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Posts Tagged ‘Project’

Office 365 Products Visio Stencil & Icons available (updated for 2019) #o365 #visio

Just a quick post to say that I have uploaded a new Visio stencil for Office 365 products that I created to aid my own solution designs and I hope you find them useful too.

Link on Technet Galleries: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Office-365-Products-Visio-ec6512de

Here is an example of the Visio Icon Set

I have also included the original image icons used to create the stencil which is useful for PowerPoint etc. too

Below is an example of the images used in the stencil. I have updated them to be inline with the new Office 365 Icon Re-Design that rolled out recently.

All images are available either in PNG format as part of the download and in some cases, the original SVG files.

#SharePoint and #ProjectServer 2016 RTM is OUT

March 22, 2016 Leave a comment
Project Server 2016, on premises, Released to Manufacturing (RTM) version is released last week.
Project Server is fully integrated within same SharePoint installer, and once SharePoint installation will be completed, Project Server service application will be available to be used.

You can refer to my last blog to follow step by step to stand up SharePoint 2016 farm: http://bit.ly/1MzUHxn

Microsoft has also announced that Project Server/SharePoint 2016 will be generally available in Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center in early May 2016.

Project Server 2016 RTM to download: http://bit.ly/1LEd1KU

Language Pack for SharePoint 2016: http://bit.ly/1MzUHxp

Project Server 2016 tech-net documentation: http://bit.ly/1hhobqk

SharePoint Server 2016 tech-net documentation: http://bit.ly/1KmWs3m

Whats new for Admins in SharePoint 2016: http://bit.ly/1LEd3T9

Enjoy.

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1MzUJFq

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

#SharePoint or #ProjectServer 2016 Installation – Step By Step

December 19, 2015 Leave a comment
SharePoint/ProjectServer 2016 Beta 2 version is available to explore now, and in this blog post I will walk through installation steps to help users follow and setup an on-premises SharePoint server 2016 farm.

Note that Project Server service application is now included within a same set of setup files. We don’t have to install separate setup files for Project Server, you will find Project Server Service application to choose to configure as part of farm configuration step.

During the installation process, I will highlight any new/additional steps or installation screens specific to SharePoint 2016. Also note that this installation is carried using Beta 2 version, that is 99% feature complete as Microsoft has quoted and must be very identical to the RTM version coming next year.
Hardware and Software requirement for SharPoint Server 2016 can be found here: http://bit.ly/1PcxZhL
For testing purposes, I am preparing a single server farm and I have a separate database server that is running SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.0.

Exactly like SharePoint 2013, lets start with installation of prerequisites. 

Pre-requisites options: 

SharePoint server expects certain pre-requisites to be installed prior to actual SharePoint installation. Below are our option to prepare SharePoint server with pre-requisites:
  1. Online installation, using Pre-requisite tool (recommended)
  2. Manual installation of pre-requisites by downloading required setups files.

For offline installation (option-2), you can download below required pre- requisites and install on server. Please always refer to this MSDNto check for any changes in pre-requisites and their respective download links:
·        Web Server (IIS) role
·        Application Server role
·        Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.5.2
·        Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client
·        Microsoft WCF Data Services 5.6
·        Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client (MSIPC)
·        Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64)
·        Windows Server AppFabric 1.1
·        Cumulative Update Package 7 for Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server (KB 3092423)
·        Microsoft ODBC Driver 11 for SQL Server
·        Update for Microsoft .NET Framework to disable RC4 in Transport Layer Security (KB2898850)
·        Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio 2012
·        Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio 2015
In this blog post, I am using pre-requisite tool that comes with SharePoint setup to configure my server.

Installing Pre-requisites

Run setup as administrator, and choose install software pre-requisites.
1.  
2. 
3.
4. 
5. After restart, the pre-requisite tool will resume with remaining installation.
6. Summary screen will show status as below:

At the end of installation, go through the completion status screen as above to identify if any pre-requisite got failed while installation

Installing SharePoint Server 2016:

Choose Install SharePoint server from setup dialog, and follow the screen shots to complete the installation process.
1.
2   2. Accept the agreement check-box, and continue:
3. Choose a file location, if it’s different then the default location mentioned:

4. 
5. At the end of installation of setup binaries, run the configuration wizard to complete the configuration and create farm:

6. 
7. Choose create a new server farm to create a new SharePoint 2016 far. Connection to an existing farm option can be used to join new server to an existing farm.

8. Define the required configuration fields below and proceed:

9    9. Pass-phrase is important, so define and save it somewhere to refer later if required. As it would be required to add another server to scale up your existing farm.
10. Below screen is part of new enhancements/change to SharePoint 2016 deployment process. This will let you choose your server role within a farm, earlier it was all about manually setting up a required application services based on server role in a farm.
11. And the final configuration dialog box let you choose port number for your Central Admin site:

12. Configuration summary page:
 
13. Below step may take a while to complete:

14. At the end of successful configuration, you will be presented with summary configuration. Click finish to launch Central Administration website:
15. Once Central Administration site launched, you can choose wizard to configure services


16. Another change to SharePoint 2016 deployment process is that Project Server is now part of same SharePoint installation as service application.
Project Server always was an application service in SharePoint, but previous versions requires separate set of setup files to be installed to enable Project Server application service in existing SharePoint farm.


17. And here you have a shiny new SharePoint Server 2016 farm ready for you to explore J

More to come soon, keep visiting my blog.

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1QwEu2p

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

Great new #Enhancements to #ProjectOnline

December 4, 2015 Leave a comment
This is to quickly share about 3 excellent new enhancements to Project Online rolled out today.

1. Email Notification

Email notifications in Project Online keep you on top of what’s coming, let you know when things are due and what’s currently on your plate.

This feature is available from today.

2. Project IDs
This was much awaited!
Until today I have to use JS or other solutions, in order to generate unique ID for each project.
This is now going to be available as OOB option, and can be configured as part of the Enterprise Project Type (EPT) settings. 



Each EPT has its own project ID definition. You can specify a fixed Pre- and Postfix, Starting Number and Minimum Digit Padding. The project ID can be added to a number of views throughout PWA and in custom reports. It can also be programmatically updated using CSOM.

Note, that this feature is still in final touches mode, and yet to be released.

3. Increasing custom field limits for reporting

This enhancement is simply overwhelming. 
Reporting from Project Online was an issue with prior limitation of 45 custom fields.
With this new enhancement introduced, increased new limits on ALL custom field types are:
Project custom fields
Timesheet custom fields
Task and Resource custom fields, combined
450 text fields
450 text fields
450 text fields
450 lookup tables
450 lookup tables
450 lookup tables
450 of all other custom field types (cost, date, duration, number, flag)
450 of all other custom field types (cost, date, duration, number, flag)
450 of all other custom field types (cost, date, duration, number, flag)
This change is valid from today.
Complete details are available here: http://bit.ly/1XDIPVk
Life is getting better with Project Online 🙂

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1XDIPVl

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

#Project Online and #ProjectServer – Reporting Enhancements

November 27, 2015 Leave a comment
Reporting is an integral factor to any successful PPM deployment, and Microsoft is continuously investing in reporting capabilities, making it bigger and better.

In this blog post, I will bring together few recent updates to reporting options that can help get the best out of Project (online and on-premises) data, and will share links to all the sources available.

1.      SSRS – SQL Server Reporting Services

SQL Server Reporting Services are amazing, it enables you to create interactive, tabular, and graphical or free form reports from relational, multidimensional, or XML-based data sources. SSRS is the most powerful tool to surface data on to reports till date, from simplest to highly complex reports, SSRS is your tool.

And now there are some good new related to SSRS devotees, Microsoft has recently announced about the number of enhancements to Reporting Services in SQL Server 2016.


SQL Server 2016 preview version is already available for some time now, and Microsoft SQL team has released number of new Reporting services features to preview version:
Few of the highlighted items are as below:

·       Pin Reporting Services report items – Including charts, gauge panels, maps, and images – to Power BI dashboards. Dashboard tiles always show up-to-date data thanks to scheduled refresh. Click a dashboard tile to drill through to the complete Reporting Services report.
·      Design reports using Visual Studio 2015 with an updated version of SQL Server Data Tools.
·       ·      Uses .NET Framework 4.x code in report expressions, report code, referenced assemblies, and extensions for report security, data processing, rendering, or delivery.
Some more details here:
·      ·      Position report parameters the way you want : I am quite excited about this particular enhancement, for the first time ever, you see the Parameters pane in Design view, handing you, the report author, design-time control of parameter positioning:
·       ·      Export reports to PowerPoint
·       ·      Create Treemap and Sunburst charts
·       ·      Design reports in an updated version of Report Builder with a modern theme
·       ·      View and interact with reports in modern browsers (thanks to a new HTML5-based renderer)
·       ·      Print reports from modern browsers (without installing an ActiveX control)
Below is the summary of all the information published till date:

1.      Power BI and Project Online

Power BI is around for some time now, Microsoft Power BI is a collection of online services and features that enables you to find and visualize data, share discoveries, and collaborate in intuitive new ways.

In new Power BI experience, Power BI displays dashboards on the Power BI service that are interactive, and can be created and updated from many different data sources. Based on the same technology as Power View, Power BI Desktop supports existing Power View reports and provides the future path to a HTML5 based interactive report experience on-premises.

In this blog post, I am particularly interested in mentioning how the Project world can take leverage of Power BI offerings.

Lately Power BI team has introduced a Power BI pack for Project online users. The Project Online content pack for Power BI allows you to explore your project data with out-of-box metrics such overdue projects or a burn-down of current project work.

Also with new SSRS capabilities as mentioned above, Pin to Dashboard, we can now pin any existing Project chart to Power BI dashboard very easily. This help an end user in particular, to quickly put together a nice dashboard using several existing SSRS reports without seeking support from technical wizards.

Glimpse of few project reports from Power BI pack are below:

 



via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1MIhFEl

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

Announcing Availability of #SharePoint and #ProjectServer 2016 BETA 2 versions

November 25, 2015 Leave a comment
A while ago I have shared about the release of SharePoint and Project Server 2016 preview versions, available for users to install only for evaluation purposes.
And here comes another great news, Microsoft has recently announced general availability of Project Server and SharePoint 2016 Beta 2 versions.

Earlier this month, November 2015, at European SharePoint conference 2015 Microsoft’s top leadership has made this big announcement. Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s corporate vice president OneDrive and SharePoint, has announced in a conference that:
SharePoint 2016 Beta 2 will be released before the end of November, and should be out before US Thanksgiving (November 26). It will be 99 percent feature complete, so we should get a better view of what SharePoint 2016 RTM will actually look like.

The Beta version is available to download and use, only for evaluation purposes. You can find links to relevant sources at end of this post.
Now as Microsoft has announced that it’s a 99% feature complete release, which means that we can safely anticipate about what we going to receive as RTM release in next year. I would like to quickly bullet point the updates to Beta version since the Preview version.

·       Profile synchronization with Microsoft Identity Manager
·       ·       Data Loss Prevention
·       ·       Extensible Hybrid App Launcher
·       ·       Profile Redirection
Please note, for Preview version users, that you will not be able to upgrade from SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview to Beta 2. You have to implement it as a fresh installation.
And here are the links to all the sources and download page for SharePoint and Project Server 2016 Beta:
Title
SharePoint 2016
Project Server 2016
Download SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2, this also includes Project Server 2016 Beta 2 binaries as an improvement to the current deployment process. Project Server will be available as a service just like other SharePoint services.
Announcement about SharePoint Server 2016 and Project Server Beta 2 Versions Quick Start Guide
Explore SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2
Explore Project Server 2016 Beta 2

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1QHT2f1

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

Announcing Availability of #SharePoint and #ProjectServer 2016 Preview versions #ProjectServer2016

August 27, 2015 1 comment

And finally the wait is over, and we have the preview version of SharePoint 2016 On-Premises and Project Server 2016 On-Premises available to explore. I am excited to share the news of availability of preview versions.

Announcing availability of SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview and cloud hybrid search

During last few months, we have been talking about it. Microsoft has introduced/demonstrated some exciting new features, and improvements to the products during last few months.
Finally it’s the time to explore those capabilities.
As a first steps towards my journey to explore Project Server 2016 and SharePoint 2016, I am sharing important links about the release. And in next coming days I will be sharing first hand details about SharePoint and Project Server 2016 features and improvements.
Title
SharePoint 2016
Project Server 2016
Download SharePoint Server 2016 Preview, this also includes Project Server 2016 binaries as an improvement to the current deployment process. Project Server will be available as a service just like other SharePoint services.
SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview Quick Start Guide
SharePoint Server 2016, and Project Server 2016 IT Preview
New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016 and Project Server 2016 IT Preview
What’s new for IT pros in Project Server 2016 Preview
What’s deprecated or removed from SharePoint Server 2016, and Project Server IT Preview
Known Issues in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview

Keep visiting my blog for exciting new posts about Project Server 2016 On Premises in coming days.

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1hhodhX

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

#Project2016 – A Short Review

Few weeks ago Office products of 2016 preview version were released, that includes Office 2016 suite products, plus Project and Visio. 
All of these products are available in desktop and office 365 formats for trials.
I have shared the links to download/install preview of Office and Project 2016 in this posta while ago.
Since then I wanted to write my first hand review of Project 2016.
And here it goes:
Installation of Project 2016
First thing first, installation challenges.
Prior to installing Project 2016, same goes for Office 2016, you need to uninstall 2013 version of the same product as they both can’t stay together.
Anyone can uninstall, and then install the new version, right? Not really.
This wouldn’t be as simple as it sounds like if you also ever have installed Project 2013 office 365 version on your machine along with Project 2013 desktop version.
At least in my case, I have tried every possible way of removing 2013 version, but Project 2016 was kept crashing soon after it starts. Here, and may be few other places, have described a solution to an issue but it never worked for me and eventually I end up installing to a fresh VM that has no traces of prior version.
How it looks like
Exactly the same as its predecessor:

Compatibility with Project Server 2013

It works with Project Server 2013.
You can configure account to connect with PWA instance in a usual way.
The Ribbon
No changes in terms of design, or layout of tabs or options within those tabs. So no learning curve.
The first thing you will notice is: Tell me what you want to do  option on ribbon.
This is not just an online/local search option which can bring you list of URLs or commands to match you search, its much more than that and quite intuitive to use.
For instance I wanted to create/insert a milestone task in my project, I did:
Considering the first option most relevant to my requirement, I clicked on the first one Insert Milestone, and result is below:
Not only this helps you list down all the commands close to your requirement, it also performs action.
In past I have seen requirement of having interactive tutorial or guide which can help user with Project options while schedules. 
This option can fill that gap to some extent.

Multiple Timelines
Timelines were introduced in Project 2013, another way of presenting attractive summary of your schedules.
In Project 2016, it goes one step forward.
You can now create more than 1 timelines within same schedule.
Created one below to depict Project and Project summary tasks:
To create 2ndor more, click on timeline bar to insert another timeline:
And here goes 2nd timeline bar to present milestones of project:
The much awaited option, though not visible yet but would be either in a final version or once you will connect Project with Project Server 2016: Resource Engagement
Image taken from MS blog
Detailed description of Resource Engagement can be found here.
Enjoy Projecting 2016 J

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1KrO0kg

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

#Office #Project And #Visio 2016 Preview Available

This is to spread the word, with great excitement, that Project 2016 preview version is now available for trial use.

If you do not have required Office 365 subscription to try Project or Visio 2016, you can download using below links and trial product keys:

Project

product key: N46MP-733KG-T8MR9-VV9JX-HCFG4

Visio

product key: W9WC2-JN9W2-H4CBV-24QR7-M4HB8

Few weeks back, at Ignite 2015, preview version of Office 2016 was announced. You can browse here to download Office 2016 desktop version for trial. Or if you have an Office 365 subscription, home or enterprise, you can find details here to download new version.

An important point to note regarding Office 2016 preview version, is that it cant be installed side by side to Office 2013 (not sure if its true for Office 2010 as well). So you have to uninstall Office 2013 prior to install Office 2016 preview.
Enjoy.

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1FuTwh4

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

#Microsoft #Ignite 2015 Wrap up #ProjectServer #SharePoint 2016

So the week of MS Ignite is over, and there is whole lot of information to absorb.

I had been closely following to all the happenings and announcements, and in this post i will summarize my take away of information related to SharePoint and Project Server.

So Microsoft has confirmed, that SharePoint Server 2016 (and Project Server) will become generally available in second quarter of 2016, with a public beta planned for last quarter of 2015. 

Microsoft has also confirmed that they will continue to release on-premises version of SharePoint/Project Server, however considering MS’s Cloud first strategy, every new feature will be released first Project Online and later to On-Premises version through a update/CU/SP.

Project Online/ Project Server 2013:

Following were the announcements in Ignite related to Project Server 2016:
  • Resource Engagement:

Resource management functionality is a major gap in current PPM version. 
There isn’t any proper mechanism in current PPM solution, that can allow Resource Manager to control allocation of resource to Projects. And Project Managers to formally request to block required resource for certain period of time to ensure availability of resource.
You can find this feature demonstrated during Ignite session: IT Project and Portfolio Management in the Cloud

  • Multiple Timelines in project professional, so instead of one you can now create multiple timelines in Project Pro 2016 and then later use it in your presentation or share through an email.
  • Visualizing Resource Capacity using Heat Map.

  • Project Server 2016 would ‘literally’ be available as a service in SharePoint 2016. So no need to install any separate binaries for Project Server. Separate license would be required though to enable Project Server service.
  • PWA database would be merged to SharePoint content db, so there will only be one database for each PWA instance and the schema for PWA would bepjrep -“. means less Admin work.

Sharepoint 2016: 
Any improvements to SharePoint architecture would definitely leverage Project Server performance as well. There were quite few announcements been made related to SP 2016, such as:

  • introduction to MiniRole approach to define server role within a farm. 
Role Name
Description
Special Load Reserved for services to be isolated from other services, I.e. 3rd party, PerformancePoint, etc.
Web Front End Services end user requests, optimized for low latency.
Single Server Farm Provisions all services on the server for a single server deployment.  This role is provided for evaluation and development purposes.
Search Reserved for Search services.
Application Services the backend jobs or the requests triggered by backend jobs, optimized for high throughput.
Distributed Cache Services distributed cache for the farm. Optionally, the server assigned to this role can load balance end user requests among the web front ends.
  • for implementation and deploymentSharePoint 2016 requires Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 10 for the OS and SQL Server 2014 SP1 x64 or SQL Server vNext x64
you will find detailed hardware and software requirements of SharePoint 2016 here: 

  • zero down time to build patches with SharePoint 2016,
  • Delve people profile will be part of SharePoint 2016. If i understood correctly, then it would be first released for SharePoint online, and then may later be pushed to On-Premises version
There is so much more that its difficult to consolidate everything in one post. So i will keep on writing about new stuff to be released later this year. For those who are interested to catch up Ignite sessions, please browse Channel 9 for your favorite sessions and watch.
Please also register for this great upcoming webinar , will be presented by my colleagues, to find out first hand information and opinions about all the happenings during 5 days of Ignite sessions.

PPM Updates From Microsoft Ignite

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://bit.ly/1FqpBqd

Khurram Jamshed
The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)