Have you seen the good news?  Skype and Messenger are coming together.  Soon millions of Messenger users will be able to reach their Messenger friends on Skype.  By updating to Skype, Messenger users can instant message and video call their Messenger friends plus a whole lot more.  Skype will become the preferred choice for all of our users’  communication needs.  We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013, with the exception of mainland China.   Learn more about this exciting change . …( read more )

Have you seen the good news?  Skype and Messenger are coming together.  Soon millions of Messenger users will be able to reach their Messenger friends on Skype.  By updating to Skype, Messenger users can instant message and video call their Messenger friends plus a whole lot more.  Skype will become the preferred choice for all of our users’  communication needs.  We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013, with the exception of mainland China.   Learn more about this exciting change . …( read more )

Following the RTM announcement: The New Microsoft Project reaches RTM! the on-premise products are becoming available in different distribution channels starting with MSDN and TechNet subscribes as show below (and yes Project Server 2013 will also be available very soon…). Please check the Office RTM post for overall timeline for other channels: Office Reaches RTM! As a reminder there are plenty of Project 2013 resources available today: Product http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/preview/project-resources.aspx TechNet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/projectserver/fp123546 MSDN http:// msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905469 Blog http://blogs.office.com/b/project/ Forums http:// social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/project

Following Xbox’s announcement today: Introducing the New Entertainment Experience from Xbox and the fact that Internet Explorer is now an app on my favorite gaming console, and while waiting for Microsoft Surface to be ready , I went ahead and looked at a few sites but quickly decided to test my favorite site these days: Microsoft Project Online on Xbox… After entering my Office 365 Preview credentials I was able to navigate PWA and access the usual: Project Center, Portfolio Analysis, BI Center and Excel Services Center, Newsfeed & my tasks etc. as shown below (yes it’s hard to take high quality pics of my TV!). Almost 2 years ago I when Kinect came out I wrote this: Microsoft Project 2010 Kinect Edition: You Are the Controller! and guess what, it’s getting closer to reality thanks to Project Online… You are the controller! Don’t wait any longer and try Project Online on your favorite device!!!

Following Xbox’s announcement today: Introducing the New Entertainment Experience from Xbox and the fact that Internet Explorer is now an app on my favorite gaming console, and while waiting for Microsoft Surface to be ready , I went ahead and looked at a few sites but quickly decided to test my favorite site these days: Microsoft Project Online on Xbox… After entering my Office 365 Preview credentials I was able to navigate PWA and access the usual: Project Center, Portfolio Analysis, BI Center and Excel Services Center, Newsfeed & my tasks etc. as shown below (yes it’s hard to take high quality pics of my TV!). Almost 2 years ago I when Kinect came out I wrote this: Microsoft Project 2010 Kinect Edition: You Are the Controller! and guess what, it’s getting closer to reality thanks to Project Online… You are the controller! Don’t wait any longer and try Project Online on your favorite device!!!

There is exciting news coming from the Office IT Pro Blog about great new Office 2013 content. Be sure to view the article below from the Office IT Pro Blog or read the original post here . Written by Jill_M [MSFT]   We’ve published a new Visio poster and article about compatibility and telemetry in Office 2013. These are both good starting points for IT Pros who want a high-level view without diving into too much detail. The  Visio poster  (also available in PDF format) describes how telemetry works in Office 2013. You can learn about the telemetry components, the types of files and solutions that are monitored, the monitoring process, and more. The new  Office 2013 compatibility guide  describes the modern Office compatibility process and how Office telemetry supports this process. You’ll learn about topics like discovery vs. inventory, the importance of working with business groups, and how to conduct user acceptance testing using Click-to-Run, to name a few. As always, we welcome your feedback and we encourage you to  check for new  and updated content weekly . -Jill

Yes!!!!! The New Microsoft Project reaches RTM! and yes that means the same for the rest of Office: Office Reaches RTM! Time to ready yourselves!

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 – “Top-down or bottom-up” – discusses project management, portfolio management, and task management, and it compares the top-down and bottom-up management practices related to them. Here is some bio information about the author: Chris Vandersluis is the president and founder of Montreal, Canada–based HMS Software , a Microsoft Certified Partner. He has an economics degree from McGill University and over 24 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 (MPUG). 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 .

With less than a month away before the start of the Microsoft Project Conference 2012 (#MSPC12), March 19-22 in Phoenix Arizona, I wanted to take a moment and re-iterate why this is the event you cannot miss next month. As the all-up content owner for this conference I have had the pleasure to review about 170 submissions during the Call For Content phase; and lately I have started doing content reviews with speakers, and trust me there are so many great stories that I just can’t wait to see attendees excited about the quality of sessions we’ll have in Phoenix. To date we have 97 sessions (including instructor lead labs) and these alone are 97 reasons you need to come to #MSPC12! Dux did a great write-up on his Top 7 Reasons You Should Attend #MSProject Conference 2012 #mspc12 #pmot , in particular I completely agree this is a unique opportunity to Network with customers, partners, MVPs (experts) and last but not least with Microsoft employees that build, support, sale, deploy and market your favorite product everyday. I personally have made a lot of marketing projects decisions following face to face meetings with attendees, and expect to do many more for the coming year… As Dux mentioned mentioned in his #5 reason: Keeping up with the Joneses, trends and news is also a very strong reason to attend. Some of you might argue that staying in the office in front of a computer is sufficient to hear and see the pulse, I actually think events like this will give you a much better vision of trends and news with respect to PPM/PM etc… Another fact to support this point, is look at these sessions we’lll have from the two leading PPM analysts: Dan Stang & Matt Light from Gartner: The Gartner perspective: PPM Industry Trends and Adoption Best Practices and Going Beyond PPM – Effectively Manage Your Entire IT Portfolio Decisions with Project Server 2010 . I also think considering the above plus free certifications, training etc. it’s a relatively cheap event with a very strong ROI (return on investment) to one should consider for their business (if you are a partners for instance) or as a career if you are an individual. As my colleague Brian mentioned in this post: To All Aspiring Project Ninjas “ Project Conference won’t be hosted every year and there won’t be another worldwide Project Conference elsewhere ”, so register today instead of regretting tomorrow! And yes we’ll also also lots of fun at the event, stay tune for more information The first Project Conference I attended was back in January 2006, and I have attended every single one since (October 2007, September 2009) plus dozens of Microsoft lead events like (SharePoint Conference, TechEd, Summit of various sorts etc…) and I truly believe next month will be very unique Project Conference and I expect to see you all there! A bientot! PS: an adaptation of the #MSPC12 theme I did during the last Seattle snow storm, feel free to use it in your email signature/blog posts etc…

Dear readers I wish you all a restful and peaceful holiday break! Since it’s a quiet time of the year and a great opportunity to catch up on recent product updates and announcement I wanted to provide you a list of tasks to keep you busy if you have spare cycle in the coming two weeks Register to Microsoft Project Conference 2012 next march in Phoenix Arizona.Yes you can’t miss it! We have great content and speakers, plus it’s a very unique opportunity to network with Microsoft, customers, partners and MVPs. More information on our site: http://msprojectconference.com Update your farms/servers with the latest software updates (SP & CU), for 2010 we released Service Pack 1 (SP1) last June and this week the December 2011 Cumulative Update (CU) below. We have shipped a number of updates based on your feedback and ensuring your users/customers experience the latest and greatest from Microsoft is a great holiday gift ! As usual please read the best practices and guidance documented on TechNet on how to deploy software updates. Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint Server 2007 and 2010 December 2011 CU Announcement Announcing The Release Of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft Project and Project Server 2010 Read the latest product documentation and guidance – yes there is a lot of valuable content we have published throughout the year and continue to do so based on your feedback so please ensure you are on top to optimize your usage or our stack. A great tool to start catching up on documentation is the Enterprise Project Management Content Pivot Viewer . A sample of recent documents for instance are listed below (and yes there are a few more on TechNet and our main product site: http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/articles-white-papers.aspx ) Actual Work Best Practices Documentation Now Available Best practices for managing a large number of resources in Project Server 2010 Testing Project Server 2010 deployments Microsoft Project Server 2010 Project Manager’s Guide for Project Web App Catch up on recent Project news announced on our main product blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/project . For instance: Microsoft is Rated in the Gartner Project and Portfolio Applications MarketScope Announcing SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010 Microsoft Project for the masses Deploy our latest Project 2010 Demo Pack V2 as announced by Jan Kalis: Project 2010 Demo Pack Version 2 NOW available to Microsoft Partners! and yes it contains Project Server and scenarios and data to showcase our full PPM functionalities. Read our recently published customer case studies : http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/customer-success.aspx . For instance in the past few months we released these: Revlon – IT Department of Global Cosmetics Company Cuts Time in Meetings by up to 30 Percent Nagra – Digital Security Firm Makes More Efficient, Data-Driven Decisions About IT Projects Intel – Intel Will Save Annually While Making Project Management More Flexible Purchase Project and or Project Server 2010 books – yes another testament that 2010 is an awesome release, is the quantity of books available today listed on your favorite online site. In addition check out our Training and Learning site . Test out our Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Innovation Process Management (IPM) solutions. A lot more information can be found below: New Feature Pack from Visual Studio Improves Project Management and Software Development Team Collaboration Innovation Management and Ideation Solutions with SharePoint and Project Server Ramp up on Windows 8, SQL Server 2012 and System Center 2012 , key links below: Building Windows 8 SQL Server 2012 System Center 2012 Sign up for an Office 365 trial , yes its landmark release for our cloud offering and it keeps getting better on a regular basis: official Office 365 site . Buy a Windows Phone and feel the love! Could not resist to add this 11th task… Seriously test out the Office 365 integration for instance or more fun application like the Skydrive app or the XBox Companion app to name two. It’s a great OS and it has improved by professional and personal productivity a lot. A lot more information here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone . PS: please find above a poster we used internally recently thanks to a similar campaign done by the Microsoft Germany subsidiary