Archive for 'Uncategorized' Category
Schedule, Baseline and Baseline Estimated Start
10 September 2010One thing you may note as part of your upgrade process from 2007 to 2010 is that there are a number of custom fields that have been added to the Microsoft Project desktop client. Why is that, you ask? Well, it just happens that as part of the retooling to support the Manual Task Mode, a number of new fields were added. Unfortunately or not, some of these fields took over the names of existing fields. For a quick overview of some of the new fields, check out Jack Dahlgren’s post from last February.
This post is intended to give a quick overview of some of the field changes in 2010, specifically with regard to the date fields such as Start and Finish. Note that there are conflicting sets of documentation in circulation, which will probably serve to confuse end users. That will be addressed later in this posting.
So, where before we had the Baseline Start and the Start fields, we now have four fields:
- Start
- Scheduled Start
- Baseline Start
- Baseline Estimated Start
…with, of course, the same principle applying to the Finish and Duration fields as well. These fields were all added to support the new Manual scheduling mode available in Project 2010.
What do they all mean?
Well, let’s take the easy ones first:
The Scheduled Start field is what we all knew in the old days as the Start field. The Scheduled Start field displays the date on which the task would start if it observed links, constraints, and network logic, i.e. the Schedule Start field is the Automatically Scheduled Start field. Even when the task is set to Manually Scheduled, the Scheduled Start field is still calculated. When the task is set to Automatic, the Start field equals the Scheduled Start field.
The Start field, on the other hand, despite having a familiar name, is actually a new field. That is the date upon which the task is set to start as per the Manual settings. One could, I suppose, calculate the difference between the Start and Scheduled Start to assess how optimistic (aggressive, self-deceiving, etc.) an organization really is. Again, for Automatic tasks, Start equals Scheduled Start. For Manual tasks, Start actually equals whatever you feel like entering, up to and including text such as “Need to ask Bob for revised estimates.”
I can even enter text in the Start and Finish fields now:
(Haikus posted by Rick Brenner at his site: http://www.chacocanyon.com/essays/tenprojecthaiku.shtml)
Baseline Start
Simple right? So how do the Baseline Estimated Start and the Baseline Start fields work for Manual tasks?
The Baseline Start field is a copy of whatever was in the Start field when you saved the baseline. If you have text data, then Baseline Start contains text data. If you have a date, then Baseline Start contains date data. And if the Start field is blank, then Baseline Start will assume the last date entered in the Start field. If no date has ever been entered in the Start field, the Baseline Start will take the Project Start date or the Summary Task Start date.
….which is perhaps a bit confusing. Here’s a handy decoder table:
| IF Start=… | …THEN Baseline Start =… |
| Text | Start |
| Date | Start |
| Blank (No Data Ever Entered) | Start (i.e. blank) |
| Blank (Data Entered, but Cleared) | Start (i.e. blank) |
Relatively straightforward enough, I suppose.
Baseline Estimated Start
The trickier question is understanding what goes into the Baseline Estimated Start field. There are a couple of theories floating around as to what gets populated in that field. I’ve seen a couple of these theories documented in print and online:
Theory #1: The Baseline Estimated Start field gets populated with the Scheduled Start field.
Theory #2: The Start field gets populated to the Baseline Estimated Start field if the Start field is populated with a date. If the Start field is not populated with a date (i.e. text has been entered), then the Baseline Estimated Start field will be populated with the data in the Scheduled Start field.
As far as I can tell from my testing, both of these theories are false as the product currently is designed. In some specific circumstances, I can make the data look like either of these theories have been applied, but in actuality, here’s the observable, testable rule for how the Baseline Estimated Start field works:
The Baseline Estimated Start field is populated by the last date entered in the Start field. This means that even if the Start date is blank, there’s a phantom entry somewhere in the system that records the task was originally scheduled for the Project Start date. As a result, when I baseline a project, the last date entered in the Start field is copied to the Baseline Estimated Start field.
In the following example, I have text entered in the Start field. As a result, the Baseline Estimated Start defaults to the last date data stored in the Start field, which would have been the Project Start date.
….which is actually less confusing than the Baseline Start. Here’s another handy decoder table:
| IF Start=… | …THEN Baseline Estimated Start =… |
| Text (No Date Ever Entered) | Project Start (or Summary Task Start) |
| Text (Date Entered Previously) | Last Date Entered |
| Date | Start |
| Blank (No Data Ever Entered) | Project Start (or Summary Task Start) |
| Blank (Date Entered, but Cleared) | Last Date Entered |
You will note that the act of clicking on Respect Task Links will overwrite text in the Start field and insert date data. When the Start field is overwritten by text, the date data still gets transferred over to the Baseline Estimated Start field.
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Microsoft Project 2010 Beta will expire on October 31, 2010: upgrade to RTM build!
10 September 2010Quick reminder all BETA versions of Microsoft Project Professional/Standard 2010, Microsoft Project Server 2010, as well as SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010, will expire on October 31, 2010 as stated in the EULA (End-User Licensing Agreement); so time to get the RTM build before its too late!
As a reminder we do not support Project Server database upgrade from beta version to RTM: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662104.aspx
Upgrading from the Project Server 2010 public Beta to the Project Server 2010 released version is explicitly blocked and not supported. This restriction applies to both the in-place and database-attach upgrade methods.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Project 2010 at Microsoft TechED Europe 2010
10 September 2010
As you may know Microsoft TechED Europe 2010 is taking place in November in Europe and Microsoft Project 2010 will have of course presence at the event!
What you can look for?
- Great event!
- 4 dedicated sessions for Project 2010 along with a special announcement
- Project 2010 booth staffed with Project experts and great Project 2010 giveaways (USB keys with Project 2010 Quick Start Training and Polo Shirts!)
- Christophe and myself Yes we are going too!
We will post more details on the sessions next week along with the session catalog going life next week!
Christophe & Jan
Popularity: unranked [?]
Project 2010 at Microsoft TechED Europe 2010
9 September 2010
As you may know Microsoft TechED Europe 2010 is taking place in November in Europe and Microsoft Project 2010 will have of course presence at the event!
What you can look for?
- Great event!
- 4 dedicated sessions for Project 2010 along with a special announcement
- Project 2010 booth staffed with Project experts and great Project 2010 giveaways (USB keys with Project 2010 Quick Start Training and Polo Shirts!)
- Christophe and myself Yes we are going too!
We will post more details on the sessions next week along with the session catalog going life next week!
Christophe & Jan
Popularity: unranked [?]
Microsoft Project August 2010 Cumulative Update Webcast: September 14th
9 September 2010Following the recent release of the August 2010 Cumulative Update for both Microsoft Project and Project Server 2007 and 2010: Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint 2007 and 2010 August CU 2010 are Live!, I would like to remind everyone that next week Adrian Jenkins and Brian Smith will provide an overview of the recently released updates, so book your calendar and attend!
TechNet Webcast: Information About Microsoft Project and Project Server Cumulative August Update
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 8:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Agenda:
- Introductions
- The purpose for these webcasts
- Overview of Cumulative Updates
- Engaging Customer Services and Support (CSS)
- Project 2007 fixes
- Project Server 2007 fixes
- Project 2010 fixes
- Project Server 2010 fixes
- CU Deployment & Links
Popularity: unranked [?]
Volvo Group Increases Project Visibility and Control While Saving Employees Time
9 September 2010Great new case study thanks to Joyce and Tad: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000008207 Great job Volvo and Teamsquare!
The Volvo Group is a leading supplier of commercial and consumer transport solutions and customer financial services. Volvo IT, which provides solutions to the Group to manage its projects, wanted to improve employee efficiency by extending current resource management, time reporting, portfolio management, and other project management processes. The Volvo Group implemented Microsoft Project Server 2010 and made customizations to adapt to various internal processes and software applications. The Group is using Project Server 2010 to improve capacity planning to build its long-term strengths. Because of the customizations and the rich but simple user interface of the Microsoft Project Web App technology, the Volvo Group has cut the time spent entering project data by 40 percent. It also has improved project visibility and control, and can now provide more transparent resource management.
Love these quotes:
- We use Project Server 2010 to gain more control over which projects we are starting and stopping, and when. This means we contract out fewer assignments based on sudden demand fluctuations.
- With the tools in Project Server 2010, we can manage our portfolio of projects and our resources working on those projects to maximize our capacity.
- With Project Server 2010, we are better able to anticipate whether a project will be delayed. This gives us the opportunity to shape future contracting and distribution strategies.
For more Microsoft Project Server case studies go here: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Search_Results.aspx?Type=1&Keywords="project%20server"&LangID=46
Popularity: unranked [?]
Microsoft Tech.Ed Europe 2010, are you going? The Project team will!
9 September 2010Following Jan’s announcement on both the Project Admin and Programmability blogs: Project 2010 at Microsoft TechED Europe 2010 Microsoft Project 2010 will be present at Tech.Ed Europe with great content, speakers, booth, and goodies so don’t miss it!
Still looking for reasons to attend, check out this Tech.Ed Europe 2010 countdown show on Channel 9 #TEE10 http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/TEE10/
Popularity: unranked [?]
No More Dharmas. Or. How Our Identities Shape Projects.
6 September 2010Almost two years ago I wrote “El Grande Post”. Outlining “El Grande Vision about Projects, The Universe And Everything”. It was one of many attempts to explain projects, your mind, identity, culture and all other things human.
It was titled: “The Four Dharmas Of Project Management“.
Can you imagine? Four dharmas! Wow. How about I try to explain it in one go?
The essence is how our identities shape our environment.
This is how I think it works.
You have a perception of yourself. Your identity. A way to describe an identity is by group association. I am a Dutch, male blogger. That are 3 associations: male, Dutch and blogger. Some associations are by choice, some by birth.
You always have more than one group association. Basically, you can identify yourself with as many groups as you can imagine. Not all group memberships are equal: you can give one more priority over another. Emphasize one more than another. When I am attending an Internet related conference, my “blogger” identity is more important than being Dutch.
Amartya Sen formulated this perfectly in “Identity and Violence” (affiliate link): “Given our inescapably plural identities, we have to decide on the relative importance of our different associations and affiliations in any particular context.”
Your own perception is one part of this story.
We are more attracted to some people than others. We are more at ease with some than others. We like some people more than others. This is a personal thing. This is about perception: your perception of the other.
We pick up all kinds of cues from people. How they talk, what they wear, what they do, how their online profile is written. Based upon those cues we build up our perception. We associate people with groups. We are creating our version of their “identity”.
We all have an idea about how a 6 year old talks. If we hear a kid of that age talking about cars and ice cream, we are at ease. If he talks about the importance of emotional intelligence, we freak out. We create expectations based upon the cues we experience. If these expectations are met, we feel more comfortable.
The way you perceive yourself in a certain context, determines which social cues you put forward. This manifestation of identity works as a filter: people who like this particular “identity” get “attracted”, those who are not in tune with it, are not.
In this way, the perception you hold of yourself creates boundaries: some stay at one end, others cross.
Our plural identities help us change these boundaries. By emphasizing one part and downplaying another, by emphasizing deviancy, we can create higher or lower walls, change the positions of the boundaries. I am not talking about faking social cues hoping that people like you. I am talking about consciously deciding which part of your face to show.
So. Reflection. Identity. Cues. Boundaries.
This scales up.
If you put people into a group, if you have interactions between all the individual identities, a group “identity” emerges. A sense of “how we do things around here.” A culture. This group identity creates an attractor for “the right people”. It sets boundaries.
Now I get to the part I find hardest to grasp. Most difficult to explain.
It’s the personal identity, the mental perception of an individual that can determine the boundaries of an entire group. A team. An organization.
It’s the culture of a group that can enhance and nurture a persons identity.
How about that?
Speaking of culture. Last week I read an awesome piece about nurturing culture in an online setting: “Jumbled (but important) thoughts about culture.”
Image by Sister72.
Bas de Baar is an independent consultant based in the Netherlands. He uniquely combines over a decade of project and team leadership with nearly a decade online presence in the area of Project Leadership in a global and virtual world.
No More Dharmas. Or. How Our Identities Shape Projects.
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SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Issue - Found 45 web(s) using missing web template 75820 (lcid: 1033) in ContentDatabase
6 September 2010Last week I was trying to migrating a SharePoint 2007 Deployment to 2010 which was very much out of the box without lot of customization. I was thinking that It will be a straight forward thing BUT it was not like that. I faced one issue that was quite weird.
The customer has installed “Project Management” Fantastic 40 template and created around 45 subsites using it. When I ran the Test-SPContentDatabase after attaching the content database to new environment I saw this error message “Found 45 web(s) using missing web template 75820”. As normal steps I ask the team to provide me the FT Core and Project Management WSPs and I installed them and re-ran the Test-SPContentDatabase command. But same error came back. But I gave the upgrade a go with Mount-SPContentDB command and upgrade went fine but completed with error message given below.
[powershell] [SPContentDatabaseSequence] [ERROR] [8/29/2010 3:27:22 PM]: Found 45 web(s) using missing web template 75820 (lcid: 1033) in ContentDatabase PortalDB.
[powershell] [SPContentDatabaseSequence] [INFO] [8/29/2010 3:27:22 PM]: SPContentDatabase Name=PortalDB
[powershell] [SPContentDatabaseSequence] [ERROR] [8/29/2010 3:27:22 PM]: The site definitions with Id 75820 is referenced in the database [PortalDB], but is not installed on the current farm. The missing site definition may cause upgrade to fail. Please install any solution which contains the site definition and restart upgrade if necessary.
I looked at newly upgraded site. It looks OK for a moment but very soon I realize that things are not well. So I decide to do another iteration of the upgrade. Cleaned the environment up and re-attached the databases. To confirm that project management template is working fine I went to create site collection page and saw that “Project Management” was visible and I was able to create a new site collection based on this template. Well and Good. I went again to SharePoint powershell and run the test-spcontentdb command again and saw the same error message. I decided that I will not go to the next step unless I fix this error message. Me and the team both went on to Google things but does not found any fix for that. I removed the Core and Project Management Template and deployed it again. Still the Template was visible on create site template page. Retried many times but still Test-SPContentDatabase showed the same error message.
I later went to WebTemp XML files and checked weather the WebTemp file for ProjectSing is available and it was there. Tweaked it up a bit by moving to another WebTemp without any fix.
Then an idea hit me to wheather to check how many templates are installed on this Farm. I went to SharePoint PowerShell and tried a command Get-SPWebTemplate commandlet. Amazingly the ProjectSing template was not visible there. After trying some other commands
Then this clearly showed me that the problem is how I am deploying the core and project management wsp files. What I did then is to Retract both the solutions by retracting PM first and then Core and restarted the server after watching from Central Administration time job page that the job to remove the WSPs has been completed successfully.
After Restart I went on and installed the core template and waited for 5 minutes until the Timer job to install the core was completed.
Then Installed PM WSP and waited for 10 minutes till i saw that the job was completed successfully.
Then I went on to deploy Core and PM but waited till the Job is completed successfully. Instead of testing the GetTemplate command I decided to give it a restart (Just In Case).
But as I restarted the server and re-Ran the Get-SPWebTemplate Command. I saw the Projectsing Template visible in the list. Watching this I went to Test-SPContentDatabase command and this time the message about 45 templates went off. The upgrade went really fine without any error and the site worked perfectly for the customer.
Below are the error message I received the upgrade.log file
[powershell] [SPContentDatabaseSequence] [DEBUG] [8/29/2010 3:27:22 PM]: Retrieving site definition for language 1033…
[powershell] [SPContentDatabaseSequence] [ERROR] [8/29/2010 3:27:22 PM]: Found 45 web(s) using missing web template 75820 (lcid: 1033) in ContentDatabase PortalDB.
[powershell] [SPContentDatabaseSequence] [ERROR] [8/29/2010 3:27:22 PM]: The site definitions with Id 75820 is referenced in the database [PortalDB], but is not installed on the current farm. The missing site definition may cause upgrade to fail. Please install any solution which contains the site definition and restart upgrade if necessary.
So If you see this kind of error message while you upgrade please do not ignore them. If you upgrade has not completed successfully, I would say go ahead and give it another try. My personally experience was great when the upgrade went really great.
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EID Mubarak to Everyone
6 September 2010
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