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Please find below a summary of the Microsoft Project and Project Server presence at the upcoming Microsoft Tech.Ed North America 2011 in Atlanta, May 16-19, 2011. We have a very exciting content and speakers line up (see summary below); not to mention a full Project booth with experts from Microsoft product group, support, consulting services and Project MVPs. Last but not least, yes we will have exciting giveaways as well, stay tune for more information, in the meantime register and attend (point your manager to this page: How to Convince Your Boss ). See you in Atlanta in May! Title Description Speaker OSP202 SharePoint Governance and Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Project Server 2010 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 – things like new sites, workflows, custom applications, web parts, and Business Intelligence dashboards. Join industry expert Scott Jamison as he discusses the importance of SharePoint lifecycle management from an IT governance perspective. We’ll introduce a free, downloadable solution that provides a powerful request and workflow process, enabling IT to view, analyze, prioritize and resource requests using the workflow and portfolio analytics capabilities of Project Server 2010. Business users are able to make special project requests through a form in Project Web App, and project managers can monitor and assign resources, evaluate priorities, and manage their overall project portfolio more efficiently. Scott Jamison, Christophe Fiessinger OSP203 Application Lifecycle Management: Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010, Better Together The Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack further strengthens the Microsoft Application Lifecycle Management Solution by bridging the gap between Project Portfolio Management and Application Development. By bringing the best of these two worlds together, it creates a win-win situation that enables developers and project managers to use the tools and processes of their choice and collaborate at the granularity they desire. Bi-directional data synchronization between Team Foundation Server and Project Server allows the PMO and Development teams to share project information transparently and provide management with insight into resource utilization, portfolio execution and alignment with strategic objectives. This session provides an overview and demonstrates the Team Foundation Server and Project Server Integration feature pack. Ed Blankenship, Christophe Fiessinger OSP371-INT Best Practices Troubleshooting Microsoft Project Server 2010 Deployments Project Server 2010 is an integrated solution with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, and makes extensive use of Microsoft SQL Server – both through SharePoint and directly with its own databases. Troubleshooting requires knowledge of the full stack and the tools associated with gathering and analyzing data from each of the layers. This session highlights how these various tools are used in Microsoft Premier Support to troubleshoot issues and help resolve customers’ problems – and shows how you can use these tools. Brian Smith

While I was working on a demo VM, and similar to the Playbook tool ( Microsoft Project Server 2010 Server Settings Backup/Restore Tool ) I wrote this tool to easily export all the business drivers and impact statements from one PWA instance into a XML file and let you import them all (drivers & impact statements) into another PWA instance (few screenshots below). I have provided the source code so you can modify at will! You could also use this to backup a snapshot of drivers and impact statements at regular interval. I did not include prioritization but you could easily extend it yourself using the documented API in the SDK. This tool further illustrates how extensible the Project Server 2010 platform is. As usual please test this out on a test environment before using it production.

I posted a while back about Unknown Errors https://blogs.msdn.com/b/brismith/archive/2010/07/02/project-server-2010-an-unknown-error-has-occurred-in-project-center-resource-center-or-tasks.aspx in various places in project “&” here is another one.

For our latest BPOS Support series video we learn about the tools that administrators can use if issues arise when you or your users are sending and receiving email. Some of the steps in this video include how to check Microsoft Online Services for an outage, checking the MOS Service Health Dashboard, remote connectivity analyzer and checking inbound routing. The support video below should be in every administrators back pocket just in case an issue arises. Was this video helpful? Learn more about Microsoft Online Services with our other support and how to blog posts . What support videos would you like to see? We want to hear from you in the comments section below or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.

I am very excited to announce the release of a great white paper written by Andrew Lavinsky from UMT Consulting Group, entitled Portfolio Analysis with Microsoft Project Server 2010, A Guide for the Business User. This 132 pages document is an easy read with lots of figures and diagrams that will explain in details the mechanism and functionality of portfolio analytics capabilities. Start you download ! Summary: This white paper is a comprehensive user guide for the Portfolio Analysis module of Microsoft Project Server 2010. The intended audience for this document is an experienced non-technical user or PMO administrator charged with analyzing portfolios of projects within Project Server 2010.This white paper assumes that the reader has a basic understanding of the mechanics of working with resource loaded projects within Microsoft Project Professional 2010.This white paper does not address the technical aspects of configuring Project Server 2010 to support Portfolio Analysis, that is, any of the functionality typically found on the Server Settings page of Microsoft Project Web App (with several minor exceptions as noted). This white paper does not address the implementation of workflow to support organizational Demand Management practices, including discussion of Project Detail Pages or Enterprise Project Types. In other words, this white paper focuses primarily on the new functionality that is behind these three simple links on the Project Web App Quick Launch: Driver Library Driver Prioritization Portfolio Analyses High level table of content : Foreword Executive Summary Process Overview Preparing for Portfolio Analysis Defining the Portfolio Performing Cost Analysis Performing Resource Analysis Completing the Analysis Conclusion About the Author List of Figures List of Tables References

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 take a look at four companies moving to the cloud with Microsoft, and an upcoming webcast for Lync. 1. Microsoft reels in new Office 365 and BPOS cloud customers Our first BPOS story sums up the last couple of weeks of Microsoft cloud news. Microsoft has been on track to bringing new customers to the cloud with the recent announcement of four more companies making the journey. Shell, Manpower, Tampa General Hospital and Advocate Health Care all chose Microsoft, and InfoWorld breaks down each company’s migration story here . 1. Tampa General Hospital – One of the largest hospitals in Florida is making the switch from Lotus Notes to BPOS. 2. Manpower, Inc. – This large temp agency has 30,000 employees and 400,000 clients per year. By the end of this year, 80% of its user base will be running in the Cloud with Exchange Online. “That’s three years to migrate 30,000 employees.” 3. Advocate Health Care – This health care company will migrate over 27,000 employees from iPlanet messaging and Lotus Notes to Exchange Online. You can read more about this company’s migration in this Microsoft Case Study . 4. Shell – Beginning in April, Shell will use SharePoint 2010. Shell is already a big proponent of SharePoint 2007 and this upgrade with help increase productivity. What do you think of the recent migration announcements? Leave your comments below. *Image from InfoWorld 2. Voice, Video, and Data Conferencing with Microsoft Lync Are you a Microsoft Lync user? Have you joined us for a Business Insights webcast? There is still time to register for our latest Microsoft webcast and learn more about Microsoft Lync 2010. In the webinar entitled Voice, Video, and Data Conferencing with Microsoft Lync you will learn how to increase your productivity and reduce costs with Lync. This webcast is presented by Bhavika Thakkar, Lync and Exchange Product Manager at Microsoft. The sixty minute webinar is set for Tuesday, March 22, 2011 AM Pacific Time. You can view our past BPOS webinars here and other Microsoft webcasts here . What webcast would you like to see? Leave your comments below or send us an email at bposcom@microsoft.com . 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

Get an overview of how the formatting system works in Windows PowerShell and learn how you can manipulate its formatting settings for more sophisticated, customized output .

Don Jones demonstrates how to use profiles in Windows PowerShell to automatically load modules and snap-ins, define functions, and customize the shell each time you open a new session. —————————————————————————————————— Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag ——————————————————————————————————

Don Jones looks at how you can use the pipeline to chain complex commands , making Windows PowerShell more than just a procedural scripting language. —————————————————————————————————— Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag ——————————————————————————————————

The Office 365 Blog just broke some very exciting news for Microsoft Online Services customers. BlackBerry mobile BES support is now free through BPOS! Allen Filush from the Office 365 blog explains in greater detail with this blog post . More information will be provided later this month for existing customers. Be sure to check out his entire blog copied below. – Josh Topal. —– We have exciting news for Microsoft Online Services customers. We are in the process of updating pricing for Hosted BlackBerry Service for Exchange Online to make this service available free of charge.