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This Week in BPOS News 4/15

This week in BPOS news is a recurring segment on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog that covers news from all sectors of Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Online Services business suite known as the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). You can read all past This Week in BPOS News segments here. For this week in BPOS news we take a look at a new Public School system embracing Microsoft’s cloud, and we learn about an essential BPOS tip to increase your productivity. Delhi Schools Embrace Microsoft Cloud-Based Email over Google Our first BPOS story comes from the Why Microsoft blog . Tony Tai takes a look at why schools in Delhi are choosing Microsoft’s cloud over the competition. One of the focuses of the Why Microsoft blog is to bring real customer stories to light. This latest post helps outline the ongoing competition to provide the academic sector with the best possible collaboration and productivity cloud solutions. Tony dives into why Microsoft came out on top for Delhi Public Schools. “ We can offer our students and teachers a technology that is on par with the corporate world without charging any additional fees for it. ” Mr. M.I. Hussain Principal, Delhi Public Schools The Why Microsoft blog does a great job breaking down the challenges, solutions and benefits with choosing the right solution for their cloud. The benefits listed in this article outline three crucial areas that Delhi Public Schools wanted to focus on: Easier, Faster Intra-School Communication and Collaboration Improves Parent – Teacher Communication Easy Access from Any Device We are glad to have Delhi Public Schools in the cloud with Microsoft. Make sure to read the full post here . What other benefits do schools gain from going to the cloud? Leave your comments below. Creating and Troubleshooting Conference Room Mailboxes For our second BPOS story we take a look at the latest BPOS support video and learn how to create and troubleshoot conference room mailboxes. The video below demonstrates how to create conferencing or equipment calendar solutions for your company. What other BPOS tips do you have? Leave your comment below. What are your thoughts about the stories we shared with you this week? Did you see a story you want to share with us? Let us know what other topics you’d like to see. You can comment on this blog post or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.

Who is NOT going to Tech.Ed 2011 in Atlanta next month? #MSTechEd

The Project team will! It be be an awesome event with awesome content and plenty of cool Microsoft Project Server 2010 goodies as shown below, so register come to Atlanta for Tech.Ed North America 2011: Registration . For more information about content check out this post: Microsoft Project/Project Server Presence at Tech·Ed 2011 16GB Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010 USB Key with key ALM links What’s New Study Guide Microsoft Project 2010 Implementing and Administering Microsoft Project Server 2010 PS: I will not be shipping the items above so don’t miss this event!

Project Developer Curriculum and Project Development for SharePoint developers

To help Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Project 2010 developers conveniently find all relevant resources for Project 2010 development we have created unified information center “Project Developer Curriculum” that references all key resources – from blogs, SDK chapters, SDK code samples, Solution Starters to extensive list of on demand webcasts. This addition to strong Project Developer Center also talks specifically to SharePoint developers offering development approach comparison . We are preparing a separate webcast dedicated to this topic MSDN Webcast: Project Server Development for SharePoint Developers (Level 300) – Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 8:00 A.M.–9:30 A.M. Pacific Time (subject to change). Make sure you register now to get the reminder before the webcast! Q&A Q: What are the key resources for Project 2010 Developers A: Project Developer Curriculum is an awesome unified resource –in addition – Project Developer Center and SDK https://msdn.microsoft.com/project/ and Project Programmability blog https://blogs.msdn.com/project_programmability/

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Microsoft Project Server 2010 Integration white paper

Good pre-release white paper that might be of interest if you have or are planning to deploy Project Server 2010 and Dynamics AX: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 White Paper: Microsoft Project Server 2010 Integration . This document explains the integration architecture for Microsoft Dynamics ® AX 2012 and Microsoft ® Project Server 2010 and provides instructions for setting up integration between the two programs. By setting up integration between the two products, project managers can create projects in either of the products and synchronize project data between them. This solution enables you to draw on both the core project management capabilities in Project Server 2010 and the financial management capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics AX. For information on AX 2012 release please check out today’s press release: https://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/apr11/04-11Con11PR.mspx

Reading Enterprise RBS values: the Easy Way and the Not-So-Easy Way

There are a couple of ways to programmatically get the Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) value for a Project Server user. The simplest way is to query the Reporting database, for example: SELECT [ResourceUID] ,[ResourceName] ,[ResourceBookingType] ,[ResourceIsActive] ,[RBS] FROM [ProjectServer_Reporting] .[dbo].[MSP_EpmResource_UserView] AS res WHERE res .ResourceName = N’Linda Jones’ The result on my machine is: ResourceUID ResourceName ResourceBookingType ResourceIsActive RBS 0D455775-01CB-42E1-A481-A6F0F1F8208A Linda Jones 0 1 User Assistance.DevDocs.SDK Writers To get the RBS by using the PSI is a bit more work. Because the RBS is an enterprise resource custom field that uses the RBS lookup table, you can use the following steps: Call the ReadResources method and filter the primary Resources table for the user name and GUID. Alternately, you can use the ReadUserList method to get all of the active resource names and GUIDs, and iterate through the ResourceDataSet for the specific resource. The attached example uses the –userList command line argument to have the application use the ReadUserList method, and displays the elapsed time for the method used. Call ReadResource with the resource GUID to get the full ResourceDataSet . Iterate through the ResourceDataSet. ResourceCustomFields table to get the CODE_VALUE for the RBS custom field (if it exists). Use a filter with the ReadLookupTables method to get a LookupTableDataSet that contains only the LookupTableTrees table for the RBS lookup table. Iterate through the LookupTableTrees table to get the LT_VALUE_FULL string that corresponds to the CODE_VALUE in the RBS custom field.