Sorry for the delay in getting this posting out.  Vacation and an unusual amount of snow are a couple of the excuses, and if you missed the webcast then you can view here – https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032493964&role=attend&pw=5A2EBE71 Also if you are thinking of watching this or future TechNet webcasts then I’ll remind you that you will need the Live Meeting client install which can be obtained from here https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/CD010254990.aspx .  – but on to the questions – thanks for all of you who attended and for the great questions!: Q: What is the risk of applying the December Cumulative Update on the server but not on the client? Is it highly recommended to always keep them in sync, or is it acceptable to have some clients that are not patched to the same CU as the server? A: There is no dependency between the client and server, and although to be fully patched you should update both there is no risk (beyond not having some of the fixes) if you update the client or server independently.  Once you have patched the client it is also worth ensuring no un-patched clients can connect by use of the Server Setting to set the minimum client patch level that can connect (2010 only) Q:  Ref 30900 – the fix relating to custom calendars – is that custom enterprise calendar, or custom calendar in template, or both? A:  In this case, it is whether or not the template has the custom calendar associated with it. For example, suppose you have a custom calendar that is the base calendar for some tasks within your project. It is in this case that the PSI method would fail as it attempted to reconcile the calendar. Q:  The Save Error 9000 is a very generic message. Can you repeat the exact issue for which this fix was designed? A:  The scenario is this. As you save your project from Project Professional, you see the 9000 error and your project does not get saved. We found about four different conditions where duplicate IDs or objects such as views could appear and it’s because of these duplicates that the save process failed. We’ve added fixes on both the client and server to address these various conditions. As Brian states, there could possibly be other conditions that could lead to this issue and so time will tell.  As mentioned – you don’t need to install both server and client fixes – they are independent – but to get full protection you will. Q:  In regards to Timesheets in Single Entry Mode, if a timesheet is submitted and accepted with actuals against 3 projects, and later one of those projects is deleted, and then someone deletes that timesheet and attempts to create a replacement timesheet, currently that results in an error. (The timesheet line items from the deleted projects still remain and seem to stop the new timesheet from being created.) Does this CU address this? The issue is that there is an “orphan” timesheet line record. A:  With the December CU the practice of deleting timesheets should be reviewed within your organization as the behavior changes – but it should not give an error.  When the timesheet is re-created it will re-load the current tasks with any current actual work that has been accepted.  The deleted project will no longer appear.  The specific error mentioned isn’t familiar – so there may still be a risk of it occurring – possibly related to pending actions? Q:  You spoke about graphical indicators disappearing occasionally after changes have been made to their enterprise field definitions. Are there other graphical indicator problems…. such as enterprise fields showing incorrect indicators after changes made to their field definitions? I experienced some problems in one of my deployments but I believe the issue was a wrong indicator not a missing indicator. The problem seems to have gone away when I created new fields in the production site. Forum postings gave me the impression the December CU would address this. Any comments on the status? Are all of these graphical indicator problems resolved now? A:  We have certainly addressed a number of issues with graphical indicators – it could be possible to see the wrong indicator if a condition of a formula calculation gives an unexpected result and no indicator (or an existing indicator) meets the resultant condition.  We’d be keen to hear of any reproducible steps that are still giving bad results. Q:  I know that for Project Server 2007 there was a tool (P12ACTool) that could be run against the environment that would check for standard issues behind the scenes and provide steps for resolving those issues. This was used in my past as a preventative step to keeping the environment up to par. Is there a similar tool for Project Server 2010? A:  There is a tool that we use for 2010 (P14ACTool).  It is used on support incidents under the direction of a support engineer and not publically available.  I does require some interpretation of the results and can give false positives which is why we like to be involved with the customer using the tool.  We do appreciate that some partners make extensive use of the tool with their customers and are reviewing a version of the tool that we could make more available – watch this space.  We are also investing a lot in diagnostics at Microsoft so expect some new automated packages sent to you from CSS to aid in collection of data. Q:  What is the status of the fix for the 2010 client issue with “Save and Send” where the data is not actually saved to the Server? A:  Although I remember hearing about a condition like this I tried some tests after the webcast and I was not able to reproduce or find a bug in our database.  I’d welcome any repro steps so we can address this if it is still an issue. Q:  We have a couple of different 2010 client machines running the Oct and Dec CU, and the links between tasks are vanishing and then reappearing, resource usage view is jumping around between resources when modifying planned time phased actual work, and indicators in the status line (at the bottom) are vanishing – is this a known issue? (not seen it prior to August client CU for 2010) A:  We have a hotfix request in for the resource usage view jumping – likely to be fixed in April CU – not familiar with the other issues – repro steps would aid our investigation here – and confirmed this was more a display problem than the links really going away.  Possibly a UI handle problem? Q:  Should you be able to update Actual Start in the Project Center views in edit mode A:  This has not been exposed for editing in the web – possibly because of the knock on effect on the task and assignment start dates. Q:  Are either of you going to be at the Project Conference? A:  We can now confirm that yes, Adrian and I will be at the Project Conference in Phoenix, along with others from the support team: our Manager Larry Block and escalation colleague Aik Chen.  Also look out for my next blog post asking what you would like us to talk about at the conference. Q:  This is a general Project Server config question: Is there a way to report time a the high level and not at task level because we just record total time of a project? Meaning entering the time A:  Reporting in the timesheet is possible at the top level Q:  Not really project related but I recently downloaded a few of the past webcasts in wma format. But I can’t sync any of these to my Zune. Any suggestions? A:  I tried this by downloading and syncing to my Windows Phone 7 and also this didn’t work.  I’ll see if I can find a way of doing this – I’m sure using Expression Encoder would allow re-encoding in a suitable format. Q:  What is the correct way to submit a Design Change Request? Is there a website we can go to directly? A:  No web site – usually giving feedback through your account team, or to a support engineer will get through to the right people.

Happy new year! Yes I’m sure you are all actively making travel arrangements to attend Microsoft Project Conference in Phoenix next march, specially after this key announcement today: Microsoft Project Conference 2012 Full Session List Announced! Since I know you love to plan and budget I have put together a list of upcoming events Microsoft PPM will participate in (sessions, demo booth, etc.) in the next few months (yes there are plenty of other regional events as well) but these are the ones the corporate marketing team will be involved in. If you have any interest to present and or help with these feel free to contact me via this blog. Stay tune for more information on each event in the future! Event Start Finish Location URL Project Conference 2012 19-Mar 22-Mar Phoenix https://www.msprojectconference.com Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit 21-May 23-May National Harbor https://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/program-management/ TechEd North America 11-Jun 14-Jun Orlando https://northamerica.msteched.com Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit 19-Jun 20-Jun London https://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/emea/program-management TechEd Europe 26-Jun 29-Jun Amsterdam https://europe.msteched.com/ Worldwide Partner Conference 8-Jul 12-Jul Toronto https://digitalwpc.com

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! 🙂

Right before the holidays and following these two recent announcements from Jan Kalis: Project 2010 Demo Pack Version 2 NOW available to Microsoft Partners! and Brian Smith: Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint Server 2007 and 2010 December 2011 CU Announcement . I decided to upgrade my demo environment to showcase the latest and greatest of Microsoft “strong positive” PPM offering with SP1 and the December 2011 CU. After about one hour I had my demo VM up and running with the latest Service Pack 1 and December 2011 CU for Project and Project Server 2010 as shown below. The new Project Server 2010 version number for the December 2011 Cumulative update is now: 14.0.6114.5000 . Happy demoing and selling! Two ways to check the version number (please refer to TechNet for CU deployment guidance): run the following query in the Reporting database go to the farm central admin page Don’t forget to attend Brian & Adrian’s webcast next Tuesday January 10th at 8am PST to get an overview of this latest update: TechNet Webcast: Information about Microsoft Project and Project Server December 2011 Software Update SELECT * FROM VERSIONS ORDER BY TIMESTAMP DESC See you in Phoenix for #PC12!

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 .

This will be the first of a couple of postings about some changes in behavior that you might see once you install the December Cumulative updates .  This one is specifically about the client, and the Project Information dialog.  In the past if you changed a field value within the Project Information dialog then this would not raise the ProjectBeforeTaskChange or ProjectDeforeTaskChange2 events.  The values in Project Information relate to the project summary task (Task 0) and in Project 2007 these events would fire regardless of where the change was made.  Now, with the December CU these events are available to you.  However, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of: 1.  Firstly the event will fire once for the complete dialog, so unlike if you were changing values in the Project Summary task you may need to allow for and have your users prepared for multiple pop-ups (depending what you code does) once they click OK on the Project Information dialog. 2. If you cancel then you will lose all your changes – so make sure users are aware they may need to go back and check the values if for some reason your code rejected one of the changes.  For example if you popped up a dialog for each change and accepted a couple then rejected one the values that had been accepted get cancelled too. 3. There appears to be a bug which we are investigating whereby the Project Department field will always raise the event even if it has not been changed. I know that we didn’t have the issue with the Department field in 2007 – I will double check the behavior of the second bullet and see if that has also changed since 2007 – and if that should be considered a bug too. *** Update – looks like this wasn’t the behavior in 2007 – you could cancel any of the individual events and not roll back other changes – so I’d consider this a bug in 2010.  No promises on any fix dates though. One workaround to avoid cancelling if you thought the Department field had been changed would be to check if the value has actually changed – something like: If ((Field = FieldNameToFieldConstant(“Project Departments”)) And (NewValue = vOldValue)) Then Exit Function should help. *** Update – you may also see this same issue with the Notes field.

Take a look over at https://blogs.technet.com/b/projectadministration/archive/2011/12/14/microsoft-project-server-and-sharepoint-server-2007-and-2010-december-2011-cu-announcement.aspx for the full details.  Also don’t forget the webcast in January giving you the inside scoop on what we are delivering in these Cumulative Updates. TechNet Webcast: Information about Microsoft Project and Project Server December 2011 Software Update (Level 200) https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032493964&culture=en-us A couple of my favorite fixes – the correction of an earlier problem that saw many non-English sites having English headers on the Project Center, My Tasks and Resource Center pages, and a change to single entry mode behavior so that you do not see unexpected changes to your timesheet entered data.  More about these and all the other fixes on January 10th Webcast with Adrian Jenkins and me.

The Can’t-Miss Conference of the Year With just 3.5 months before Microsoft Project Conference 2012, excitement over Microsoft Project Conference 2012 has been through the roof! Come celebrate the phenomenal momentum of Project 2010 with us at the conference. There will be a concentration of learning, networking, and growth opportunities you can’t get anywhere else. Remember, Microsoft Project Conference doesn’t happen every year (the last one was in 2009) so you definitely don’t want to miss this.  We’ve got Over 100+ hours of Sessions! We received over 170 submissions (note: over 200 hours of great community content!)through our Call for Content. Here are some content highlights over the three tracks (Business Value & Insights, Product Sessions, and Deployment, Administration & Developer):  15 customer-led sessions (representing 6 verticals)  where customers share personal success stories using Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management (PPM). 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-December on the official conference website .  Get hands-on Project 2010 Training at the Conference Whether you are currently using or looking to invest in Project 2010, Microsoft Project Conference 2012 provides awesome computer-based and instructor-led training opportunities. On-site at the conference, you can begin your mastery of Project 2010 and make the most of your investment through: Project Professional 2010 (Managing Projects 70-178) desktop training Project Server 2010 (Configuring 70-177) computer-based training with your Project Conference 2012 registration (Hurry: limited seats are available for this hands-on training session.) Instructor-led training sessions Fantastic Sponsor and Exhibitor Excitement The Sponsor and Exhibitor momentum has also been wonderful! We’d like to thank these partners for their support and continued dedication to Microsoft Project. Check out the list of sponsors and exhibitors . If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor or exhibitor, it’s not too late! Contact ProjConf@microsoft.com for details. This is the event for You and the Project Community! Great content and a wealth of training are just some of the reasons for you to attend Microsoft Project Conference 2012. This is also the key event for the worldwide community to see, share, and evolve. With such richness of expertise and depth of knowledge in the community, you’ll be able to discover ways to take your project management success to the next level. Tell us what excites you about the event on Twitter or facebook .

When: Monday, January 9, 2012 at 9:30 AM – Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 5:00 PM (GMT) Where: Technology House Shottery Brook Office Park Timothy’s Bridge Road CV37 9NR Stratford Upon Avon United Kingdom Hosted By: Technology Associates International Limited Technology Associates International Limited is one of the leading global project management consultancies specialising in Microsoft Office Project and Enterprise Project Management Solutions. Since 1990, Technology Associates have provided deployment, consultancy, development and training services to more than 500 organisations including some of the world’s leading companies, and we have an international presence throughout the world.     Technology Associates have deployed hundreds of EPM solutions and deployed more than 2,000 Microsoft Project solutions. With twelve Microsoft Competencies under our belt, and three at Gold level including PPM, ISV and Application Integration, we have built a solid reputation for delivering high quality services and solutions, and providing exceptional value for money. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, with Offices in New York, San Francisco, India and Barcelona, and a strategic partner network covering AsiaPac, Middle East and ROW, we work internationally in delivering EPM and SharePoint solutions to our customer base in over 39 countries. Register for this event now at: https://taiprojdes2010090112-rss.eventbrite.com Event Details: Course Outline: The goal of this two-day instructor-led course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively manage projects with Microsoft Project 2010 Standard or Professional Editions. Who Should Attend: This course is intended for Project Managers, Project Schedulers, Managers, Supervisors, Team Leads and other people responsible for managing projects. These individuals are involved in or responsible for scheduling, estimating, coordinating, controlling, budgeting and staffing of projects and supporting other users of Microsoft Project. Typical products and technologies that are used include Microsoft Project 2010, Microsoft Excel 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server. Pre-requisites: Students should have a working knowledge of the following: • Basic project management concepts and terminology. • Basic Windows navigation skills.   Objectives: After completing this course, students will be able to: • Explain the new user interface of Microsoft Project 2010. • Initialize Microsoft Project settings. • Create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) • Create task relationships in a project schedule. • Configure advanced task information and use the Task Inspector. • Create and manage resources. • Assign and level work resources. • Review and finalize the project schedule. • Track and update project schedules. • Customize Project 2010 features. • Communicate project information in your organization. • Manage multiple projects and resource pools.  

Thanks to everyone who attended the webcast covering details of the Project and Project Server 2007 and 2010 cumulative updates for October 2011 – as well as some brief comments on Project and Project Server 2007 SP3.  The recorded webcast can be viewed here – https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032493963&Culture=en-US .  Mark your calendars for the next one about the December 2011 CU on 1/10/2012 – https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032493964&culture=en-us . I’m posting the questions that were asked both during and at the end of the webcast – in some cases I’ve found out more complete answers since the webcast and have included the detail here too. Q.   Adrian mentioned an anti-virus package had slowed down Project Professional – which one? A.   We not going to name names here – and really the same could apply to any of the packages that scan what winproj is doing.  It is really up to the customers to decide if they feel they can exclude the project executable from the virus scanner – balancing the virus risk against the performance gain. Q.   Ref fix 30990 (Modifying time-phased work in Project Professional moves actual work; additionally, the “Out of Sync” message does not occur), will this fix work if you are on a server with August 2011CU+SP1, and client with SP1 + October 2011CU? (i.e. out of sync client server CUs) A.   Yes, this is a client side fix and not dependent on the server CU or SP level. Q.   Project Server 2010…Graphical indicators – we have had lots of issues with graphical indicators not displaying correctly. The issue is random (as far as we can tell) and it doesn’t matter whether the custom field references a formula or lookup table. Both can be affected. Sometimes (not always) opening, modifying, saving and publishing the project in PWA resolves the issue, but on next publishing from ProjectPro the indicators disappear again. This problem is well over 18 months old and was supposed to be fixed in the Dec 2010 update, but wasn’t. When will this be fixed ??? Customers (as well as ourselves) are finding this incredibly frustrating. A.   Had some dialog on this after the webcast with a couple of the attendees (Thanks Kelvin and Marc!).  Looks like we have specific issues where the first publish does not show the indicator – just the text.  We have a fix coming in December that should address the publish from