Project Solution Accelerator
One of the major announcements at Ignite was a solution Accelerator for the new Project, aka, Project for the Web (P4W). The accelerator is being developed by Microsoft and will include items such as project requests, issues, risks, programmes, and will create some additional functionality for P4W to bring it more inline with the existing Project […]
A whole host of Power BI content – Power BI Lunch and Learn and the Manchester Power BI user group
Over the last four years I’ve spent a lot of time working in both Power BI and using the similar tools in Excel (for those of you who didn’t know Power BI was “born” in Excel, or at least as an Excel add-in (PowerPivot)). As part of giving back to the community, I’ve been co-running […]
Planner Tasks Power BI Template on GitHub
Microsoft are retiring content on TechNet, and so I’ve taken this opportunity to slightly modify the Planner Power BI template, and move it over to GitHub. At the same time I recorded a video of how to use the template file – I didn’t cover the whole of template usage because that’s been done in […]
Updated Planner Tasks Power BI Template
Planner Priority field #2 It’s great when Microsoft copy one of your ideas 🙂 Back in Sept 2019 I updated my Planner Template to include the Priority field. Microsoft have now included the Priority field in their own charts as blogged here by the product team. Here’s the Priority visual spotlighted in my Power BI […]
Planner Tasks now have a Priority field
This is just a quick blog post to say that Planner now includes a priority field for each task. The priority can be Urgent, Important, Medium (default) or Low. Setting of the priority is easy, but what’s really nice is the ability to filter and group by priority as displayed in the next two images. […]
PowerBI Template for Exported Planner Plans
<Update 10th September 2019> The Power BI template now supports the Priority field, and an additional two tabs have been created, one to display the tasks by priority, and another with a buttons to switch easily between the status or priority views. As well as links to the template at the end of this post, […]
Updated PowerBI Template for Project Server
Updated Power BI Content Pack – drill through and buttons! Power BI has definitely become my favourite application (after Project of course) in the Microsoft suite simply because of its power and versatility. In the past I’ve taken Microsoft’s standard content pack (available here) and modified it to expand the number of languages supported […]
Permissions Mode
Introduction This is really the briefest of blogs to let you know of a UI change away from SharePoint to Project Server. Permissions Modes Since Project Server came into being there have been two permissions modes, the default SharePoint one, and the older (because it was always there in Project Server) and more configurable Project […]
Project Server Content Pack Multiple Language Support – now with Polish language
Modifying Microsoft’s #ProjectOnline #PowerBI Content Pack to Support Your Language – Polish, Russian and now Polish. <180822 – Update> A quick note of thanks to Bartek from Poland for his Polish contribution – the download is still available from here. <\180222 – Update> This article shows you how to modify Microsoft’s standard Project Server […]
Project Server Content Pack Multiple Language Support
Modifying Microsoft’s #ProjectOnline #PowerBI Content Pack to Support Your Language This article shows you how to modify Microsoft’s standard Project Server Content Pack to support additional languages. Content Pack Overview If you are using Project Server (PJO) then you are probably using the OData feed for reporting purposes, the two most common options being to […]
RAG Status and PowerBI Reporting – #PowerBI #ProjectOnline #O365
I’ve been a massive massive fan of PowerBI for some time now, and an even bigger fan of Power Query; so much so that here’s a shameless plug for a Power Query course I wrote year ago here. Moving forward it’s fair to say that every Project Server/Server implementation I now do has some portion […]
Speaking at the European SharePoint Conference 2017 #ESPC17
Take Project Server from 0-60 in 1 Hour I’m delighted to say I’ve been selected to speak once again at the European SharePoint Conference which is being held in Dublin during 14-16th November 2017. The session overview is below Take Project Server from 0-60 in 1 Hour Getting started with Project Server sometimes seems […]
Kyiv Presentations #ProjectOnline #Project
I was lucky enough to be invited back to Kyiv by fellow MVP Oleksiy Prsonitskiy to present at the Ukrainian Project Conference. If you’ve never been to Kyiv, it’s worth the effort with some great sights and great food. https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/PublicProfile/4032153?fullName=Oleksiy%20%20Prosnitskiy http://www.project-conference.com.ua/ I presented on two topics, Microsoft Planner and Reporting in Project Server. Microsoft Planner […]
Hiding Unwanted EPTs in #ProjectOnline & #ProjectServer
Some of the clients I work with are really big, and some are really small. The smaller ones tend to want things that are really simple and I wanted a quick way to ensure that they can only select a single EPT in order to create projects (who really uses SharePoint Task List projects anyway?) […]
Gantt Charts in Power BI part II #ProjectOnline #PowerBI #GanttChart
It came to my attention recently that my previous post on Gantt Charts in Power BI needed slight modification in order to display the correct length of the Gantt bar. In the post I used the ProjectDuration to display the duration on the Gantt bar, however this is held in “working hours” and not […]
Gantt Charts in Power BI
Over the last year or so Power BI has made a real charge to become THE reporting tool for many applications, including of course Project Server. There are lots of great things about Power BI (and some not so great too!), including the very quick release cycle (dare I use the word agile!). Whereas Excel […]
SPC Adriatics 2016 #ProjectOnline #Workflow
I’m delighted to be have presented at the SPC Adriatics 2016 on a couple of topics regarding Project Server, and decided to record the sessions so I could share them to a wider audience. Alas I only remembered to record part way through the 2nd session, but it’s sufficient. Also, apologies for the quality of […]
Issues with Multiple Project Server Accounts in #MSProject with #ProjectOnline
UPDATE 16/05/2017 This issues still plagues me, but on Project 2016 and not Project 2013. I removed several unused accounts from the Project Web App Accounts setting in Project 2016 and everything seems to work for now. I’m now at 6 accounts, whereas previously I had at least 10. I’m not sure if this was […]
Securing Enterprise Custom fields on Project Detail Pages in #ProjectOnline #Project #PPM #PS2013 #Office365
One of the main configuration items with respect to Project Server is the creation of project level Enterprise Custom fields and their layout on separate Project Detail Pages. Assuming that you are not using workflow* then by default anyone with read access to the project can see all of the fields on the PDP, and […]
I can’t delete a project – but I’m THE project manager!
It’s a bit of a mundane topic this one, but like all of my topics, it’s soooo real world! I have a customer (okay, so I’ve got lots, not just the one!) and this particular customer is only using Project Server, and not Project Pro for O365/Project 2013 Professional. For those of you familiar with […]
The Project Virtual Conference
The Project MVP community is hosting the 1st ever Project Virtual Conference. Running for 24 hours on the 22nd October, it encompasses the truly global nature of the MS Project Community, with speakers from the US, UK, Australia, Russia and many points in between. We’re not just focusing on Project, but Project Server. We’ll cover […]
Save Site as Template – No longer an option!
[Coffee] Modifying an existing project site, saving it as a template and then associating that template to an EPT is something that I’ve been doing for many years in one form or another with Project Server systems (prior to 2010 there wasn’t an EPT construct, but the ideas were the same). When it comes to […]
Top 5 Reasons to Deploy Project Server
I was thinking about the top 5 Reasons why my customers, over many years, have deployed Project Server. Just as every organisation needs standardised ways to perform HR, Payroll etc, they all need (but not necessarily desire) a standardised way to manage projects; in truth some desire, but have no propensity to change (but that’s […]
Outlook Synchronisation
When I review the statistics on my blog, one of the most popular ones is Exporting tasks into Outlook – https://applepark.co.uk/exporting-tasks-from-project-into-your-outlook-calendar/. I’m not sure how many people have implemented the solution outlined, but I suspect those that have implemented it have done so on a personal basis. When it comes to enterprise solutions, (i.e. those […]
Project 2013 – Template mysteries unravelled.
When you first open Project 2013, you are presented with a series of templates… this is a new (and on the whole pleasant experience) which should make using Project easier, especially the Get Started template which walks you through some of the nice new features in Project 2013. Where is the list of templates populated […]
Using O365 email for notifications within Project Server 2013 on premise
These days we are presented with different options and price points for utilising on premise or on line services, and as a consultant, I’ve been using different versions of hosted Exchange for the last eight years (my mantra is stick to what you know!); two years ago I migrated to Office 365. With the advent […]
Resetting the colour on the Project Server 2013 Timeline
Promising to keep the blogs going, but with a bias towards Project and Project Server 2013 (check out the book here…), I thought I’d blog this little issue. Project Server 2013 (hereon in known as PS2013) introduces the timeline to the web, which is a great feature – so thank you Microsoft for that. Here’s […]
Instant Team Foundation Server 2012 and Project Server 2010 Integration How-to
If you didn’t already know, Microsoft provide an out of the box solution to integrate Project Server and Team Foundation Server called “Team Foundation Server Extensions for Project Server”. I’ve dealt with several organisations who have the requirement to track their agile development (managed in TFS) in Project Server (via PWA), and we ran a […]
Automatically approve task status updates
Project Server 2010 allows for the option of auto-approving task status updates, and since SP1, this has become even more useful as the option to publish the update has been added (see here). However, due to the complexity of setting up the rules and lack of documentation regarding them, PMs have either tended to not […]
Deploying Project Server in a global environment
I’m starting to see this small issue more and more, as Project Server deployments become global in nature. The issue is around the display of dates, specifically (for my customers at least) the difference between US and European dates when displayed in the short date format. A date displayed as 12/01/11 is the 12th Jan […]
Project Server Security explained
I seem to spend quite a bit of time, during training courses, explaining (in some depth) how Project Server security works. People generally understand Groups pretty easily, and then global permissions, but really struggle with the concept of categories, their relationship to groups and category permissions, and what happens is a user is a member […]
Project Server 2010 Administrator’s guide
I rarely re-blog existing blogs, but I thought this one was worth it. MS have just released the grandly named Microsoft Project Server 2010 Administrator’s Guide. It’s a weighty tomb of 302 pages, but it does a good job of filling part of the documentation requirements for Project Server. Anyway, make your own mind up, […]
Project Server 2010 – Exchange Integration
When I talk to customers about Project Server and task management, one of the things that really catches their eye is the ability to synchronise tasks to Outlook, and this is certainly one of those marketing ideas that looks a great idea. So, let’s drill into this a bit more. History Lesson Ever since I’ve […]
Project 2010 introduction – UK Tech Days
MS UK recently held a week long series of events here in the UK called techdays – http://www.microsoft.com/uk/techdays/. I was given the opportunity to present on Project 2010 (what else!), and I gave a cut down version of one of Eric Zenz’s presentations. I’ve uploaded the presentation here, and when the video is out, I’ll […]
Sleeping Queues
I’ve been troubleshooting an existing PS2007 implementation recently (obviously not one that I set up!), and the customer was having problems with Qs entering the sleeping state (I know that feeling). This was only on their development environment, their live system was good to go. The customer has tried all the usual tricks of rebooting […]
Project and Project Server 2010
So here I am, sitting Pheonix, AZ at the Project Conference 2010. I’ve been working with Project 2010 for a while now, but under NDA, so I’ve not been able to blog about it, but as I type, it’s being demo’d publically for the 1st time, so the NDA has been “lifted”. You’ll see a […]
Task Alerts and Reminders
The following blog details the settings and email formats behind the task alerts and reminders page. I originally wrote this in word using lots of tables and it hasn’t transferred very well to the web, apologies for that! Setting Up Task Alerts Each resource is able to configure the frequency of email alerts and reminders […]
MPUG events
Just to let you know there are two MPUG events happening in the UK. The first is in London, and the second Manchester. Details are below… Tuesday 28th April MPUG London Presents: Networking and Best Practice Presentation Members and non members are welcome at this event!! 3:00PM: Welcome and Networking 3:30PM: “Best Practices” 5:30PM: Close […]
Microsoft Project Server 2007 Training
If you’ve been looking out for training for Project Server or Portfolio Server training, there are now a few options… 1. Enterprise Project Management University – This has been running since Project Server 2003, and since that time has evolved from being a set of slide ware (though with lots of screen shots) to a […]
Problems with Status Reports
Status reports have been around since Project Server 2003 (or even in 2002? – I can’t remember), but I do know that I’ve had various problems with them in 2007, but haven’t been able to specifically reproduce them in order to get a bug raised with Microsoft. My specific scenario was that when Status Reports […]
How to set up permissions so that Project Managers can Save their own projects, and open all others in Read Only mode
This question comes up again and again, and I can’t remember where I found this information from all those years ago (it applied to Project 2003), but I wrote it down and seem to use it for most clients. It’s easily adaptable for Project Server 2007 – one day I’ll write it properly and update […]
How to move a sub Project Workspace to another programme site.
Introduction This blog details how to move the WSS workspace between sub-sites. This may occur if a project is moved between programmes (setting up a programme is discussed in this blog here http://appleparkltd.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!EB0688A7A6F04E1D!307.entry Process Overview By default, Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 creates a project workspace site on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 when it publishes […]
Creating the Perfect Plan
Introduction Okay, so there is no such thing as the perfect schedule, but there are good and bad practices for creating a schedule using Microsoft Project. Some other tools don’t allow some of these bad practices, but Project just goes ahead and lets you do it – this allows lots of flexibility but if you’re […]
Master Projects
I have to admit, I do like Master Projects, Microsoft appear to have got these right in this edition of Project Server and overcome the limitations of double resourcing that existing in 2003. History Master Projects have been around for ages, and have generally been used to get a programme type view of all the […]
Deliverables
Moving back to the scenarios, I wanted to give a rounded overview of Deliverables. Historical implementation of deliverables. A deliverable is a tangible and measurable result, outcome, or item that must be produced to complete a project or part of a project. Typically, the project team and project stakeholders agree on project deliverables before the project […]
Timesheets – What are they, what do they do?
Introduction Timesheets are a completely new area for PS2007. Okay, so PS2002/3 had a button labelled “Timehseets”, but the main function was task statusing, rather than a true timesheet system. So, Microsoft have invested a whole lot of time in this functionality, but the Timesheet functionality is therefore a v1.0 release, so expect lots of […]
Oh no, not another project server blog…
(Leffe Brune…) Oh no, not another project server blog… or maybe, yippee, perhaps this blog will provide some answers? It depends on where you are coming from and what you are looking for, but if, like me, you are thinking that the whole MS EPM 2007 solution is now very big compared with 2003 and […]