Important announcement from Jan Kalis this week: Project 2013 training for IT pros and developers a.k.a. Project Ignite recording available! Find technical how-to training and walkthrough videos with this quick start interactive course about Project 2013 and Project Online.

Thanks to Jorge for this great blog post – https://blogs.technet.com/b/raymond_ris/archive/2013/04/04/cannot-open-or-create-word-documents-in-sharepoint-2013-with-office-2010-and-project-2013.aspx explaining how, after loading Project 2013 this can make your SharePoint libraries default to the 2013 versions of the protocol handlers.  You might get a Url such as ms-word:nft|u|https://o15psvr:8080/Shared Documents/Forms/template.dotx|s|https://o15psvr:8080/Shared Documents for Word or ms-excel:ofv|u|https://sharePointDocumentlibraryURL for Excel. The fix is easy – go take a look at Jorge’s blog.

Following recent discussions with CIOs in different geographies and industries, there is a lot of interest around enterprise social networking (ESN) and hence I’ve compiled below a few articles on successful ESN adoptions and journeys from customers. Another great read is this latest McKinsey research: Evolution of the networked enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey results Enterprise social networking – Ignoring new trend should be a crime Red Robin CIO Drives Change Through IT Management When social tools go viral, Some Australian organisations are embracing enterprise social media tools

I’m looking forward to attend my first Share conference in Atlanta, April 10-12, 2013. Beside loving to visit Atlanta since I’ve lived there for seven years ( Georgia Tech alumni!) I’ll be delivering a keynote Friday morning titled: Transform Your Business with Enterprise Social (details below) and monitoring a roundtable Wednesday afternoon on “ What does 2013 mean for me? ”. There are lots of other great business users focused session at Share not to mention awesome speakers, check the detailed conference agenda . There will be a Microsoft booth staff by experts including Yammer Customer Success Managers to answer all your enterprise social questions and more!  As usual, beside great contents delivered by great speakers, I believe a key value for such event is to network and meet customers, experts and more.  Register today and see soon! Keynote on Friday morning (April 12th): Transform Your Business with Enterprise Social Abstract: “Enterprise Social is enabling organizations to transform their businesses, to harnesses the power of their most valuable asset, their people, by connecting employees, partners, and customers. Microsoft has made significant investments in Enterprise Social in SharePoint 2013 and with the acquisition of Yammer. This keynote will cover Microsoft’s vision and roadmap for this transformative technology, in addition to highlighting the significant opportunity for business value using case studies and demonstrations.”

Just posted over on the Project Support blog about the March 2013 Public update for Project Server 2013, which includes the fixes that were due to be delivered in the February 2013 Cumulative Update.  The link is here – https://blogs.technet.com/b/projectsupport/archive/2013/03/18/project-server-2013-march-public-updates.aspx and I have also updated the more general CU release blog.   Please note that this release of the March Public Update becomes the new baseline for CU installation – meaning that any future CU installations will require the March Public Update to be installed.

A couple of cross blog references here on resource management topics – and both affect Project Online as well as the on premise installations.  Firstly an issue where you cannot open more than a certain number of resources from your Resource Center in Project Professional 2013 – blogged over on the Project Support blog at https://blogs.technet.com/b/projectsupport/archive/2013/03/11/project-server-2013-why-can-t-i-open-all-my-resources-from-the-resource-center.aspx .  The numbers aren’t exact – but will be around 120 for IE9, then 520 or so for IE10, Chrome and Firefox. The second one is from our very good friend Gary Chefetz over at MSProjectExperts and unlocks the key to the Windows Logon Account field if you wish to add resources via Project Professional 2013 – https://www.projectserverhelp.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=205 .   Also note Gary’s comment on needing to select at least one resource from the existing resource center to open Pro up.

In case you have missed the launch webcast last week on February 27th to mark the general availability of the new Office 365, here is the link . In particular I’d like to highlight the Yammer demo that starts at 16:30 and ends at 19:00. Also check out this video released on YouTube that provides and overview of Yammer: Yammer: Transforming the Way We Work

Following yesterday’s release: Yammer and iPad Capabilities Now Available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM please find below a few screenshots from my CRM demo environment integrated with my Yammer Enterprise demo network below. I’m sure other CRM experts will write more extensive posts in the future but in the meantime I wanted to wet your appetite with the integration! Time to buy or upgrade to Dynamics CRM Online!