Just posted the April 2013 Cumulative Update announcement for Project and Project Server 2013 and Project and Project Server 2010 on the Project Support blog .  No updates for Project or Project Server 2007 – but I have included the WSS and MOSS updates. Also an important posting concerning the March 2013 Public Update for Project Server 2013 where you will get an error at the conclusion of the SharePoint Configuration Wizard that ‘Task upgrade has failed with a PostSetupConfigurationTaskException’ and in your upgrade logs you will see EventID ajxnf and errors like ‘WARNING Project Web Instance ‘SharePoint – 80:PWA’ can only be upgraded once its database ‘ProjectWebApp’ has been upgraded. ERROR  Cannot upgrade [ProjectSite Name=f959de76-c4e9-4fa7-91a5-d9d9e287714b]. 38c20f9c-fdcc-b07a-f785-09836d46c179.  The resolution is described in the post on the Project Support blog – and requires the April 2013 Cumulative Update for Project Server 2013 – details of which can be found in the April 2013 CU posting mentioned above.

And a new look for this blog – thought it was time for a spring clean (just as some more snow arrives), a new header picture and the new Microsoft logo.      The latest post on Project Support is titled Project Online- How do I get a copy of my databases- and people who know me will have guessed that the answer is that you don’t.  More info over on the blog.

A couple of postings today over on the Project Support blog – and I split this into two to hopefully avoid confusion.  The first looks at the changes in location of Server Settings in Project Server 2013 compared to Project Server 2010 – Project Server 2013- Server Settings .  The second takes a similar look – but at the Project Online PWA Settings to see what is available there – Project Online- Server Settings .  So if you are wondering where your favorite server settings have gone to – or if they are still available anywhere – head on over and read the posts! Any questions then post them either here or over on the Project Support blog .

I just published a couple of posts on the Microsoft Project Support blog over on TechNet covering a couple of issues that appear to be catching our customers out. The first is one on adding Project Online to an existing Office 365 plan that has not yet been upgraded with the recent service upgrade – Project Online- Why can’t I add it to my Office365 yet-   and the second relates to adding one plan to another – such as adding Project Pro for Office 365 to a Project Online plan – Project Online- How do I add Project Pro- I hope you find these useful – and let me know how Project Online is going for you if you have already jumped in!

If you have started working with Project Server 2013 and have run into issues with Project Sites not being provisioned as you expect, and are using Alternate Access Mappings (AAM), then take a look over on the new Project Support site at the latest posting – https://blogs.technet.com/b/projectsupport/archive/2013/01/10/project-server-2013-project-sites-alternate-access-mapping-and-themes.aspx

Happy New Year to everyone – and I’ll probably keep these cross postings coming fro a month or two as you get used to the new URL.  The latest and last posting for 2012 covers language packs in Project 2013, Project Server 2013 and Project Online – https://blogs.technet.com/b/projectsupport/archive/2012/12/31/project-2013-and-project-server-2013-language-packs.aspx   Enjoy!

If you have used or are still kicking the tires of the Office 365 Preview and Project Online you may have noticed that you can have up to 3 PWA instances.  The first one is provisioned for you as the …/Sites/PWA instance, and you can then either use the New > Private Site Collection with Project Web App option to add a new site collection with PWA, or you can use the Project Web App > Add option to add the feature to an existing site collection.  Once you have used all three your SharePoint admin center may look something like this: The red bar in top right signifying that you have used all your available PWA instances.  In the preview we have seen that customers wanting to start afresh with a clean PWA have deleted the site collections and then still not been able to re-use this apparently deleted PWA instance.  The reason behind this is that the instance isn’t gone – it is in the recycle bin – and you could actually recover it if you needed to.  So how should you remove a PWA instance if you want to recover the quota to re-use somewhere else?  We have this documented over on the Office site (thanks Sonia! – and if the link isn’t live it soon will be…) and the key take-away is that you should use the Project Web App > Remove option.  This removes the feature from the selected site collection and gives you back one of your quota instances.  But what if I have already deleted the site collection?  The answer to that question is covered on the link given too – but I’m also going to cover the steps here as well as introducing the concept of administering your SharePoint Online instance via PowerShell. So my scenario is that I have deleted two of my site collections that had PWA instances – so still see that I have used my quota of 3 – what do I do next?  For the first recovery I will use the option to restore my PWA and then remove properly.  So looking in my Recycle Bin from the ribbon I can see my two sites (if I had deleted more than 30 days ago they would be gone anyway – and my quota would have been returned) – and I select the first one and click Restore Deleted Items – and then click Restore on the next dialog..   In my testing the restore took just a few minutes – but my PWA was pretty empty.  Once it was back I could select the site collection and use the option Project Web App > Remove, and then click Disable in the next dialog to disable this feature (and we really are sorry to see you remove PWA…). After this completes, which again for me was just a minute or two, I can see that I now have 1 PWA instance available to re-use – and I still have the …/Sites/PWS site collection.  This is important to note – I have disabled PWA which deleted all Project Web App data, including project plans, timesheets and resources – but I still have any pure SharePoint content that may have also existed in that site collection. For my remaining PWA instance that is still in the recycle bin I am going to take a different approach – and thanks to my colleague Stefan Schwarz for coming up with this workaround.  PowerShell is a tool that can be used across many and probably nearly all current Microsoft products.  For current Office 365 there is a good article at https://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/hh124998.aspx and for the commands we are interested in you will also need the SharePoint Online Management Shell from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35588 You will also need to install the Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Assistant as noted in the first article. I prefer using the ISE for PowerShell – so I start this up and then load the SharePoint Online cmdlets using import-module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell (installed from the link above) then connect to my SharePoint Online instance using Connect-SPOService and entering my Tenant admin url and then my credentials.  This isn’t just your tenant url but your tenant admin url – for example mine is https://BlogFodder-admin.sharepoint.com . I can then use the command Get-SPODeletedSite to see what is in my recycle bin: and to completely remove it I can use another PowerShell command – Remove-SPODeletedSite, along with the Url of the site I wish to remove – and to be extra cautious I can use the –Confirm parameter to give me that last chance to change my mind – and I then even get another last chance with the Permanently removing site dialog… Once this completes then I did notice it took a couple of minutes and a refresh or two before I could see my available PWA instances count go up to 2. Remember, the Remove-SPODeletedSite  isn’t just removing the Project stuff – but will completely delete everything to do with that site collection.  But hey – it was in your recycle bin so I guess you thought you could do without it.  Again, the link to the Office site gives a good breakdown of the options to use and what the consequences of your actions will be. The SharePoint Online Management Shell isn’t a total replacement for the SharePoint admin center UI – for example you can’t administer PWA instances and features – but it may offer some useful features such as user administration.  Another good reference to help understand the differences between the Office 365 and SharePoint Online PowerShell commands is https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161388.aspx .  I can see that the PowerShell stuff for Project and SharePoint online will be generating a few more blog posts. Thanks to Jean Donati and Sonia Atchison for feedback on this article – and Doug Welsby for running into the problem and getting us thinking about documenting the issue – and Stefan Schwarz for the PowerShell commands.

The release of the Project Server 2007 Cumulative Update for October 2012 appears to have a problem with the digital signing of one of the files and the installation will fail.  This issue affects both the Project Server 2007 – Project Server 2007 hotfix package (Pjsrvapp-x-none.msp; Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp): October 30, 2012 – KB 2687536, and also the SharePoint Server roll-up package – SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update server hotfix package (MOSS server-package): October 30, 2012 KB 2687533.  It also affects both the x86 and x64 versions.  This DOES NOT affect the individual SharePoint Server 2007 CU – KB 2760381, or the WSS 3.0 CU KB 2687535 – so if you need to update WSS or SharePoint Server then these packages can be used – but this will still leave Project Server un-patched. Thanks to Stéphane Deschênes of gp3 in Quebec City for bringing this to my attention. The problem file is the DATAEDIT.dll (assembly dataedit.dll.x64 or dataedit.dll.x86) and the message you will get will be “The installation of this package failed”: The KB in the title bar will be either the Project Server one here Hotfix for Office (KB2687536) – or Hotfix for Office (KB2687533) if you are trying to load the SharePoint Server roll-up. In the Application event log you will see two Error events, 11937 and 1023 both with a source of MsiInstaller.  The text will be: Log Name:      Application Source:        MsiInstaller Date:          11/14/2012 8:33:32 AM Event ID:      11937 Task Category: None Level:         Error Keywords:      Classic User:          DOMAINUser Computer:      Description: Product: Microsoft Office Project Server Application Server — Error 1937. An error occurred during the installation of assembly ‘DataEdit,fileVersion=”12.0.6668.5000″,version=”12.0.0.0000000″,culture=”neutral”,publicKeyToken=”71E9BCE111E9429C”,processorArchitecture=”MSIL”‘. The signature or catalog could not be verified or is not valid. HRESULT: 0x80131045. assembly interface: IAssemblyCacheItem, function: Commit, component: {AD9A0847-F41E-41F3-9B3C-CA9952D6D7E2} Log Name:      Application Source:        MsiInstaller Date:          11/14/2012 8:33:34 AM Event ID:      1023 Task Category: None Level:         Error Keywords:      Classic User:          REDMONDbrismith Computer:      BriSmith2007.redmond.corp.microsoft.com Description: Product: Microsoft Office Project Server Application Server – Update ‘Hotfix for Office (KB2687533)’ could not be installed. Error code 1603. Additional information is available in the log file C:Users AppDataLocalTemppjsrvapp-x-none_MSPLOG.LOG. The log file mentioned in the second event will give more information – the key piece will be the following: …. MSI (s) (3C:88) [08:40:11:480]: Assembly Error:Strong name signature verification failed for assembly ‘%1’.  The assembly may have been tampered with, or it was delay signed but not fully signed with the correct private key. MSI (s) (3C:88) [08:40:11:480]: Note: 1: 1937 2: {AD9A0847-F41E-41F3-9B3C-CA9952D6D7E2} 3: 0x80131045 4: IAssemblyCacheItem 5: Commit 6: DataEdit,fileVersion=”12.0.6668.5000″,version=”12.0.0.0000000″,culture=”neutral”,publicKeyToken=”71E9BCE111E9429C”,processorArchitecture=”MSIL” MSI (s) (3C:88) [08:40:11:480]: Note: 1: 2205 2:  3: Error MSI (s) (3C:88) [08:40:11:480]: Note: 1: 2228 2:  3: Error 4: SELECT `Message` FROM `Error` WHERE `Error` = 1937 Error 1937. An error occurred during the installation of assembly ‘DataEdit,fileVersion=”12.0.6668.5000″,version=”12.0.0.0000000″,culture=”neutral”,publicKeyToken=”71E9BCE111E9429C”,processorArchitecture=”MSIL”‘. The signature or catalog could not be verified or is not valid. HRESULT: 0x80131045. assembly interface: IAssemblyCacheItem, function: Commit, component: {AD9A0847-F41E-41F3-9B3C-CA9952D6D7E2} …. At this time I don’t have any details of when the packages will be rebuilt – I will update this posting as soon as I have more information.

There appears to be an error currently on our TechNet documentation at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662106.aspx indicating that the version of the Analysis Management Objects required when building an OLAP cube from Project Server 2013 depends on the version of SQL Server you have running Analysis Services.  In fact it does not – and like previous versions of Project Server we actually require a specific version that our code talks to – regardless of which version it will actually be building the cube on.  For Project Server 2013 we require the ‘10.xx’ release so anything from RTM SQL Server 2008 Analysis Management Objects – version 10.0.1600.60 through to the SP2 of the SQL Server 2008 R2 10.50.4000.0 will work.  The only one that does not work in my testing is the SQL Server 2012 version. If you have the 2012 version, or if you haven’t loaded any Analysis Management Objects then you will see the following error when trying to build a cube.   [11/12/2012 10:17 AM] Failed to build the OLAP cubes. Error: The attempt to build the OLAP database on server BriSmithSQL failed, the SQL Server Analysis Services Analysis Management Objects (AMO) client software may not be installed on this server, please install/update the client on this server and retry. The underlying exception was: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.AnalysisServices, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. The SLQ Server 2008 R2 SP2 version is the most recent and can be found in the feature pack at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30440 and you are looking for SQLSERVER2008_ASOLEDB10_amd64.msi (which is the x64 version).  Direct download link is here . I haven’t tried building a cube against a SQL Server 2008 instance – that may need to use the earlier SQL Server 2008 feature pack – most recent is SP2 if you find the R2 version above doesn’t work. For those still having a hard time finding where we have hidden the cube building option (I admit it – it took me a while…) can find it either by going to Central Administration, Manage Service Applications, Project Server Service Application (or whatever you have called yours) and then use the drop down for the specific PWA site you are interested in and click Manage which will take you to the following page – and OLAP Database Management is the link you need: Or Central Administration, General Application Settings, and click Manage under the PWA Settings header. If you go this root you may need to change the PWA site in the upper right hand corner. And if you are using the preview of Project Online (or you are reading this after the full release) and can’t find the link to OLAP cubes it is because that feature isn’t available in the online version.

We have some guidance out on TechNet about the recommended settings for SQL Server for our various versions – so for example we recommend for 2010 at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662107.aspx that you set AUTO_CLOSE to OFF, and AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS_ASYNC to ON.  But we don’t always make a show of telling you what NOT to change.  A good guide is to leave things at the default settings unless we recommend otherwise.  For example, in 2013 we don’t recommend the UPDATE_STATISTICS settings because we, like SharePoint in 2010 and 2013, now have a timer job for that purpose. One good example of this was a case I worked today with my colleague Vikram.  The customer had an issue connecting from Project Professional to PWA – the error was “The following job failed to complete.  Job Type: Load, Error ID: 42(0x2A), Error Description: An internal error occurred.  My apologies if you are reading this having searched for that error – it has many causes and this one is probably way down the list of likely ones…It usually means it couldn’t get the enterprise global from the database.   In this case we could reproduce the issue with the customer’s database, and soon found the SQL error that was being thrown (The ‘More Info’ button in the dialog, the ULS logs and SQL Profiler helped here)  – “Arithmetic overflow error converting numeric to data type numeric” as a result of executing the stored procedure MSP_WINPROJ_READ_ENTERPRISE_CUSTOM_FIELDS, which also has an set of GUIDs passed in that represent the custom fields of interest.  However, all the data looked OK, and it even gave the same error with a NULL parameter indicating no custom fields.  After trying a few things it was obvious from debugging the stored procedure that it had some issue with the eglobal version number – which should have been ‘14’ but was showing blank. The value in the database being queried was just fine – 14.1461140000, the same as on a working system I was comparing with.  But it got me thinking – it turns 14.1461140000 into 14 – I wonder if some DB options would make that give an arithmetic overflow?  Sure enough – the database had an option set to True for Numeric Round-Abort – so this implicit cast was being aborted. I thought I’d also look to see how 2013 behaved with this wrong setting – and as I expected it also failed, but with a slightly different (but no more helpful) error on the client side (please click the link if you too see a message that you feel could be more helpful – I did…) – though to be fair the failure is slightly different just caused by the same root cause. But at the back end it is very much more helpful!  In the ULS logs I saw: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): Error 1934, Level 16, State 1, Procedure MSP_UPDATE_USER_ACTIVITY, Line 14, Message: UPDATE failed because the following SET options have incorrect settings: ‘NUMERIC_ROUNDABORT’. Verify that SET options are correct for use with indexed views and/or indexes on computed columns and/or filtered indexes and/or query notifications and/or XML data type methods and/or spatial index operations.  This is a great example of the improvements to logging we now have in 2013 to try and ensure that the log will give us the full answer – rather than just being a clue as to where we should go and look next.