I posted a while back about Unknown Errors https://blogs.msdn.com/b/brismith/archive/2010/07/02/project-server-2010-an-unknown-error-has-occurred-in-project-center-resource-center-or-tasks.aspx in various places in project “&” here is another one.

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 four companies moving to the cloud with Microsoft, and an upcoming webcast for Lync. 1. Microsoft reels in new Office 365 and BPOS cloud customers Our first BPOS story sums up the last couple of weeks of Microsoft cloud news. Microsoft has been on track to bringing new customers to the cloud with the recent announcement of four more companies making the journey. Shell, Manpower, Tampa General Hospital and Advocate Health Care all chose Microsoft, and InfoWorld breaks down each company’s migration story here . 1. Tampa General Hospital – One of the largest hospitals in Florida is making the switch from Lotus Notes to BPOS. 2. Manpower, Inc. – This large temp agency has 30,000 employees and 400,000 clients per year. By the end of this year, 80% of its user base will be running in the Cloud with Exchange Online. “That’s three years to migrate 30,000 employees.” 3. Advocate Health Care – This health care company will migrate over 27,000 employees from iPlanet messaging and Lotus Notes to Exchange Online. You can read more about this company’s migration in this Microsoft Case Study . 4. Shell – Beginning in April, Shell will use SharePoint 2010. Shell is already a big proponent of SharePoint 2007 and this upgrade with help increase productivity. What do you think of the recent migration announcements? Leave your comments below. *Image from InfoWorld 2. Voice, Video, and Data Conferencing with Microsoft Lync Are you a Microsoft Lync user? Have you joined us for a Business Insights webcast? There is still time to register for our latest Microsoft webcast and learn more about Microsoft Lync 2010. In the webinar entitled Voice, Video, and Data Conferencing with Microsoft Lync you will learn how to increase your productivity and reduce costs with Lync. This webcast is presented by Bhavika Thakkar, Lync and Exchange Product Manager at Microsoft. The sixty minute webinar is set for Tuesday, March 22, 2011 AM Pacific Time. You can view our past BPOS webinars here and other Microsoft webcasts here . What webcast would you like to see? Leave your comments below or send us an email at bposcom@microsoft.com . 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

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 the fastest Cloud service in the world, and how one company is saving $100,000 with Microsoft BPOS. 1. Microsoft Azure Named Fastest Cloud Service Microsoft’s Azure Cloud service was recently named the fastest cloud service when compared to the competition. In our first story for this week in BPOS news, we take a look at how CloudSleuth tested and compared 13 Cloud services from companies including Microsoft, Google and Amazon. The cloud services were tested over an 11 month period which resulted in Microsoft coming in first, followed by Google, GoGrid, Amazon, and then Rackspace. Microsoft was rated the fastest, but only by less than a second. The top five cloud services listed above were within 0.8 seconds of each other. The test was conducted by CloudSleuth which used the largest “legal” bot network in the world, with 150,000 user computers pinging the different cloud services. The response times measured with reflections of what end users would likely see. This article from InformationWeek features an interesting outline of the testing process and some more cloud service response time numbers. Be sure to check out this great study . What do you think of the CloudSleuth study? Does this study alter your perception of the competition in the Cloud? Leave your comments below. 2. Chelgrave saves $100,000 thanks to BPOS deployment Chelgrave Contracting is a labour hire company founded in Melbourne, Australia. Chelgrave recently integrated with Microsoft BPOS and has estimated the company will save $100,000. BPOS gives Chelgrave a fully functioning intranet system with tools like SharePoint Online and Microsoft Exchange that have replaced the existing manual paper-based system. Even without an IT team, Greg Scott, General Manager of Chelgrave, was able to implement Microsoft BPOS with the help of Microsoft and Microsoft partners. Greg Scott claims that the move “has had a great impact on savings for the business, with some 40% more revenue than at the same time last year being generated for the company.” Chelgrave is also saving money on transportation costs through the ability to access files from anywhere and host meetings via Communicator. Chelgrave is a shining example of how Microsoft BPOS is enabling companies and their employees a more productive and collaborate work place while saving money. Do you have any BPOS stories? Share them with us in the comments below or send an email to our community mailbox . 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

One question that came up recently was around the different behavior when starting from the same template but creating a new plan in Project Professional 2010 or in PWA through the Project Center or via the Project Web Service Method CreateProjectFromTemplate.

Great white paper published in January from Microsoft Business Intelligence team: Choose the right business intelligence technology to suit your style (white paper) From the white paper’s introduction: This white paper discusses five different styles of BI reporting: Self-Service Analysis – Self-Service Analysis describes free-form reporting and analysis by users so that they can integrate data from disparate sources and drill-down and understand the root cause for data anomalies. These non-technical users value the ability to perform their own reporting and analysis without relying on IT or others. Business Reporting – This style describes formatted reports that are created by advanced business users or analysts. Reports are typically based upon approved corporate data, and then shared more broadly with managers, teams, or departments. In this style, IT involvement is moderate, usually overseeing the distribution and monitoring of the reporting environment and building of the structured data layer upon which the reports are built. Parameterized & Operational Reporting – Similar to the Business Reporting style, Parameterized &Operational Reporting is also characterized by fixed-format reports. The reports, however, are authored and managed by IT instead of business users and usually follow a pixel perfect format and rendering style. Consistency, scalability, manageability, and automated distribution are some of the key characteristics of this style. Performance Monitoring – This style describes dashboard-style reports that allow users to quickly and easily monitor the performance of their business. This style is catered to executive level or department leadership who require at-a-glance visibility on the health of the business, but it often also permits further investigation via interactivity. Scorecarding – Scorecarding is a style that describes highly summarized views with Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs) measured and scored against predefined targets such as a balanced scorecard. This style is generally a part of a performance management program, though it can also be used to measure operational performance. This white paper provides readers a practical guide on how to identify both which BI style is being used as well as the tools that best fit each of the styles. The white paper outlines the following: The key characteristic of the BI style in the Description section. The Tool Options to consider along with the recommended “Best Fit” for the characteristics of the style Infrastructure considerations A Case Study highlighting how the “best fit” technology was used to support that style

This probably isn’t a very common scenario – but you may run in to it.

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 the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 announcement, and we get a 99.9 percent guarantee from BPOS. 1. Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM 2011 hits the cloud In our first BPOS News story we announce a new cloud offering from Microsoft, Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM 2011. CNET covers the launch story here . The announcement comes with a price drop of the service from 44 dollars to 33 dollars per user. There is also a “Cloud CRM for Less” program which CNET explains as Microsoft “ offering cash rebates on a per-user basis for companies that switch over from competing Salesforce or Oracle CRM tools.” Dynamics General Manager Brad Wilson told CNET why he was excited about this announcement. “What’s kind of cool about this right now is that this kind of price point and this type of technology lets smaller business take advantage of technology that was before only available to larger organizations,” Wilson said. “So to be able to offer it up as an on-demand service at a very affordable price really expands the access of the technology to smaller companies, and I think that’s very exciting.” What do you think of the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 announcement? We want to hear from you! Leave your thoughts below in the comments section. 2. Microsoft: BPOS components average 99.9-plus percent uptime In our final BPOS News story for this week , we look into the average up time for Microsoft BPOS over the past year. Microsoft offers a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee as their service level agreement or SLA. SLA’s are taken very seriously and if the 99.9% SLA cannot be met, Microsoft offers cash reimbursements. In this NetworkWorld article it claims that Microsoft has held a 99.9 uptime SLA over the past year. What do you think of the service level agreement from Microsoft BPOS? Leave your thoughts 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.

We are pleased to introduce the January 2011 Service Update for BPOS-Standard, which includes new features and enhancements to improve the service experience for both administrators and users. Many of these service enhancements are the result of customer and partner feedback and will be deployed into production data centers for all regions by the end of January, 2011. The following features and capabilities are included in this Service Update: Microsoft Online Services Blackberry Administration Console Enhancements Two enhancements have been introduced to the Microsoft Online Services Blackberry Administration Console (MOSBAC). These enhancements are relevant for customers who subscribe to the Microsoft Online Services multi-tenant Hosted Blackberry service. User Search Hosted Blackberry administrators can now search for users in the Microsoft Online Services Blackberry Administration Console. The new search function is similar to the user search function in the Microsoft Online Administration Center (MOAC).

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 what opportunities SMBs are seeing in the cloud, and we learn about a new medical innovation that is utilizing cloud computing. 1. SMBs See Opportunity in the Cloud SMBs stand for Small and Midsize Businesses, and SMBs are seeing the benefits of cloud computing. A Microsoft-sponsored survey entitled, “Cloud Computing as an Engine of Growth” questioned SMBs about the cloud. The survey is highlighted in this InformationWeek post . The numbers from the survey reflect about one third of SMBs polled see the cloud as an opportunity for their IT department to be “more strategic” and SMBs view embracers of the cloud as “innovative.” About 12% of SMBs are “Born in the cloud” which means “the primary capability for their business is through cloud technology as the leading thing that enables them to do it.” There are many other interesting stats about SMBs and

We have published preliminary version of the Scrum Solution Starter for Project 2010 on MSDN Code gallery https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/P2010Scrum please participate actively in the Discussion to notify us about any issue you may encounter or post any feedback! This solution starter focuses on the Project 2010 desktop client, and on the individual Scrum team experience. Scrum is an iterative, incremental methodology for project management often seen in agile software development. Although Scrum was intended for management of software development projects, it can be used to run software maintenance teams, or as a general project/program management approach. There are 3 main items in Scrum: Product backlog: A product backlog is dynamic—Items may be deleted or added at any time during the project. It is prioritized—Items with the highest priority are completed first. It is progressively refined—Lower priority items are intentionally course-grained. Sprint backlog: A sprint backlog is a negotiated set of items from the product backlog that a team commits to complete during the time box of a sprint. Items in the sprint backlog are broken into detailed tasks for the team members to complete. The team works collaboratively to complete the items in the sprint backlog, meeting each day (during a daily scrum) to share struggles and progress and update the sprint backlog and burn down chart accordingly. Burn down: The sprint burn down chart is a publicly displayed chart showing remaining work in the sprint backlog. Updated every day, it gives a simple view of the sprint progress. It also provides quick visualizations for reference Supported Scenarios: A Scrum Master wants to use Project for the basics of running a sprint, including: Collecting and tracking status Managing the product backlog Managing the sprint backlog (and initial iteration planning) Viewing a burn down chart Easily exporting Scrum data to email/other apps Enjoy!