Project Server 2010 - White Paper about Portfolio Analysis

Few days back an excellent White Paper been published on techNet forum about Portfolio Analysis with Microsoft Project Server 2010. The paper has been written by our fellow consultant Andrew Lavinsky, with the Business User as a target audience. And following is the executive summary from the white paper just to give you the glimpse of what is hidden inside :)

This white paper is a comprehensive user guide for the Portfolio Analysis module of Microsoft Project Server 2010. The intended audience for this document is an experienced non-technical user or PMO administrator charged with analyzing portfolios of projects within Project Server 2010.This white paper assumes that the reader has a basic understanding of the mechanics of working with resource loaded projects within Microsoft Project Professional 2010.This white paper does not address the technical aspects of configuring Project Server 2010 to support Portfolio Analysis, that is, any of the functionality typically found on the Server Settings page of Microsoft Project Web App (with several minor exceptions as noted). This white paper does not address the implementation of workflow to support organizational Demand Management practices, including discussion of Project Detail Pages or Enterprise Project Types.

In other words, this white paper focuses primarily on the new functionality that is behind these three simple links on the Project Web App Quick Launch:

• Driver Library

• Driver Prioritization

• Portfolio Analyses

 Please go and download, it surely is a good read.

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Project Professional 2010 - Interactive Guide

Folks, i would like to share the treat with you :)

This is for those who recently moved to the Project 2010 from Project 2007 and struggling to learn the ribbon menu of Project 2010 to find out the where the toolbar menu and commands are. Since Microsoft has revamped its office family products  with the new ribbon based outlook, it usually takes some time to learn the new places for all the activities you use to perform in Project 2007 and the new and improved actions of Project 2010.

To speed up this learning period, i recently came across with this great interactive Project 2010 guide published by the Microsoft. It lets you select the activities of Project 2007 and shows you the new place for those activities in Project 2010. You can find the setup here, once you will install and run the guide it will be open for you in IE. If you like to download the workbook on desktop to use in offline mode, you can download it from here, though its not as interesting as the hosted one but will still server the purpose.

Hope it will help you to speed up your Project 2010 learning.

Happy reading ...

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Project Server 2010 - Latest SDK

Project Server 2010 latest SDK is now available for download.

The Project2010SDK.exe download includes two help files: Project2010SDK.chm (conceptual topics and managed code reference), and Project2010_ReportingDB.chm (the Reporting database schema reference). Additional references for reporting include the OLAP cube schema reference (OLAPCubeSchemas2010.xlsx) and a pivot table to help select fields in the Reporting database (RDB_Field_Selector.xlsx). The WINPROJ.DEV.hxs file is an update for VBA Help in Project Professional and Project Standard, along with instructions for installation. The SDK download also includes the default Project Guide files, the XML schema for Project 2010, and the XML schema for the ChangeXML parameter for Statusing methods in the Project Server Interface (PSI).

You can still access it online in MSDN library.

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Project Server 2010 - FEB CU released

A little late to post, but this is to announce that the Feb CU of Project and Project Server 2007/2010 have been released. Although there are some problems reported with the server roll out packages, and the current advice is to wait for the release during the week of 3/7/2011. For more details, browse the MS admin blog.

The webcast, Information About Microsoft Project and Project Server Cumulative February Update, about the Cumulative Update detail will be on 8th march, the link to access the webcast is:   https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032455141 

However, Project 2010 client package is ready to be installed from here. The instruction to install the client patch to the client is pretty simple and is the same as it was in Project 2007:

1. Download the hotfix from the link in the KB Article mentioned above.

2. Extract the patch package by running the .exe file that you downloaded.

3. Run the extracted .exe file to apply the patch to your Project Professional/Standard client.

NOTE: Microsoft strongly recommends testing within a NON-Production environment prior to rollout. Feel free to open a support incident at http://support.microsoft.com if you run into any issues with the installation.

Happy patching!

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Project Server 2010 - Administrator Guide

I want to spread the word about the release of the Project Server 2010 Administrator's Guide by Microsoft. I must say that MS active contribution and support so far related to the latest Project Server version must take the product to the next level. The guide consist of mighty number of pages and list down all the administrative activities to be performed by the administrator of the system.

This also help Project Server consultants while preparing and delivering the role guides at the end of the Project to the customer. The guide can be found and downloaded from here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=212383

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