Project Server 2010 SP1 is available for download.

Microsoft just released Project Server 2010 SP1.

MS also recommends to install the June CU after SP1 since it has number of fixes.

Please read carefully all instructions and test your applications in test environment before installing it to production servers. 

SP1: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/project/archive/2011/06/28/announcing-the-release-of-service-pack-1-sp1-for-microsoft-project-and-project-server-2010.aspx

SP1:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2460047

SP1:http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/06/28/announcing-office-2010-and-sharepoint-2010-service-pack-1-availability.aspx

June CU: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2536586

FluentPro.com is live

After almost 3 month working on design, contentent and structure, we are happy to announce that our webisite www.fluentpro.com is live.

We've changed a focus of out company more to product development and hope that tools and products that we have will be a great addition to market.

We announce availability of number of products and we will cover it later in separate blog posts.

I hope you will enjoy FluentPro's products for Project Server 2010!

Few advises to customers installing Project Server 2010 in-house with internal IT

Quite often we handle situations when customer's IT department is installing Project Server 2010 internally using their general IT specialists. From time to time this leads to errors that hardly discovered but easy to fix.

One organization simply deleted farm admin from local admins group on servers in farm - it is unsecure from their point of view (disregarding that MS clearly states that this has to be done). As you can imagine you cannot make any change since you get access denied and other errors.

Another organization is not caring about configuring administrative backup daily schedule and resulting in loosing data because of change.

other organizations install Reporting services in DB server and insist that this is the way it has to be and it is our problem how to configure this.

Customers - if you install project server - PLEASE follow the guide from Microsoft and please do not change any configuration / setting after that. IF you have a chance - order an audit / assessment of configuration by one of the partners and follow their recommendations.

Troubleshooting Project Server 2010

This week was kind of crazy - 2 clients with major problems. Both on RTM, DB + APP + WFE.

One of the client got the PWA in test environment corrupted. SharePoint pages inside PWA work fine but not all PS related pages and the problem is that ULS is not giving exact picture what's going on.
tried re-provisioning, deleting PWA and re-provisioning with same DBs into the same name. Ended up with restoring from day-before crash and installing Feb CU. Went well, but we've lost like 2 days and thanks that it was just a test environment.

Second client is also on RTM. But in test environment the Search application was corrupted somehow and when someone tried to delete DBs were gone but service left and it is still impossible to delete it from either   Central administration and PowerShell.

Hoped that CU will fix but on step 9 in SharePoint configuration wizard gives the error on that service since cannot do anything with it.

Will try delete it from Config DB and see if it will be gone and will tyr re-run configuration wizard. If not successful - will have to re-build the entire test environment.

Also, fixed few problems -  CLR was not enabled in DB and Taxonomy picker has the #&44; instead of ",". Small one but logs have errors and it looks ugly.

Found a strange error - SP was giving error that farm admin cannot run reconfigure on master DB and he has server wide role sysadmin. After giving explicit permissions to DB this was fixed.

This was a fun week in Houston, TX - interesting tasks, good people good food and excellent outdoor swimming pool :-)

Also, I'm almost done with content for FluentPro.com website - we go live next weekend!.

Just passed 070-177 exam

Discovered some gaps in my knowledge (migration from 2003 and 2007). Some questions are stupid, made not for knowledge, but for reading the questions.

Merging 2 instances of Project Server 2010 into one instance

Right now I am working on merging of 2 instances of Project Server 2010 into single one.
2 departments started PS2010 trials independently; were running it for about 6 month and performed number of customizations:

• customer fields (project and task level). Some fields have matching name and different meaning / values and some fields have different name but same purpose
• different EPTs
• different Project Site templates (that's the most easiest problem to solve)
• one is using Single Entry, second one is using Free Form for progress reporting and no time sheets.

Beside custom fields, the biggest challenge is that both instances have over 50 projects that are actively being used and so far it looks that this will be the most time consuming operation.

Proposed strategy is to pick one instance that is more "clean" and less "messy" and have it as "master" instance and merge another instance into this one.

So approach will look like:

1. Backup instances
2. Pick one instance as master (I1).
3. Export project site template from I2
4. Import site template into I1
5. Unify custom fields
6. Try applying Playbook from I1 and then from I2 into 3rd instance to see the conflicts, rename fields /lookups in I2 if required. If not working out - move it manually
7. Export project from I2 as will be described below
8. Import projects as described above
9. Have PMs to edit new projects to have same project ECF values as in old system (This can be automated with FluentPro's ECF Migrator tool)
10. Copy resource pool from I2 via Project Pro into I1
11. Import resources
12. Replace resources in project 
13. export project sites from I2 with STS-ADM
14. import project sites into I2
15. Point projects into new sites
16. Verify everything :-)

The easiest workaround for moving projects between instances is to save all task level custom fields into standard local column (Text1..., Number1...) using Copy-Paste of columns, save a local copy, upload to destination server and copy values back to Enterprise custom fields.

I will update this post if will find one missing steps.

Update: We've developed a product - FluentBooks that allows configuration migration, merge and documenting. You can learn more here or watch a sample video in another our blogpost.

Reviewing Project Server 2010 Implementation

Today was on a call with company that had implementation of PS by quite big EPM partner. This was ugly.

• To display milestones on Project workspace they put schedule control.
• On Status Report page instead of displaying information they have a mix - data entry and some display.
• Status Report is not printable and like 1500 pixels wide
• To create a page to display risks and issues from all projects they read from number of sites but display just name.
• In custom fields there are like 30 extra fields that never were used - looks left from 3rd party solution.

It was really bad; Partner simply stepped out after a while not completing solution but getting paid. Nice.

Project Server 2010 Solution Starters - feedback from customers

After being involved in Project Server 2010 Solution Starters development, we are always pleased to see that companies who are implementing / using Project Server 2010 utilize some of the solution starters. From our experience, most popular ones are Dynamic Workflow, Bulk Edit and Bulk Import.
Here I wanted to share some ideas / problems from customers who are using them.

Dynamic workflow

• ability to send email when moving between stages

Bulk Edit

• Works slow on big number of projects (over 50) (we have customizations with reading data from RDB but writing via PSI)
• Some customers want projects to be checked-in after editing
• Correct handling of session end (we heard one comment from user on this and it is more our guess

Bulk Import

• using custom fields with lookup tables and populating values.

Maybe community should ask MS to implement some of those changes?

Portfolio and Programs in Project Server

In this post I will cover how we can create a support of Programs and Portfolio Functionality in Project Server 2010.

By definition, project is "a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result". Program can consist one or more Projects that are delivering within one initiative; Portfolio can consist one or more Programs or Projects and is more strategic grouping.

Usually, Program can have its own schedule ignoring the fact that it can contain more than one project which can define the duration, start / end dates; Logic behind giving ability to have own schedule is based on fact that there might be activities that has to be tracked on Program level.
We can use the same logic for Portfolio, but in reality portfolio is a more a matter of "grouping" projects for reporting / structuring projects within organizational strategy.

My suggestion is to have 2 lookup tables and 3 custom fields on Project Level:

Lookup tables:
  LT Program
  LT Portfolio

Custom fields:
  Is Program (Flag)
  Program (Referencing LT Program)
  Portfolio (Referencing LT Portfolio)

Program is defined as project with Program field empty and Is Program field checked; Program can have value in Portfolio field.

Project has Is Program field unchecked; Project can have values in both Program and Portfolio fields.

Portfolio is just grouping value;

As significant improvement for managing lookup tables is to develop event handler on project save that will populate LT Program lookup table dynamically, otherwise you have to maintain it manually.

As part of effort, I would recommend to create several reports:

• Programs Overview (list of programs in Program with indicators
• Program Details 
• Portfolio Overview (list of projects / programs in Portfolio with indicators)

Every report can incorporate links to drill down.

FluentPro Reports Pack

After working on number of customer engagements and developing over 100 reports, we've decided to kick-off "assembly" of our own report pack. This report pack will include set of reports and set of custom fields that customers will have to add to the system in order to be able to use reports.
Report pack will contain approximately 20 reports:

• Several Executive dashboards
• Timesheet reports (weekly and monthly views)
• Status update reports (weekly and monthly views)
• Portfolio and Program overview
• Project overview
• Milestones overview
• Capitalization reports

Reports are based on SSRS.

Update:

We have several available reporting packages:

1. Project Status report:  http://www.fluentpro.com/productsstatusreport.html
2. Project Dashboard: http://www.fluentpro.com/productsprojectdashboard.html
3. Timesheet reports:  http://www.fluentpro.com/productstimereports.html