Restoring single projects with Project Server 2007

For those of you who have been using Project Server 2003, this may be one of the new features not too many people have talked about. Yet, it will help you a lot in your daily life as Project Server administrator. In the past - or maybe present if you're still using PS2003 in your organization - it has been painful to restore a single project that for some reason is not accessible anymore or has some other issues. Many people have tried using the "Restore Single Project Tool" but were not too happy with the results. So the quickest way to restore a project actually was to restore the entire Project Server database to a backup instance of PS2003, open and export the project to a MPP file and finally re-import it back into the productive environment. That is finally over with MOPS 2007! If you already had a closer look at the 'Server Settings' in PWA of MOPS 2007, you have probably seen the 'Database Administration' section. There you will find all you need to solve the above mentioned scenario with MOPS 2007.

On the 'Schedule Backup' site you can define how many versions per project (as well as other backup objects) you want to retain. Per default, only one version per object will be retained.
On this page you can also define whether you want MOPS 2007 to automatically backup individual objects. You can also manually backup objects on the 'Administrative Backup' site. You will find the UI pretty intuitive and straightforward, I guess.

If you need to restore an earlier version of a project, simply navigate to the 'Administrative Restore' site. Here you can first select the object type you intend to restore - Projects in our case - then mark the respective version of the project plan and finally click the 'Restore' button to initiate the restoring process. For projects plan of a normal size this operation won't take too long, so don't be surprized if you don't even see the job listed in the queue.

Feel free to leave comments with questions - hope this post is helpful.

Workaround for corrupt look-up tables in MOPS 2007

If you have installed Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 in your organization (MOPS 2007), you will sooner or later run across some product bugs that will hopefully be resolved with SP1 (availability unknown). This article describes a workaround for one of these bugs around Enterprise Custom Fields and Look-up Tables.



As you know with MOPS 2007 you can now create your Enterprise Custom Fields in PWA rather than in Project Professional as it was the case with Project Server 2003. To me, this is definitely much more convenient and a nice improvement. However, you will soon find that not all changes you apply to a look-up table linked to a custom field will be represented in Project Professional 2007. This is obviously caused by the new Active Cache feature in Project Pro 2007. Here is how you can work around that issue until a hotfix or service pack is available

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Navigate to the following directory:
   C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft\MS Project\Cache\
3. In \Cache you will find several subfolders labeled with long GUIDs
4. Within each GUID subfolder you will find a file named 'global[1].mpc'
   
5. Delete the 'global[1].mpc' from each subfolder. Alternatively you could also the entire subfolder for each GUID

Note: Make sure that the Project Professional 2007 application is not running at the moment you're performing the above steps.

Keep in mind that you will have to follow these steps for all clients.

E-Mail notifications in SharePoint

In one of my previous posts I have written about the added value that the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) can provide to your EPM solution. As you may know WSS - among many other things - is capable of sending user's action-triggered e-mails, e.g. send an e-mail when a new item has been added to a specific list. This is a very powerful function that helps users to stay up-to-date without having to check each SharePoint site daily or even on a hourly basis. The purpose of this post is to guide you through the process of configuring the e-mail notification on your SharePoint server.

Step 1: Configuring default e-mail settings

1. Connect to the server running WSS using the farm admin account.
2. Open the Central Administration website
3. From the section 'Server Configuration', select 'Configure default e-mail server settings'
4. Fill in the information of your SMTP/Exchange server (host name, fully qualified domain name or IP address)
5. Fill in the information for 'From address' as well as 'Reply-to address'. Note that this can be an un-monitored account
6. Select the applicable character set (default: 65001 Unicode) should work in most cases

Step 2: Configuring virtual server

1. Go back to the Central Administration start page
2. Click 'Extend or Upgrade Virtual Server'
3. Click the link 'Complete list' and then select the website hosting WSS (e.g. Default Website)
4. From the 'Virtual Server Management' section, select 'Virtual server e-mail settings'
5. Fill in the information as mentioned above in Step 1, points 4 - 6

Post-configuration

On your server, go to Administrative Tools - Services and look for the 'SharePoint Timer Service'. If the e-mail notifications are not working yet, change the account running the service from 'NT Authority' to 'Local System'. You can do this under the service's properties in the 'Log on' tab.

For additional information regarding e-mail notifications with WSSv2, see http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/stsf13.mspx?mfr=true

E-mail notification in Project Server

Please note that the above steps only address Windows SharePoint Services. This means that through these settings you will allow your users to receive notification on changes in project workspaces, e.g. when somebody has uploaded a new document or modified an issue.

E-mail notifications for Project Server are completely separate from the settings in WSS. To enable e-mail notification in Project Server, go to the PWA Admin section and select 'Customize Project Web Access' followed by 'Notifications and reminders'. Filling in the correct information here will e.g. enable team members to receive notifications about new assignments or alert project managers about task updates that must be approved.

Project Professional 2003 with Project Server 2007?

That might be a question you have already heard a couple of times if you have talked to people working with Project Professional and/or Project Server.

Project Professional 2003 will not integrate with Project Server 2007 for technical reasons. As you may know Project Professional 2003 has connected to the Project Server 2003 database through ODBC. This was a pain for a great number of customers, especially with WAN scenarios.
For the 2007 products ODBC has been replaced (although you could still connect to other databases using ODBC). Instead, the Project Professional 2007 client will connect to the Project Server 2007 database through HTTP. The publishing process has also been improved thanks to the Active Cache the Project Professional 2007 client is now working with.

Even though Project Professional 2007 looks a lot like its predecessor, you will find many new features that your project managers will enjoy a lot. There's change highlighting, multiple un-do and task drivers just to name a few. Even if it would be possible technically to connect to Project Server 2007 through Project Pro 2003, I would recommend you to upgrade to the 2007 client.

Feel free to post any comments regarding questions.

Project Server 2007 available!

I'm sure all of you have already heard that Project Server 2007 will be available soon. For all you MSDN subscribers out there, let me tell you that you can download the RTM version of Project Server 2007 today! Download it, install and configure using your MSDN license key and start testing! I'm sure you will like the new look and feel of Project Web Access, the change highlighting in Project Pro as well as all the other nice, new features.

In the meantime, both Office 2007 as well as Windows Vista have become available as well. They are also available for download from MSDN.

I will start posting about the new Project Server features soon, so stay tuned.

Project Web Access with Internet Explorer 7.0

The latest version of Microsoft's web browser has been released a few weeks ago. Unlike the previous Beta versions, the final products works just fine with Project Web Access 2003.

The out-of-the-box configuration of IE 7.0 should run smoothly with your existing Project Server configuration. Users will not have to re-install the ActiveX controls again, removing a large potential obstacle for companywide deployment. However, depending on your company's policies and your current Project Server 2003 architecture, ensure that the 'Access data sources across domains' option is enabled in order to continue using the Portfolio Analyzer feature (OLAP cubes).

If you do not want to update to IE 7.0 make sure that your company has disabled the automatic Windows Update feature for your workstations and laptops.

Project Server 2007 Beta 2 TR available soon

Today has been announced that Beta 2 technical refresh (TR) will be made available somewhen next week from betaplace. If you are participants in Microsoft's TAP or RDP programm you should be able to download it withouth the announced download fee.

Unlike Beta 1 TR for Project Server 2007 which was a complete new version of the product, Beta 2 TR will be a patch only. This means you can simply apply it to your current installation of Project Server 2007 Beta 2. Please consider that you must have Beta 2 installed to run the patch -- neither Beta 1 nor Beta 1 TR will work.

As far as the RTM (final) version is concerned there were rumors that there will be an update available to directly update your Beta 2 TR installation to the RTM version! This would be huge considering the amount of time you would save with installation, configuration and migration.