be a resource. Flip that around, you can have resources that can be assigned to tasks but might not be able to log in. To give these users access will varying depending on the permission mode, if your Project Web App instance is using the Project Permission Mode you can just select the resource, click the edit button then check the checkbox “Associate resource with a user account” then enter the User logon account and select the security group. If you are in the SharePoint Permission Mode, which our example Project Web App instance is, you just share the site with those users. Lets look at that, navigate the the Project Web App homepage and click the “Share” button in the top right corner:

The Share button will load the following window:

Add the user name, then click “Show Options”, this will enable you to choose the correct group:

The default is “Team Members for Project Web App [Contribute]” but you can change this to another Project Web App group if required:

The correct group depends on the level of access this user needs. The SharePoint permission group details can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1fG5PKC. Once the correct group has been chosen click the Share button. That is one way to add resources (and users). You can also add resources manually either via the Project Web App or Project Professional. Let’s look at the Project Web App first. In the Project Web App, navigate to the Resource Center (link on the quick launch), click the Resources tab then click the New button:

This will load a new page, complete the required details then click Save. In this example I am going to create a new generic resource:

After clicking save I see the new resource appear in the resource center:

That is it for creating resources in the Project Web App. The other option is to create the resources via Project Professional, from the Resource Center, click the Open button:

You will need to have at least one resource selected for this to work. This will then open the enterprise resource pool in Project Professional (you will also need the account set up in Project Professional 2013 for that Project Web App instance):

You can create resources on this table, or copy and paste from Excel etc. For the purpose of this post I will just create one additional resource:

Now click the Save button and the resource will be created, see the resource center now:

With Project Online it would be recommended to use enterprise resources (we have created enterprise resources above) rather than using local resources. This way you can get good visibility of the resource assignments / demand. That is the intro to creating resources and users for the Project Web App instance. Next we look at the various ways to create projects in the system. Project Professional 2013 can be used, either a blank project, a template project or even an offline mpp file. Projects can also be created from the Project Web App, either from a project idea type list, from a SharePoint task list or from the Project Center. Full details can be seen here. For the purpose of this post we will look at using Project Professional 2013 and the Project Center. Firstly from Project Professional 2013, launch Project Pro and connect to the Project Web App instance, build the schedule:

Now build the team to add the enterprise resources to the project, either the Resource tab > Add Resources > Built Team from Enterprise or just press Ctrl +T:

That will load the Build Team window:

Here add the resources you might need on the project team. If you have access to a large resource pool, there are options to filter / group the list of resources. Select the resource and click the Add button:

Click OK. Now in the Resource Name column you can select the resource or resources for that task:

You can also double click the task name to load the Task Information window. Click the Resources tab and you add your resource here:

Once the project plan is ready, click the Save button then Save under Project Web App and a new window will appear:

Enter the project name, complete the project level fields and click Save. That data will then be sent to Project Online but not visible in the Project Web App. To make this visible in the Project Web App the project will need to be published. To publish the project click File > Publish:

This will load another window to create the associated project site:

Click Publish. Once the jobs complete in Project Online, this project will be visible to users with the correct permissions in Project Web App:

You can also create a project from a template, in Project Professional 2013 click File > New:

Here are several templates available, you can also click the Enterprise link to load the project templates you have created and saved to Project Web App:

Here we can see the project plan template we created in a previous post. Selecting one of the templates will load the template project plan, modify this as required then use the same Save and Publish options. Worth noting, when creating projects from Project Professional the default EPT will be used.

Now we will move the the Project Web App and review some of the options in the Project Center. When you first navigate to the Project Center on a new Project Web App instance you will see the following:

This gives a link to create a new project. We will look at using the EPTs, click the Projects tab then click New:

For this example we will use the Project Design EPT that we created in an earlier post. Click the Project Design EPT and the new project Project Detail Page will appear:

Enter the details and click Save, once complete the schedule PDP will appear:

As this was created from the Project Design EPT, the associated project plan template was used, hence the tasks displayed. Edit the project as required then click Save. Now we can build the team in the Project Web App. Click the Project Tab then Build Team:

Clicking this button loads the following page:

Select the resource you need in the project and click Add and they will appear on the right hand side:

Click the Save & Close button and you will be taken back the the schedule PDP, here you can assign the resources:

Once you have completed the project plan updates, click the Save button. Once the save has completed, click the Publish button to make this project visible. Click the other PDPs on the left hand side to complete the other details required, in this example we click the Project Details PDP:

Complete the details and click Save. When finished Close and check in the project:

Now you will see the project in the Project Center:

That covers the intro for creating projects. Next up we look at where in the system we can see the data (Tasks, Resource Center 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)

A quick post to highlight a recently approved app that allows you to report on your Project Online data with SSRS!

http://bit.ly/MNAbRV

This is great, something I know  a lot of people would have been waiting for!

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)

In part 6 of the getting started series we will look at creating a project plan template and a new project site template. This closely ties into the previous post on EPT’s:

http://bit.ly/1aCeU8q

Firstly we will look at creating a project plan template, this is done using Project Professional 2013. Launch Project Professional 2013 and connect to the Project Online instance. If you are unsure on how to connect Project Professional 2013 to the Project Online instance, see post 3 as we covered the required steps there. Once Project Professional is launched, a blank project (Project1) is loaded:

We will use this to create our project plan template. If you already have a project file (.mpp) that you wish to use as a template you can click File > Open to open this file and proceed to the steps where we save the template. Continuing with our blank Project1 file, we will create our plan structure, the details are not important for the purpose of this post so we will keep it simple. The following plan structure has been created:

Now click File > Save then click the Save button under Project Web App:

In the dialogue box, give the template a name and select Template from the Type menu:

Click Save then select the type of data you want to remove from the template:

Click Save. Now close the new template and click File > New > Enterprise and you will see the new template:

Selecting the template will launch a new project with the project plan schedule created in the previous steps. This is the project plan template created. We will now move on to the project site template, once they are both complete we will add them to the EPT.

The site template is a bit more involved than the project plan template. Firstly, launch your chosen browser and navigate to your Project Web App site:

We need to create a new site that will be modified to meet our requirements, this site will then be saved as a template. To create a new site click the settings cog in the top right hand corner then Site Contents:

Scroll down to subsites and click the + new subsite link:

Give the site a name and URL and select the template used to create your new site:

You will need to select Project Site so that Project Online recognises this as a valid project site. Scroll down and click create. You will then see the new site:

Now we have a site, we need to think about what we need to capture or see on this project site. For the purpose of this post we will just create one new example list and also modify the Issues list, that will give you the idea on how to customise the site as required. Firstly we will create the new list, this is going to be called “Marketing Ideas”. To create this list click the settings cog then Add an app:

Click Custom List then enter the list name:

Click Create and you will see the new list appear on the quick launch menu and the site contents page:

Now we need to think about the data we need to capture for each idea. For the purpose of this post we will keep it simple and have the following columns on the new list: Title, Marketing Area – this is choice field, Idea Description and Idea Cost Estimate. Before we create the new columns, there are several options here, create the columns locally (on the new list) or create them central and have the columns centrally managed. I know you would all prefer the centrally managed option so we will go with that! To make these centrally managed we will create the new columns as site columns on the Project Web App site. Navigate back to the Project Web App Site and click the settings cogs then site settings:

Click Site Columns under the Web Designer Galleries:

Click Create:

A new page will display:

Enter the column name, in this case it will be “Marketing Area” as Title will already exist on the list so we don’t need to create that. Change the type to Choice and scroll down to the group section, create a new group to hold all of the custom columns:

Now scroll down to the choice box and update the values as required:

Update other settings as required then click OK to create the new column and group. Click create again to create the other columns, type the name, choose the type and set it to the new custom group (select it from the list of existing groups), update any other settings and click OK. For this example I have three columns in the custom group:

That is the new site columns created for the new list, now we need to create a site content type to hold the new columns. Think of the content type as the container or wrapper. To create the content type click the Site Settings link on the settings cog menu then click Site Content Types under the Web Designer Galleries:

Click Create and complete the form:

Give the content type a name, selected the parent content type from as “List Content Type” then selected “Item” as the parent content type as we need this for list items. I also created a new group to hold this content type and any others i create. Click OK. The new content type will be created:

Click the Add from existing site columns link, we will now add the three columns created earlier. I changed the “Select columns from” menu to the custom site columns group so that only my custom columns are displayed then added the three columns:

Click OK. You can then change the column order if required using the “Column Order” link:

That is our new example content type created, we are now ready to add this to the new Marketing Ideas list. Navigate back to your new site where the new list was created and click the Marketing Ideas list (or the name of your new list):

Click the list tab then list settings:

Click Advanced Settings:

Select Yes for the management of content types:

Click OK. Now scroll down and click the “Add from existing site content types” link:

Change “Select site content types from” menu to your custom group then add your custom content type:

Click OK. Now click the “Change new button order and default content type” link. Set the item content type to not visible and set the new content type position to 1:

Click OK. Now go back to the advanced settings option and turn off the management of content types:

Click OK. Now set up any views you want on the list, this is done at the bottom of the settings page. For the purpose of this post I have just updated the All Items view and added my new columns:

This new list is now complete. Clicking the new item button on the list shows my new columns:

Now we will look at modifying the Issues list. Firstly we need to activate a site feature so that the default Project Server / Project Online project site lists are created. From the new site click the settings cog then Site Settings:

Click Manage Site Features and scroll down to the “Project Web App Connectivity” feature and click Activate:

Navigate back to the site homepage and you will see three new links appear on the quick launch under the Recent heading:

Now we have the Issues list we can modify it. The Issues lists will contain columns already, I would avoid changing any of the default columns as this can break some functionality in Project Online. For the purpose of this post, we will just create a new additional column called “Highlight”, this will be a yes / no column. Like the Marketing Ideas list, this new column will also be created as a site column on the Project Web App site then added to a new site content type on the Project Web App site. I wont cover those steps again as it is the same process as before when we created the three marketing ideas columns. We also need to create a new site content type for holding the new column/s. Again, I won’t document this as the process is the same, create a new site content type and add the highlight site column. Continuing with the Issues list changes (assuming you have set up the required columns and content type), click the Issues list then click the List tab followed by the List settings. Click advanced settings and allow the management of content types:

Click OK. Now scroll down to “Add from exiting content types” link, update the “Select site content types from:” menu to the custom site content type group you created (saves you scrolling to find your new content type) then add the Issues content type:

Click OK. Now scroll down and click your new content type to load the settings:

Click the link “Add from existing site or list columns” and you will see the page below:

These are the default Issues list columns, add all of the columns:

Click OK. This has added all of the local Issue list columns to the new custom Issues content type on the Issues list:

Click the Settings link at the top of the page to go back to the list settings page. As before with the custom list, click the “Change new button order and default content type” link. Set the Project Site Issue content type to not visible and set the new content type position to 1:

Click OK. Now go back to the advanced settings option and turn off the management of content types:

Click OK. The last thing to do is update / create any views. For this example I will create a new view based on the default “All Items” view but filter for items that are highlighted. To do this, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Create view”. Under the “Start from an existing view”, click “All Items”:

Once the new view page loads, give it a name, in this case I will call it “Highlighted Issues”. Add the new Highlighted column to the view by checking the check box, update the position as required. Scroll down to the filter settings and select the Highlighted column  is equal to Yes as displayed below:

Click OK to save the new view.

That is my lists configured, well for the purpose of this post anyway. In reality you would probably make many more changes but that should give you a good idea / starting point. The next change that I will do to my site is update the navigate menu, currently it looks like this:

I want to change the order. To do this click the settings cog then Site Settings. Under the Look and Feel heading, click Navigation. Scroll down to the “Structural Navigation: Editing and Sorting” section and you will see something like the image below:

I want to move Issues, Risks, Deliverables and Marketing Ideas to the main part of the menu and remove them from the Recent heading. I will walkthrough updating the Issues link so you get the idea. Select Current Navigation:

Click the “Add Heading…” button and you will see a new pop-up:

Complete the details as required:

To add the correct URL if you are unsure, click Browse, then select the Issues list and click Insert:

Click OK and the new link will appear at the bottom:

With the new Issues link selected, click the “Move Up” button until the link is in the correct place:

Now select the original Issues links under the Recent heading and click “Delete”. Repeat these steps for the other lists / navigation links. Once complete it will look similar to the links below:

Once the links are all updated click OK on the navigation settings page. You will now see the quick launch menu updated:

There are two more changes that I want to do to this site before it is ready to save as a template, the next is to update the homepage. I want to remove the large “Get started..” web part and add my own. Firstly lets edit the page to remove the current “Get started…” web part. Click the settings cog then Edit Page, the page will now be in edit mode:

Click the drop down menu next the to “Get started..” web part and select Delete:

Click OK and the web part will be removed. Now I want to add my own tiles to the homepage. Firstly I need to create another custom lists called the “Promoted Links”. Lets stop editing the page, click the Page tab followed by Stop Editing:

Click the settings cog then Add an app. Scroll down the list and click “Promoted Links”:

Give the list a name such as Site Links and click create. You will now see the new list:

Click the list then click the “All Promoted Links” link and add your links. The links I have added are below:

Notice the use of relative links, don’t use absolute (full) URLs.

I have linked to my Issues, Risks and Marketing Ideas lists. The images are stored in the site collection image library so that they are centrally managed and can be updated easily. Now the list has been created we need to add the web part to the homepage. Navigate back to the site homepage and click the settings cog then Edit Page. Click the Add web part link:

You will then see the web part gallery at the top of the page:

In the Apps category you will see the name of the custom list you just created, in my case I see Site Links:

Select the app and click the Add button. You will now see the tiles (links) appear on the page. Move the web part to the correct web part zone as required. Just drag the web part to the desired zone. I have moved this below the Project Summary:

Click the Page tab followed by Stop Editing:

One last thing, you will notice I now has the “Site Links” under the Recent heading:

I want to remove this. Click the settings cog then Site Settings. Under the Look and Feel heading clicking Navigation. Scroll down to the “Structural Navigation: Editing and Sorting” section , select the link under the Recent heading and click Delete. Click OK then navigate back to the site homepage and it will look something like the image below (if you have been following):

I don’t want to see the Site Links title, so I will edit the web part,click Page then Edit Page or use the Edit Page option on the settings cog menu:

Click the “Edit Web Part” link on the drop down menu for the web part:

Expand the appearance section and change the Chrome to None:

Click Apply then click OK. Now click the Stop Editing link on the ribbon. The homepage will now look like this:

Finally I want to update the theme, to do this click the settings cog then “Change the look” and the following page will load:

Click the current design (or chose a different) then choose the updated theme using the controls on the left:

I went for the following:

Click “Try it out” then “Yes, keep it” if you are happy. Now the site will have updated:

That’s it my site is ready to be saved as a template. To so this, click the settings cog then Site Settings. Click “Save site as a template” under the Site Actions menu. Give the template a title and name. Also check the box to include content:

As we are including content make sure no lists or libraries have any data as this data will then be created on all sites created from this template. The only list on my site that will have data is the “Site Links” list, this is fine. Other lists or libraries are fine to have data too but as long as you are aware this data will get created on all sites that are created from this template. We have to include content for two reasons, one so our tiles on the homepage work and two so that the “Change the look” functionality works on new sites. If you don’t include content you will not have the tiles on the homepage and you will have an issue with the themes, the themes issue is described here. Click OK to save the template. After a short while you will see the success message:

Click OK. The template is now ready and available to use. The final steps is to add the project plan template and the site template to the new EPT. To do this navigate back to the Project Web App site and click the settings cog then PWA Settings. Under the Workflow and Project Detail Pages heading click Enterprise Project Types. Click your new EPT, mine is called “Product Design”, this will load the EPT settings. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Project Plan Template section. On the drop down menu select the project plan template. For the purpose of this post mine is called “Project Design Template”:

Scroll down to the last setting, the Site Template section and select the site template. Mine is called “Project Design Template v0.1”:

Click Save to apply the changes.

That comes to the end of this post, next up we look at getting data into the system, this includes populating our resource pool, giving users access and a guide on creating projects.

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)

In part 5 of the getting started series we will look at Enterprise Project Types (EPTs) and Project Detail Pages (PDPs). The last post, in case you missed it was looking at PWA Views:

http://bit.ly/1jGgmqo

Firstly we will look at PDPs and create a new PDP, we will then look at EPTs and create an EPT.

Project Detail Pages, known as PDPs are used use either display details or capture details for projects.There are several PDPs out of the box, lets look at creating a new one. As a PWA Admin navigate to PWA Settings and click Project Detail Pages under the Workflow and Project Details Pages heading:

Here you will see the PDPs that are included out of the box:

To create a new PDP click the Files tab > New Document > New Document:

Enter a name for the new PDP, choose the layout required and click Create:

You will then see a SharePoint web part page:

Click Add a Web Part and you will see the web part categories appear:

Scroll down to the Project Web App Category and you will see all of the Project Web App web parts. You can add any type of web part of these pages, it doesn’t have to be a Project Web App web part but for the purpose of this post I am going to add a Project Web App web part. The type of web part you add will depend on the purpose of the PDP, this example PDP is used for editing multiline project level custom fields so I will add the Basic Info web part. PDPs are the only place you can edit and view multiline project level fields in PWA. After selecting the required web part click Add and you will see the web part appear:

I have created two example multiline project level fields called “Project Status Summary” and “Project Actions”. These fields will be added to my example PDP. To add the fields, click the Edit Web Part option on the Basic Info web part:

Click the Modify button:

Add the fields that you want to see on the PDP, for the example I have added to the multiline custom fields I had created:

Click OK. Edit other web part properties as required, I have updated the title and the chrome then click Apply on the web part properties then click OK.

Click Stop Editing in the top left corner. Now click Edit Properties and enter a description:

The other properties can remain the same. The key property for PDPs is the Page Type, there are three options:

• New Project – this is used for creating a project
• Workflow Status – this is used to display the stage and status information
• Project – this is used for editing a project

Click Save. Now click the cog > PWA Settings:

Then click the Project Details Pages link and you will see the new PDP:

Now we have created a new PDP we need to be able to view this page, by default the users wont be able to use it or see it. This is where the Enterprise Project Types come into play.

Enterprise Project Types, known as EPTs are used as a container or wrapper if you like. The different project components are associated to the EPTs, for example any workflows, project plan templates, PDPs, project site templates. EPTs are used to create different types of projects, for example you might have a requirement for HR type projects and R&D projects, both of which have different requirements. HR projects might be required to capture different information for the project and project site compared to the R&D projects. R&D projects might require a project lifecycle workflow but the HR projects might not. All of this is possible using EPTs.

You get two EPTs out of the box, the SharePoint Task List and the Enterprise Project. The Enterprise Project EPT would be the default to use for full Project Online functionality. Lets look at creating a new EPT. As a PWA Admin navigate to PWA Settings and click Enterprise Project Types under the Workflow and Project Details Pages heading and you will see the table below:

You can see the two default EPTs. Click the New Enterprise Project Type button and you will see the new EPT form:

Enter a name, for this example we are going to create a Product Design EPT, so the name will be Product Design. Enter a description if required. Leave the other options as default and scroll down to the New Project/Project Detail Pages section and change the New Project Page to the Project Information PDP then add the other PDPs you wish to see for the type of project. For this example I have added the Schedule, Project Status Information and the Project Information PDPs. Project Status Information PDP was the PDP I created in the post:

Scroll down past the other settings until you get to the Image section, the others will be default. The Image setting allows you to set an image for the EPT, this can be seen when the user clicks the New button in the Project Center. For this example we will just use the default EPT image:

You have the option to change the order of the EPTs, for this example we will place this new EPT at the end. Scroll down to the Project Plan Template and Project Site Template sections:

This is where you can specify a plan template and a project site template. For now we are going to leave these as default because we do not have any plan templates in the environment or any custom project site templates. Click Save to create the new EPT. You will now see the new EPT:

That is it for the intro to EPTs until the next post. The next post in the series will look at project plan and project site templates, this will also touch on EPTs as we add our new templates to the Project Design EPT.

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 4 for the getting started with Project Online series. In the last post we looked at configuring the Enterprise Global:

http://bit.ly/1aIV2ea

In this post we will move back to PWA and continue with the configuration there. Next up are the PWA views, these are configured on the PWA Settings page. To access this page, click the cog menu and click PWA Settings:

Now click Manage Views under the Look and Feel heading:

You will see many preconfigured views here:

Above are the Project views, below are all of the view types that have preconfigured views:

As you can see there are quite a few different types of views in PWA, these are for different areas or functionality in Project Server. A summary for each view can be seen below:

For the purpose of this post we will create one Project view, one Project Center view and Resource Center view. Each view type has different settings and fields available, for example task level or assignment level fields are not available in a Project Center view. To create a new view we can either start with a blank view or copy an existing view, for the Project view we will copy the Task Summary view. To do this, select the Task Summary view:

The Copy View button is now enabled, click this button and a pop up will appear with a field to type the new view name, by default it will have “Copy of Tasks Summary”, update this with the name of the new view:

Click OK to create the new view, this new view will appear on the grid. Click the new view to load the edit view page:

Scroll down to the fields section and select a new field from the available fields, for the purpose of this post I am going to select the RAG Planned Work field that was created in post 2 and add this to the view.

Save the view. Now we will create a new Project Center view, click the New View button and select Project Center from the view type menu:

Type a name in the Name field and add a description if required. In the field section add the required fields, for the purpose of this post I will be adding the 3 custom project level fields created in post 2:

You have the option to set the field width and give the field a custom title / label.

Scroll down the the format view section and set the required options. For this example I have set the grouping format to Views, the group by to Programme and sort by to Project Name:

Now save the view. The third view we will create is a Resource Center view, click New View again and select Resource Center from the type menu and give the view a name:

Add in the required fields, in this example I will add some of the default fields plus the Employee Contract Type custom field created in post 2:

Scroll down to the Filter section and click the filter button, this will load a pop up for the custom filter:

Add the filter required, in this example it will be where the resources are full time:

Notice the filter is validate. Click OK and save the new view. That is it for the PWA views in this post but that should be enough to get you started. Next up we continue with other Project Online configuration to help you get the most out of your new environment.