Use Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to help manage your project

There is more to ensuring the success of a project than collecting actuals and checking for resource overallocations. Putting faces on the people assigned to the tasks in your project is often forgotten in the maze of software functionality. OK, tweeting, facebooking, blogging, and the rest may seem like unbillable downtime, even if the subject matter is work related. But workers and their executives are beginning to appreciate the extent to which non-work related social bantering improves morale, and thus productivity, just as much as feeling invested in a project does. Some might even see a dependency of the two on each other. Social networking tools also help uncover hidden knowledge that has difficulty surfacing through normal conversations and e-mail. And when the hidden knowledge is surfaced, it tends to stay surfaced and not disappear when team members move on. Tip

Tips and Tricks: Work offline from Project Server

There are a number of reasons why you might want to work offline from Project Server. One, you might want to work on a project while flying across the country (but don’t take your eyes off the instrument panel). Two, the network you are using goes down unexpectedly while you’re are in the middle of managing an important project. Three, you want to share a project in Project Server using e-mail. Let’s look at these more closely. Work on a project offline Step 1: Check out a project Start Project Professional 2010 and connect to Project Server. On the File tab, click Open . In the Open dialog box, click Retrieve the list of all projects from Project Server. The Open dialog box displays a list of projects in Project Server. Click the project you want to open, and then click Open After the file opens, set Project to work offline from the server. On the File tab, click Info . On the right, click Manage Accounts , and then click Work Offline . When you have finished working on the project offline, close Microsoft Project. Keep in mind, that when you open Project Professional again to continue working on the project offline, you need to select the server to which it was initially saved, and then click Work Offline in the Login dialog box.

Wrangling with the Timeline

The new Timeline in Project 2010 has become an very popular way to present Project information quickly and attractively. Problem is, you can get a little carried away putting all your tasks on the Timeline, and then have trouble selecting only a few tasks to copy into another program, like PowerPoint or Word. Here is what you can do to copy selected tasks on the Timeline for copying and pasting. 1

Tips and Tricks: Out with the old menus and in with the new ribbon

Can’t find your favorite Project 2007 menu commands on the new ribbon for Project 2010? Now you have a clever tool that maps the old menus with the new look. Click here , and then click the Project Guide. An interactive guide will start that displays Project 2007. Choose a command on any of the menus, and the guide will rotate to display Project 2010 and highlight where the command migrated to on the new ribbon. Below shows what the experience is like when you click a command on the Project 2007 side of the tool.

Using Alternate Domain Accounts to Connect Project Client to Project Server

There are many reasons why you might want to connect the Project client to the server using an account other than the one that you typically use. In 2007 this was a relatively straightforward task accomplished using the “Enter User Credentials” option on the login box that opened when you opened up Project 2007. However in 2010 the login box now only allows you to select the server that you wish to connect to. That leaves you with a couple options for connecting to the server using a different account including using the “Run as Administrator” option from the context menu. However, in order to connect to the server using an alternate account and maintain the ability to use all features of the Project client (like creating and linking deliverables) you will need to change some settings in Internet Explorer: Open the following dialog starting from the IE main page: Tools > Internet Options > > Security > Custom Level Where in the security zone in which the PWA is loaded, this can usually be determined by going to the PWA home page and looking at the bottom of the Internet Explorer window: After clicking on the “Custom Level” button you should see a long list of security settings. You are looking for a setting near the bottom called “User Authentication” which you should set to “Prompt for user name and password” as shown here: After you’ve accepted this change you can safely attach the Project Client to a server using any valid domain account and perform all expected functions. After you are done you might want to consider returning the setting to the original value as IE will now prompt you for credentials any time you connect to a site within that zone regardless of its association with the Project Server.

Microsoft Project 2010 has Launched!

Today we are launching the latest release of Microsoft Project. This event is an exciting one for my team and for me on many levels. Following Office 2010 RTM on April 16 , today represents the culmination of over 3 years of development for the most innovative, the most advanced and the most integrated version of Office and Project we have ever released. It takes an incredible set of people to deliver on the kind of challenges that a new version of Project and Project Server represent. I would like to first thank my team, the Microsoft Project Business Unit , for their relentless efforts, their innovative spirits and technical depth, and more importantly for their unwavering passion in driving this complex project to completion. I also wanted to recognize and thank the myriad of people who contributed directly or indirectly to this product, our customers, our partners, our MVPs, our TAP team, the Project planning and marketing organizations, our Field, our support and services folks, all of whom have had a great influence in shaping Project 2010. Project 2010 is the most significant release for Project in over a decade and delivers new innovative capabilities across the Microsoft Project family of products: Project Standard 2010, Project Professional 2010 and Project Server 2010. · Project 2010 features the simple and intuitive Microsoft Fluent user interface and dramatic ease-of-use enhancements for both occasional and professional project managers. · Project and portfolio Management are now unified in a single server to provide end-to-end capabilities – a consistent Web interface, common data store, and centralized administration. · Project Server 2010 is built on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Enterprise Edition bringing together the leading PPM software with the powerful SharePoint business collaboration platform. · Project 2010 integrates with familiar Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, providing powerful work management capabilities delivered through familiar and connected tools. In summary, 2010 represents significant investments on both our client and server. The fresh, simple and intuitive features of Microsoft Project 2010 will enable teams and organizations of all sizes to analyze, select, plan and deliver the right projects . On the client, we have focused on improving the experience and capabilities, adding groundbreaking views such as Timeline and Team Planner and new concepts like our Fluent user interface, while allowing new users familiar with Office tools to fully leverage the power of Project Standard and Professional with minimal ramp up time. On the server, Project 2010 is a revolutionary new release of Microsoft’s EPM solution built on the Project Server 2007 foundation and fully integrated with SharePoint 2010. By centralizing all aspects of project and portfolio management on a single, unified platform, fully leveraging the advanced features and capabilities that SharePoint Enterprise offers, we are delivering with Project 2010 the most comprehensive, integrated EPM solution on the market today. As I talk to Project customers worldwide, it has become clear to me that over the past few years Project has become a mission critical tool in the enterprise application fabric. With 20 million users worldwide and over 10,000 named accounts on our EPM solution, it is no surprise that when we set out to define the 2010 areas of investments, we decided on quality as our top business driver and we prioritized every step of the way accordingly. Consistent with our original goal of making 2010 a “no brainer upgrade” for our EPM customers, the Project engineering team put a few stakes in the ground early on in the release: · Upgrade from 2007 will be smooth and easy : we are taking an incremental approach to changes to our database and our web services, as such we are offering a predictable and robust upgrade experience from Project Server 2007. · Compatibility with 2007 is top of mind : compatibility with partner and customer solutions was the main driver for this goal, we ensured that Project 2010’s web services are backward-compatible with 2007. · Driven by customer feedback: Any area that received significant investment was driven by direct customer feedback. We worked with our partner ecosystem, Field, MVPs and, of course, TAP customers to refine or improve key areas in Project and PWA. · Reduce barriers of adoption : From ensuring a consistent experience with SharePoint to removing technical roadblocks such as our previous dependence on ActiveX controls, we’ve worked towards making PWA even easier to deploy, adopt and use. · Test the product broadly, deeply and early : By putting a new structure in place to leverage our early adopters both externally (TAP) and internally (internal “dogfooding”), Project 2010 is the most real-world tested version of Project at release time. Our TAP program has allowed us to discover a total of 1439 issues, 825 of which were discovered unique and fixed. · Benefit from Project 2007’s technical feedback : Thanks to the close technical relationship between Project 2007 and Project 2010’s codebases, we’ve been able to roll-up every single fix (Service Pack, Cumulative Update) from 2007 to 2010. At our release on April 16, Project 2010 already had 3+ years of customer feedback baked into it. These guiding principles have not only shaped the final product, but have had a profound impact on how the Project team designs, develops and tests software for the 2010 release and for releases of Project to come. Today we are marking the official launch of Office and Project 2010 , for those who follow the news around Project however, you have been able to see, hear or even experience the new innovations we are bringing to market in 2010, through one of the many events the Project marketing and product teams have organized following Project Conference 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona last September. With over 1200 registered attendees, 250 partners and a representation of 731 companies from 49 countries and 47 states, Project Conference 2009 was one of the most successful and impactful to date. The buzz and anticipation created during the event was incredible and led up to the unprecedented success of our Project 2010 Beta program . Additionally, the Project 2010 Beta campaign website garnered a significant number of visitors and a very high level of interest from existing as well as new Project users. Finally, the Office 2010 launch today is your opportunity to participate and learn . Please join us at www.the2010event.com to see Project 2010 in action. As you document and share your launch experience , please remember to “tweet” and “RT” and to utilize #join2010 hashtag. Visit www.microsoft.com/project as your one-stop-shop to learn more about Project 2010 today and to download the free trial . Thank you for reading this post, I hope you will enjoy the launch activities and events surrounding the release of Office and Project 2010. Ludo. Ludovic Hauduc – General Manager – Microsoft Project Business Unit