Wednesday, I will presenting on Microsoft Project Conference 2012 about configuration management in Project Server 2010 and how it can be improved and optimized with our product - FluentBooks.
Tired of grey, static and not-visually appealing project sites?
Don't like that information is in many places and I have to switch to see it?
We are tired of them too. So - we've developed a product for our customers that in its nature is a modified project site template that will change your experience with Project Sites in MS Project Server 2010.
Microsoft Metro-style design with home pages based on tiles that every user can customize
Easy access via links to native Project Web App pages - My Tasks, Timesheets, Project Schedule PDP
Visualized and improved risks, issues, change request and action items lists
Easy customization and re-use - add your own lists, pages, sub-sites (Wiki, Blog and other) and standard / customer webparts without any restrictions, save as project site template and distribute inside of your organization for different project types - this is just a native Project Site Template.
Video preview:
Visit our booth #209 at Project Conference 2012 and take a closer look on this amazing product.
Product will be launched at Project Conference 2012 and will be available for purchase.
EPM partners: Have your own products and would like to incorporate this product into your solutions? Let's talk.
We've completed development cycle and are very close to complete internal testing cycle for FluentPro Project Migrator software that allows to migrate projects (MPP files) from other EPM systems (Attask, Daptiv, EPM Live - any system that can save to MPP) and from any Project Server 2010 PWA instance (in case of PWA - we support project-level and task-level metadata migration as well) into Project Server 2010 PWA.
We are looking for 5 to 10 companies to be a first beta-testing users. In return for the participation in test and feedback, you will receive one license at no cost right after public release (March 2012 at Microsoft Project Conference 2012 ).
Product is implemented as add-in for Project Professional 2010.
Please send your contacts to beta (at) fluentpro.com with potential problem / task that you have and after review we will send you copy of software installation package and links to several video on how to use the software.
We plan to distribute version on March 1, 2012. There will be 2 versions - Lite with some limitations and Pro without any limitations. Product will be distributed independently and as part of FluentBooks Pro package.
Recently, we've implemented solution for template distribution to multiple PWA instances.
One of our customer had a multiple PWA instances ( really not recommended solution) and as result problem of updating project templates from one centralized location to multiple PWA. They do it every 2 weeks, and problem of updating 20+ PWA with 10 templates each.
FluentPro has a product - FluentPro Project Migrator (releasing soon) that supports migration of projects (MPP files with all metadata) between PWAs; And it supports project templates migration as well.
All that we had to do it to add ability to support a configuration script that will instruct product how to iterate thought multiple PWAs.
It took us only about 1 day to implement this solution with help of existing product and customer was spending 8-10 hours every month for this operation for last 14 month.
Manual insertion: Let user insert it in Project Pro. It can be problematic if we are talking about inserting let's say 35 sub-project
Automate it
Both scenarios require user to have Project Professional installed.
To eliminate any manual work and reduce the human factor, we've developed a solution that does this as listed below:
When user click on a button on ribbon in PWA, window to capture user input for projects is shown;
User input is captured and "normal" projects are created using PSI based on specific EPTs; Special metadata (set of project level custom fields with XML data) is updated to provide instructions for add-in to build a relationship.
Master project automatically opens in Project Professional from PWA; Project Professional has add-in installed that using metadata inserts projects as sub projects, does save and publish for all projects.
Biggest problem for Project Pro add-ins that try to automate operations is suppressing the different dialog windows from Project Pro so it is an automated process with minimum or no user interaction required.
Not ideal solution (dependency on Project Professional and cost of license) - but worked out for us to solve the problem.
If you have similar problem direct your developers to this post so they can follow the "flow" or contact us and we might be able to help you.
Customers - PLEASE install cumulative updates and service packs. You can wait for 3-4 month to make sure that CU is stable but PLEASE install them from time to time.
Working on environment - customer installed PS in 2010 and it was never patched. 14.0.4763.1000
I am happy to announce that this Friday FluentPro will release a free edition of FluentPro Audit Lite product for Microsoft Project Server 2010.
FluentPro Audit Lite logs / tracks changes of:
changes to custom fields (add / delete)
changes to lookup tables (add / delete)
changes to projects (project level fields)
creation and deletion of projects
All changes are logged to SharePoint List; you can then export to excel, create views and build any type of reports as well as protect the list with permissions if required.
Software is absolutely free; although if you need more detailed level of audit, FluentPro Audit Pro will be available for purchase during February 2012.
Check out FluentPro Software website - www.fluentpro.com starting next week (Feb 6th, 2012) and get FREE Project Server 2010 audit software.
