Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Jscript error in adding two Project Server 2010 web parts in a single page.

Environment: PWA 2010

Issue:

I had a client requirement to add an additional Project Center web part in Tasks page. I used the following steps to perform this task

1.      Go to PWA and open Tasks page
2.      Click Site Actions >>Edit Page
3.      Click “Add a Web Part”
4.      Select “Project Web App” from Categories option. Select Project Center web part and click “Add” to the page
5.      Adjust your web parts location as required



6.      Click “Page” tab >> “Stop Editing” from ribbon.



7.      You get the following Jscript error “Object Required”



8.      If you try to send your progress using “My Tasks” web part, you can see all the commands within the ribbon of “Tasks” tab are grayed out because of the JS script error.




Solution:

To fix the issue (work around), you need to follow the five steps (i.e. 1 – 5) as mentioned above and rather than clicking “Stop Editing”, click any available link (e.g. click Project Center link) to get the page out from the Edit mode. Now the web parts within this page is working all set without any JScript error. For some unknown reason, clicking “Stop Editing” button is causing the Jscript error.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Accessing Issue in opening the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration site from the User computer other than the Server itself

Issue

Server OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 –Enterprise version
Environment: MS EPM 2010

After the installation of SharePoint/Project Server 2010 software, when I tried to access SharePoint Central Administration site from my computer, the IE browser displayed the blank screen (see Fig-A). However, I had no problem in accessing the Central Admin site on the server. Keep in mind, I am using port # 999 not default port # i.e. 80.



                                                               (Fig - A)

Solution:
In Windows Server 2008 operating system, Microsoft introduced more security and restricted in accessing any SharePoint site which is not on port# 80 (Default port), by default. In Windows server 2003, you can access any sites hosted on different ports number without any issue as there were no restrictions.

Here are the following steps to access Central admin from any user computer



Steps:
  1. Login to your server.
  2. Click Start>> Administration Tools >> Server Manager
  3. Expand Configuration option available under Server Manager on the left pane (see Fig – B)
  4. (Fig -B)
  5. Select “Inbound Rules” available under “Windows Firewalls with Advanced Security” (an option of Configuration) – See Fig C
  6.                          
                                                        ( Fig – C )
     Create a new Inbound rule by clicking “New Rule”. You can see this option on the top of the right site (See Fig – D)
                                                                        (Fig - D)
        6.    Under “Rule Type” step, select  Port “option and click Next (See Fig –E)
    Fig – E )
        7.     Under  Protocol and Port” step, select “TCP” &“Specific local ports” option and enter port number 999 as an example (See Fig – F) and click Next
    (Fig – F)
    8-      Under “Action” step, choose “Allow the connection” option and click Next (see Fig –G)
                                                                         (  Fig – G )
    9-           9. Under “Profile” step, select all the available options and click Next (See Fig –H)
                                                                           ( Fig - H )
     10.    In the last “Action” step, enter any desired name (e.g. Microsoft Project Server 2010 Central Administration) of the rule and click Finish (See Fig –I)
                                                                        (See Fig – I)
    After following all the mentioned steps, you would be able to open Central Administration site without any issue. Thanks to my good buddy and colleague “Somesh Janjirala” who rightly informed me about this.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Accessing Issues in opening the project details page in PWA 2010 for Team Members group:

Issue: 
Team Members get “access denied” error (see error screenshot below) and are not able to open Project details page (PDP) or Schedule of a selected project from Project Center.


Resolution:
There is a restriction in 2010 version. In PWA 2007, team members were able to see the project detailed schedule after clicking the project link in Project Center without any issue. In PWA 2010, we use Enterprise project templates (EPT) during creation of a new project. That EPT can consist of multiple PDPs. Here in this default EPT, we have 2 PDPs (Project Details & Schedule). This Project Detail PDP shows the custom project level fields information and it is the same what we had  “Edit Project Properties”  button in PWA 2007 project center  to view or edit project custom level  fields by Project managers. In 2010, the Project schedule PDP is a part of default ETP, so TM needs to have at least “Open Project” permission to access the page.
Steps:
1-      Go to PWA main site and click Server Settings
2-      Click Manager group and select Team Members Group
3-      Click “My Tasks” category and turn on “Open Project” permission (see screenshot below)


Note:
A team member can open a schedule in MS Project Professional if TM has this “Open Project” permission. If your organization does not want TM group to have access the schedule in Project Pro, you can easily disallowed  “Log on to Project Server via Project Professional" permission for Team Member group so no one can access schedule via MS Project at all.

Friday, September 2, 2011

JScript error in My Tasks page in PWA 2010

Environment: Project Server 2010 (Tasks page)

Issue:

After successfully migration of Project Server 2007 data into the Project Server 2010 version, I got a JS error when I try to enter date in Actual Finish Date field or any other date field (see attached screen shot) and in result, I was not able to enter any information.




Solution:

For some unknown reason, the "Tasks" page generated this error after migration 2007 version data. Following steps need to follow to fix this error

  1. Go to Central Administration
  2. Click Manage Service Applications >>Project Server Service Application
  3. Delete the specific PWA instance
  4. Create again with same "Project Web App Path" name and use the same existing four Project Server databases
  5. After Provisioned, go to Tasks page , you will not get any more the sepcific error mentioned above.
Cheers!

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Issues in line and Bar chart in SSRS report (Project Server 2007) after migration from 2005 to 2008 version

Issue:

After converting my reports (created in 2005 version) to SSRS 2008, one of my reports had an issue on X- axis with line and bar charts disappearing values on randomly basis (see screen shot). This report shows MS Project schedule tasks information with time line showing in Gantt chart. Initially, I thought that it will be resolved after updating height adjustments but no luck. I realized that the Chart control's configuration/properties in SSRS 2008 have been changed what I had in 2005 version.



Solution:

After a couple of hours investigation, I found a solution that helped me to fix this issue as follows

1-    Right click on X-axis and click “Axis Properties”


2-     In the "Category Axis Properties", do the following

·         Under the "Set Axis Scale and Style" section, there is a check box named "Enable variable interval” displaying underneath “Interval” field, enable this check box
·         Enter “1” in the “Interval Type” drop down values.  “1” means "default" setting. Click OK.

(See the attached screen shot below)


3-      Run the report and it will fix the missing gap on X-axis and show the correct field as below





Note: Bar chart offers now dynamic height and width changes properties in the SSRS 2008 version which was not available in version 2005. You can create expressions to adjust height and width dynamically (i.e. on run time) based on the number of available data...I liked the new flexible Bar chart in SQL Reporting services 2008 BI.

Hope it helps!  

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Unable to build OLAP cube(in Project Server 2007) after migrating to SQL 2008 R2 Cluster

Issue:

Project Server 2007 environment migrated from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 R2 . Evertything worked fine except OLAP cube building process. It failed to recognize SQL Server Analysis Server that caused failure in building OLAP cubes.

Solution:

We performed the following two actions to fixed this issue

1.   Changed the client provider from 10 (SQL OLEDB 9.0)to regular SQL Native Client in making DSO connection.
2.   Added client SQL alias to each node of the SQL Cluster that SharePoint is using to connect to database tier and then cube gets process just fine.

Friday, May 20, 2011

How to retrieve comments, notes and any assignment level custom tasks field information in “Task update” page in PWA 2007?

Issue:

The “Task Update” data grid is hard wired and does not offer adding new fields for e.g. notes and comments. It allows changing column order but it does not save it and every time PM has to reorder the columns.

One of my clients wanted to get one page report showing all the desired information in correct order including comments and notes data(see attached screenshot). Project Manager was getting annoyed clicking each task link and seeing the submitted comments. In addition, there is no indication to show if a resource has submitted any comments on a particular task.


Solution:


I had two choices; either to extend the existing “Task Update” web part or to create a custom report in SSRS showing all the required fields data. I chose the 2nd option and created an SQL that fulfills my client requirements. The Project Manager/Scheduler would be able to see only his/her own resources submitted tasks information exactly the same what they are seeing in the “Task Update” page. This SQL runs on Published database.

Enjoy the SQL. I HOPE IT HELPS!


SQL Query:



SELECT P.Proj_Name,TSK.TASK_ID,TSK.TASK_WINPROJ_UNIQUE_ID AS 'TASK_UID',A.Task_name,A.ASSN_START_DATE AS 'START',A.ASSN_FINISH_DATE AS 'FINISH',

     (SELECT ACFV.DATE_VALUE
      from MSP_ASSN_CUSTOM_FIELD_VALUES_SAVED AS ACFV
      INNER JOIN MSP_CUSTOM_FIELDS AS MCF
      ON ACFV.MD_PROP_UID=MCF.MD_PROP_UID_SECONDARY
      AND ACFV.MD_PROP_ID=MCF.MD_PROP_ID_SECONDARY
      WHERE MCF.MD_PROP_NAME LIKE 'Actual_Start'
      AND ACFV.PROJ_UID LIKE A.Proj_UID
      AND ACFV.ASSN_UID LIKE A.ASSN_UID) AS 'ACT_START_VAL',

     (SELECT ACFV.DATE_VALUE
      from MSP_ASSN_CUSTOM_FIELD_VALUES_SAVED AS ACFV
      INNER JOIN MSP_CUSTOM_FIELDS AS MCF
      ON ACFV.MD_PROP_UID=MCF.MD_PROP_UID_SECONDARY
      AND ACFV.MD_PROP_ID=MCF.MD_PROP_ID_SECONDARY
      WHERE MCF.MD_PROP_NAME LIKE 'Estimated_Finish'
      AND ACFV.PROJ_UID LIKE A.Proj_UID
      AND ACFV.ASSN_UID LIKE A.ASSN_UID) AS 'EST_FINISH_VAL',

                       

((A.ASSN_WORK/480000)* 8) AS 'WORK', ((A.ASSN_ACT_WORK/480000)* 8) AS 'ACT_WORK', ((A.ASSN_REM_WORK/480000)* 8) AS 'REM_WORK',
A.ASSN_PCT_WORK_COMPLETE as 'PercentComp',TSK_SUBM.TASK_PHY_PCT_COMP AS 'PhysicalPercent', R.RES_NAME,RM.RES_NAME AS 'OWNER', A.WASSN_Comments AS 'NOTES',
(SELECT Stuff((
           SELECT  ',' + MSP_ASSIGNMENT_TRANSACTIONS_COMMENTS.ASSN_TRANS_COMMENT
           FROM  MSP_ASSIGNMENT_TRANSACTIONS_COMMENTS
           LEFT JOIN MSP_ASSIGNMENT_TRANSACTIONS ON MSP_ASSIGNMENT_TRANSACTIONS_COMMENTS.ASSN_TRANS_UID = MSP_ASSIGNMENT_TRANSACTIONS.ASSN_TRANS_UID
           WHERE MSP_ASSIGNMENT_TRANSACTIONS_COMMENTS.ASSN_TRANS_UID = ASGN_TR.ASSN_TRANS_UID
           For                    XML Path('')
          ),1,1,'') ) AS 'COMMENTS'


FROM MSP_ASSIGNMENTS_SUBMITTED AS A
INNER JOIN MSP_PROJECTS AS P
ON P.Proj_UID=A.Proj_UID
INNER JOIN MSP_RESOURCES AS R
ON R.RES_UID=A.RES_UID
INNER JOIN MSP_ASSIGNMENT_TRANSACTIONS AS ASGN_TR
ON ASGN_TR.ASSN_UID=A.ASSN_UID
INNER JOIN ASSIGNMENT AS ASGN
ON ASGN.ASSN_UID=A.ASSN_UID
INNER JOIN MSP_TASKS AS TSK
ON TSK.TASK_UID=ASGN.TASK_UID
INNER JOIN MSP_TASKS_SUBMITTED AS TSK_SUBM
ON TSK_SUBM.TASK_PUBLISHED_UID=TSK.TASK_UID
INNER JOIN MSP_RESOURCES AS RM
ON RM.RES_UID=A.WRES_UID_Manager
WHERE ASGN_TR.ASSN_TRANS_UPDATE_DATE IS  NULL

    
Notes: It does not show all the comments history submitted by resources that have been approved in the past. It shows only the current comments (one or more) which are in the pending mode.



Thursday, May 19, 2011

Welcome to my Blog!

Thanks for visiting my blog about Microsoft Enterprise Project Management. I started my career as a software developer and then got an opportunity to work in EPM domain with different organizations in their PMO as an EPM consultant. The purpose of starting this blog is to share my hands on experience in those areas where we need to do some customization. When I started looking for information on how to extend and customize Project Server & reports to meet the specific needs of my customers, I did not find as much as I wanted. I hope this blog will provide some good tips to you.