Do you find the Support WebCast transcripts helpful?
Let us know!

Note This document is based on the original spoken WebCast transcript. It has been edited for clarity.

LaDonna Carpenter: My name is LaDonna Carpenter, and I am the Technical Lead for the Microsoft Project Support team here with Product Support Services at Microsoft. With me today is Larry Block, and he is our Product Escalation Lead. Today we're going to take some time to discuss Microsoft® Project 2002, give you a product overview, and show you a little bit of an overview of the workflow.

The objectives (slide 2) for today's presentation include a very basic overview of Microsoft Project Server 2002, the system requirements, and the supporting technologies involved with setting up a Project Server. We will give you a demonstration or show screen shots of the process of setting up and configuring your Microsoft Project server. Then we'll also give you an introduction to Enterprise Project Management workflow and the Project Web Access interface.

Our agenda for today is (slide 3) first we're going to start with an introduction of the products and technologies that we use. We'll give you some information on getting started with your setup. And then we'll move into the installation and setup overview. We will then go into the workflow from the client to the server and how to move your data back and forth. We'll also then review the Project Web Access interface. After we've gone through all that, then we will move into the Q&A session.

Microsoft Project 2002 products (slide 4) are actually made up of three separate components. These components do make up the Enterprise Project Management solution offered by Microsoft. The base of the whole product is going to be Project Server. Project Server is a Web-based application. It is used for managing your enterprise organization. We'll talk in more detail, in a few moments, about the components involved with Project Server, but it does run on top of Internet Information Services (IIS). It uses a SQL Server™ database back-end. And it also integrates features that include SQL Analysis Services, SMTP, and SharePoint™.

Microsoft Project Web Access is the interface that any stakeholder in your project is going to use to access Microsoft Project Server 2002 information. It is accessed through Internet Explorer. It's used to access the data that's stored on the Project server. It does provide enterprise functionality, in that all stakeholders have the ability to view Project data without having Microsoft Project on their computer. It also provides the ability to track progress, and using the OLAP cube and the Office Web components you have the flexibility to do some reporting that was never available in previous versions of Microsoft Project.

The client is still Microsoft Project Professional 2002. This is very similar to what you would have seen if you have worked with Microsoft Project in the past. Project 2002 comes in two flavors, if you will. The standard version, Project Standard, provides you with basic project management functionality, but to take advantage of the Enterprise Project Management features you will need to use Microsoft Project Professional 2002. Connectivity to the Project server is built into Project Professional, as well as other Enterprise Project Management features that we will discuss a little bit later.

Larry Block: Thank you, LaDonna. Okay, to our next slide, the Requirements and Supporting Technologies (slide 5). What we wanted to do here was give you an overview of what we're looking for when you're using our product with Microsoft Project Server. A key part of this is Windows®2000 Server. We do, pretty much, want to make sure that the latest service packs are applied to the machine, so we don't have any problems down the road. Internet Information Services 5 will be hosting Project Server for you. Some things to keep in mind with this piece include that security and some things that you might have set when customizing a site might interfere with the installation of our Microsoft Project Server Virtual Directory within IIS. We also require Microsoft SQL Server 2000 SP2, and this is going to provide us with the back-end information for you to use Microsoft Project Server.

What we also wanted to do in this slide was give you an idea of other technologies that you can use with Microsoft Project Server to fully utilize the enterprise functionality within the application or solution. We have integrated with Microsoft SharePoint, which we will be discussing later in the presentation. Two key areas where we use SharePoint are with the ability to use issues or documents with your individual projects. Analysis Services is another feature that you can use, and like LaDonna mentioned in the previous slide, this is what we use for our OLAP technology when building our reports and things like that. Then we have the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which we use for Project Server notifications to update your resources and perform some other key actions outside of the application for notification.

In our next slide (slide 6) we're looking at Microsoft Project Access. Like LaDonna explained earlier, this is one of the key components for which we need to use Microsoft Project Server. The key things that we're looking for here include Internet Explorer 5 as the minimum requirement, but you can definitely use current versions of Internet Explorer. Licensing is required to access this, and the first time that you access Microsoft Project Server you're going to receive a prompt ensuring that you have licenses to access the site. For more information on that, you can go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/project/. And there is information on that Web site on how to acquire licensing. The next thing is to view information within Project Web Access we have .ocx controls that download, again, the first time that you access our site. Some key things that you're going to have look for or ensure is that the person downloading these controls has permissions to install them, and that they also download them from Internet Explorer by selecting Tools, clicking Internet Options, then clicking Security.

Then the next major key component or requirement is installing Microsoft Project Professional, and we have a Knowledge Base article (321382) that will demonstrate what's needed. Again, we can install this to most of the operating systems, going back to Windows 98. For any questions on that, you can check the Knowledge Base article.

On the next slide (slide 7), because this is a 100-level WebCast, we wanted to give you a very high-level overview of the enterprise architecture, especially if you're trying to access Microsoft Project Server through Project Web Access or from the client, our application Microsoft Project Professional 2002. Then going back to the previous slides you'll see where we incorporate the communication through Internet Information Services or the OLE DB provider; this is our mechanism for connecting to SQL. You'll see the SQL Server. And the stored procedures that we install as part of Microsoft Project Server help us gather the information quickly, making sure that we're presenting it in a fashion that would be available within Project Web Access. Then you'll see the OLAP cube.

From that point, I briefly want to go into the table structure and what you're going to see there. We have tables that are outlined specifically for Microsoft Project Server tables. Again, later we're going to help explain how we're populating these tables in the back-end and what data you're going to see if you need to go into the tables to review any type of information. With the Project Server Tables, that's going to be the "browser side of the house," sort of to say, with Internet Explorer. Project data tables are something that you'll be accessing when coming from the client. View tables are used when we're talking or speaking to permissions and other things that we'll be discussing later in the slides. And then there are the enterprise tables. Again, we just wanted to give you a high-level overview of what we'll be discussing, and just give you an idea of what our architecture looks like.

LaDonna: On the next slide (slide 8) we wanted to point out some resources that are available to get you started in your planning and implementation of Microsoft Project Server. The first two links are for the Enterprise Implementation Framework (EIF) and Enterprise Project Management (EPM). These are online Web demos that are available on our TechNet site.

The EIF is really intended more for server administrators, dealing with topics such as postinstallation tasks, configuring your SharePoint Project Server, configuring Analysis Services, and configuring the COM+ objects that are necessary to pull the data back and forth between the database and the Web interface. Other topics that the EIF covers include working with the Enterprise Global Template, methods of adding resources to the Enterprise Resource Pool, and demos of the Office Web Components and PivotTable® reports.

The Enterprise Project Management link is more aimed at Project Managers and how you can leverage Microsoft Project Professional 2002 to create new projects and save them into the enterprise environment. There's also a demo of our new Project Guide, which is a step-by-step guide that takes you through the process of creating and managing a project. There are also demos of the Enterprise Resource Pool, using the build team from Enterprise and Resource Substitution Wizard features, which are also brand new to Microsoft Project 2002. Then there are also some demos of the functionality for team members and functionality for your stakeholders, including executives, some of the things that they can do, as far as viewing projects in the Project Center, using the Portfolio Modeler and Portfolio Analyzer, and other miscellaneous features, such as the Personal To Do Lists.

Additionally, we have some links here for client-side information (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/project/project2002/default.asp) on setup and configuration (slide 9). Our TechNet and MSDN® sites contain the Solution Developer Kit and the Project Resource Kit. These offer a variety of information on deploying and customizing both Project Professional 2002 and Project Server.

The Knowledge Base article here (325956) points to the Enterprise Implementation Framework tools. These include an EIF interview spreadsheet, which basically covers everything that you need to plan and deploy your Project Server and Project Professional environment. It includes planning spreadsheets for skill codes and the resource breakdown structure (RBS), which we'll talk more about later. And these are used in many of the features of Project Server, including the Resource Substitution Wizard. Also, the tools in the Enterprise Implementation Framework include some information on evaluating your environment, how large your deployment is going to be, and some hardware evaluation for the type of deployment that you want to accomplish.

Larry: Thank you, LaDonna. In our next slide (slide 10) we wanted to speak specifically to hardware. Again, we can't say it enough, the EIF is something that is very vital in making sure that you have a successful deployment in the application or even your solution. Some of the guidelines that we wanted to look into are, we put an example here as to how big this implementation can become if you're using a Project Server farm. Meaning you're going to deploy this not to just one server but to many servers that are going to be hosting Microsoft Project Server. We also have a link to that information on TechNet (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/project/project2002/deploy/psvconfg.asp). Again, we have a lot of articles available on TechNet that will help you deploy this; you may see something in a Visio® diagram that shows some of the things that we've tested in the past, even through the beta programs. We highly recommend viewing this, especially when it comes to implementing Microsoft Project Server.

On to our next slide (slide 11), LaDonna mentioned that in the EIF what we're looking for is the RBS. We have defined new outline codes that will assist in the resource management capabilities. It helps determine the resources for what the Resource Manager can review or edit within Project Web Access in the Resource Center, and it enables skills to display in the Portfolio Modeler, the Analyze view.

Again, these are things that we're going to be discussing later on, when we're reviewing the Project Web Access, but again, we just wanted to stress this, as to some of the key things that are going to need to happen in the beginning. If they don't, you're going to have to go backward to make this solution work for you.

We also have the Enterprise Resource Pool. I believe this isn't new to a lot of people who have already used Microsoft Project in the past. We've brought this in with a database and our solution, so that you have the capability to use different types of resources, whether they're local or they're enterprise resources, or even groups, when it comes to building your Resource Management portion of Microsoft Project Server.

The next thing that we are looking at here is permissions. When we're speaking of permissions, we're looking at groups or categories. When we're speaking groups, we're looking at things like the administrator executables that LaDonna spoke about earlier. We have Portfolio Managers, Project Managers, Resource Managers, Team Leads, and Team Managers. What we wanted to do here is give you an idea of how many different types of people can access Microsoft Project Server, and then what they'll be able to access through categories. What we mean by through categories is again, who you are and what you'll be able to access. We have My Organization, My Project, My Resources, and My Tasks.

Again, many of these things will have to be set up in the beginning, so you can prepare the people who are going to be accessing Microsoft Project Server to either access information from the client side, meaning the Microsoft Project 2002 client, or valuable information within Project Web Access. An example would be cost. In most organizations you wouldn't want a resource to see the cost of something that's occurring with another resource, for HR reasons or something like that. We just wanted to give you a brief overview on what we're looking at for the Resource Breakdown Structure, the Enterprise Resource Pool, and the permissions when trying to access specific information, and who those people need to be.

In our next slide (slide 12) we're looking at installation. Before preparing to perform the installation, again, we wanted to give you an idea of the documentation that's available and that comes with the product, and the key things that we're going to have to look for when performing the installation. Again, we're going to go through the actual installation process and we'll give you some ideas of what the screens are going to look like.

Preparing for installation is going to require specific accounts with specific permissions, meaning that normally when it comes to accessing things, especially when it comes to SharePoint or a database, you wouldn't necessarily want to use the SA account, because that can open you up to security problems and things like that. What you'll find within the documentation is that we'll look at things like adding db_reader permissions to the SharePoint site and things like that. Again, we want to make sure that you are reading the documentation before the installation and that you understand the accounts that are going to be needed. We'll get into a little bit more detail in the following slides.

LaDonna: Okay, let's take a look at the setup process, the actual screens and the information that you'll be asked for during the setup of Microsoft Project Server 2002. The first screen that you'll see when the CD autoruns looks very similar to this (slide 13). You have links to the Readme and the Installation Guide that Larry spoke about in the previous slide. As he said, it is very important that you fully prepare by reviewing that Installation Guide before going through the setup process. Then we also have a link to the SharePoint Configuration Wizard. This wizard is something that you would want to make sure you run before installing Project Server. You can run it afterward. There is some manual configuration that needs to take place, however, if you decide to do that. Then we go to Server installation. When we click Server installation, that will start Project Server setup.

The next screen that we see (slide 14) is the type of installation. You're going to be prompted to select what type of installation you would like. You can click Custom or you can click or install now. One thing to keep in mind is that if you do choose or install now, this will basically give you the same functionality that you had in previous versions with Microsoft Project Central. You will not have access to the enterprise features. It will simply be an online storage and viewing point for your projects, but without the ability to share enterprise-level information and allow stakeholders to run those reports that are based on OLAP and some of the other enterprise-level features. Also, if you use the or install now option, Project Server will install MSDE as your database, which will limit the number of connections that are available to you. Also on this screen you'll select what your installation point is going to be, in the Install to box on this screen.

When we click Next, the next item that we're going to be prompted for is the Project Server database (slide 15). We're going to want to enter the database information. We can choose either Create a new database or we can Connect to an existing database. One thing to keep in mind here is that when we choose to create a new database, the accounts that are needed for authentication of Project Professional and Project Server are automatically created on SQL Server. If you choose to connect to an existing database, those users and roles will need to be created manually by running the Setupdb.cmd file on the Project Server CD. Running that file will create your database. It will also create two new roles in your SQL Server, the MSProjectUser role and the MSProjectServerUser role. You will then need to manually create accounts to assign those roles to. But if we choose to create a new database, those accounts are going to be automatically created for you and added to the correct roles. At that point we want to enter the name of the server, and we want to choose whether we're going to connect to that server using Windows Authentication or using a SQL Server authenticated account, such as the system administrator (SA) account.

The next screen that we're going to go on to, when we click Next, will be the Analysis Services page (slide 16), where we will enter the information for the SQL Server Analysis Server. The account that we use here must be a Windows Authenticated account, and it also must be an account that is a member of the OLAP Administrators group. The OLAP Administrators group is created on the computer where SQL Analysis Services are installed. If Project Server is on a separate computer than the SQL Analysis Server, you will need to install the Decision Support Object or DSO from the SQL Server CD onto the Project Server computer to provide access to the OLAP Cube information.

Larry: On the next slide (slide 17) what we're going to be looking at is the Web site to which we're going to be installing Microsoft Project Server. If you're hosting this on what we considered a "clean" machine, meaning that it isn't hosting any other Web sites, this is normally what you're going to see. You would see Default Web Site. If you're hosting other Web sites, you will have a variety of selections that you can install Project Server to. Some things to keep in mind when you're going through the setup portion include using static IP addresses and host headers, even if you're using Domain Name System (DNS) to try to access the server; you just want to keep that in mind when you're selecting this option to install Project Server and the Virtual Directory.

Then on the next slide (slide 18), because we've already selected the Web server, it's going to ask us for the information on how we're going to be accessing Microsoft Project Server. Again, we're looking for the DNS entries or anything you might have customized to make this solution work for you. What it's going to be asking for here is the information on how you will be accessing Microsoft Project, either the local intranet or within your network, from the extranet, through the Internet, or by other means of accessing Microsoft Project Server.

In the next slide (slide 19), for the SMTP information, what we're looking for here is the enterprise functionality for the notifications that we use to make sure that everybody is up to speed on what's happening with the projects, and things like that. Here you would have to supply the information for an already-existing SMTP server. The installation for that isn't too difficult; that's an option that you can choose when you're installing Internet Information Services. Again, the reason for this feature is to use our notifications and communications when using Microsoft Project Web Access, and so forth.

LaDonna: After we've configured SMTP we're going to go on and configure the SharePoint Team Services connection (slide 20). This screen is fairly straightforward. We're going to enter the server name. We're going to enter the Web server port, which by default is going to be set to port 80, and the administration port. The administration port, you can find where that is in one of two ways. You can go into Control Panel, click Administrative Tools, click Internet Service Manager, find the SharePoint administrative site there, and then locate the port in the properties for that. Another thing that you can do is, if you go to admin tools from the Start menu, you'll find SharePoint Administration in that menu. If you rest the mouse pointer on that, it will pop up a tool tip that includes the port number. Then at the bottom of this screen you'll be prompted for another logon name and password. This must be a Windows User account. It needs to be a domain account that is a member of the Administrators Group on the SharePoint Team Services server.

One thing to keep in mind is that if we decide to choose to enter this information later, in other words we don't have SharePoint installed yet or we want to configure the connection later, we will need to manually run the Pscomplus.exe and Proxyconfig utilities to create the COM objects and set up the proxy configuration information to make the connection work between Project Server and SharePoint. If you choose to enter the information during the setup process, those utilities are run for you. The COM+ objects will automatically be created, and the proxy information will be configured automatically.

After we've done that, we're going to be prompted for the client connection for Project Server (slide 21). We have two options here. We can choose Project Professional 2002, or we can choose the option for Project Standard 2002 and/or Project 2000. One thing to keep in mind here is that if we choose the second option our enterprise features are going to be disabled. No one from Project Professional will be able to log on to the enterprise. You won't be able to leverage features such as the Enterprise Global Template, the Enterprise Resource Pool, and things like the OLAP reporting. In general, if you want to use the enterprise features, we don't recommend a mixed environment.

Then the next screen (slide 22) is going to prompt you for an administrator's password for Project Web Access. Now, this is not to be confused with the SQL admin or the server admin password. This password is going to be used when you log on to Project Server through the Project Web Access interface in Internet Explorer.

Larry: On the next slide (slide 23), as in previous slides, what we're looking at here is what drive we're going to be installing this to and the free space available and required. If we're installing to a separate drive where the OS wasn't installed, or to a different partition, we have to make sure that you have enough room on the partition so that this is a successful installation.

In the next dialog (slide 24) what you're going to see is — as we're progressing and we're writing these files, writing the registry keys — something else that we do uniquely, and LaDonna pointed this out in previous slides: we had to select a SQL Server database and name it. What's going to happen is we're going to run several scripts that are going to populate the tables and the information we need to make sure that we can host Microsoft Project Server and access it through Microsoft Project Web Access. The scripts will take time, so please allow it several minutes, especially when we come to around script six. We have to give it ample time to complete the process. Again, it shouldn't be hung.

Going into the next slide (slide 25), here's our conclusion. We'll both be speaking this time. We just wanted to make sure everybody had a good idea of what's required for the initial setup, drive home the importance of the EIF, and stress that those are things that we're doing up front. Again, it will save a lot of time when it comes to setting it up. And if it isn't done, then you're going to spend a lot more time trying to correct the issues than setting it up the right way the first time.

After setup you should be able to access the Web site, Microsoft Project Server, through Project Web Access. Again you're going to receive several prompts making sure that you have a license to access the site and download the .ocx controls to access information within the pages.

LaDonna: As Larry said earlier, as some of the best practices (slide 26), especially surrounding the setup and configuration of SharePoint, one of the first things you want to do is make sure that you remove any host headers and static IP addresses from SharePoint at the time of installation. A general best practice would be that SharePoint really should be installed from the Project CD. If you'd rather start by just installing SharePoint, without the customization provided for Project Server, you can run Setupse.exe off the Project Server CD. A best practice is to not use an existing SharePoint Team Server site that has been set up off the Office CD. SharePoint really should be installed, as a best practice, before Project Server setup. As I said before on the SharePoint screens, if you do enter the SharePoint information at the time of Project Server setup, a lot of the configuration and utilities will be run for you. Again, you can install SharePoint from the Project Server CD by running the Setupse.exe, and then you would want to run the Stswiz.exe to add the Project Server templates to the SharePoint structure.

Larry: Going on to the next bullet for the disaster recovery planning, we don't have any formal documentation on this, but we are working on this right now. We do have some good means of backing up information when it comes to all components of Microsoft Project Server, SQL Server, and SharePoint. So we are working on that. But what we wanted to hit home on was that after you set up the Project Server solution the next thing that we'd have to identify is the disaster recovery. You spent all this time getting this to work for you. Now we have to make sure that, for whatever reason, if something were to happen, we can easily bring this back up and ensure that the solution is not down, and that it can be utilized.

What we're looking at here is, again, backing up the databases and backing up the documents when it comes to SharePoint in the root where all of this information is going to be stored. Something that we're testing and that we're getting this documentation together for is something unique to SharePoint, which is that we create the groups locally on the machine. That's something that you would have to keep in mind when it comes to disaster recovery.

LaDonna: That wraps up the installation portion of our presentation. Now we're going to move into the workflow (slide 27). To just give you a little bit of an idea of what we're going to discuss, the workflow refers to the way that the data is moved between Microsoft Project Professional and Microsoft Project Server, how updates are made and accepted by team members and Project Managers, how those changes are going to affect the project, and how we see those changes. Some of the things we will be discussing will be logging on to Project Professional 2002, publishing a project plan from the Project Professional client, reviewing the project plan in Project Web Access, reviewing and accepting new tasks that are assigned to resources, and then reviewing and updating the new updates to the tasks as a project manager.

Also, please note that just for the purposes of this WebCast we will be covering this information based on the enterprise information workflow, because the workgroup mode, which is very similar to Project Central, really has not changed from previous versions. If you're not using the enterprise features, you're going to get the same functionality you had previously in Project Central.

This slide shows you a bit of a flowchart (slide 28) of how the data moves through the task updating cycle. Where we want to start on this cycle is over on the left side, with the blue box that the Project Manager would create. The first time he saved the project he would want to publish the project plan to the enterprise.

After it has been published the publishing process will send the task assignments to resources. Resources then have a couple of choices. They can either accept or reject the task assignment, or they can choose to delegate that assignment to another resource, if they've been allowed that permission. Assuming they're going to accept that task assignment, the resource would be able to, at that point, update their progress directly within the Project Web Access interface. He then sends that update back to the project manager. The project manager obviously has the choice to either accept or reject that information. This is something that I really do want to bring out as an important point, is that the project manager does always maintain total control of all the information that is accepted or rejected into or out of the project plan. Just because the resources are allowed to make their own updates doesn't mean that they have control of the project plan itself.

After the project manager has accepted those updates, he then updates the plan. The project plan will be updated in Microsoft Project Professional. If those changes are going to affect other people, other resources, or other assignments, you'll receive indicators that you need to republish the plan or republish the assignment to notify other resources of the changes. For example, if one of your resources were to make a change that would push out another assignment further into the future, you would be prompted to republish that resource's assignments, so that he's notified that perhaps his assignment is going to start later than it was originally planned. If the changes don't affect others, then you would just want to save the plan. Then we have the soft link back to the resource's update, so that can continue its own cycle.

Some other ways that you can get task assignments into a project would be that a resource now has the ability to create their own new tasks. If you look up at the top of the flowchart, you'll see that the new tasks can be created by the resource in the Project Web Access interface and then sent to the project manager. Again, the project manager maintains total control over the information that is accepted into the project. He can choose to either accept or reject the new task from the resource. If the new task falls outside of the scope of the project, he doesn't have to accept that information into the project. That just gives you a basic idea of how the main workflow is going to go through the Project Server, from between Project Server and Project Professional 2002.

Now, let's just take a little bit of a closer look at some of the specifics involved with the workflow (slide 29). As we said earlier in the presentation, one of the first things that you're going to want to do is set up your users. That is accomplished mainly within the Project Web Access interface. Under the Admin page, you'll find the first link is Manage Users and Groups. Go in here and set up all of your users, determining whether they're going to use accounts that are authenticated by Windows or authenticated by the Project Server database. If you do use the Windows User Account Authentication, then when the user hits the Project Web Access site in their browser, they will automatically be authenticated and logged on to the site; whereas if you're using Project Server accounts, they would need to enter a user name and password each time. Also, there are some additional limitations to using Project Server accounts, such as that SharePoint Team Services requires Windows Authentication, which we'll discuss more in a little while.

Also, when you're setting up the users and groups, you have the permissions settings. Some of the questions that you want to consider when you're configuring the user settings are, for example, if it's a project manager, what functions must the project manager have available to them? Do project managers, for example, need to be able to create new resources, or do you want to limit that ability to resource managers or site administrators? Also, what access levels do executives need? Do they need to be able to view the SharePoint sites, or do they just need to have access to the Portfolio Analyzer and Portfolio Modeler, and perhaps the Project Center, to view the project online? That's something else you want to think about. Also, what items do you want the team members to see? Do you want them to be able to see all information within the project, or do you want to limit their access? Or do you not even want to allow them to see the project at all?

We also mentioned earlier, and I just want to reiterate, that you will be setting up the security configuration using both groups and categories. The groups, generally, will determine the Project Web Access functionality that is available to the user. In other words, you can pretty much equate that to, "What tabs will they see at the top of the screen?" The screen shot that you see here is really an administrator. This person belongs to an administrator's group and has all functionality of Project Server and Project Web Access available to him. The categories are going to determine more along the lines of, what data does the user have access to? Do they have access to all projects? Do they have access to all views within all projects? Or have we limited that information?

Larry: On the next slide (slide 30), going back to what LaDonna said, we need an account to make the connection from the client side. What we're looking at here is when you are initially logging in you're going to have to elect to work offline and select the connection setup options. The Account Name is something that you'll see on the next slide, and it is just the name of what you're going to be connecting to, or an identifier. The next entry will be the URL, and we had already done this in part of our setup. Again, depending on how you set that up, that will be the URL. We also have a Test Connection button. That will tell you, right off the bat, whether or not we have the right permissions or if something has gone wrong during the setup, and we cannot connect to the Microsoft Project Server site. When connecting, again, we're looking at two forms of authentication, whether that's Microsoft Project Server authentication or Integrated Windows. Again, Integrated Windows will automatically log in, whereas with the Project Server you'd receive a prompt and you'd have to provide credentials. Again, you have the option to set this account to be the default. If you select this when logging into your client application, Microsoft Project Professional 2002, this is the option that you're going to use every time, unless you elect not to do that, and you would then have to clear this option.

In the next slide (slide 31) you'll see we already established our connection and filled out that information. Now you'll see it within the list, when you're making your connection to the enterprise. You'll see that the manager is there. Again, you wouldn't see this dialog if you had automatically selected to log on using a default account. That's just something to keep an eye on.

Now that we've established our connections, and going back to the workflow that LaDonna mentioned, and even the architecture in previous slides, what's going to happen is that from your project plans you're going to have to publish this information to Microsoft Project Web Access. We call this publishing (slide 32). What we're doing is taking specific information from the project file, depending on what option you see here. Again, we list All Information, New and Changed Assignments, Project Plan, or Republish Assignments. What option you use here is dependent on the information that you see within Project Web Access. Again, after creating your plan and saving it to the enterprise, the publish operation is necessary if you want to see the information within Project Web Access.

One key note that I just wanted to bring up, again going back to how we're setting this up, is that how you publish this information depends on how your resources are going to report against it. Meaning that if you want them to report percent work complete, actual work done against the task, or hours of work done per day, this is going to depend on how you initially set up Project Web Access and the clients.

LaDonna: After the data has been published from Project Professional 2002, we can log on to Project Web Access and see the information in the interface in Internet Explorer (slide 33). What you would see when you would log on would be something similar to the top graphic. Logging on as a Team Member, under the Tasks section, you would see that you have new tasks assigned to you. Viewing those tasks is as simple as clicking the blue new task link, or you can go up in the menu options and choose the Tasks page.

After you have gone to that Tasks page you are going to be offered a timesheet area, where you can provide updates of progress. You can also view tasks in a personal Gantt chart view. Information entered into this timesheet area will appear in red until the update has been sent back to the project manager. It's always very easy to see whether you've sent the data or not. You have the option to Update All (in other words, I'm going to send all updates back to the Project Manager); Update Selected Rows (so only the items selected would be sent); or to simply Save Changes and send later.

After those updates have been sent back to the project manager, the project manager will log on to Project Web Access and he'll see something very similar (slide 34) to what the team members saw. Instead of a Tasks section on his home page, however, he sees an Updates section and sees that he has 1 task change from a resource. When he clicks that option he can view the Updates page, and he can see that there have been updates submitted by his resources.

Again, as I mentioned before, the project manager does have total control over the information that gets moved back into the project. At this point he's allowed to either accept or reject information that is submitted by the resource. When he chooses to accept the updates, those updates will be pushed into the project plan, and Project Professional will automatically open, so that the Project Manager can verify the changes and immediately view the effects of those changes within the project plan. After that update has been accepted, here's what that update looks like in the Microsoft Project interface (slide 35). Here that task has been updated, and the updates are displayed in the Gantt chart in Microsoft Project.

Larry: Now we're at the overview of the Web Access portion (slide 36). We've gone over a couple times why you'd want to use Project Web Access and what it will do for you in your enterprise or as a solution. We went into a lot of detail on the groups and categories and setting as much or little access as you want. Think of it as NTFS permissions on your regular system. So who you want to access what files is one thing that you're going to have to think about in the beginning, and then you set them up based on project management, team leads, and things like that.

LaDonna: Another way to think of it is as like Windows Profiles, almost as a profile, as to who has permissions to do what.

Larry: Right, so depending on the scope, those are things that you're going to have to look for too, in making sure that if you want specific people to access specific information, they'll have that capability.

LaDonna: Project Web Access is generally going to be used by managers and resources just to communicate task status and communicate updates (slide 37). There are also some additional features, such as status reports, that we'll talk about in just a moment, and some other general features that are available within the Project Web Access interface. You also have a fully functional administration area within the Project Server that allows site administrators to set up the security structure, which is completely customizable. We do have built-in groups and categories, but you can also create your own. Then you can also manage enterprise functionality from that administrative site, and then manage SharePoint subwebs as well. Also, the enterprise functionality allows you to share enterprise-wide information regarding resources and regarding projects, over an internal LAN environment.

Larry: We're going to give you screen shots of pretty much every option that is available, again depending on who you are when you're accessing the site. The screen that we're looking at here (slide 38) would be more for a manager role. On the page you have the availability to see anything that has been provided, whether it's status reports, new tasks, updates, and things like that. Or you may have issues that have come from the SharePoint Team Services.

We discussed SMTP in previous slides and why you want to set that up for notifications to happen outside of Microsoft Project Web Access. When speaking to notifications, we're looking at tasks, issues, documents, status reports, and things like that, so you don't have to continually come up to the site. You'll get an e-mail when you need to see something. That goes over some of the notifications, reminders, and things that you can set up that will happen through (in this case Outlook®) MAPI-compliant systems.

You'll also see the option to work offline. With this option you can view, edit, and save changes to your timesheet over a time period, so that you'll actually see it within the next view. If you select that option you'll have to enter a time period for what information you're going to be taking offline, and then bring it back online when you can access Microsoft Project Web Access.

The next option that you're going to see is the Tasks page (slide 39). Again, LaDonna went over this with our workflow, and what a manager was doing or what a resource was doing. You have a timesheet view. The options that you set up originally would determine what you'll see within this view, meaning that somebody can either enter information within what we call the time phase period, which would be on the right side of our view (where you can see the dates), or on the left side, so they can see percent work complete or what they've done specifically on a task, and so that we do not have to track it every single day. These are the views that are available, and that's pretty much it.

The next page (slide 40) is a location that you can come to and see which project plans have been published. Again, this will depend on what permissions you were configured to view when this was originally set up, in the beginning. Some things that you're going to see here are viewing options, depending on what you would want to see or even filter a group on. You have a little bit more flexibility as to what you would want to see in your view, instead of having to scroll through all the project plans that have been published or that you have access to. Some of the things that you also have the capability of doing are as follows. If you have the client installed you'll see in this view that you have Open in Microsoft Project, so you can open up the specific project that you selected. Then again, if you're making any changes, you would want to make sure that you're selecting the option to publish the new and changed assignments.

Some other options that you'll see include Analyze projects in Portfolio Analyzer. This is a quick query of information across the portfolio. With this tool you can conveniently view project and resource information in a variety of PivotTables®, charts, or both. The next thing that you have available is the Portfolio Modeler. This tool will allow you to modify project schedule and resource staffing to see the effect of changes on the project portfolio. You have more "what-if" scenarios that you can use, so that you're not affecting the original project plan. Then you have the to-do list. This is something that you can use outside of Project. It's just something like a reminder — it's something you can do with the to-do list. It's just a personal reference or an easier tool that you can use to take advantage of the functionality in Project Web Access.

LaDonna: The next page that we're going to take a look at is the Resources page (slide 41). The Resources page is really just going to be an area that you're going to use to view your Enterprise Resource List. This is going to be

a list of all the people who are available to use the project across your enterprise environment. Besides viewing just the list of people, you can also go in and edit some of the Enterprise Resource details, including maybe who that person's manager is, updating their skill sets, and things like that.

On the left side you'll see that there you can analyze the resources in the Portfolio Analyzer. You can view that information from here as well. And then you also have the ability to View resource assignments, and when you do that, you can either view that in a timesheet or a Gantt-style view.

Then we have the Status Reports page (slide 42). Status reports are simple, text-based, shared reports that are available to communicate information about project status. These can be customized. They're generally organized by headings. When you create a status report, you'll be prompted for the headings that you want to include. They could include things like "Hot Topics," "What's Going Well," and "What's Not Going Well." When your resources or your users reply to the status reports that you request, you can consolidate those status reports so that everyone's response to Hot Topics is all grouped together, for example. These can be automated and customized, so that users are automatically notified, through SMTP, that a status report has been requested. Or resources can also submit the status reports unrequested.

Then we have the Updates page (slide 43), which we've already viewed from the project manager's part of the workflow. This is the page that he'll get to when he clicks the Update Received link on his home page. When he logs in to Project Web Access, he actually goes to the Updates page. This is, again, simply a place for the Project Manager to view changes that have been submitted by the resource, update those changes, accept them, and admit them into the project. As it says here, it is more or less an "approval gateway" for the project manager to review the information.

Some of the other features that you have available include viewing any change requests to resource calendars that have been submitted by resources. You can also set up rules to automatically accept changes. So if there are particular resources for which you always want their changes to be accepted, you can set up rules for that, so that each time you log on to Project Server it will check for those changes and automatically update them into the project. Then after you've accepted the resource's changes, those changes will be added to an archive, so that they won't always be listed here in the View task changes submitted by resources page. But you do have an historical reference to go back and view past changes that have been accepted or rejected by clicking View history of past task changes.

Larry: Going to the Documents page (slide 44), again, this is functionality that comes with SharePoint Team Services, better known as STS. Without that capability this will not work for you. Again, going through publishing, and we didn't mention this, when you're publishing a plan and you're using SharePoint, each project is unique to itself. What we do is create a site, or what we call a subweb, for each of the project plans. When you come to the Documents page, you'll see Other Projects, My Projects, Public, and things like that that you can access. When doing that you can add specific documents to that project plan for collaboration purposes or even the life cycle of the project. So you can share information that way, versus what we had to do in the past, in creating the network share, creating our own site for it, and having to shift through all of that documentation. We have that functionality and it is a lot easier to retrieve the data specific to that project plan.

With the Issues page (slide 45), again, this is SharePoint Team Services, so we would need STS functionality for it to work. It's an effective way to improve team communication and track issues. We can associate it to tasks or projects, assign ownership, track progress, and other things like that, so that you can have an open communication or dialog with the project plan that you're working with. Again, you're using this as a solution, so you're not necessarily going through e-mails. If you're looking at the document and you have to communicate issues with that document, a project plan or anything like that, you can do that through this interface.

We're going to the Administration page (slide 46), and again, we've talked about this a couple times. We've talked about security, roles, and things like that that you'd need for some features to work. This would have to be done up front. The first thing that we're looking at is an option to Manage users and groups. These are pretty much at the point where you determine permissions that you're going to assign to a user.

The next option that you have available is Manage security. What you're going to find with security is, and we brought it up in the beginning, again depending on who you are, you can even set it so specific managers can't view other managers' project plans. What we're speaking to here are all current and future Project Server plans within the database, project views that are available, resources that are available, and Project Center views that are available. Again, there are a lot of things that would have to be done up front to make sure that, if you were a manager or a stakeholder and you needed to view a lot of information within Project Web Access, that you would have to set this up initially. Then going into security, we would have to create views, again accessing specific information from Project, Project Center, the assignment, the Resource Center, and the Portfolio Analyzer. You can create specific views based on your needs when accessing information or when other people are accessing information within Project Web Access.

With Manage organization, again, LaDonna brought this up, we're speaking to features that are available. When somebody accesses the site, that will determine whether or not they can access, as an example, this page or functionality or options within this page.

The next option that you have available is if you elected to set up SharePoint at a later time, and this page will allow you to make that connectivity or SharePoint functionality work with Project Web Access and even manage your subwebs, or even synchronize users and things like that. We have a lot of capabilities to help make sure that SharePoint Team Services will work within Project Web Access.

Going into the enterprise features here, and LaDonna mentioned this earlier, we're looking at features and things that we can do within Project Web Access, whether we're going to use Microsoft Project 2000 or Project 2002, who's going to be allowed to publish, and things like that.

The last thing that we have, as to what we can do, is Customize Microsoft Project Web Access. A key thing that we normally see, right off the bat, is the home page. We give you the capability to do some customization where you wouldn't have to manipulate or create an .asp page or do things in the back-end that normally we wouldn't want you to do, especially when supporting you, if you're having issues.

We didn't want to give you some screen shots for this, because these are some very basic things. Logging off (slide 47) gives you the capability, if needed, to log off and log on as somebody else. One thing you have to watch out for here is that if you're trying to log on using another Windows-authenticated user, we do have the option, when trying to log on, you would have to use Secured Socket Layers (SSL). But for Project Web Access you can log off and log on, as long as you have the permissions to do that, or at least the password.

Then we have help. That gives a brief overview of some of the pages, so that if you need a little bit more detailed information as to what some of these options are, or what we've discussed today, you can see that within help. Also, in a moment we'll give you pointers to other documents to help when it comes to Project Web Access, and more information on all the pages that we just reviewed.

LaDonna: That really wraps up most of our presentation for today, the formal part anyway. Just to summarize what we've talked about here (slide 48), initially we discussed the setup, and planning really is going to be your key to success in the setup and deployment phase of Project Server and Project Professional 2002 in your enterprise project management solution. Fully evaluating hardware and architecture, so that you know whether you want to just do a standard deployment all on one server, or if you want to distribute the deployment across several servers, with different components on different servers. Also, fully planning out your security strategy and how you're going to want to limit users to different features and different data. Then user education is another key. A little bit later we do have some links to our online training documentation that's available, the training courseware. Really, when you're getting ready for setup, planning is going to be the big thing, and also the Enterprise Implementation Framework and the Enterprise Project Management demos online, we can't stress enough how important they are to go through, so that you're fully prepared to deploy the Project Server.

The last thing that we've given you an overview of is just using Project Server as an Enterprise Project Management solution, fully utilizing the client and Project Web Access, and moving data back and forth between the two, and a general description or a general overview of the process involved.

Larry: Here are those links that we mentioned. What we wanted to do was give you an idea, based on our presentation, of the other information (slide 49) that is available to you and that might help you in key areas like deployment, and the Enterprise Implementation Framework.

We also have the setup portion. What we wanted to make sure of is that your setup will go successfully and stress that some key things that are going to have to happen. Again, when you're thinking about setting up Microsoft Project Server, and even when it comes to the architecture, like LaDonna mentioned, we do have some really good white papers that help when it comes to setting this up across several machines or even several domains.

The next thing that we have is usability. We highly encourage the Enterprise Project Management piece for Project Server, and we also gave you a link for this.

Then for additional information we listed some Knowledge Base articles (slide 50) that we've created to make sure that this is a successful solution for you and to make sure that you have everything you need to ensure success with our product. We mentioned our home page (http://www.microsoft.com/office/project/) in the beginning. Again, this is a central point that you can go to for any new information that's provided for Microsoft Project in most versions, even our previous version. Again, we talked about the workgroup functionality and things like that, and if you're not going to use this in the enterprise, we have another WebCast that from a little while ago that can help explain some of the functionality and features that you'll see.

LaDonna: That really wraps up the formal part of our presentation. I guess at this point Otto's going to join us again, and we're going to open up the floor to some questions.

Otto Cate: Thank you for the presentation. Before we jump into the Q&A portion of the Support WebCast today, I'd like to share a couple of quick program notes with our audience.

The Q&A portion of the WebCast is intended to encourage further discussion of the topic today. One-on-one product support issues are outside the scope of what we're able to address. If you do find that you need some more complex technical assistance, your best bet is to contact a Product Support Services support professional, either by phone or through an online incident.

It looks like we have a large number of questions. We have about 45 minutes to address as many of these as we possibly can. We'll get started here. The first question is as follows: Do you know whether there are any SAP connectors available for Project Server 2002?

Larry: I believe, for extenders, connectors or things like that, you can definitely check the documentation on the MSDN or the TechNet site.

LaDonna: The Solution Developer's Kit.

Larry: Right. I'm not too sure about the SAP, but I recall seeing a lot of documentation, depending on what you're going to do with the site.

Otto: Okay. Can Project Server 2002 be used alongside Project 2000? I know this was mentioned early on.

LaDonna: What's going to happen when you use Project 2000 with Project Server 2002 is that you will not have any of the enterprise features available to you. Most of the abilities that we discussed, as far as creating the subwebs, using the Enterprise Resource Pool to have one centralized location for shared resources, and things like that will not be available. If you're using Project 2000 with Project Server, you're really going to have the same general functionality that you had with Project Central.

Larry: Right, and there are options available within Project Web Access to make that happen. Again, in your initial setup, those are things that you would have to assess and see whether or not that's something you want to do, but that is an option.

Otto: Is the license for Project Web Access an additional cost on top of Project Server 2002 and Project Professional 2002, or does it simply require activation? Is that something we're able to address?

Larry: We can give a little bit of detail on that. I believe it's five licenses that come with Microsoft Project Server. For anything additional to that, such as if you needed open licenses or something like that, go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/project/. Then you should see where you can go to the licensing site.

LaDonna: To answer the question on whether is it a separate license, yes. The Project Web Access license is a separate license that would need to be purchased, if you need to go over and above the five.

Larry: Right.

Otto: What is the OLAP cube used for?

Larry: Meaning for the reporting structure and things that we discussed in our conversation, again, we wanted a high-level, but usually we use the OLAP for creating reporting structures and things that we haven't done in the previous versions. When you publish and you have the capability, if an administrator gives it to you, we build an OLAP cube based on the information that you've published. Then you can create views and use the functionality within Project Web Access to view this information from the browser and not through the client.

LaDonna: Right. One of the things that we didn't really have time to show you, because of the scope of this presentation today, was the Portfolio Analyzer and the Portfolio Modeler. Those are really where the information within the OLAP cube is going to be used within the interface. Especially within the Portfolio Analyzer, where you have an Excel-like PivotTable, that's actually the Office Web Component that pulls the data from the OLAP cube. So you can use pivots and create reports that were never possible in older versions of Project.

Larry: Right, and the Office Web Components would be a requirement for that to happen on the client machine.

LaDonna: Exactly.

Larry: If you don't have it installed, you'll experience issues.

Otto: Is there currently any integration available with Visual SourceSafe® with Web-based access to Source Safe?

Larry: I would say, at this level, we do have information like that. I'm not familiar with anything on Visual SourceSafe, but what we have right now is only available on the TechNet or the MSDN site, when it comes to doing any type of high-level customization with Microsoft Project Server.

Otto: We have a couple of questions that are similar. Essentially, a few users are wondering: If using Project Server 2002, is it still possible to check out project files and then work with them offline, like on a laptop, for instance? Then, after changes have been done on the offline system, can they be simply imported back on to the main server?

LaDonna: As far as what we've seen, no, there are some difficulties, and we've seen some duplication issues when we do things like that. The checkout process is really more of a safety step, to allow only one user at a time to work with a project. When you open a project from the enterprise, it will display as checked out, but that's really not the same thing as taking it and working with it offline. Larry, do you have anything to add to that?

Larry: No. I think some of the confusion might have occurred when we were explaining the offline mode of Project Web Access. The offline mode, that's more geared toward the browser, what reporting you can do, and things like that within the Web browser portion.

Otto: If Project 2002 will be sharing a server with another application, does it matter which application is installed first? There's no detail on what that other application would be.

Larry: It just depends on what the other application is. We coincide with and we have a lot of customers who have several sites being hosted, including Project Server. So it would just depend on what this other application is and what it's trying to do, especially if — like in some of these previous questions — they're trying to integrate it with our site.

Otto: I'm not sure which slide this is referring to, but the next question is: Which database creation method is preferred?

LaDonna: I think they're referring to the setup slide, where we discussed whether you're going to create a new database during the installation or connect to an existing database. Neither is really preferred over the other, but keep in mind that there are some considerations if you're going to create the database ahead of time.

As I mentioned on slide 15, if you do create the database ahead of time, the new roles will be added to the SQL Server, but the accounts that will have those roles will not automatically be given permission to the Project Server database. Those accounts will need to be manually created and given the MSProjectUser or MSProjectServerUser roles to the Project Server database.

If you allow the setup process to create that database for you, then you don't have to do any of that manually. It's all done for you automatically. The roles are created. The accounts are created. And they're given the appropriate role within the database.

Otto: In Project Central/Project 2000, you could either save the project in a SQL database on a separate server or you could save the project as an .mpp file on the actual server. Does that option still exist in version 2002? And if so, what are the advantages to storing all the projects as SQL databases versus MPP files?

Larry: In the past you had the capability to put this into Project Central or save it to a UMC or a database. When it comes to using the enterprise functionality, having it in the database is the best thing that you can do. We do have the option to save into an .mpp file format if you wish, from the enterprise, that is an available option. But a lot of the functionality and things that we do from Project Web Access immediately access the tables that we've already stored. In our previous slides on the enterprise architecture, and on the far right where we were talking about databases and things like that, all of that would be stored (as with the previous question) within the Project Server database. We still have options available to us, but that's the functionality, that's why we have to log into the enterprise, establish our connectivity to the database, save to the database, and do things like that.

LaDonna: To summarize, yes, you can still save to the shared folder, but again, that's going to be something that's going to provide you only the features that you had available in Project Central; there is no enterprise functionality.

Otto: Where is the DSO software located?

LaDonna: That is actually on the SQL Server CD. That's installed off the SQL Server 2000 CD.

Otto: Does Project Server 2002 require an installation of SharePoint Server, or is that optional?

Larry: That's optional. In our previous slides, when we were just going over the requirements, the settings, and those things, SharePoint was under Other, just like SMTP and Analysis.

LaDonna: Right.

Larry: Those are things that aren't really required, but you just won't be able to use the functionality within Project Server.

LaDonna: You won't have access to documents or issues, be able to link them to projects, create the subwebs, and things like that.

Otto: Can you install Project Server on a domain controller?

Larry: Yes. We don't have any documentation that says that you cannot do this. For security and other reasons you normally wouldn't want to put those on a domain controller. You have to think about what this domain controller is doing and how many people are accessing it. Then on top of that, you're going to install Project Server, which is a Web-based application. We have customers who have installed to a domain controller. Some of the things that we've seen that are common is that as long as you have Internet Explorer 6 installed and you're using SharePoint, we find that the connectivity between the two does work. But currently we have nothing that says that you can't install it to a domain controller. We just recommend that you not do that.

LaDonna: Yes, exactly.

Otto: This might be related: Why is it recommended to not use a mixed environment if you have the option to use a mixed environment?

Larry: I'm thinking it's Project 2000/2002.

Otto: Right, I'm sorry.

LaDonna: Again, if you allow users with Project 2000 to log on to Project Server, what you're doing, in essence, is disabling all of the enterprise features. Really, you don't want to use a mixed environment of Project Professional 2002 and Project 2000. Now, if you have Project Standard 2002 and Project 2000, that's fine, because you're not going to have the enterprise features available to you anyway, in that case. But if you're going to be using the enterprise features with Project Professional 2002, you don't want to allow access by Project 2000 and 2002 Standard users.

Larry: But, you can. There may be some confusion within the enterprise, where one person can access something and another one can't, knowing that this was done with a previous version, whereas the other one was done with Project Professional.

LaDonna: Right.

Otto: Would you recommend upgrading from Project Central 2000 to Project Server 2002 versus a new install?

Larry: It depends on what information. We have some information on that, even a Knowledge Base article, on migrating from Project Central to Project Server. Realistically, if it's data that you need and you want to use it, I would recommend that you migrate. If it's something that you're just starting from scratch on, it just depends on what you're looking to do. Migrating is going to take a little bit more time, but then you'll be able to get the archived information and project information if needed.

LaDonna: Right.

Otto: Are Setupse.exe and Stswiz.exe for SharePoint?

LaDonna: Right. The Setupse.exe, that's just going to install SharePoint without the Project Server customization and templates. Stswiz.exe is going to add the Project Server functionality to the SharePoint site and the SharePoint subwebs.

Otto: We're currently evaluating the use of Project Server, but we are mainly interested in the resource tracking and management features. Can you point us to some documentation that might further explain resource setup?

LaDonna: The EIF, the Enterprise Implementation Framework, would definitely be something to take a look at.

Larry: Even in our training documents we have specific lessons just geared toward reporting and resource management, such as building your team and things like that.

LaDonna: I'm going to flip back to the last slide that we had with additional information. The second bullet point with the Knowledge Base article 325846, that is the Project 2002 Training Courseware. It's actually four downloads. They're self-extracting files that expand into Word documents, and this is the full text of the training documentation and the training courseware that's available, starting with the very basic, which is assuming that you're new to the product, all the way up through the Project Management and Enterprise Project Management functionality. There is definitely some information available within that courseware that would give you good information on setting up your resources, your skills, your skill codes, RBS, and even walk you through those items, yes.

Otto: After a task is assigned and then delegated to another resource, can that resource re-delegate to another resource, therefore allowing a three-tier management workflow?

Larry: Within Project Web Access?

Otto: I believe so.

Larry: I think I understand what they're talking about.

LaDonna: I don't see why not.

Larry: Yes, I don't know. I haven't tried it.

LaDonna: We haven't tried that specifically, but I don't see why not.

Larry: As long as they have the option to delegate, then they can delegate it.

LaDonna: Exactly, as long as that resource has permissions to delegate. Now when you delegate, you do have the option to either retain the lead role or not retain the lead role. If you don't retain the lead role, then you won't receive the updates from the person you delegate to. But if you do retain the lead role, then you would receive the updates from the person that you delegated the task to. I guess I really don't see a reason why it wouldn't work, but we haven't specifically tried that.

Otto: Can a Project Manager not use the Web-based tool for editing and republishing, or are the Web tools used only for viewing but not editing purposes?

LaDonna: That's actually correct. I'll go back, if I can find the workflow slide. Everything that is in blue on this slide needs to take place within Project Professional 2002. The red items can take place within Project Web Access. You'll notice here that any manual editing to the project plan is still taking place within Project Professional 2002 and not Project Web Access. Project Web Access is simply going to be an area where your resources can provide status updates with progress that they've completed, how much work they have remaining on a task, and things like that, like status reports. Then as a Project Manager you can accept or reject that information. Accepting it would move it into the project. But as far as actually creating and editing projects, no, you still need Project Professional for that.

Larry: Right, but if you're publishing and expecting the updates to come from your resources, you would definitely have to update that to the project plan, or you might become out of sync with the information that's coming to and from.

LaDonna: Exactly.

Otto: With Project Central, you had to either choose to have your resources notified by PC or the Web, or you could have the resource notified via e-mail, but not necessarily both. Has that changed in Project 2002? And if so, is it compatible with Exchange 5.5 SP4?

LaDonna: The change is really that instead of the project manager pushing those notifications — what I think what this person is referring to is that in Project 2000, within the Project client, one of your options was to send notifications via e-mail. For those notifications, instead of being sent through e-mail, we're using the SMTP rather than going directly through the Exchange Server. But now instead of the manager actually pushing those notifications out, the notifications are subscribed to by the users from the Project Server 2002 Project Web Access home page.

Now, the other possibility is that they could be asking you to choose whether the users are going to use the Web Access interface or whether they're going to use the original workgroup messaging features. The original workgroup messaging is still available, but as in the last version, the workgroup messaging has actually not been changed or updated. Therefore, any of your enterprise features, again, will not be available if your resource is going to be notified with the e-mail – based workgroup messaging.

Otto: We have a few questions on this subject. The question is: Is it possible to send an e-mail from multiple project managers to notify team members?

Larry: You mean like dual managers, is that what they're asking?

LaDonna: I'm not really sure what they're asking.

Larry: I'm not aware of it, because the notifications and all those things are going to be from the manager. I'm not sure if you can have several managers sending the notification to one or many resources.

LaDonna: The thing is, within Project 2002 you have the option for a manager other than the owner of the project to come in and take ownership of specific tasks within that project, but notifications will come from the manager that owns a specific task. If Manager 1 owns Task 1, and Manager 2 owns Task 2, if the notification has to do with Task 1, it's going to come from Manager 1. And the same thing with Task 2 — if it has to do with Task 2, it will come from Manager 2. I don't believe that it's going to send from multiple managers.

Larry: Yes, we might have to take that offline to ask a little bit more on that one.

LaDonna: Yes.

Otto: Okay. Who determines the rights to each project for Project Web Access? Do the project managers have any control over that?

Larry: It depends on who has the availability to go to the administrative page. There is an option available to limit the access from one or many managers. If LaDonna and I each had a project plan, then depending on the options that they set up, they could see both or one.

Otto: Do project managers have the ability to create and delete users without having administrator rights?

Larry: Delete users? We don't delete users from Project Web Access. We make them inactive. If it came to resources and things like that, they would need to have permissions to the resources pool to make that happen, or even the Administrative page Clean-up feature.

LaDonna: Again, that's one of the options that's available when setting up the security structure, to either allow or deny the project managers the ability to create accounts.

Larry: Right, and I just wanted to know if they were talking about physical accounts within Project Web Access, or are they talking about accounts, meaning resources within the Resource Pool? But they would have to have permissions to do those things.

Otto: Is IIS enough for Project Web Access to work, or do you also require SharePoint for Project Web Access?

LaDonna: SharePoint is optional, as Larry mentioned earlier. SharePoint is only going to be required if you want to use the document and issues and you have the subwebs for the project. But as far as IIS, yes, all you need is IIS. You'll need a SQL database.

Larry: Right, and we can install what we need to make that happen or work for you, when it comes to the server extensions or things like that.

LaDonna: Exactly, and if you don't want the enterprise features, IIS is simply enough, because if you use the install now option and you don't want to use the enterprise features, we'll install the Microsoft SQL Data Engine, the MSDE, and set our database up on that.

Otto: Thank you for the clarification. Is it possible, on each tab or view, to show who is logged on? That question came in while you were going through the screen shots of PWA.

Larry: To show who's logged on at that time?

Otto: I believe so.

LaDonna: I believe that only shows up on the home page. And to do that on each page would require some kind of customization of the .asp. That would require some kind of developer code. I would definitely recommend that that person take a look at the Solution Developer's Kit, and take a look at some of the information on customizing the .asp pages.

Larry: But it definitely shows up on the home page.

LaDonna: Yes.

Otto: Is there a way for the project manager to delete his or her projects without being able to delete projects that others created? That sounds like a permissions per project issue.

Larry: Right, and again, it would depend. Usually what we like to see is, as long as the file wasn't saved outside of the enterprise, you'd delete the plan. Again, we create subwebs, and depending on the functionality that you're using with Project Web Access, you would want to go to the administrative page and select the clean-up option. Then you would have the option to check whatever project you want and delete it, for that specific manager. And again, that's assuming there aren't multiple managers managing that individual project plan.

Otto: Is there a way to rename the project after it's already been published?

LaDonna: I don't believe so. I know that is something that I've been asked in the past, and we have not found a way to do that without causing other issues.

Larry: Right, because other links are looking for it. I haven't tried it, but I recall that in previous versions, after you are within the dialog, then —

LaDonna: After it's published to the enterprise environment, really there's not going to be a good, easy way to rename that project.

Otto: How does one control the columns displayed in the timesheet view?

LaDonna: In the timesheet view, that information is going to come from customizing the published fields within Project 2002. What the user would want to do is go into the Tools menu, select Customize, and choose Published Fields. That's where they would select what fields they want to show or remove from the timesheet view.

Larry: Right, but if they're not available up there, I think we have something on TechNet that gives them an idea of how we use our controls and how to add specific columns and things like that to the view.

Otto: Can you give me a brief explanation or definition of what you mean by resources?

LaDonna: Resources are basically any person, group of people, or thing that is going to perform effort or be consumed. Within Project, we can define individual resources, like Bob, Joe, Sally and Fred, or we can define groups of resources, for example, carpenters, engineers, and plumbers. Another thing that we can do is define material resources, for example, servers or software, things like that, that are going to be consumed and used by individuals.

The Enterprise Resource Pool allows you to store a single list of the resources that are available to you to either perform work or be consumed on your project. You can store them in a single location that's available across the enterprise, and then as you're utilizing that person or that item, their availability is updated so that other users can see that, "Oh, that person or that thing is not available in that particular timeframe." I hope that answers the question.

Larry: Ultimately, yes, if you have a task that needs to be completed, an example would be our WebCast today. Currently, LaDonna and I are resources, because we had a task that needed to be completed today to present this to you. A resource is something that you would have to assign to a task that needed to be completed, that needed some type of action for it to be 100 percent complete, or to get closure on that task.

LaDonna: But, using Larry's example, additional resources might include the room that we're sitting in, the microphones that we're using, the servers that we're using, and things like that. Those might be considered material resources. So it can be anything that you would want to track as far as its availability, its cost, things like that.

Otto: Because there can be multiple projects on a Project Server, do updates go to the project manager for individual projects, or to the SMTP address set up when Project was originally installed?

LaDonna: Okay, I think the question is, "Do the notifications go back?"

Larry: When they're doing an update as a resource.

LaDonna: Yes. If you're doing an update as a resource, those updates go back to the project manager.

Larry: Right.

LaDonna: They will always go back to the project manager.

Larry: That could be several managers in one project plan.

LaDonna: Right, whoever owns the task that you're updating.

Otto: In the Project Center, how can you control large numbers of projects, over 500, for example? Is there any way to filter the projects that are shown, given that everyone in our company may have open access to all projects? Of course, some would be read only, in this case.

LaDonna: Sure, there are filtering options that are available at the top of the screen. You can certainly filter on a variety of fields. Your Project Server administrator can, under the Admin section, go in and create new views that include fields, as far as who the owner is, things like that, so that you could certainly create filters on any available fields. That's certainly not a problem.

Also, I would say that as a best practice, a better approach for something that large would probably be to use the permissions and the categories to restrict access to such a large number of projects. Because it can get very frustrating when you see this entire list of projects that you really don't need to have access to. They might want to think about implementing a security structure, whereas project managers only see the projects that they really need to see.

Otto: This question is a clarification of something I believe we have already covered: Does the system handle multiple resources assigned to a task?

LaDonna: Absolutely.

Otto: Okay. Is the To Do List something that you can maintain locally for when you don't have Web access?

Larry: The functionality comes with Project Web Access.

LaDonna: Yes, it's in Project Web Access, and that's something that's totally separate from Project.

Larry: I think they're looking to do something like that within the project plan itself, and they can use a text field or something if they needed to identify or do something with it.

LaDonna: But if they're talking about the Personal To Do List in Project Web Access, that's really going to be something that's going to be stored just within Project Web Access on the Project Server. It's really not going to be externally managed any other way.

Otto: With a lot of resources, we've found that the ActiveX® control may not be able to cope with such a large number of those resources. Any comments on how we can deal with over 6,000 resources?

Larry: I've had 6,000 resources, so I think we'd have to look and see whether or not it is really a limitation with the .ocx control when we're trying to pull all of that into the .asp page. I've done some testing where we've had over 8,000 resources. It does depend on the information that we're pulling through the .ocx control, but I don't have any recommendations. I'd have to physically see or work with that person. We would have to take that offline.

Otto: Okay.

Larry: It would take a while.

LaDonna: Yes.

Otto: That question might be better handled through a support incident. That way we can get a little bit more detail on exactly what kind of an infrastructure you're working with.

The next question: When a customer from another company is using OWA to access Project Server over the Internet, is he responsible for the client license, or is the responsibility with the company housing the server? Is that something we're able to address?

Larry: I guess within Project Web Access, you tell how many people can connect to that. If it's somebody external and you haven't purchased a license, then it would be the responsibility of the person linking to it. But ultimately, the person who is going to be responsible, I would think, would be the person hosting the site.

LaDonna: Right.

Larry: Even if it wasn't Project Server related, and it was some other Web site that required similar things, the person who is hosting it, I believe, would be responsible for that.

LaDonna: I believe the Web site that really addresses licensing issues is http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/. You might want to refer to that site to take a look at some of that information.

Otto: Can Project access each resources' calendar, so that you can see their availability before assigning deadlines, and so on?

Larry: I don't think they're talking about Outlook, are they? They're talking about the calendar that would be specific to the assigned resource when viewing the assignment information within Project Web Access, or something like that.

LaDonna: Right, and that's really one of the features or one of the advantages to using the Enterprise Resource Pool, is that you can view multiple resources' availability at any given time, so that you know whether they're available to, like you say, hit a specific deadline or not.

Otto: In my current Project Central setup, if I go in as the admin and I set the server to Single mode, delete a project, then set the server back to Normal mode, all the projects seem to be deleted from the Project Portfolio. Is that something you guys have seen before?

LaDonna: That sounds like a Project Central issue, actually.

Larry: I think he's just confusing Project Central with Server. Are they talking about the Portfolio? Yes —

Otto: Yes, Project Portfolio.

Larry: That would be related to Project Central and not Project Server. I haven't seen that in the past, where you delete one and it removes everything else.

LaDonna: No. I would recommend that this person contact support.

Otto: Are rules run against the server database, or do you have to log on before rules are actually run? For instance, will they run automatically without the Project Manager being logged in?

Larry: If I understand correctly, in the past you had to log in for the rules for that manager to run.

LaDonna: That's my understanding too, is that the rules will not actually be run until the Project Manager logs on to Project Web Access, so that they are connected to the server database.

Otto: Is versioning of documents supported?

Larry: Meaning baseline and things like that?

LaDonna: No, I think they're talking about versioning of the documents within SharePoint. The versioning features within SharePoint, if that's what you're talking about, are available only through SharePoint Portal Server, and that's not actually supported. The connection to SharePoint Portal Server is not supported, because of the way that we apply our templates. It doesn't really work the same way with Portal Server as it does with Team Services. You can save multiple versions of your project. We do have some versioning with the project. But not the document versioning that's available with SharePoint Portal Server.

Otto: Regarding Project Web Access permissions, do group permissions override individual user permissions in this case?

Larry: That's a good question. I think I've seen it go different ways, especially with the categories. It depends on what they've set up, especially with the template.

LaDonna: It would seem to me that setting something to "Allow" would always override, versus having nothing selected, but "Deny" would always override Allow. If there's a specific scenario that they're thinking of, they might want to call in to support.

LaDonna: Good question, though.

Larry: Yes, definitely.

Otto: I'm going to ask the last question that we will be able to answer in the time allowed. Our apologies to those users who have asked questions that we were not able to get to. Moving on here, the final question that we're going to be able to address today is: If I want to wipe out the database and start over, are the SQL scripts available for me to manually re-create the tables and stored procedures?

Larry: Yes.

LaDonna: Right, yes. That's that Setupdb.cmd that I mentioned earlier. Then what they would want to do is use some of the tools from our resource kit to re-create the connection from the virtual directory back to the SQL database.

Larry: That's the Edit Site utility.

LaDonna: I believe it's listed in the resource kit as the Site Editor utility.

Larry: We also have a Knowledge Base article for that (323021).

Otto: Okay, great. Thank you. It appears that we've answered all the questions that we were able to get to in the time allowed today. I'm going to wrap up our session. I would certainly encourage all of our users to take a look at the additional resources slides at the end of this slide deck for more information. If necessary, you can always call in to Product Support Services or submit an online Web incident to obtain some more clarification on your issues.

Keep in mind that you can always e-mail us at supweb@microsoft.com if you have any suggestions for future topics, or comments about the quality of the sessions, or even the WebCast program as a whole. That feedback is absolutely important to us as we continue to ensure that we're providing you the right content in the best way possible.

I hope that everyone has the opportunity to tune in again soon. Thank you for joining the show today. Have a great day.