Microsoft Office Project Server 2007/Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution
Technical Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Page title: Office Project Server 2007/Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution Technical Frequently Asked Questions
Keywords: MicrosoftOffice “12”Project, Office Project Server 2007, Project 2003, new Project Server/Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution, technical information about Microsoft Office Project, Office EPM solution, visual reports, Office reporting tools, Project Portfolio Server, PPM, portfolio management.
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Introductory sentence: Find answers to frequently asked technical questions about Office Project Server 2007/Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution.
On This Page:
- General Information
- Project Desktop
- Project Server–Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution
- Project Web Access
- System and Technology Requirements
- Integration
- Standards
- Deployment
- Upgrade and Migration
- Administration
- Security
- Customization
- Reports
- Financials
- Resource Management
- Technical Resources
General Information
Q. What are the applications in the Microsoft Office Project 2007 family?
A. The Microsoft Office Project 2007 family includes Project Standard, along with the fiveprograms that are integral to the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution: Project Professional, Project Server, Project Web Access, Project Portfolio Server, and Project Portfolio Web Access.
Q. What are the top future areas of investment Microsoft expects to make in Project?
A. Desktop
- Delivers great reports.
- Easier to get started.
- Control finances.
EPM Solution
- Gain visibility and insights
- Provides rich analytics and market-leading reporting.
- Easier to get started
- Propagate best practices for project work with enterprise templates to improve the project management process throughout your organization.
- Enterpriseready
- Manages schedules from simple projects to large programs.
- Extensible and programmable
- Provides the flexibility to meet your needs as your business requirements evolve.
Q. Will Office Project 2007add support for additional languages?
A. Yes. In addition to all the languages supported by Project 2003, Office Project 2007will add full support for Arabic and Hebrew. In addition to the client being Unicode enabled, Office Project 2007 will support Unicode for the desktop client to server communications and deliver full Multilingual User Interface (MUI) compliance.
Q. In what languages is Project localized?
A. The current plan provides localization for these languages: Arabic, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simple), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. Please note Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 is English only.
Q. What languages are enabled in Project?
A. The following languages will be enabled: Bulgarian, Chinese (Hong Kong), Croatian, Estonian, Hindi, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, and Ukrainian. “Enabled” means that the user interface (UI) will not actually be localized into that language, but that the English version and possibly localized versions for other languages are designed and tested so that they can properly handle data in the enabled language.
Q. Will Office Project 2007support the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) pack?
A. Yes, the Office Project 2007clients (Project Web Access, Professional, and Standard) will support MUI. Project Workspaces will be in only one language because those depend on Windows SharePoint Services, which itself does not support MUI.
Q. What is the offline strategy for the Office Project 2007offering?
A. Office Project 2007 provides both an online andoffline solution analogous to Microsoft Office Outlook.
Q. What file formats will be supported?
A. There will be no cutting of any file type reading from Project 2003, except for .mpx. However, you cannot write to the Project 98 format, nor can you write to a database of any type.
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Project Desktop
Q. What is new in Office Project Standard 2007 and Office Project Professional 2007?
A. The new Project features include:
- Budget Tracking
- Visual Reports
- Desktop OLAP Cube
- Multiple Level Undo
- Task Driver Pane
- Change Highlighting
- Background Cell Highlights
- Cost Resources
- 3-D Gantt Bars
- Hijri Calendar
Q. How does Budget Tracking work?
A. This means a manager can define a budget at a high level (program or project) so the project manager can allocate funds and track costs against the budget.
Q. What is the Visual Reports feature?
A. This feature uses Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Visio Professional to produce charts, graphs, and diagrams based on Project data. A user can define custom report templates to share with other Project users. These templates and reports can be previewed from a dialog box in Office Project 2007.
Q. What is the Desktop OLAP Cube?
A. Users can create customer reports or archive Office Project 2007 values with data exported from Project into a Microsoft Office Access database and OLAP cubes. Five cubes are generated: Task Time Phased, Task Non-Time Phased, Resource Time Phased, Resource Non-Time Phased, and Assignment Time Phased.
Q. What exactly is meant by Multiple Level Undo?
A. The user can reverse the most recent series of changes, that is, undo and redo changes to views, data, and options. This functionality also enables undo actions or sets of actions from compliant macros or third-party applications.
Q. What is the Task Driver pane?
A. This pane appears to the left of the table portion of the view. It shows prerequisites and resource constraints that drive the start data of the selected task. The user can click these drivers to link to the relevant information.
Q. What is Change Highlighting?
A. When the user changes data in the project, then all impacted tasks—such as dependencies and summary task—are highlighted. The highlights reflect only the most recent change.
Q. What is Background Cell Highlighting?
A. This function enables a project owner to change the background color of cells in the table/grid portion of the view.
Q. Is “cost” an actual resource type?
A. Yes, Cost Resourcesis the resource type for fixed costs assignable to a task. It more accurately monitors Project financials by assigning multiple costs to task, tying costs to account codes, and rollingup costs against budgets. Additionally, the costs are not tied to the work contours, so changing the percent complete or end date of the task will not affect Cost Resources. More predefined cost-related fields enables easier mapping to project accounting systems, such asEnterprise Resource Planning modules.
Q. With Multiple Level Undo, can users go back past the last save?
A. Yes. But users cannot undo the save itself.
Q. What are the updates on the Project Guide?
A. The Project Guide is not updated other than small changes to indicate new features such as Task Drivers.
Q. What is the difference between Office Project Standard 2007 and Office Project Professional 2007?
A. Office Project Standard 2007 is the latest release of the desktop project management program. As a stand-alone program, Project Standard enables project managers, business managers, and planners to manage and plan projects independently with familiar, easy-to-use tools. Project Standard 2007 is not designed to exchange data with Project Server 2007.
Office Project Professional 2007 is the desktop client that is used with Project Server 2007 as part of the Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution. Project Professional 2007 offers all the capabilities found in Project Standard 2007, and when used with Project Server 2007, it also provides powerful EPM capabilities such as collaboration, management of shared resources,and reporting across projects and programs run by different project managers.
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Project Server–Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution
Q. Has the architecture of the EPM Solution changed?
A. Yes. The architecture has a front end (Project Web Access thin client for Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Project Professional Win32 client, or Project Portfolio Web Access), middle-tier (Project Server hosts the Web Services API layer and interacts with the backend by means of a data access layer (DAL) and optionally Project Portfolio Web Access), and backend (SQL Server 2000 SP3a database). All functions are exposed through .NET using Web Services and managed code instead of ASP. All clients communicate with the server using Web Services, which are designed to work across the firewall.
Q. Has the core technology stack of the EPM Solution changed?
A. The core technology stack remains mostly the same: Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Project Server, Windows SharePoint Services, Project Professional, and Project Web Access, and new optional components from the UMT acquisition (Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server and Project Portfolio Web Access). The two new requirements are Windows SharePoint Services(version 3) and .NET Framework 2.0.
Q. What is the Data Access Layer (DAL)?
A. The DAL provides record-set and logical access to Project Server information. It uses ADO.NET datasets to ferry data.
Q. How will Project Professional communicate with Project Server?
A. Messaging will be directed to the server and SOAP over HTTP with the Project Server Interface (PSI) rather than direct to the database with Open Database Connectivity (ODBC).
Q. Will one Office Project Server 2007 support users in more than one language?
A. Yes.
Q. Are there any changes regarding time zones?
A. There are no significant changes to time zones.
Q. What are the new Project Server features?
A. The new Project Server features include:
- Programs
- Deliverables
- Assignment Owner
- Timesheets
- Reporting Data Service
- CubeBuilding Service
- Multicurrency
- Project Server Interface
- Event Model
- Server Side Scheduling
- Active Cache
- Queuing Service
Q. What are Programs?
A. Programs are collections of projects to accomplice a large objective. The program level supports KPIs, analysis, and reporting.
Q. What are Deliverables?
A. Project managers can create a Windows SharePoint Services list of items to which they commit dates such as milestones or deliverables. Other projects can then create soft or hard dependency links to these deliverables.
Q. What is an Assignment Owner?
A. This is the individual who has the responsibility for entering actual work or reporting progress against the assignment. For asset resource assignments, this will be a surrogate user. In Project 2003 only named enterprise resources could report their own time through Project Web Access.Now users can track time and assignments for other types of resources such as generic, cost, or material resources.
Q. What is new in Timesheets?
A. In Project 2003 the timesheet was mainly for reporting progress on tasks in Microsoft Project (task statusing). In Office Project 2007 users can enter times for more than Project activities and non-project time. Time can be linked to project tasks or run independently. Users no longer need an assignment and can capture time at different levels, such as against the project or account code level, instead of individual tasks. Full auditing will be available and if enabled an audit log entry will be created for all changes made when the timesheet is saved or submitted. Timesheets support billable/non-billable and fiscal periods. They are 100 percent HTML Web-based. Project managers can approve or reject timesheet independently from project status updates. Timesheets will track actual time worked and that will be protected through auditing. Additionally Office Project 2007 will be able to lock tasks and projects against further time tracking.
Q. What is the Reporting Data Service (RDS)?
A. The Reporting Data Service extracts data from the Project Server Publish, Working, and Version databases, transforms the data into a format suitable for end-user reporting and Analysis Services cube building, and loads it into the Reporting database.
Q. What is the Cube Building Service (CBS)?
A. Users access the CBS via a flexible UI to build portfolio analyzer cubes with more data options. Users can also choose what custom fields to include in the cube. The CBS consumes the RDS generated data and metadata from the Reporting database in order to build cubes for end user reporting.
Q. What degree of multicurrency support does Office Project 2007 deliver?
A. You can define an exchange rate table for each project. This supports conversion on task/assignment cost fields. Resources may have rates in multiple currencies. Reports, ProjectCenter, and data cubes are all in one currency.
Q. What is the Project Server Interface (PSI)?
A. The PSI replaces the PDS API. For more information please refer to the FAQ on customization.
Q. What is the Event Model?
A. Office Project 2007 includes a well-documented server side event model. Developers can extend the functionality by developing custom event handlers and associating them with events raised by Project Server. An event is a message sent by an object to signal the occurrence of an action, which could be caused by user interaction, such as a mouse click, or triggered by some other program logic.
Q. What is the Server Side Scheduling?
A. Now if a third party builds a frontend, they no longer have to have winproj.exe on each client asthe server contains the scheduling engine. This reduces license needs from Professional to a Client Access License.
Q. What is the Active Cache?
A. Project Professional will interact with Project Server through a local cache. It will manage replication of the enterprise global, resource pool information and project updates. Updates to the server will be message based and only use differences between files rather than the whole files.
Q. What is the Queuing Service?
A. The server side service queues work requests pending Project Server availability, which provides greater resiliency and use of server resources.
Q. Can multiple Project Servers talk to the same database?
A. No, they cannot,although Project Portfolio Server can report across multiple Project Servers.
Q. Can multiple instances that are part of the same Server talk to the same database?
A. Yes.
Q. Does Office Project 2007 have Archive functionality in order to exclude archived projects from reporting and other daily interactions?
A. Yes. Project Server 2007enables a ProjectCenter view to be filtered by default so that the view only shows certain projects. You could create all the normal views to filter out projects that had a custom enterprise field renamed Archived set to Yes.
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Category 4: Project Web Access
Q. Has Project Web Access changed?
A. Yes. Project Web Access requires Windows SharePoint Services(version 3) with all Project Web Access functions being Web Parts.
Q. What is the new Project Web Access?
A. The new Project Web Access features include an enhanced user interface, a recycle bin, list item versioning and history, the ability to track work lists then promote or publish these into full projects, and great access to desktop and administrative functions. Office Project 2007 streamlines the process for provisioning project workspaces.
Q. Will Project Web Access permit changes to the interface?
A. Yes. Formatting options will be the same as those for Windows SharePoint Services sites.
Q. Does the display name have to be the domain name when establishing Project Web Access?
A. No, it does not.
Q. Regarding Workspace Provisioning, will combined workspaces be supported?
A. No, there is no functionality for multiple projects to point at the same workspace.
Q. Where are the templates stored for Project Web Access?
A. In the Content database (the same project database as in Project 2003).
Q. The Default Site was always created as “Project Server.” Can users change that name?
A. Yes, users can now name this as they want during Project Web Access instance provisioning.
Q. Is there the ability from Project Web Access to print the graphical aspect of a Gantt chart rather than just the HTML printing?
A. No. In Office Project 2007, an ActiveX control similar to that in Project 2003 is used. Many investments have been made around Gantt, such as in Windows SharePoint Services, the Project Task List is being introduced. Alternate ways to render a visual representation of the project plan are being considered.
Q. Is it possible to create a Windows SharePoint Services template that can be used each time a new project is created?