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This Week in BPOS News 5/27

This week in BPOS news is a recurring segment on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog that covers news from all sectors of Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Online Services business suite known as the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). You can read all past This Week in BPOS News segments here. For this week in BPOS news we feature a video that will help customers prepare for the Cloud productivity evolution, and we learn about the newest city that went to the Cloud with Microsoft. 1.      What Do Existing BPOS Customers Need to Do to Prepare for Microsoft Office 365?    Our first BPOS story comes to us in video form from Channel 9 . The video embedded below dives into what Office 365 will offer BPOS users and how customers can prepare for the evolution in Cloud productivity software.  What are your thoughts about the video? Are you ready for Office 365? Leave your comments below. 2.      Why Winston-Salem Chose Exchange Online Our second BPOS story focuses on the competition in the Cloud and why the city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina has chosen to move to the Cloud with Microsoft. Author Shane O’Neill, from CIO.com , writes a great article about Winston-Salem’s recent decision and notes some very interesting reasons for their move to the cloud. The first reason that is mentioned from the article is costs. Shane states that “with tighter budgets than most corporations, government agencies have been the first wave of cloud adopters.” The Cloud is seen as a way to cut costs for governments versus constantly updating and maintaining local machines. Winston-Salem is deploying 2,700 seats. Most users will have fully functional desktops, and the Cloud allows for 600 “deskless” workers that don’t need the full capacity of tools. The Cloud allows Winston-Salem to maximize their dollars and cents. It’s an exciting time for the government sector and the Cloud. San Francisco also joined Winston-Salem in the Cloud with Microsoft. What do you think of local governments moving to the cloud? What benefits do you see from cities moving to the Cloud with Microsoft? We would love to hear your thoughts below. What are your thoughts about the stories we shared with you this week? Did you see a story you want to share with us? Let us know what other topics you’d like to see. You can comment on this blog post or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.  

Multi-Browser Support for time entry in Project Server 2010

Yes, as announced last week as part of Project Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) on the main Project blog: Announcing Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Project & Project Server 2010 one of the new innovation of SP1 is the ability to do timesheet in your favorite browser as shown below (all tests were run on Windows Server 2008 R2 + SP1). Happy time sheeting! Timesheet In Internet Explorer (IE) Entering timesheet time in FireFox Entering more timesheet time in Chrome and submit Take you pick!

See you at SPTechCon in Boston next week! We’ll have great Project Giveaways :)

Following this post: I am speaking at SPTechCon in Boston June 1-3, register! @SPTechCon , I’m happy to announce that in addition to the sessions we will be having a special next Wednesday (June 1st) from 5:15 to 7:00pm. Beside a great presentation & demos from Dux Raymond from Innovative-e and Scott Jamison from Jornata , we’ll be giving away great giveaways including 10 copies of Project Professional 2010 (yes we can!), books, 16GB USB keys and more… More information can be found here: https://www.sptechcon.com/Boston2011/specialevents.html So don’t miss out and register!

Save the dates Tech.Ed 2012 North America and Europe

For those of you that did not attend Tech.Ed last week in Atlanta (it was an awesome week!), please note the following two key dates next year: Tech.Ed North America 2012 : June 11-14, 2012 in Orlando, Florida Tech.Ed Europe 2012 : June 25-29, 2012, in Amsterdam Please see below two session that are publically available delivered last week: SharePoint Governance and Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Project Server 2010 Application Lifecycle Management: Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010, Better Together   PS: I really like the car above for some reason

Latest Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack videos & webcast

We have released recently a number of videos on the recently released Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack, providing an overview of the solution and demonstrating its key capabilities: Top-Down Planning of Business Requirements within an Enterprise Project using Team Foundation Server and Project Server Managing Project Details in an Enterprise Project Plan Mapped to a Team Project in Team Foundation Server Making Agile Team Progress Visible to the Project Management Office Managing Field Mappings for Integration of Team Foundation Server and Project Server Application Lifecycle Management: Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010, Better Together (Tech.Ed session delivered last week) Last but least, please book your calendar for this upcoming webcast on the subject on June 8, 2011 at 8:00am Pacific Time : TechNet Webcast: Implementing Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack from Siddharth Bhatia and myself.

Announcing SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010

I am excited to announce the release of SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010 produced by Jornata . Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 provides a vast number of capabilities that empower both business users and IT to create solutions quickly. For this reason, many organizations consider implementing SharePoint as a central platform to address a wide array of business solutions. For those organizations, it is likely that they will need a good way to track, manage, and prioritize those business requests. The SharePoint Lifecycle Management Solution with Project Server 2010 provides a framework and guidance for managing SharePoint business requests and includes two white papers and a sample dataset. This no-code solution includes: Business Decision Maker/Technical Decision Maker white paper containing a business evaluation of how Microsoft Project Server 2010 can be employed to help manage your SharePoint Lifecycle through enhancement requests and project proposals. Technical white paper contains step-by-step instructions on how to install and customize the SharePoint Lifecycle Management solution, along with basic instructions on how to use it. Project Server 2010 sample databases and templates that can be used to illustrate concepts. The sample dataset requires a farm that has a working installation of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Project Server 2010 fully configured (please refer to Project Server 2010 Tech Center ); and the Dynamic Workflow and Workflow Visualization web part solutions from Microsoft Project 2010 Solution Starters . For an overview of the solution, please watch this recent recording from Tech.Ed last week: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/OSP202 Last but not least do not forget to check out other existing white papers on Microsoft Project Portfolio Management offering on our Project site at https://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/articles-white-papers.aspx Christophe Fiessinger Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Project https://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie

New "From the Trenches" article from Chris Vandersluis: "Enterprise System Best Practices"

Project 2010 SP1 – Improvements to Project Scheduling in Project Web App

In Project 2010, we added the ability to create and edit project plans through Project Web App ( blog post ). One of the limitations though was that the only way to edit projects that contained Fixed Work or Effort Driven tasks was to use Project Professional 2010. We knew this was a shortcoming when we shipped and from the feedback we’ve received, we know this shortcoming puzzled many of you. Let me explain, essentially as we were getting late into Project 2010 development we realized that we weren’t able to stabilize editing projects that contained those kinds of tasks in the web environment. Rather than risk project plans getting corrupted, we chose to block the functionality and then stabilize it for SP1. I’m happy to announce that with Project 2010 SP1 you can now edit project plans containing Fixed Work tasks and Effort Driven tasks in Project Web App. Before SP1: After SP1: And proof that I can actually edit the plan: You can learn more about task types and effort driven tasks here . You can learn more about SP1 here .

This Week in BPOS News 5/20

This week in BPOS news is a recurring segment on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog that covers news from all sectors of Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Online Services business suite known as the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). You can read all past This Week in BPOS News segments here. For this week in BPOS news we learn five things that every CIO should know, and we watch some great videos on how people are more productive with the Cloud. 1. Five Things Every CIO Should Know About the Cloud and Office In our first BPOS story we analyze five things that every CIO should know about the Cloud and Office 365. The Microsoft Future of Productivity blog has a special guest blog post from Office 365 Group Manager, Andrew Kisslo. Microsoft Office 365 recently released its public beta, and there is no one better than Andrew Kisslo to walk you through the top five talking points from Microsoft’s Cloud. The five things every CIO should know are listed on the blog in the following order:

Trust Your Network Servers when Deploying a Custom Install

To allow clients to install a custom installation of Internet Explorer 9 from a network server, you should specify your network servers as trusted sites . Here’s how. Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag