Silver Project and Portfolio Management competence received

Today FluentPro received Silver Project and Portfolio Management competence in Microsoft Partner Program.

Merge 2 Project Server 2010 PWA with help of FluentBooks

Today, I've recorded sample video to demonstrate how to merge configurations from 2 Project Server 2010 PWA with help of our product - FluentBooks. Enjoy the video!




If you have any questions / suggestions - let us know, we would love to hear your feedback.

FluentPro PDP Manager video

Please find short overview of FluentPro PDP Manager, software that allows to customize look and feel of fields on your PDPs.

You can control:

• - Title
• - Font, color and style
• - Visibility in edit / view mode
• - Read-only state

Software will be available for purchase starting 16th of December on www.fluentpro.com

Updates and new products availability announcement

FluentPro Software, Inc (www.fluentpro.com) , developer of products and tools for Microsoft Project Server 2010 is happy to announce availability of updates of our existing products and release of new products for Project Server 2010 that will become available for purchase during next week:

Updates for existing products:
FluentPro Status Report
Automate project status report generation. Capture all informaiton in project server and send ready report to your manager in seconds.
Change Log:

• We've updated the look and feel of report
• New installer

FluentPro Project Dashboard
Visualize your project status and key metrics
Change Log:

• Updated the look and feel of report
• New installer

FluentPro TimeSheet Reports
Users can print their Timesheets and assignments; Project managers can do the same for themselves and their teammates.
Change Log:

• We've updated the look and feel of report
• New installer

FluentPro Lookup Manager
Software tool to synchronize Project Server 21010 Lookup tables with SharePoint lists;
Change log:

• Software is converted into SharePoint job instead of utility that was run on schedule with task manager.
• New installer

FluentPro View Manager
Ability to define rules for Schedule PDP which view to load automatically depending on EPT and user Group membership.
Change log:

• Update includes support of user group membership
• New installer

FluentPro Publisher
Publish all your projects for accurate and up-to date reporting
Change log:

• New installer

New Products
FluentPro PDP Manager
This is our brand new new product that our beta-testers LOVE; Now you have full control to control look and feel of your PDPs: change field name captions, descriptions, colors, font size and visibility of fields on PDP with support of edit mode / view mode and rules that can be defined to support different EPTs.

FluentBooks
As mentioned in previous blog post, our product - FluentBooks - software to manage migration, merge and comparison of Project Server 2010 configurations will be released for limited Beta-2 testing. If you are interested - we still have 2 open slots.

We will make additional announcement on day you can purchase products from our website.

Alternative to Project Server 2010 Playbook utility - looking for beta testers

Over last 2 years our company participated in over 50 Project Server 2010 implementation projects (small and big ones, clear deployments, upgrades and PWA instances merge) via partners and directly. There are 2 possible hosting scenarios - on-premise and hosted; but there is always a problem no matter where your are hosted: How to migrate configuration from one development environment (at customer or at your development / staging servers) to the test servers and then to the production servers and to make sure that everything is moved correctly.

Microsoft provides a really great and FREE utility - Playbook for Project Server 2010 (included into Project Server 2010 Resource Kit), that allows to do such migrations (backup and restore configurations). There are some issues - first of all warnings on use of Playbook on production environments and secondly - in more than 50% of cases we've used the Playbook we've experienced  errors and exceptions and crashes of different kind when restoring configurations.

To optimize our deployment experience and time we spend on deployment, we've developed alternative to Playbook - FluentBooks, that supports more granular selection of items for migration and migrates items that we had most of the issues with - Fields, Lookups, Views, EPTs and PDPs. We've used it in-house for last 6 month to perform most of our deployments and decided to release it as product for other companies.
Our experience shows that use of FluentBooks allows to optimize process and cut time spent by consultants and PPM partners for configuration migrations between servers (we estimate savings over  hundred of hours for "busy" Project Server 2010 consultant within 2-3 years period) and will remove significant amount of "pain" associated with those migrations and deployments.

Quick overview of our FluentBooks functionality:

• FluentBooks support migration of Custom Fields, Lookup Tables, Views, EPTs and PDPs between Project Server 2010 environments the same way as Playbook does but we allow user to select elements that he wants to migrate (not just custom fields)
• FluentBooks is build with using PSI calls only, no database read / write operation.
• FluentBooks provides functionality for comparison of environments for difference - for example Dev and Test and you can visually see the difference and generate difference configuration.
• One great features that users can benefit from is migration of data and projects from external sources (Excel, SharePoint lists) -  FluentBooks support migration of projects (without schedules) with attributes from one environment to another (all projects with all values in project level custom fields).
• FluentBooks support import of project information with attributes and fields from Excel; it will create enterprise custom fields and lookup tables as well. It means that you can import projects from/to EPM Live, ATTask and other systems
• FluentBooks implements 2 level of validation of elements - same element UID or just same Name (in addition to other matching attributes to element)
• You do not need to deploy solutions remotely anymore - send a free version of utility and configuration to customer and they can deploy configuration without your participation
• FluentBooks work over internet (if Project Server 2010 is available via HTTP); Only NTLM authentication is supported as well as Kerberos authentication.
• FluentBooks will be licensed per user and will be tied to machine.
• Migration of Security Settings, Workflows, Timesheet / Tasks settings and other settings are not supported at this version (we plan to add Security Configuration and resource migration later functionality later but we will not replicate 100% of Playbooks functionality).
• FluentBooks is not replacing process of creation of configuration, development and customization in Project Server 2010 PWA via Server Settings - it helps to move and deploy configurations and data.

Possible usage scenarios:

• Migrate configuration from development server to test server (Project Server 2010 PWA)
• Compare 2 PWAs
• Merge configurations of 2 PWA
• Migrate projects and project information (without schedules) between PWA
• Import and export projects from Excel or from SharePoint list to PWA

We've done the internal testing and  Beta 1 testing with our partners - limited number of Microsoft PPM partners. Right now we are looking for about 10 more companies / consultants to participate in Beta 2 testing. Every company / consultant  selected to participate will receive one free license of the software for use after commercial release (we plan to release FluentBooks end of December 2011).

Please leave your comment on this blog post with your company name and email and we will contact you on your participation in Beta 2 testing.

How to repair broken PDP in Project Server 2010 / SharePoint 2010

Sometimes there are situations when you have a web part that you cannot delete or it gives you errors so you even cannot see your PDP.
There is a tiny trick: add "?contents=1" or "&contents=1" (depending where you are) and you will see a page with list of all web parts on your page. And you can delete web part that creates all those issues

Lookup error after update to SP1 + June 2011 CU

We've upgraded one server to SP1 and CU. As result - when clicking on any field with lookup table receive unexpected error:  http://screencast.com/t/tOoIionuv

Project Server 2010 - One or multiple PWA instances?

In our Project Server 2010 practice we work with various customers and see their deployment strategies, problems and great things. Today, I wanted to cover one of the major issues that big companies without centralized PMO are facing.

The problem (challenge) is - Should organizations create one PWA for entire organization or several PWA per business unit or department?

Our recommendation is ONE PWA.

One of our customers had 2 departments that started implementing project server about the same time but independently. Now - the challenge is to merge the data. 150 projects total, project sites, duplicated custom fields and names, different document library structure. It is a significant effort that is way more complex now than to have several joint meetings to discuss the approach, attributes and structure.

If fact, this was driven by requirements to isolate data between departments and this is a task for Project Server 2010 consultant / consulting company or qualified Project Server 2010 Administrator to configure security in a way that it will isolate data.

Analysis of pros and const for one PWA:

Pros:

• Executives can see all the information in one place.
• In future, departments that will start using PS (for example HR) will re-use existing approaches, practices. This significantly reduce time and investments required to start using Project Server
• Ability to overview entire resource pool in the organization and do cross-departmental resource planning
• Ability to do the cross-departmental dependencies in projects.

Cons:

• Slightly more complicated security configuration
• Anything else?

I would recommend using additional PWA for test / staging environments if there is no additional hardware available (recommendation is still to have staging / development environments as separate farms).

Feel free to comment or ask questions - I will be happy to answer.

Related blog posts:

Distribute templates to multiple PWA: http://www.projectserverblog.com/2012/02/distributing-project-templates-in.html

Merge PWAs with help of FluentBooks: http://www.projectserverblog.com/2011/12/merge-2-project-server-2010-pwa-with.html

PowerShell and Project Server 2010

FluentPro released PowerShell snap-in for FluentPS library that allows you to manage and perform actions with most of the objects in Project Server 2010 with the Powershell. Project, Tasks, Resources, Workflows, Security - just write code in PowerShell and you can automate project server activities.

You can see sample code on http://www.projectserver2010blog.com/2011/08/projectserver-2010-psi-from-powershell.html and download it from http://fluentps.codeplex.com/releases

SSRS Reports Client Side printing

From time to time we are facing customers who cannot print SSRS reports on their PCs from SharePoint or Project Server.

Solution: Install the RSClientPrint.cab file.

You can find detailed description at http://www.kodyaz.com/articles/client-side-printing-silent-deployment-of-rsclientPrint.aspx