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The Project 2007 SDK download includes E-R diagrams of the major tables and views in the Project Server Reporting database. The Project 2010 SDK download does not include the Visio diagrams, although it does have the new RDB_Field_Selector.xls tool, along with the Project2010_ReportingDB.chm schema reference. You can easily create database diagrams by using either Visio Professional or Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. For example, with a Visio diagram, you can see the relationships between the timesheet tables: If you have Visio Professional 2010 and access to a Project Server 2010 Reporting database, you can reverse engineer the RDB to new database diagrams. Use the Visio diagrams in the Project 2007 SDK download as an example. With the Reverse Engineer Wizard in Visio, select the Microsoft SQL Server driver, and then create a new data source, for example: … and then follow through the wizard to select the tables and views you want for each diagram. In the Project 2007 SDK, there are four E-R diagrams: EPM User Views:  this is a very crowded page, suitable mainly for printing on a large sheet of paper. EPM Relationships:  shows the main relationships between the views in the previous page. Timesheet Tables SharePoint Data:  shows the links from tasks and projects to the Issues and Risks views. To create diagrams using SQL Server Management Studio, expand a Project Server Reporting database, right-click the Database Diagrams folder, and then click New Database Diagram . Select the tables you want, and SQL Server arranges them in a useful manner so that relationship lines don’t cross. Following are the timesheet tables in the Project Server 2010 Reporting database: Hover the mouse pointer over a relationship to show the relationship details.Database diagrams can help you derive T-SQL queries to build reports. Note:   When you create enterprise custom fields with lookup tables, Project Server creates additional views in the RDB, and can also create more column pool tables as required, for that instance of Project Web App. For more information, see  Custom Fields and the Reporting Database in the Project 2010 SDK.

We are happy share Microsoft Project 2010 presence at the upcoming SharePoint Conference 2011 ! The Microsoft SharePoint Conference is the most comprehensive event in the world dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies taking place in Anaheim, CA, October 3-6, 2011. Facts: Technical pre-event “ Project 2010 Technical drill-down for SharePoint Partners ” 7 breakout sessions directly covering Project 2010 2 booths in the expo hall staffed by Project experts Lots of great swag … … and more! Project 2010 Technical Pre-event Date: Sunday, October 2nd, 2011 Audience: IT Professionals, Architects and Developers from SharePoint Silver and Gold competent partners Keynote Speaker: Arpan Shah , Director of Project, Microsoft Corporation MVP Speakers: Dux Raymond Sy , SharePoint MVP, PMP and Scott Jamison , SharePoint MVP and Certified Master, Microsoft Speakers: Christophe Fiessinger and Jan Kalis , Senior Technical Product Managers; Steven Haden , Microsoft Consulting Services Senior Consultant Full agenda of the technical pre-day: 8:00 AM 8:30 AM Breakfast and Registration 8:30 AM 9:00 AM Keynote: Microsoft Project Opportunity Arpan Shah 9:00 AM 9:30 AM What it takes to become a Gold Project and Portfolio Management Partner Dux Raymond Sy 9:30 AM 9:45 AM Break 9:45 AM 10:45 AM SharePoint Lifecycle Management with Project Server 2010< Scott Jamison; Christophe Fiessinger 10:45 AM 11:30 AM Project 2010 Key Capabilities – Demos, demos, demos! Jan Kalis 11:30 AM 12:30 PM Lunch 12:30 PM 2:15 PM Project Server 2010 Architecture and Administration Overview Christophe Fiessinger 2:15 PM 2:30 PM Break 2:30 PM 4:00 PM Building Solutions on Project 2010 Jan Kalis; Steven Haden 4:00 PM 4:15 PM Break 4:15 PM 5:00 PM Q & A Panel with Arpan Shah, Dux Raymond Sy and Scott Jamison More details and registration here .   Project 2010 Breakout Sessions Session Title Abstract Speaker SPC106 Microsoft Project and Project Server 2010 Overview In this session we will highlight the key investment areas for Project 2010, demonstrate the Microsoft Project and Portfolio Solution which is built on top of SharePoint 2010 and introduce you to Microsoft Project Professional 2010, the world's most popular project desktop scheduling tool. We will also demonstrate business intelligence dashboards, portfolio analysis and demand management. Jan Kalis SPC242 Leveraging Project 2010 with Office 365 for Project Management Success Microsoft Project 2010 has proved to be instrumental in driving project management success for many organizations. In this session, we will discuss how to effectively create a Microsoft Project Plan, create a SharePoint-based Project Management Information System (PMIS) with Office 365 and integrate Microsoft Project information with SharePoint 2010. In addition, we'll cover best practices around empowering a project team to share relevant information, facilitate better collaboration and build project management dashboards in SharePoint. All PMP certified attendees will earn 1 PDU for attending this session. Dux Raymond Sy, PMP, MVP SPC262 Project 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Better Together With the release of Microsoft Project Server 2010 which is built upon SharePoint Server 2010 project management has reached new heights of flexibility, and power. Project Server 2010 provides a natural growth story to SharePoint 2010 advanced capabilities. In this session,  we will cover project portfolio management tools and how they can help any organization by providing insight into resource utilization, portfolio execution and alignment with strategic objectives. Tad Haas SPC273 SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server Is SharePoint becoming an important part of your company’s overall IT offering? If so, it's likely that you have a need to better manage SharePoint business requests. Join industry expert Scott Jamison as he discusses the importance of SharePoint Lifecycle Management from an IT governance perspective. In this session we'll demonstrate how business users can make special project requests through a form in Project Web App, and how Project Managers can monitor and assign resources, evaluate priorities, and manage their overall project portfolio more efficiently. Christophe Fiessinger; Scott Jamison, SharePoint MVP SPC275 Solving Agile and PMO Problems by Integrating Project Server 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010 Do your Project Managers and Developers need to play nicer together? In this session, we'll discuss how integrating Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010 allows you to enable development and project management teams to collaborate and communicate more effectively by using tools that they are most familiar with. In addition, we will conduct demos and share real world stories and best practices from customers. Christophe Fiessinger SPC313 Best Practices for Deploying Project Server 2010 on SharePoint Farm Are you interested in deploying Project Server 2010 but don't know where to start? In this session we will provide you with an overview on how to deploy Microsoft Project Server 2010 in a SharePoint 2010 Farm. Specifically, we will discuss how to deploy Project Server in an existing or separate farm, asses the proper capacity planning, and how to tackle upgrading and migration. Christophe Fiessinger SPC378 Project 2010 Development for SharePoint Developers Microsoft Project Server 2010 is built on SharePoint 2010 and offers a wide variety of customization options. In this session we will provide you with resources and real-world best practices  to help you get started with Project 2010 development. In addition, we will discuss the similarities in development between SharePoint 2010 and Project Server 2010. Steven Haden; Jan Kalis Full SharePoint Conference 2011 session agenda here .

The Guide to creating SharePoint Composites includes a 73-page download that explains SharePoint Composites. To quote from the download, “A SharePoint Composite combines data, documents, and business process in a useful, productive way. … A SharePoint Composite is a ‘do-it-yourself’ business solution.” The SharePoint Composites.docx handbook includes a detailed introduction along with common design patterns that can help provide ideas on how to integrate and present data for collaboration and BI, by using SharePoint. Although the Office 2010 integration points section includes only a brief mention of Microsoft Project, the handbook overall is a useful introduction to the concepts. For those who work with Project and Project Server, the handbook can help to expand your view of what is possible – as well as what is useful.  Similar terms you might have heard in the past include mashup and OBAs (Office Business Applications). The SharePoint Composites handbook extends those ideas specifically for SharePoint-based solutions.

This post is a reminder that Microsoft Online Services has maintenance scheduled for this weekend. Office Communications Online has a two hour maintenance window on Saturday, 8/27, between 1AM GMT and 3AM GMT. During this time, the service may be unavailable for a 10 minute period. We will deliver minor patch updates to the  Americas  Region BPOS Exchange Online service on Friday, 8/26, between 4AM and 10AM  GMT , and Saturday, 8/27, between 4AM GMT and 10AM  GMT . We expect minimal customer impact during this time. Between 3PM GMT Saturday, 8/27, and 3PM GMT Sunday, 8/28 , the billing portion of Microsoft Online Services will undergo planned maintenance. While we’re updating the system, the following services won’t be available: Purchasing new subscriptions or addition of additional licenses Conversion of trial to paid subscriptions/offers Viewing of monthly charges or final invoices Viewing or modification of credit card or invoice information.   The following services will NOT be affected by this maintenance:  All product services (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Communications Online) Managing existing BPOS subscriptions Thanks for your patience while we make important service improvements. 

Microsoft Project Conference 2012 is the premiere Microsoft-led event to share Project and Portfolio Management best practices and connect with your peers from around the globe. Project Conference will be held in Phoenix, Arizona on March 19 – 22, 2012. Do you have best practices you would like to share on Microsoft’s Project Portfolio Management (PPM) offering? Do you have success stories you would like to share with attendees? Are you passionate about Microsoft Project & Project Server? If you do and are interested in presenting next March, you are invited to propose content for delivery at Microsoft Project Conference 2012! Action Propose titles & abstracts at https://projconfcallforcontent.deregistrationservices.com/ Complete all the required fields carefully so we can better evaluate your entries. Deadline for Submissions: September 30th, 2011 Acceptance Timeline:  Notifications will be sent out by November 15, 2011 Audience Project Conference hosts a mix of audience including audiences including Microsoft PPM practitioners, IT Professionals and Developers, as well as Decision Makers and Business Managers. Breakout Sessions Breakout Sessions are the main content delivery modality at Project Conference other than the keynote sessions. These breakout sessions are lecture-style presentations located in rooms seating anywhere from 100-400 people and are 75 minutes in length. They typically include slides, demos, and a Question & Answer period, and they are recorded and distributed in the MyPC virtual event platform. Content Tracks Business Values & Insights will showcase customers across industries and experienced partners, all sharing success stories and PPM best practices.  Product Session will showcase production information, how to best enhance your project portfolio performance, and solutions that enhance out of the box capabilities and provide integration with line of business applications. Deployment and Administration focuses on deployment, configuration, administration best practice as well as developer sessions on how to extend the out of the box desktop and server products to fits your specific business needs. Travel & Expenses Complimentary passes will be provided for all selected speakers.  Any travel costs including airfare, hotel, etc. will be the responsibility of the speaker. Questions If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the Project Conference Speaker Team at pcspkr@microsoft.com . All proposals will be responded to by November 15, 2011.

I was reviewing a case yesterday and just checking the behavior of SharePoint permissions in Project Web App after an upgrade from 2007 to 2010 – either in place or a 5 database  – thought this might be useful information to blog about.  In 2007 in the Project Web Access site the users would be added directly to the site with SharePoint permissions based on their roles.  These permission levels were identifiable by their names which would be like Project Managers (Microsoft Office Project Server).  In the Project workspaces these same permission levels would be used, and the users again added directly based on their roles within the project.  So this generally be a small subset of the overall user population – just those added as resources on the plan, and potentially others depending on the use of the View Project Workspace permission within categories. Here is the start of the list of permissions on the PWA site – Project workspaces will be similar although the permission levels may be different. In 2010 in Project Web App we now use groups within the /PWA site and the users are added in to these groups rather than directly to the site.  The groups are named Project Managers Group (Microsoft Project Server), Team members group (Microsoft Project Server) etc.   Some individual user accounts will be present in PWA as shown below (blanked out) – these will be site collection administrators and other farm admins. For the Project sites (formerly called workspaces) we still add the users directly, but we have new SharePoint permission levels which are named similarly to 2007, but we have dropped ‘Office’ from the product name – so they are now like Readers (Microsoft Project Server), Web Administrators (Microsoft Project Server). If you upgraded from 2007 to 2010, either in place or 5 DB then you will retain the old permission structure – but also get the new ones too.  So for example you would see all your users individually in the Project Web App permissions, as well as them belonging to the respective groups.  At the Project Site level you would see the users but with both Permission Levels applied – so they might have Web Administrators )Microsoft Office Project Server), Web Administrators (Microsoft Project Server). All of this is the expected behavior and none of this will break anything, although I admit it may look unusual having the two sets of permission levels.  Also it does not leave any security issues as in 2010 if I remove someone from a Project plan then they get taken off the site with both sets of permission levels – and if I inactivate a user they are removed both at the individual level from PWA and also removed from the group that 2010 would have put them in – so all is good.  If you really wanted to then you could delete the permission levels with (Microsoft Office Project Server) in the names, and also remove the individual user permissions on PWA (apart from the site collection admins of course).  Worth checking that the groups contain the members you expect first just in case for some reason the sync hasn’t populated the groups yet.

In SharePoint 2010 when you upgrade to a new Cumulative Update or Service Pack this involves two main steps – first is loading the binaries, and the second is running the SharePoint Server 2010 configuration wizard (psconfig or psconfigui).  SharePoint supports delaying the running of the configuration wizard or even detaching content databases while running the wizard, so that these perhaps slow parts of the process can be managed in a more timely fashion.  If you look at a SharePoint farm that is in this condition you will see in Central Administration, Upgrade and Migration, Review database status, that it says against many of the databases (Content, Config, and Admin Content) – Database is in compatibility range and upgrade is recommended .  However, if you have Project Server installed then you will see against all of its databases (certainly for SP1/June CU) – Database is too old and upgrade is required .  Some other databases such as BDC or PPS ones may just say No action is required if there were no updates for schema in the particular release.  For some CUs you might see this for Project and the SharePoint content databases too. If you ignore this message and try and go to PWA then you will get an error message: Error, Project Web App cannot connect to Project Server. For more information, contact your system administrator. – along with a GUID for tracking the full error in the logs. Looking in the logs you will find the following exception and unexpected level records – which are pretty self explanatory. 08/23/2011 09:46:41.85    w3wp.exe (0x1724)    0x0FC0    Project Server    General    g7ls    Exception    System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Interfaces.DefaultServerFault]: The databases are out of the range of compatibility, upgrade your databases. (Fault Detail is equal to Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Interfaces.DefaultServerFault).    fe5f9380-1f54-4021-a6a2-5fe7d3e321e8 08/23/2011 09:46:41.85    w3wp.exe (0x1724)    0x0FC0    SharePoint Foundation    Runtime    tkau    Unexpected    System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Interfaces.DefaultServerFault, Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Communications, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c]]: The databases are out of the range of compatibility, upgrade your databases.   Server stack trace:      at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.HandleReply(ProxyOperationRuntime operation, ProxyRpc& rpc) … So to answer the question in the title – No, you cannot delay the running of the configuration wizard if you are using Project Server if there are database updates required in the particular patch you have loaded.  Not every CU will require database changes – but rememeber these are cumulative, so the need for the database update will also depend at what level your server is when applying the patch. 

Just for reference – I have added the April and June CU information, and some notes around SP1 versions, to the on-going blog post at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/brismith/archive/2010/09/23/how-to-tell-which-cumulative-update-hotfix-or-service-pack-version-of-project-server-2010-and-project-2010-you-are-running.aspx .

Better late than never.  We realized (with a nudge from Treb) that we hadn’t posted the normal announcement – so now we have – over at Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint 2007 and 2010 June CU 2011 announcement .

A bit of fun for Friday afternoon.  A question came via the forums on the subject of Portfolio Analysis in Project Server 2010 and how a decision would be made on the allocation of resources if the projects had exactly the same priority.  Firstly there is no real optimization logic in the resourcing part of the analysis – most of the heavy lifting happens in the cost analysis – where other metrics can also be taken into account.  In terms of the resourcing this just happens in order of priority – so the top project gets resourced, then the next, and so on.  For any project where there is insufficient of any type of resource then that gets forced out.  But what if you have equal priority projects?  In truth the Portfolio Manager would probably make the call and force in or out appropriately – but it is still technically interesting to know how it happens (well I wanted to know anyway…) I had a play around with this today. So in my scenario I was also interested in seeing how equal cost choices were differentiated as well as equal priority ones chosen to get resourced. And the interesting result is that each appears to make the choice in the totally opposite way! If I have 4 projects of equal cost and equal priority then the order of selection if the budget is not available to do all of them is carried out in the order of their GUIDs (PROJ_UID from the SQL Server database table MSP_PROJECT) – but not in the strict order that SQL might use – that sorts by the lowest order grouping of the last 6 bytes, but in the more straightforward left to right order of the hexadecimal characters. As an example – SQL Server would put D741FE6E-D426-4A41-8BCC-370FDE23A3E4 before 6EDBF314-BFAE-4838-8CBC-6B95E91EC0C5 based on the last group (37.. before 6B..) but the order the Portfolio Analysis uses would take 6E… before D7… So almost random, unless you happen to know (and care) what your GUIDs are. Now on to the resourcing. This happens in entirely the opposite order. So the ‘highest’ value of GUID (still using the full left to right logic) will get resourced first and the lowest gets resourced last. Again – it is really irrelevant how this happens and I’d guess you’d be forcing things in and out based on other criteria rather than some random 32 character hexadecimal string. If you are keeping up – or slightly ahead of me – this opens up an interesting paradox. If I have 4 projects that have equal cost ($20,000 each) and equal priority – and I have a budget of $80,000 – but they each require a resource that I only have one of – then the project with the highest GUID will get selected for resourcing! However, if my budget is just $79,000 then that very same project would be the one that was rejected at the cost analysis stage – leaving the next highest to get resourced!