Archive for May, 2007
You may experience unexpected behavior in the date field of the work item when you use a Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server work item in Project 2007
29 May 2007
Popularity: 1% [?]
The “Trust all installed add-ins and templates” setting in the Office Customization Tool does not change 2007 Office macro security settings
29 May 2007
Popularity: 1% [?]
Newly published content for Office Project Server 2007: Week of May 14, 2007
29 May 2007For your information the following content has been published on TechNet, specifically of interest how to backup and restore a PWA instance from one server to another (from a development environment to a production environment for instance):< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
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Administering backup and recovery for Project Server 2007
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Back up item-level objects by using Project Web Access
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Back up Project Server 2007 by using built-in tools
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Back up Project Server 2007 by using Central Administration
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Managing the Cube Building Service in Project Server 2007
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Migrate Project Server 2007 by using built-in tools
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Migrate Project Server 2007 by using Central Administration
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Prepare to back up Project Server 2007
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Restore item-level objects by using Project Web Access
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Restore Project Server 2007 by using built-in tools
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Restore Project Server 2007 by using Central Administration
And to track newly published content for EPM 2007 you can bookmark this URL.
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Please Use the SharePoint Backup Options!
29 May 2007I guess many of you read all of the different blogs coming out of Microsoft from Treb, Christophe and others so I try not to repeat stuff - but there are some new postings concerning backup and restore and migration of data between servers. The links are referenced on Christophe’s blog.
So to add value I’ll concentrate on some problems I have seen - and hopefully convince you that having a full SharePoint backup of your farm is a good idea!
So two recent cases I worked on involved firstly one setting a new IP address for the SQL Server, and the second was actually changing the name of the SQL Server itself. The first should not have been an issue; once DNS was up to date all would have continued OK. But initially it gave errors indicating the database could not be contacted and the troubleshooting steps followed involved creating a new configuration database. This is fairly common practice for WSS issues but in the new world of Office Server you also need to have a full SharePoint backup to make it easy to get your Shared Service Providers and Project Web Access sites (and data) back. Unfortunately in this case there was no full SharePoint backup - but as there was really nothing wrong with the initial configuration database (it was just inaccessible for a while due to DNS issue) we could just re-run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard, disconnect from the new config db, then run again and connect to the old config db and everything was back working! Be aware that the search and Project application services (and possibly others) will need re-starting in Central Administration, Operations, Services on Server.
The renaming of SQL Server is a bigger issue. In hindsight a good fix would be to just set an alias to the new server with the name of the old server and SharePoint would be happy. If you have a named instance then the port is variable so a simple hosts file entry is not enough. The article mentioned above details moving from one server to another and this is really what you are doing - assume your change of name for SQL is really a new server and have that full SharePoint backup ready!
One thing I thought might work (and it didn’t - so worth stopping anyone else wasting time) was to just re-run the configuration wizard pointing to the configuration database by referencing the new SQL Server name. This seemed to work - but many of the internal references were still looking for the old server name and I could not find a good (supported) way to correct these. However with the SharePoint full restore you can resolve this.
I’m sure there will be some readers who take this as a challenge and come up with steps to resolve the SQL renaming issue without having to use the restore method and I would be very interested to hear your results.
Technorati Tags: Project Server 2007
Popularity: 1% [?]
Saucy
29 May 2007
From the world of Finance comes the news that Bull-Dog Sauce Co. is a take-over target (see quote below). It is not a surprise to me. It is not management though which is the problem. It is the products themselves. A look at the label of Bull-dog tonkatsu sauce shows that it is composed of high-fructose corn syrup.
Yuck.
The rival brand Kagome lists:
トマト、にんじん、たまねぎ、りんご、レモン、にんにく
(tomato, carrot, onion, apple, lemon, garlic)
Yum.
Is it any wonder?
In general, companies with a specific profile are an easy target for corporate M&As: Their stock is priced relatively low in spite of their technical capabilities; they employ overly optimistic corporate strategies; they do not make effective use of their assets; or they have much retained earnings.An example in this mold is Bull-Dog Sauce Co., the nation’s leading sauce maker, which has become the target of a takeover bid by U.S. investment fund, Steel Partners Japan Strategic Fund. To avoid such a situation, management should properly tackle difficult tasks, such as implementing management reforms, improving corporate value, increasing the aggregate market value of shares and preparing measures against buyout attempts. Source: The Daily Yomiuri
d from Alice’s Tonkatsu blog entry
Popularity: 1% [?]
Getting at the Task Time Phased Data
29 May 2007I have been asked many times how to get the task time phased data from the PSI. Unfortunately there is no way to get this through the PSI. I suggest that you either go to the RDB for this information or the cubes. Here is a quick example.
I created a project with one task and broke the work down over a week:
I saved and published the project so that it would make its way into the reporting database. Here is the query I wrote to retrieve this data:
SELECT MSP_EpmTask_UserView.TaskName, MSP_EpmAssignmentByDay_UserView.TimeByDay, MSP_EpmAssignmentByDay_UserView.AssignmentWork FROM MSP_EpmAssignmentByDay_UserView INNER JOIN MSP_EpmTask_UserView ON MSP_EpmAssignmentByDay_UserView.TaskUID = MSP_EpmTask_UserView.TaskUID WHERE (MSP_EpmTask_UserView.TaskName = ‘Task 1‘)
Here is the result of the query:
Chris Boyd
Popularity: 2% [?]
HOW TO: Setting Up RBS Security for Vendor Resources
29 May 2007This post comes to us from Phil Smail, our Project Server Security Program Manager. He understands Project Server security better than anyone since he oversees the design of the implementation. So, Phil wanted to share the solution to a fairly common problem that we experienced internally. With that, here’s Phil.
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I was asked a question recently on an internal distribution list about how a Microsoft Group should handle their Project Server Security. At first the issue didn’t seem too complex but after a face to face meeting it became obvious that there challenges here but thankfully the Project Server security model was able to work around it. I feel it’s worth spending some time to describe the scenario as it may help others who face similar issues.
Don’t worry, all names are changed to protect the innocent!
Overview
This particular Microsoft group, let’s call them Microsoft Group Foo, has a lot of localization work that occurs through external vendors. It’s up to the internal Microsoft folks to assign those vendors to localization projects. Each Vendor has general work resource that can be assigned to these localization work, for example for Vendor A the resource will be called ‘General Vendor A Resource’. Now this is where things get complicated!
Each Vendor has a number of users (not assignable resources) in Project Server who are allowed to edit the project if the Vendor’s general resource is assigned to that Project. They should also be able to assign full time Microsoft folks to the Project as required. It’s not a concern for vendors to see what other vendors are working on the same project but vendors shouldn’t be able to see what other, non-related, projects that other Vendor’s are working on. Got that?
So let’s say we have a User, called Roderick, who is one of the Microsoft Employees. He needs to be able to assign a general resource per vendor to projects. This general resource should be represented by a generic resource with each vendor having their own generic resource. Therefore the Microsoft employee no longer needs to worry about who in the Vendor does the actual work
Now each Vendor has their generic resources but we need to add in the users for each vendor. Let’s say Vendor A has the user David and Vendor B has the User Heather. We know we have the parent-child relationship between the Vendor users and the Generic Vendor resource. It also makes sense for the Microsoft internal folks to have a parent child relationship with all the Vendors
Security Design
The way we would represent in our security system would be by assigning these users/resources values within the Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS). Both Users and Resources can have RBS values and therefore can all exist in the hierarchy. The RBS is useful as it allows us to use the RBS category rules. These rules allow us to get permissions to Resources and Projects that have some relation with our peer Resources or Resources below us in the RBS. This means we would put the generic Vendor resources below the Vendor users and the Microsoft internal folks above the Vendors in the RBS to allow them the correct permissions on the Resources and Projects
I figured we could represent the RBS structure as such:
Now what about the Categories that would need to be associated here?
First off David and Heather need to be added to a category that gives them Project Manager permissions. The Category rules are more interesting.
The rules they’d definitely need set are:
Project permissions: ‘A resource on the project’s Project Team is a descendant of the User via RBS’.
This rule would allow them to view all Project’s that the general Vendor Resource had been added to the Project Team.
Roderick, and all other Microsoft employees within that group should belong to another category which has the ‘Assign Resource’ permission and the following Category Rule:
Resource permissions: ‘They are descendants of the User via RBS’.
This rule would allow them to assign the general Vendor resources to projects
Now one tricky bit is for the Vendor users, for example David if they become the Project Owner, is how to assign Roderick to a project. The only option would be to create another category which includes David and Heather (and any other users). The would also be given the ‘Assign Resource’ permission. The resources in the category would be the list of Microsoft employees that could be assigned. Unfortunately there’s no way to assign a group as the list of resources so as the list of MS resources changes then this list would need to be manually modified.
So there you have it. An environment now where vendors can only see the projects that they’re assigned to, the Microsoft folks can assign the Vendor’s to projects and the Vendors can assign Microsoft people to those projects
Questions and Answers
Question: The obvious follow up question is how do we take this model further and prevent Vendors from seeing the work that other Vendors are doing on even if they’re on the same Project
Answer: Unfortunately this functionality is not available in Project Server 2007. The only solution would be to create sub projects for each vendor and aggregate into a master project
But let’s think about expanding this further. This solution could be used to support full time employees managing contractors who manage sub contractors! Assuming the contractors are longer term vendors and the sub contractors are short term resources it makes sense to make the sub contractors generic resources under the main contractors. This is super cool!
Question: I have sub contractors who are managed by multiple contractors. How do I cope with that in the RBS
Answer: Unfortunately the RBS based category rules do not support accessing RBS nodes in different branches. That is something we are hoping to improve in future releases. This is where another category containing those sub contractors resources would make sense
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Support options for Microsoft Office Project
23 May 2007I really welcome the great comments and contact I have from readers of my blog and I often take the issues you are hitting as topics for future blogs - but it isn’t possible for me to give you a good support service via my blog. If it is an obvious problem with a one line answer I will try and steer you in the right direction - but for deeper issues this is just not possible.
http://support.microsoft.com gives details of the various support offerings from Microsoft - including no cost options such as self support and the community help at http://www.microsoft.com/communities/default.mspx. A tremendous part of the community are the newsgroups where many of our Project MVP’s are involved (fantastic job guys!) along with many of you - all helping each other. Microsoft.Public.Project, Microsoft.Public.Project.Developer and Microsoft.Public.Project.Server are the ones to look for in your favourite news reader (or Windows Mail in Vista). You can also browse to the following sites:-
Please do keep the comments and contact coming as it helps me understand what issues you are running into - but please also understand that I am not able to give detailed support though this channel.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Project Server 2007 Help & Support Site
23 May 2007Looking for troubleshooting articles on Project Server 2007, or information on the latest hotfix package for your EPM deployment? < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 6pt 0cm 3pt 11.35pt”>Did you know a hotfix was released on April 24th?
To stay up to date, check the following two (second link is a RSS feed you could subscribe to)
¾ Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/ph/11388/en-us
¾ Most Recent KBs for Project Server 2007 (RSS feed)
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Agile Practices do not mean forget the architecture!
23 May 2007Popularity: 1% [?]