How to add break line and a link in comments field in SSRS “Manage Subscription” page ?

Environment: Project Server 2007/ SSRS component integrated with SharePoint 2007/ iPad

Issue:


There is good news for SSRS developers/Admin using SSRS email subscription in Project Server/SharePoint environment. Sending emails (out of the box feature) using “Comments” field for email body (see Fig “A” below) is always excited but  a few restrictions like not using break line and link made developers very uncomfortable to sell this part. Keep in mind this comments field is a Text field. MS Outlook client was smart and considering any text as URL (if starts with Http://...”) but if you open the same email on Outlook Web App/Mobile/iPad, it shows URL simply like a text with no link (see Fig “B” below)

                                                                                                   Fig “A”

                                                                                               Fig “B”

These restrictions continue till SQL Server 2005 but luckily SQL server 2008 addressed this issue and allowed developers to use HTML tags in the Comment text field.


Solution:

As I mentioned that SQL Server 2008 allows us using HTML tags to put break line and links.  As an example, I will show the changes to achieve this result.

In Comments field on "Manage Subscription” window, enter the following

This week's Flash Reports are available. Please click the following URL to access the documents <a href="http://epmxxx.com/exec/default.aspx"> http://epmxxx.xom/exec/default.aspx</a> <br/> If you have any issue, please contact to Support group.

And you will see the following output on Outlook Web App/Mobile/iPad

 

 I am sure this is very good news to all Admin/Dev who want to use Out of the box features as much as possible and make their clients happy.

I hope it helps!

Unable to connect to Project Server from client (MS Project Professional 2007) - Accounts corruption issue!

Environment: Project Professional 2007 SP2/ Project Server 2007
Issue:

Last week one of PM brought up an issue in accessing his schedule using MS Project Professional 2007 in Project server 2007 environment. When he tries to login to connect with Project Server, he gets the following error

PM was not able to close this window as it freeze the MS Project Pro 2007 application. He first tried to kill MS Project application in Windows Task Manager but could not do that. Eventually, he was able to kill Project 2007 application from “Processes” tab by selecting WinProj.exe (as shown screenshot below)

When I tried to see the exact error, it showed me the following

Note: PM had no issue in opening any schedule as a standalone basis i.e. without connecting to Project server. This was happening only when he picks an account created to cnnect with Project server

Solution:

 After an investigation, we figured out that the account created to connecting to Project Server got corrupted for some reason. Deleting the old account and recreating a new account solved this issue like Bingo…

SharePoint Configuration Wizard failed after applying DEC 2011 Cumulative Updates for SharePoint/Project Server 2010

Environment: SharePoint/Project Server 2010
Farm: Two Servers (1 WFE & 1 ADMIN)

Issue:

The following error I got when applied DEC 2011 CU over an existing Oct 2011 CU

                                                  

                                                          

The following error I got when applied DEC 2011 CU directly in a new fresh environment.

Solutions:

Summary:

To resolve those mentioned errors, use the latest CU updates i.e. Feb 2011 CU for SharePoint/Project Server 2010. Applying the latest patch in the new fresh environment fixed the error and SharePoint Configuration was successfully completed, however, applying on the old existing environments that were previously patched with Oct 2011 CU updates, required to follow a few extra steps to get SharePoint Wizard completely successful.

Please keep in mind that we have no issues with Oct 2011 CU but looks like Dec 2011 CU got some issues.

I will show below all the steps in detail that worked for me in multiple environments with successful SharePoint wizard completion message.

Scenario # 1: Installed SharePoint/Project Server 2010 with DEC 2011 CU with the Configuration wizard was failed with an error message in the log file mentioned in FIG C.

Steps:

This scenario was pretty straight forward with no error message after applying the latest Feb 2012 patch as mentioned below…

1-    Installed Feb 2011 CU bits of SharePoint 2010 on Admin Server

2-    Installed Feb 2011 CU bits of Project Server 2010 on Admin Server

3-    Reboot the Admin server.

4-    Installed Feb 2011 CU bits of SharePoint 2010 on Admin Server

5-    Installed Feb 2011 CU bits of Project Server 2010 on Admin Server

6-    Reboot the Admin server.

7-    Run SharePoint Wizard on Admin server first with successfully completed result.

8-    Run SharePoint Wizard on WFE server first with successfully completed result.

Scenario # 2: Installation of DEC 2011 CU patch on existing SharePoint/Project Server 2010 environments patched with OCT 2011 CU with the Configuration failure error message mentioned in FIG A & B.

Steps:

1-    Installed Feb 2011 CU bits of SharePoint 2010 on Admin Server

2-    Installed Feb 2011 CU bits of Project Server 2010 on Admin Server

3-    Reboot the Admin server.

4-    Installed Feb 2011 CU bits of SharePoint 2010 on Admin Server

5-    Installed Feb 2011 CU bits of Project Server 2010 on Admin Server

6-    Reboot the Admin server.

7-    Run SharePoint Wizard on Admin server first. It was completed around 46% and it gets failed.

8-    Run PSConfig exe in command prompt (see the command below) but it is also failed with the exceptional error as shown below

Command:

psconfig -cmd upgrade -force -inplace b2b

Error:

9-    Run SharePoint Wizard on WFE server. It was completed around 90% and it gets failed.

10- Run PSConfig exe in command prompt (see the command in step #8) but it is also failed with the same error mentioned in step # 8

11- Run SharePoint Wizard on WFE server again. This time it was completed successfully with 100%. It will give the following windows messages. Use the same settings and click Next to continue till getting the final successful message window

12- Run SharePoint Wizard on ADMIN server again. This time it was completed successfully with 100%. It will give the following windows messages. Use the same settings and click Next to continue till getting the final successful message window

 

           

Installation of MS EPM 2010 application on D drive required

OS: Enterprise Windows Server 2008 R2
Activity:  MS EPM 2010 Installation

Issue:

As per company policy, all the applications should instaIl on D drive rather than on the default C drive. I was installing MS EPM 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2 OS by using auto SP installer. I need to find out a way to configure the server in a way to install all the application on D drive automatically.

Solution:

To set the D drive as a default installation path, you need to update a few registry entries. To automate this,  use the following steps

Steps:

1- Create a batch (.bat) file named "find_iis_root". bat and add the following commands

        echo off
        REM Following script is used to display the values in the registry for IIS Virtual Directory
REM Settings
        reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\InetStp" /v PathWWWRoot

     - Save the file. Open a command prompt and run the about batch file, the system will show C drive as the current installtion path.

       
2-  Create a registry file named "IIS_root.reg". This file will actually update the registry entries to set the default path in Windows server 2008 R2. Add the following command in the file and save it with the extension 

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\InetStp
PathWWWRoot = D:\Data\vroots

     (In my case, I set "D:\Data\vroots" path)

3- Create a new batch file that will be used to run the above registry file. Name the file as the same of registery file i.e. "IIS_root.bat" and add the following commands

      echo off
REM Following command is used to update the registry for changing IIS
REM default virtual directory settings. Open iis_root.reg file in Notepad
REM to see while key are being changed. Refer URL
      REM http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2008/06/10/add-this-to-your-image.aspx
     regini iis_root.reg
     echo Registry Updated

 - Save the batch file and run this batch file. This batch file will run the registry file and update the entries in the Registry file. Once you run this file, you will see the following output in the command prompt

               

Now it the time to test the default path. Run the "find_iis_root.bat" batch created in step 1 and see the following path i.e. D:\Data\vroots

                 

Note: Run the "IIS_root" batch file on the other servers (if you have more then one server in the farm) to keep the consistency in the path selection.

Not anymore User Name and Password fields available in Login profile to connect to Project Server in MS Project Professional 2010

Environment: Project Professional 2010
Issue:

In the new version of MS Project Professional 2010, the User Name and Password fields have been removed what we had in MS Project Professional 2007 version in the login screen to connect to Project Server (see Fig –A).

                                                              (Fig –A)  - MS Project Professional 2007

                                                           (Fig –A)  - MS Project Professional 2010

If a user needs to connect to server on different user id, he will have to log off first from the windows and re- login with the other user id. Sometimes this feature is very useful if a user is working in two different departments with two different roles and had two different accounts setup. In other scenario, if we need to test security on different roles, we login on different workflow ids to test specific MS Project professional functionalities right away by using those fields.

Solution:

There is no out of the box settings in MS Project Professional 2010 to get it back but no worries -  we can create a batch file (.bat file) with few commands to open MS Project Pro 2010 without windows login off. Please follow the below steps to create a batch file and open MS Project Professional 2010.

Steps:

1- Open a note pad and enter the following commands

@echo off

set /p UN="Username?   "

set /p DM="Domain?   "

RUNAS /USER:%DM%\%UN% "W:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\WINPROJ.exe"

2-   Save this file as “OpenProjectPro-2010.bat” on your desktop. A new batch is now being created as below

3-   Click the batch file to run from the desktop. Enter the asked information i.e. User name, Domain  and Password and in result, it will open MS Project Professional 2010  based on the provided credentials as shown in the following screen shot.

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.

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)

(Fig -B)
4. Select “Inbound Rules” available under “Windows Firewalls with Advanced Security” (an option of Configuration) – See Fig C
                         
                                                    ( 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.