OK so I’m building a Project 2010 addin using Visual Studio 2010 (VSTO) and I got tired of the clickonce deployment option. I added a Visual Studio installer project to my solution and went about following the advice on this page: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsto/ff937654.aspx It was mostly pretty good. A bit confusingly worded in a few places but I wrote that off to me not having enough real development background to pick up on the flow as I might if I was an experienced dev. In the section on registry entries it made mention of this page: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386106.aspx . It also showed sample registry entries settings and how to set them up in your installer project. I followed these to the letter and matched mine up with their screenshot to make sure they matched. For the Manifest entry mine was: “[TARGETDIR]ADDINNAME.vsto|vstolocal” I used this and my addin installed the proper ribbon tabs and buttons which meant that the system was able to interpret my entry enough to install my code into Project 2010. But some of my code was not quite working properly. Two of my dialog boxes should have read in a default value from an Application setting but the combobox controls that should have contained these defaults were blank. Click events for buttons were not firing off the code connected to them. The load event of a graphing control did not fire so while the graph control was there with the right visual settings it contained no data. I spent most of last night and much of the early part of this morning trying to figure out what was going wrong. I rebuilt my setup project from scratch. I double checked dependencies and looked to make sure I was building my setup project based on the right output, etc, etc. No Joy. I then checked in with old friend Colby Africa, one of the resident developer geniuses over at forProject to see what I was doing wrong. He had seen some roughly similar oddities in one of his projects and his research with his contacts suggested that I needed to add ‘file:///’ to the beginning of my registry setting in my Manifest key. It had something to do with the way the system interpreted the entry. I was skeptical but did it anyway. My Manifest entry was now “file:///[TARGETDIR]ADDINNAME.vsto|vstolocal”. I rebuilt my setup project and reinstalled my addin and poof! It worked! As always, having smart friends is at least as important as being smart yourself! 🙂

I’m working on a toolkit for Project 2010 that will at several tools and utilities that people have asked me to write for them in VBA.   I’m looking for feature suggestions from the crowd. What do wish there was a button for in Project 2010? do you want to run a series of checks against your project to make sure your tasks and resources abide by a set of standard rules? Do you want to create a logfile of all the new tasks, task deletions, resource assignments, etc for that project? How about a tool to remove rates and costs from a schedule before you send it to a client or partner? What about one that lets you prepend or append some text to the Task Name of a set of selected tasks? Well my toolkit has these already. What would you like to see? Send me an email at brian.kennemer@projectified.com and tell me what you wish there was a button for and I will try to add it to the toolkit.

Just a quick post to get this into the search engines for the next person. If you have an Administrative Task in Project Server 2010 that has either any of the following characters in the task name you cannot manually add that task to a timesheet. & There are likely others but these are the 3 I know of for sure. When you add one of these tasks to a timesheet you get the error “An unknown error has occurred” as shown below. The odd thing is that you can set one of these tasks to “Always Display” and the task will display with no problem but it cannot be manually added to the timesheet.  

Written by Divya Gunasekaran, Microsoft Online Services PM Updates to two existing PowerShell cmdlets are now available to use with Microsoft Online Services.  The updates to Get-MSOnlineUser and Set-MSOnlineUserPassword give admins more visibility into password and alternate recipient settings, and more control over password expiration. 1. Get-MSOnlineUser : This cmdlet can be used to retrieve the properties of a specified user in Microsoft Online Services.  Three properties have been added to the output of this cmdlet: PasswordLastSetDate: Returns the date that a user last set their password.  If a user is set to change their password on next logon, the default date of “1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM” will be returned. ForwardingAddress: Displays the forwarding address (a.k.a. alternate recipient) that has been set for a user’s mailbox.  If no forwarding address has been set, an empty string array will be returned. DeliverToMailboxAndForward: Returns a Boolean indicating where messages are being delivered when a forwarding address has been set. If a forwarding address has been set and messages are being delivered only to the forwarding address, this property will return False. If a forwarding address has been set and messages are being delivered to both the user’s mailbox and the forwarding address, this property will return True. 2. Set-MSOnlineUserPassword : The Set-MSOnlineUserPassword cmdlet has been updated to make the “Password” parameter optional.  This ability allows admins to force users to change their passwords after logging in with their current credentials, rather than having to first assign new passwords to the users.  Admins can also continue to use the cmdlet as they did before to set a user’s password to a specified value and optionally require them to change their password on next logon.  Please note that requiring a user to change their password on next logon will reset the “PasswordNeverExpire” setting to False for that user. To use the updated cmdlets, admins must download the latest 32-bit or 64-bit version of the Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools.  

Free Instructor-Led Project 2010 Training Sessions for Conference Attendees We are excited to announce Instructor-led training sessions by our three validated training partners : Milestone Consulting Group Global leaders in providing Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) services, Milestone Consulting Group can help your organization gain visibility, insight and control across all work.  With the launch of Project 2010, Milestone expanded their training offerings to include Microsoft’s Certification exams, had them validated by a third party, and made them available through your local software training center.  Make plans now to attend Project Conference and deepen your knowledge on Project 2010 desktop and prepare yourself to take the Microsoft Project 70-178 exam. MSProjectExperts MSProjectExperts is a Microsoft Certified partner and the global leader in Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010 training, courseware and reference books. MSProjectExperts maintains both the Gold Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management and Silver Microsoft Learning Systems competencies, a rare combination that certifies both its depth in Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010 and its ability to deliver quality training, eligible for Microsoft Software Assurance training benefits. The Versatile Company The Versatile Company provides expertise in project management, Microsoft Project and Project Server, delivering training, consulting and Project Server deployment. Company founder Eric Verzuh is recognized worldwide for his bestselling book, The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management, the fourth edition which was just released last December.  Sam Huffman, a Microsoft Project Most Valued Professional (MVP), will integrate proven best practices, industry standards, and hands-on learning to create high impact learning experiences. We’ve got Over 110+ hours of Sessions! We’ve added more content since our last blog post – more customer-led sessions! To recap, here are some content highlights over the three tracks (Business Value & Insights, Product Sessions, and Deployment, Administration & Developer): 19 customer-led sessions (representing 10 industry verticals) where customers share personal success stories using Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management (PPM), and upgrading to the latest 2010 solutions from prior PPM versions and competitive solutions. Project desktop best practices for scheduling, program management, Earned Value, and more. Project Server best practices for Demand Management, Portfolio Analysis, Resource Management, Time Management, Business Intelligence, and more. Key solutions overviews and case studies for Application Lifecycle Management, Innovation Process Management, Product Lifecycle Management, Dynamics AX integration, ERP integration, and more. Technical best practices for IT Professionals and Developers. A full list of session titles and abstracts will be available in mid-January on the official conference website . Wednesday Event at the Arizona Science Center Spend an unforgettable evening at the Arizona Science Center!  Take a trip to the stars in the state-of-the-art Dorrance Planetarium, soar high above the ground on the exhilarating Sky Cycle, climb your way to adventure on the Rock Wall, and immerse yourself in over 300 hands-on exhibits while nestled in the picturesque setting of Heritage and Science Park in historic downtown Phoenix.  Do your own star-gazing on any of the beautifully situated terraces as you sip handmade specialty cocktails and dine on an array of mouth-watering gourmet fare all while you explore the wonderful world of science! This will be a fantastic venue to connect with other Project Conference attendees!   Tell us what excites you about the event on Twitter or facebook .

I found out this week that the technical session DeltaBahn proposed was accepted for the Project Conference in March. I will be giving a talk titled “Planning and Executing a Multi-Instance, Multi-Version Project Server Migration” about the process required to merge a Project Server 2007 instance and a Project Server 2010 instance into a new Project Server 2010 instance. Hope to see you all there!

In order to follow up on our promise to provide you with more Project Server 2010 role guide content, we are pleased to announce the recent publish of the Microsoft Project Server 2010 Project Manager’s Guide for Project Web App . Much like the Project Server 2010 Administrator’s Guide that we released earlier this year, this guide was created with great consideration given to the great customer feedback we’ve received.  In putting together this guide, our writing team addressed the three big asks customers had for this content: It is graphical.  We’ve Included a lot of screenshots of the user interface, making it easier to see where you are at within a procedure. It is customizable.  We have it in Microsoft Word format to make it easier for customers to customize parts of the guide to train their own users. It is downloadable in .docx, .pdf, and .xps file formats.   Feel free to print it off and read it at your convenience. The Microsoft Project Server 2010 Project Manager’s Guide for Project Web App provides detailed information about how to use Microsoft Project Web App (PWA) to work with Microsoft Project Server 2010 data and to perform project management-related tasks. This guide helps project managers in your organization to better understand elements of project management in PWA, such as projects, resources, tasks, approvals, updates, and notifications. It includes many step-by-step procedures and accompanying user-interface screen shots of Project Web App.  It is important to note that although Microsoft Project Professional 2010 can be used with Project Server 2010 to perform many project management tasks, this guide only covers procedures done through PWA. The Microsoft Project Server 2010 Project Manager’s Guide to Project Web App contains the following seven chapters: Introduction Chapter 1, “Navigating Project Web App” Chapter 2, “Managing projects in Project Web App” Chapter 3, “Managing resources” Chapter 4, “Managing task updates” Chapter 5, “Managing issues, risks, and documents” Chapter 6, “Managing status reports” Chapter 7, “Configuring e-mail notifications and reminders” File size: approximately 3 MB Download the guide as a .docx file Download the guide as a .pdf file Download the guide as a .xps file

We’re happy to announce the publish of a new white paper by Chris Vanderluis of HMS Software for the “From the Trenches” column in the Project Server 2010 TechCenter and the Project Server 2007 TechCenter . This latest white paper –  “They Say They Want a Resolution” – describes some common challenges you may face when scheduling projects. It describes coming up with the best approach when you try to determine how long tasks should be and how many tasks there should be to optimize a project schedule. It discusses how different industries typically require different types of schedules (for example, software development, EPM (engineering, procurement, and construction), and plant shutdown).  It also discusses several factors in choosing project resolution (for example, length of project, resources involved, management or division of resources, speed and effort required in collecting data, and data update schedule).  Here is some bio information about the author: Chris Vandersluis is the president and founder of Montreal, Canada–based HMS Software , a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. He has an economics degree from McGill University and over 27 years’ experience in the automation of project control systems. He is a long-standing member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and helped found the Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec chapters of the Microsoft Project Users Group (MPUGA). Publications for which Chris has written include Fortune , Heavy Construction News , Computing Canada magazine, and PMI’s PMNetwork , and he is a regular columnist for Project Times . He teaches Advanced Project Management at McGill University and often speaks at project management association functions across North America and around the world. HMS Software is the publisher of the TimeControl project-oriented timekeeping system and has been a Microsoft Project Solution Partner since 1995. Chris Vandersluis can be contacted by e-mail at: chris.vandersluis@hms.ca . If you would like to read more Enterprise Project Management related articles by Chris Vandersluis, see his blog: EPM Guidance .

One of the most important aspects of any Project Server implementation is the ability to accurately record and report on actual work values when they are submitted by resources. The desire to ensure that the integrity of actual work, or “actuals”, is maintained within Project Server is one of the most critical customer requests. When implementing a Project Server based solution for time tracking and progress reporting there are a lot of questions that come up like: What’s the best way to have my resources report time for their assignments? How do I make sure that the resource-reported value and the project plan stay in sync? Where should I retrieve data from if I want to integrate Project Server with an external billing or ticket tracking system? Admittedly the breadth of configuration options available in Project Server can create some confusion and lead to solution configurations that are not optimal for the maintenance of actual work values. To help ease the process of recording and reporting on actual work we’ve created the Best practices for submitting and reporting on actual work (Project Server 2010) documentation. To give you a sneak preview of what the document contains here are the primary tenets of best practices for actual work integrity: Use single entry mode Protect user updates with protected actuals Use submitted work from timesheets, instead of project plans, for timephased reporting Use administrative time categories to track non-project work You can find more details for each of these best practices in the linked document.

We recently published a series of nine articles about how to test a Microsoft Project Server 2010 deployment as an enterprise project management system administrator or solution tester. Use the series as a guide to test the functionality of a newly deployed Project Server 2010 instance. The articles in this series discuss the functionalities that are on the Server Settings page, and some initial tests that you can run to connect and check server communications by using the Project Professional 2010 client application. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg502592.aspx