Trick or Treat? Why not both! Happy Project Halloween

It’s been a busy week planning the future (it’s a secret can’t tell) so might have a bit of fun before its over! Yes October 31st is fast approaching and that’s a special day here, at least for people living in the United States (for all others, here is the Wikipedia story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween ). Anyway since the tradition is to trick or treat , lets do both but definitely tons of treats with 2010 (thanks to Toney and Adrian for the collector picture above) I did actually try to carve out our logo, but as you can guess it was more work that I dared to do so went the easy route! Happy Halloween!

Come meet the experts online today and in person soon

Come visit the Project Momentum “virtual” booths and connect with the experts today Click here to enter, https://www.microsoft.com/Momentum booths For the first time we will be showing digital partner booths to highlight the capabilities of our Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management competent partners. Come experience the innovative showcase environment , connect with these experts online and then meet them in person at the event. Come to the Project Momentum

Free Resources for Developers

Just in case you don’t receive the MSDN Flash Newsletter, there are three top stories this week: Free eBook: Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Still using Visual Studio 2008? Oops, you said 2005? Maybe 2003? We’re pleased to announce another free offering from Microsoft Press (336 pages). 31 Days of Windows Phone 7 Jeff Blankenburg is posting every day in October on Windows Phone 7 development. Check the topics he has covered so far. Watch PDC10, Live from the Redmond Campus, October 28 and 29 Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is sold out, but you can still participate via the live broadcast, starting at 9:00 A.M. Pacific Time . Also: Attend a Microsoft PDC near you .

Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint 2007 and 2010 October CU 2010 are Live!

As announced by Brian Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint 2007 and 2010 October CU 2010 are Live! To learn more about the content of this Cumulative update mark your calendars and attend this webcast from Brian Smith and Adrian Jenkins: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 8:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada),

At a Glance: Roles vs. Generic Resources

Project Server 2010 supports both resource roles and generic resources . On the surface, these terms may appear to be redundant. If you want to call out a Developer in my project, do you do so by identifying a “Developer” role, or by creating a generic resource called, “Developer”? You use roles during resource constraint analysis, part of the portfolio analysis process. Resource constraint analysis is the process of looking at the resource needs of a project proposal, and comparing that with the resource capacity of the organization. (For example, Proposal A needs 5 Developers, and our organization has 4 Developers available.) In Project Server 2010, resource constraint analysis relies on roles. You can identify “Developer” as a role, and then assign that role to either named resources (“real” people), or to generic resources (placeholders). Project Server 2010 will only consider resources with defined roles during resource constraint analysis. You use generic resources , on the other hand, are used as placeholders for named resources. You may have a generic resource named “Developer” that also has the role of “Developer.” Just like saying Joe is a developer, when you use a generic resource, you are saying that “Developer” is a developer. In the context of portfolio analysis, you should use generic resources when you know the role type and quantity needed for a project (for example, two Developers), but you don’t have to know the names of the actual people who will do the work. Want to read more? The following topics cover resource constraint analysis in detail, with clarification on roles and generic resources: Overview: Setting up resource constraint analysis Define primary resource roles Create resources to represent capacity Create generic resources to represent demand Specify resource demand in a project proposal

How to display Project information on a project site?

Saw this recent question on our public forum: how can I display project information on my project site (around referred to as the project workspace)? In Project Server 2010 it’s actually very easy thanks to a very useful web part that is part of the Microsoft Project 2010 Solution Starters on MSDN Code Gallery ( https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/P2010SolutionStarter ); yes there are plenty of others useful solutions as well so I highly encourage you to check out these free of charge solutions (and yes we also provide source code if you want to further customize them). Basically deploy the Workspace Project Custom Field Web Part (folder: WorkspaceProjectCFWP), add the web part to your custom project site template (Site Actions | Edit Page| Insert Web Part | Custom | Project Custom Fields Web Part ): Edit Web Part and pick and choose which fields you want to add (contains all standard project fields and all enterprise project custom fields): and voila! As a reminder on what you can do and can’t do with the out of the box Project Web App (PWA) web parts check this post from yesterday: Adding Project Server 2010 web parts to SharePoint sites

Tips and Tricks: Copy custom views, filters, tables, and other elements to other projects

After you start working with Project, if won’t be long before you get creative and start customizing views, tables, filters, reports, and so on. And it won’t be too long after that when you begin to think about leveraging your creativity by applying it to all your future projects. Welcome to the Project organizer. The organizer is a dialog box that allows you to copy Project elements between files, or between a file and the global template. What is the global template? It is a special Project template that is associated with every project file that you create. For example, suppose you customize the Gantt chart with cost columns, then rename the view “Corporate Cost Gantt.” And now you want to use the new Gantt chart in all future projects. Here’s what you do. For Project 2007, on the Tools menu, click Organizer . For Project 2010, click the File tab, click Into , and then click Organizer— but see note below for some differences. In the Organizer dialog box, click the Views tab. The list in the right box contains the custom views in the currently open project. Note

Adding Project Server 2010 web parts to SharePoint sites

I am sure you are all following my recent advice and actively following this TechNet RSS: Newly published content for Project Server 2010 https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186461 New and updated content typically appears Thursday night (Seattle time/PDT) and today take a note of the following important articles our technical writers have put together: Plan for Project Server 2010 Web Parts