#ProjectServer 2013/2010 Dec CU is available #sp2013 #ps2013

Little late though, but before the years end would like to share that Dec 2013 CU for Project Server 2013/2010 is available.

You can find the details of Project Server 2013/2010 installation package here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectsupport/archive/2013/12/12/microsoft-project-server-2010-and-2013-december-cu-announcement.aspx


Note, as usual, that this should be applied to test environment first prior to production. Also Mar 2013 CU is been set as baseline for all Project Sever 2013 CUs, so install Mar 2013 CU first.

Dec CU includes fix to one of the commonly encountered issue:

• Assume that you change values for fields such as Project Owner and Name on a Project Detail Page (PDP) in Project Web App. When you save and refresh the page, the values are reverted to what they were before the change.

Also at last, try this PowerShell script to install CU for reduced installation time.

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Server-2013-automate-and-833aeb0b

And if its works for you, please do not forget to rate :) 

Happy patching and Happy New Year to everyone .... 

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Bulk Import tool - (401) Unauthorized error #ProjectServer #PS2010 #SP2010

A quick note to share the Bulk Import tool issue i came across while working in NLB environment.

Before i proceed, please note that Bulk Import tool was released along with the release of Project Server 2010 and to be used with Project Server 2010. Till date, i am not sure, if Bulk Import tool without modification will work with Project Server 2013. This issue, and its resolution, is for Project Server 2010 environment.

Some time back Andrew Lavinsky had discuss Bulk Import tool feature in great detail through his blog, a blog worth every minute of your time. Please go through these blog posts if you are interested to use Bulk Import tool:

• The Bulk Import tool, Unwrapped (Part 1)
• The Bulk Import tool, Unwrapped (Part 2)

My post is to highlight the following issue you may come across while trying validating Site URL:

The remote server returned a error: (401) Unauthorized.

Now if you are in NLB environment, and you are accessing your PWA using NLB URL, you will come across an error as mentioned above. 

Resolution is quite simple, though it took me a while to figure it out, you need to use your original PWA URL to access your PWA. Open Bulk Import tool now, ensure that you URL you are entering in also based on original PWA URL, click validate - and this time it work.

Hopefully this will help to some out there - happy importing new projects for analysis as a new year is not far away :)

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Improvise #ProjectServer 2013 #CU installation time #SP2013 #PS2013 #CU

With the release of Project Server 2013 and then release of periodic Cumulative Updates, one evident factor i have experienced is the size of cumulative updates of project server, and the time they requires to be installed.

Just before this blog, a normal time i have experienced to install any CU on Project Server 2013 servers, were some where between 4-5 hrs and some time more than that as well :( and this duration is for 1 CU only, imagine if you have to install more than 1 CU which is common as March CU is a pre-requiste for any new CUs to be installed.

Which means, that either you plan to start the installation at day end, so that next day when you will resume work you only have to wait for configuration wizard to be finished

OR

you can sit idle and stare at that progress bar on your screen, moving as slowly as any slowest turtle exist on planet earth, and curse yourself that why have you started the installation at this time.

I have been look for ways to improvise the duration of installation of CU, and the good news is that there is a way to install the same CU with the duration time of between 30-45 mins ... yea you are reading it rite, its mins NOT hrs :)

Credit for this goes to Russ Maxwell, who brought this solution forward. And i am re-posting this good to spread to Project server community, because its equally painful for us as well :)

From the start the suspect in this whole case, i.e. why CU takes so long, are the SharePoint services running on the server such as App fabric/search etc. As they consume most part of CPU, and push windows installer to a lower priority to consume CPU time.

So here is a Power-Shell script to automate and speed up the installation process by disabling SharePoint server services gracefully. The scirpts performs the following steps:

1. Disable the IISAdmin and SPTimerV4 service
2. Shut down IIS Admin and Timer Services if they are running                                                                                                          
3. Give you the option to Pause the Search Service Application (see search notes below)                                                                                      
4. Stop Search Services (see search notes below)                                                                                                                                                     
5. Install the patch in passive mode (No user interaction required but will witness the patch install in the UI). Note:  Power Shell should remain open in the background while patch is running.
6. Upon completion of the patch, the Power Shell script, services in step 1 are set to Automatic                                                                          
7. Starts up IIS Admin and Timer Services                                                                                                                                              
8. Starts up Search Services                                                                                                                                                                                      
9. Resume the Search Service Application if it was paused                                                                                                                       
10. Finally, the script will display the Start Time and End Time for patch install

The script can be downloaded from the script gallery below:
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Server-2013-automate-and-833aeb0b

A walkthrough using the script is below:

Copy the script and CU in the same folder, note that only one CU should be placed in the folder and file extension should be .exe.

Open the power shell and run the script, i recommend to pause search service application here by choosing 1. The screen shots below are of Project Server 2013 JUN CU installation on my server:

Notice the installation time of JUN CU, 35 mins, voila :)

Happy patching.

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Office Web Apps Server 2013 - Unable to preview/create/edit through web #SP2013 #PS2013 #OWA2013

A quick post to share the joy of installing/configuring Office Web App server 2013 and adding to farm to work with Project Server 2013 project sites, and additionally to share the issue which led me bang my head to wall several times a day while troubleshooting :)

This can be very beneficial in terms that Project Server users can enjoy a complete web based Project Management experience with Office Web Apps server in place. As most of the Project scheduling capabilities are already available through PWA in 2013, additionally users can also manage their project artifacts on project site without the need of office suite installed to be used to create/edit documents.  

Follow these very detailed and helpful TechNet article in order to prepare Office Web App server , and then bind it with your SharePoint server later to make it work.

1. Plan office Web Apps Server
2. Deploy Office Web Apps Server 
3. Configure SharePoint 2013 to use Office Web App Server

There is troubleshooting section in last TechNet article, Configure SharePoint 2013 to use OWA server, which can help you to troubleshoot most of your common issues.

However there are few more i would like to highlight, which may can drive you crazy:

First, if you are planning to configure your SharePoint to use Office Web Apps in test environment over HTTP, include the host name list to your OWA server list by using following power-shell command:

New-OfficeWebAppsHost -domain <server-name>

Note, since the above parameter is slightly confusing, you need to include Domain and your SharePoint server name as well. That is if you domain name is contoso.com, and your SharePoint webapp name is http://sharepoint:port, then include contoso.com and sharepoint both to host list by executing above command twice for each parameter value.

You may find following error in your OWA server log file due to above issue:

WOPI : CreateWOPIHttpRequest failing due to invalid host

Also in your Office Web Apps Server, ULS logs location is: c:\programdata\microsoft\officewebapps\data\logs\uls 

More issues, if you see the below issue and technet article solution wont help, try check your SharePoint server firewall settings:

Sorry there was a problem and we cant open this document. Please try to use Microsfot word to open this file. 

One of the solution for the above issue is host name not available in host list of OWA as described above. however, if you still see this error, as for me i have had been banging my head with this error for last few hours :) , go through your ULS logs thoroughly and see if there is an indication to connectivity between two servers. Something like below in ULS: (i have highlighted the meaningful line in below, however left the other part intentionaly so that search engines can catch)

__________________________________________________________________

OPI CheckFile: Catch-All Failure [exception:Microsoft.Office.Web.Common.EnvironmentAdapters.UnexpectedErrorException: HttpRequest failed ---> Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.HttpRequestAsyncException: No Response in WebException ---> System.Net.WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 33.0.0.4:85     at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.EndConnect(IAsyncResult asyncResult)     at System.Net.ServicePoint.ConnectSocketInternal(Boolean connectFailure, Socket s4, Socket s6, Socket& socket, IPAddress& address, ConnectSocketState state, IAsyncResult asyncResult, Excepti... 03e73292-863f-49a5-bf05-6d9f982aa7e9

10/01/2013 15:17:29.72* w3wp.exe (0x1084)                       0x222C Office Web Apps               WAC Hosting Interaction       adhsk Unexpected ...on& exception)     --- End of inner exception stack trace ---     at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.EndGetResponse(IAsyncResult asyncResult)     at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.HttpRequestAsync.GetResponseCallback(IAsyncResult asyncResult)     --- End of inner exception stack trace ---     --- End of inner exception stack trace ---     at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.WopiDocument.LogAndThrowWireException(HttpRequestAsyncResult result, HttpRequestAsyncException delayedException)     at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.HttpRequestAsync.End()     at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.WopiDocument.GetWopiRequestResultWithRetry(Int32 maxSize, MemoryStream ms, WopiRequest wopiRequest)     at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.WopiDocument.CheckWopiFile()] 03e73292-863f-49a5-bf05-6d9f982aa7e9

10/01/2013 15:17:29.72 w3wp.exe (0x1084)                       0x222C Office Web Apps               WAC Hosting Interaction       ajjve Medium   WOPI CheckFile: Catch-All Failure [url:http://epm2013:85/_vti_bin/wopi.ashx/files/9cc20f3dd1c444f0b6eb71528ec907c2] 03e73292-863f-49a5-bf05-6d9f982aa7e9

___________________

To ensure the connectivity, don't only rely on using ping command to ensure the connectivity between two servers, i.e SP and OWA. Try browse you webapp from OWA server and see if its accessible. If you are getting above error, then most likely you wont be able to access the webapp as well from outside SP server. Check your firewall settings of SP server, and see if you have allowed the ports to be accessed.

Control Panel -> Windows firewall -> advance security -> Inbound Rules > Port > Protocol:TCP, Specific Port:  > Allow the connection > Apply to all zones > Enter a rule name > Finish.

And hopefully if everything works for you, you will be able to preview/create/edit office documents through web to have a complete web based experience of SharePoint 2013.

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Virtual Machine - Duplicate SID issue #VM #Clonning #SID #SP2013 #PS2013

While preparing virtual environment, including Domain controller and other VMs joining DC VM. I chose a quicker way by using same base VM to be used to create other VMs.

Everything went OK with domain controller VM, until i received first shock during SQL installation process. When i entered dedicated SQL domain account i have created to configure SQL services, following is the error i received:

No mapping between account name and security SIDs was done

and then i tried few more times entering credentials again, until i started googling about the error, but it didn't work.

As per Technet and other reliable sources, i figured out that problem is with security identifies SID between VMs. And for those wondering about what the hell is SID, because i was doing the same when i first came across this issue :), following is what i found about SID:

“Every Domain has a unique Domain SID that’s the machine SID of the system that became the Domain’s first DC, and all machine SIDs for the Domain’s DCs match the Domain SID. So in some sense, that’s a case where machine SIDs do get referenced by other computers. That means that Domain member computers cannot have the same machine SID as that of the DCs and therefore Domain.”

Now the challenge was to verify this information, i.e. to check if both VMs have got same SID, and how to rectify this issue. 

In order to check the SID of your VM, download this handy tool PsGetSID available on technet. From command prompt, run this tool and you will get the SID of your VM. Run the tool on both machines, and verify if both machines have got the same SID.

For me, SID was same in both VMs, and in this case the good news is that there is solution to fix it other than creating VM form scratch - feeling better :) You need to run the SysPrep tool to get things fix, following are the steps;

1. go to c:\windows32\system32\sysprep folder, and run the tool sysprep

2. Once the dialog box will pop up,  select the following configuration and click OK.

3. It will take a while to process and create a new SID, and it will restart your system.

Once finished, you can then run the same previous tool PsGetSid to verify if your VM has got a new SID now, and try using domain account again and hopefully this time it will work for you without any issue.

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#Project and #ProjectServer 2010 SP2 released #PS2010 #SP2010 #Project2010

Good news, Service Pack 2 for SharePoint Server 2010/Project Server 2010 and Project 2010 is available now.

The Service Packs contain all cumulative fixes since SP1, starting with the June 2011 Cumulative Update (CU) and the July 2011 Public Update (PU) all the way through to the April 2013 CU and May 2013 PU.  The Service Packs also contain previously unreleased fixes.  In addition to general product fixes, these fixes include improvements in stability, performance, and security.The complete list of fixes is available here.

All the download are available through Microsoft download center, and the link to each download is as below:

Project 2010 Service Pack 2 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687457 – with full technical details of the client products athttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687523/en-us 

Downloads – x86 – x64

Project Server 2010 Service Pack 2 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687452

Download - Download the Microsoft Project Server 2010 Service Pack 2 package now

SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 2 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687453 – with full technical details for the server products at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687524

Download - Download the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 2 package now 

For other Office and Sharepoint SP2 packages please visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687521/

More details related to update are here.

And as usual, don't rush to install any update directly to production, try it first on your test environments.

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#ProjectServer 2013 Issue: The Server was unable to save the form at this time. Please try again. #PS2013 #SP2013 #SPS2013

A quick post to share the issue and its resolution i came across after applying April 2013 CU to my Project Server 2013 farm.

After successfully completing the configuration wizard, i was browsing project site to relate document to particular task in project to verify if the absence of icon issue is resolved. So first to confirm that its not resolved by Apr CU, i.e. document indicator still not appearing along with the task in project views, however document indicator will appear in project center views along with the project name.

But this is not the issue i am blogging it about :)

While verifying this issue, i came across another issue i.e. when trying creating  risk/issue i found this message at the bottom of the page:

The Server was unable to save the form at this time. Please try again.

After some goggling i found that this can be resolved by restarting  SharePoint Search Host Controller services. You can open services dialog box by using Administrator user, and restart the service.

Hope this help some of you out there, good luck.

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#ProjectServer 2013 White Paper

This is to share that Project Server 2013 white paper is released and can be found here.

This paper is written by Microsoft senior consultant, and it includes guidance and best practices for those who plan to implement Project Server 2013 in their organization. 

It provides an analytic comparison of both the Project Online solution versus implementing a Project Server 2013 on-premises solution, and describes scenarios in which you would select one solution over the other. 

The target audiences for this white paper are partners, consultants, decision makers, and technical personnel who need to understand what is required to successfully implement Project Server 2013 in their environment, whether it be an on-premises solution or an online solution with Office 365.

Good Luck.

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#ProjectServer 2013 Administrator Manual #PS2013 #Project #SP2013

A quick post to share that Project Server 2013 Administration Guide is now available to download. 

The Microsoft Project Server 2013 Administrator’s Guide helps you understand the tasks involved with administering and managing Microsoft Project Server 2013.

The guide also includes the SharePoint Central Administration PWA settings.

The guide can be downloaded from here.

Happy downloading.

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#ProjectServer 2013 PWA more integrated with Project Sites #PS2013 #SP2013

A quick post to express my pleasant experience of finding that Project Sites in Project Server 2013 are more integrated with PWA then ever before :)

Since long i have been vocal about the distant connection between Project sites and PWA, formerly known as Project Work spaces in PS2007. Although project sites are meant to be a second home, other then PWA, to project team for their project activities.

However this distance some how comes in a way while convincing users to use project site associated with project to manage artifacts such as documents, issues and etc. One of the common request received in this case was, how to show projects tasks or project status on project site? and since there is no OOB way of achieving this in PS2010, then you have to come up with all these brilliant ideas of developing different custom solutions to accommodate such requests.

But it comes as a pleasant surprise in PS2013 that Project Sites are now more seamlessly connected with PWA. Though still the distant feeling exist, but was overcome to some extent to give user a more connected feel of Project site with their projects.

Your first experience: Project site link do not exist on ribbon anymore, its from with the Project now.

 click on Project Name, and you will see the Project Site link along with PDPs.

 click on Project Site link, and it will NOT open in separate window as new site like old times: (unless you prefer, and use any of the trick to open in new window :)  )

(some whistles.. please :) )

my first impression was WOW, the home page by-default shows the status including Project Timeline and Alert alert that you are behind schedule.


Deliverable/Issues and Risks lists are the same, in fact Paul Mather few days back wrote about the change of functionality of linking tasks along with issues/risks and documents here and took the opportunity away from me since i was also planning to write the same :)


(ok, ready for more good things .... :), here you go )

Tasks link until PS2010 was of no good in most cases, in fact i used to rename it as "Team Tasks OR Personal Tasks" for customers to avoid the confusion of mixing these tasks as project schedule tasks.

But now these alternates are not required any more. Lets click on Tasks link: 

Your project tasks are displayed here to be shared with team, and of course you can change the view of tasks page to show you only Yours Tasks or etc. However you cannot edit the values of tasks here, such as %complete, it will take you back to project schedule for the editing which i believe is pretty logical.

Before we wind up, a quick hint to show that you can also add a famous Timeline web-part  to your project site home page to show timeline alone. And also you can modify the existing Project Summary web-part to reflect information minus timeline.

Here you go:

And now last but not the least, in order to go back to PWA, no need to look for navigation link on project site. Simply click on Project Details link to access project details:

Fig-1

This is it for now, we have seen enough good things - now lets get back to the real work issues :)

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