Microsoft Project Conference 2012 Sessions Announced We’re excited to announce that all session content including titles, abstracts, speakers and learning objectives have been posted to www.msprojectconference.com ! Microsoft Project Conference 2012 is your only opportunity this year to see over 90 sessions focused on Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010 in addition to other key products that integrate with our Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management such as SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics, Team Foundation Server and more! Let us know what you’re looking forward to most on Twitter using our new hashtag #mspc12! Project 2010 Sessions This year’s conference will cover a variety of in-depth topics across three tracks: Business Value & Insights, Product Sessions, and Deployment, Administration & Developer, delivered by customers, industry experts, partners, Project MVPs and the Microsoft product team. Here are just a few highlighted sessions. Detangling project demand, resource supply and capacity with Project Server Isabel Merlano, AMD Corporation Pearls and Pitfalls – Realizing Real Business Benefits with Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint Mike Bullard, AT&T Business Services Best practices for implementing a successful Enterprise Innovation Program Simon Floyd, Microsoft Unleashing the Value of Earned Value: Applying Schedule and Cost Controls to Measure Project Performance Andrew Lavinsky MVP, UMT Leveraging Project 2010 with Office 365 for Project Management Success Dux Raymond Sy, Innovative-e Resource Management – Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together! Collin Quiring, PMP Specialists View the full agenda on the website for details on all 90+ sessions. Hands-on Project 2010 Training There will be valuable computer-based and instructor-led training opportunities on-sight at the conference. Make the most of your investment by attending one of the sessions below. Managing your Projects: Come find out how to save over 3 hours a week using Microsoft Project? Jacques, MS PROJECT NOW! Goupil YJTJ (Your Job Tool’s Job)™ – Working in Concert with Microsoft Project Dan Renier, Milestone Consulting Group Core concepts: Business Intelligence Reports Treb Gatte, msProjectExperts Microsoft Project: Inappropriate practices (Level 300) John Wagner, Versatile Task Types (Level 300) John Wagner, Versatile Designing with Project’s new manual scheduling type (Level 300) John Wagner, Versatile UMT Project Essentials Pro – Comprehensive Financial Governance for Project Server 2010 Ben Chamberlain, UMT Sponsor & Exhibitor Momentum At Microsoft Project Conference 2012 (remember, #mspc12 on Twitter) you will not only attend rich sessions, participate in hands-on training and network with your peers, but there is a lot to look for in the exhibit hall! You can review the list of Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management Partner companies who will be demonstrating industry leading products and services. Check back weekly as we are updating the list as new exhibitors and sponsors join! If you are interested in the sponsoring, exhibiting or marketing & promotional opportunities please contact projconf@microsoft.com . Join us for a special webcast event with Microsoft Project Director Arpan Shah and hosted by our partner at Innovative-E, Inc., Dux Raymond Sy, next Wednesday at 9 AM PST. More details available on our Facebook events page . We’ll be doing a live Q&A about the conference, tweet @ProjConf and include #MSProjectChat.

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!

One of the questions I get fairly often is that people want to show their project schedules and get feedback on them without including real dates since their project hasn’t been officially scheduled yet. You know once you show someone a schedule with dates, that’s all they can think about and then you don’t get the feedback you want. You have three ways of doing this: Timescale The default timescale setting has it showing real dates. You can update this though by right-clicking on the timescale and selecting Timescale… Then in the dialog, for the tiers that are being displayed choose one of the circled items that uses relative time (ie. the first week of the project is Week 1) instead of calendar time: This will update my timescale to look like: The only other step you’ll need to do is to hide the start and finish date columns Date Format For date format (what controls how dates are displayed in the task sheet and throughout Project), Project doesn’t support a relative time format so you have two options which I’ve circled below. To update the date format, go to File – Options: You can select to just show time when how tasks line up is important to show. Alternatively you can choose one of the W4/4 formats. This date isn’t relative to the first week of the project but instead is based off the calendar (so the first week of January is week 1). Doing this format plus the timescale formatting I mention below will still essentially hide real dates from the people you are reviewing the schedule with. Just make sure to temporarily set your project to start on the first week of the year. Then when you know the actual start date of your project, you can use Move Project to adjust the schedule. Timeline View Last but not least, you can use the Timeline View. Say I have the following Timeline: To not show the dates, you need to go to the Format tab – Date Format and un-check Task Dates, Today and Timescale. This will get you: Now you still have dates on either ends, to remove those you can either crop the image or paste the Timeline into PowerPoint and delete them there. The only problem is that while you aren’t showing dates anymore, now the timeline is kind of meaningless if you want to show anything more than order and relative size of tasks. To get around this you can create dummy tasks to represent generic time intervals. For example, if I create a bunch of week long tasks I can get this: I also changed Text Lines to 2 since I just think that looks better. And here’s what I added to my project plan: You can choose whatever time interval makes the most sense for your project. Also, don’t forget to include weekends or else you’ll have gaps.

Decided to make this post as we have been getting quite a few questions about this dialog – Operation still processing. It can occur in various places within Project Web App and in my case I have made it appear in Project Center by creating a new project based on an Enterprise Project Type (called “Large”) that is using a project template which has around 2500 tasks.  In this case the full text says “The Create operation has been queued, but is taking longer than expected to process.  To check the status of the creation queue job, visit the My Queue Jobs page. Once the job has completed, the new Large will be listed in the Project Center. Click OK to close the project and return to Project Center.” This isn’t an error – I wouldn’t even go so far as to say it is a warning – merely an informational dialog that we programmed to appear in cases where whatever you are doing is taking a little while to happen – usually around a minute or so.  It could be that something has gone wrong – more likely it is just taking a while – so have a look in the queue.  Possibly by the time you have read the message the job has completed.  It could be that you are creating a quite large plan from a template – or perhaps there are other jobs in the queue that mean yours is just waiting.  So this shouldn’t be treated as an error – unless when looking in the queue you find a bigger problem – like I did when writing this posting….  Possibly more on that in another posting if a reboot of my abused server doesn’t make my issues go away.

I’m working on a toolkit for Project 2010 that will at several tools and utilities that people have asked me to write for them in VBA.   I’m looking for feature suggestions from the crowd. What do wish there was a button for in Project 2010? do you want to run a series of checks against your project to make sure your tasks and resources abide by a set of standard rules? Do you want to create a logfile of all the new tasks, task deletions, resource assignments, etc for that project? How about a tool to remove rates and costs from a schedule before you send it to a client or partner? What about one that lets you prepend or append some text to the Task Name of a set of selected tasks? Well my toolkit has these already. What would you like to see? Send me an email at brian.kennemer@projectified.com and tell me what you wish there was a button for and I will try to add it to the toolkit.

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 .

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: https://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: https://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: https://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 : https://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: https://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

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.

Good news for all the Visio enthusiasts out there! Did you know that you could visualize, edit and even create a new project plan in Microsoft Office Visio 2010 (Professional or Premium) and then export it to Microsoft Project? Courtesy of the Visio product team, the Visio 2010 Add-in for WBS Modeler enables effective integration between Visio and Project by offering the ability to manage project elements in a graphical view, as well as capabilities to layout a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in Visio. The Modeling process in WBS Modeler offers a wide variety of options to manipulate the WBS data and layout. Custom ribbon elements enable intuitive import and export between Visio and Project. Sibling and Child tasks can be added to existing tasks at every level within the project plan. Shape data can be defined and assigned for every element within Visio and this data binding remains in place when exported to project. Download the add-in today and get more out of your Visio and Project investments.  

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 .