Project Server 2007 End of life – Migration options to consider
Office 2007 servers and applications reach the end of its support lifecycle this year, which means there will be no new updates, no assisted support (free or paid), or bug fixes, or any online technical content updates. If you are still on Project Server 2007, this post is for you… read on! Project Server 2007 and related products like Project Portfolio Server 2007, Project 2007 Standard, Project 2007 Professional, will have no more support after October 10, 2017. You should start planning to move to Project Online or upgrade to the supported versions of Project, if you are currently using any of the above products. For more information about this product reaching retirement, see Project Server 2007 End of Life Roadmap. What does End of Life mean for you? You will still be able to install Project Server 2007 after the mentioned date, but because of the above changes, we strongly recommend that you migrate from Project Server 2007 as soon as possible. For your help, here we list a few things that you won’t continue to have it coming from Microsoft: Technical support for problems that may occur with the product at any stage Bug fixes for issues that may impact the stability and usability of the server Security fixes for vulnerabilities that are discovered and that may make the server vulnerable to security breaches Time zone updates What are my options to upgrade/migrate? There might be a lot of head scratching about what to do next if you’re still on legacy versions. You need to weigh your options – should your organization want to stay on-prem or move to the cloud? As a Project Server 2007 user, your migration options can be: Migrate to Project Online Migrate to a newer on-premises version of Project Server (preferably Project Server 2016) Take into consideration how you can cause the least amount of headache for your users. How Advaiya can help you? Upgrading from Project Server 2007 can be challenging, and needs a lot of preparation and planning. It can get even more difficult if you were not the one to setup and configure Project Server 2007 originally. Luckily, you can turn to Advaiya, a trusted Microsoft partner who has been helping customers with complete migration, implementation, adoption, and after support. We can help you to assess tour current infrastructure and requirements, and help you decide your migration to Project Server 2016 or to Project Online. We can make the process quick and easy as we have our own project management tool – AdValue – to get Project Online deployed rapidly and adopted broadly. Call us today!
Unlock the power of workforce data with HR dashboards and reports
We understand that consolidating data from multiple sources, tracking employee engagement, and bridging the gaps within team and management are some of the biggest challenges of an HR executive. With our custom HR dashboards and reports, you can have all your data pulled and presented in one place, visualized through charts, graphs, and other stunning visuals to spot specific trends and measure your company’s progress towards goals. Also, it helps you stay current by scheduling automatic data refresh. Click here to explore the live HR dashboard, and find out how the data filters automatically based on different parameters.
Automate project status reports and stay always updated
Get automated status reports on time and provide comprehensive and correct information.
SharePoint Approval Workflows with metadata made easy
This post talks about the solution to a problem when SharePoint 2013 workflow doesn’t work for document approval workflows.
Simplify project status tracking and save time effortlessly
Quickly share project information that needs your executives’ attention in one view with Quick Insight Executive Dashboard that AdValue offers. The AdValue quick start pack is built on Project Online to bring visibility and clarity to schedules, resources, performance and budgets across portfolio of projects. You have all the needed information for your team through role-based dashboards available to them at all times, so they can gain insights as the project progresses, and make informed decisions. Looking for further info on AdValue – Why not check out this video or read this page for more.
Five easy ways to avoid project delays
Fewer than a third of all projects were successfully completed on time and on the budget over the past year. Keeping projects on track when handling continuous change requests is a project manager’s greatest challenge. From the beginning, if the objectives are not clear, and right expectations are not set with executives, the client, or the team, deadlines can suffer. Project delays are frustrating and costly but can be easily avoided with a little foresight and planning. If we look into the reasons, missed deadlines, unclear objectives, and lack of communication are some of the common causes that can sabotage successful implementation of a project. Here are a few suggestions to avoid unforeseen project delays and efficiently handle large project portfolio programs. 1. Pay a lot of attention to project planning Planning is an essential component of project management and the biggest defense against cost overruns and delays. A well-developed plan in place lowers the overall uncertainty and risks. It would be a good idea to have customized Project Plan templates like Agile Development, or Software Development, specific to organizational standards, and detail out the complete project scope before starting the actual work. Once the scope is defined, get a sign-off from the client and the stakeholders. 2. Keep all information/ assets organized with a single workspace Ensuring that the team members working on the project are organized from start to finish can help in cutting down unnecessary time spent in finding out project related information. Have a central workspace that acts as a portal to store all your documents, track, share and collaborate. Customized project workspace for better tracking, information sharing, and collaboration. 3. Simplify best practices and automate project processes Setup custom process templates to increase standardization, help project teams and set the stage for the upcoming project. This ensures best practices across all projects and saves time and effort which can be invested in other critical project tasks. 4. Constantly track and measure the progress To govern the level of success achieved, the measure of progress attained is necessary. It is imperative to have quick access to all relevant project information and summarized weekly project status for informed decision making. Easy to create BI dashboards for team members, project managers, and executives, can help the entire team stay on track with their goals. 5. Notify stakeholders about overall project status and change requests Giving stakeholders adequate knowledge on the projects health status, team’s achievements and concerns can save the project from trouble in the long-run. The status reports help to raise important matters, discuss them freely and find a solution to issues before they get out of hand. Also, the stakeholders should be notified of any new change requests, the scope of the change, and information about what it will take to implement it. They can decide and take the required action to accommodate the request, without impeding the overall project schedule. Fast track your project schedule with AdValue. Advaiya has designed AdValue pack for project management to help you and your team use standardized processes, and quickly visualize and analyze project data to make better-informed decisions, faster. AdValue is a package you can install on top of your Project Online tenant that instantly helps you to get the most out of your deployment. Here are some of its many benefits: Insightful Power BI dashboards customized for Executives, Project Managers and Team Members Customized project workspace for better project tracking and collaboration Built-in workflow to standardize project management phases Alignment with PMBoK tools to manage projects better Quick and easy deployment to make you look like a superstar Extensible solution that can later be customized to specific needs Need more guidance on project and portfolio management? Write to us to discuss how we can help you and your team become more efficient. Want information about our project portfolio management solutions? Click here
Is your organization truly data-driven?
You are a bank manager. You discover the customer churn rate of your bank which has steadily increased. You realise a loophole in retaining the existing customers of your bank. To validate your instincts, you gather the past six month’s data of customers and hire an analyst to come up with the results quickly. But here is the problem. Analyst working on the project realises that the data has a lot of noise, is not captured at a granular level, is coming from multiple sources, not a single version of the truth and is also limited. Hence insights can’t be drawn at the required time. This results in loss of business. Does this scenario sound familiar to you? The reason behind this grief is the bank is not a data-driven organization. Is your organization data driven? Do you embrace data? Can you provide decision makers of your company with the data they need? Does your organization make business decisions with the help of high quality, noise free, granular data? Are all the data sources integrated at one place providing a single version of the truth? If your answer is yes, then congratulations!! You are indeed a data-driven organization. But if the answer is no, you should infuse analytics in your company. In today’s digital age, we are engulfed with an enormous amount of data. It is an acceptable fact that organizations who have the knowledge to extract insights and decisions based on data would be at a competitive edge rather than the organizations who still have not understood its value. We’re in a digital transformation age where data is more valuable than ever. Companies would only be able to have a competitive edge if they truly understand the power of data and promote the use of data in decision-making. Switching to a data-driven organization usually takes time, but hard work pays off. Constructing this sudden shift is a tedious process but this journey from capturing data to making it trustworthy ensures everybody in the company is on the same page with the most updated information at their fingertips. So how do you turn to a data-driven organization? Below are few points to get started: Information Management: Start capturing the data from the most granular level. Each single field should be detail-oriented. This ensures that every single detail of all the business processes in an organization is identified and stored in databases. Data Integration: Often data does not reside on a single data source. We rely on data warehouses to integrate our disparate data sources. Traditional data warehousing can take up to 6 months to 1 year and significant effort to complete. Surely this is not the right way to stay competitive in today’s ever-changing and ever-evolving data landscape. Is there any solution to optimize the data warehouse lifecycle? This is where automation comes to rescue. We now have self-service data warehouse tools with drag and drop capabilities just like modern BI tools. TimeXtender is a leading data warehouse automation tool which automates the entire cycle of implementing and maintaining a DWH/BI solution. Other notable vendors in this space are Wherescape and Attunity. Next Gen BI Tools: Are you still using traditional BI tools for data integration and reporting? If yes, then you have already lost half the battle. Businesses today can’t wait for weeks or months for the BI reports. And this is where self-service BI tools like Tableau, Power BI, Qlik provide an edge over the traditional IT-centric reporting tools. You can have dashboards/reports in just a few clicks without any involvement of IT. Teamwork and Collaboration: This should be one of the key focus areas to become a data-driven organization truly. Self-service BI tools provide a platform that allows analyst, data scientists, decision makers to work collaboratively and act sensibly on approaches for deriving insights of a company. With the help of collaboration, all the members working on a data intensive project are now able to collaboratively work with real-time access to all the features of a BI tool. Training & Reskilling: Employees should have basic knowledge of reporting skills. Also, the power users of analytics must be reskilled and trained with the latest development in analytics space. This ensures that your organization is well equipped to support value-driven decision making. Welcoming a data-driven approach is vital to your organization. It helps you in making decisions that are informed, intelligent and impactful. To understand more about making powerful decisions that lead to desired results, Register for webinar recording on Make powerful decisions with Power BI
Configure Project Server custom fields with PowerShell
In my previous blog I talked about a complete PowerShell script for creating custom fields and one level lookup tables using Project Server PSI services. The uncovered part is to create a Graphical Indicator custom field. So, here I will be explaining how to add a graphical indicator custom field in project server. In the XML file, which contain the detail for adding the enterprise project server fields the structure for representing the graphical indicator is Thus, to create a graphical indicator We have used an attribute IsIndicator whose value need to be set as “Yes” . Add the child which will contain the Indicator value to be displayed and the Image ID of the image to be used for that value as indicator. To get the Image Id for the values perform following steps: Login to PWA Go to Server Settings->Enterprise Data->Enterprise Custom Fields and Lookup Tables->New Custom Field On New Custom Field page under Values to Display select Graphical Indicators. Do F12 of the page and then expand the image dropdown and using the Select Element option of the F12 window select the required image icon. The corresponding image information will get highlighted. To get the image ID for creating the custom field we must increase the image index value by 1. e.g. In below screenshot the name for cross image is cf_54p.png. So, the Image Id to be used for PowerShell scripting will be 55. The PowerShell script for adding the graphical indicator is as follows: if(-Not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($customField.IsIndicator)) { if ($customField.IsIndicator.Equals(“Yes”, [System.StringComparison]::CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)) { $IndicatorList=”” foreach($Invalue in $customField.Indicator) { $IndicatorList =$IndicatorList+”[[== “+$Invalue.Value+” ][“+$Invalue.ImageID+”]]” } $customFieldRow.MD_PROP_GRAPHICAL_INDICATOR=$IndicatorList } } In above code if the IsIndicator attribute value for a custom field in the XML has the value “Yes” then it is an indicator custom field. To set the indicator values to be added we parse through each of the Indicator child and generate a string assigned to $IndicatorList variable which is then assign to MD_PROP_GRAPHICAL_INDICATOR property of custom field row. Now the import part is the string we are creating for the indicator values to set. +“[[== “+$Invalue.Value+” ][“+$Invalue.ImageID+“]]” The string is formed as First put 2 open square brackets then 2 equal to (=) sign. After that give a tab space and add the value to be displayed. Then give 2 tab spaces and a closing square bracket. Opening square bracket and the Image ID to be displayed. At last 2 closing square brackets. If tab space does not work in the PowerShell IDE. You can create the string using a text editor and paste it in your script. Thus, your graphical indicators will get easily added with these simple steps using PowerShell scripting. Hope my both blogs were helpful to you. Happy PowerShell Scripting!!
Configure Project Server custom fields using PowerShell
Working with Project Server many a times we come across a requirement of creating numerous custom fields and lookup tables which is a time-consuming job. To, overcome this I will be sharing with you how to create an automated script using PowerShell script. I have used Project server PSI services which will be complied in the script itself to generate an assembly to carry out the operation. The same operation can be accomplished with CSOM also but due to limitation of not creating Graphical Indicator fields used PSI services. The complete PowerShell script is attached and comprises of 3 files. Below are the details: File Content Deploy-Config.PS1 Contains details of Project Server instance to be used. DeployFields-PWA.PS1 Complete Power shell script file. ProjectServerFields.XML Contains details of custom fields and lookup tables that needs to be created. To run the PowerShell script user must have admin rights and permission to run PSI services. Using DeployFields-PWA.PS1 script, you will be able to create single level lookup tables and custom fields for any entity type (project, task, resource). A log file is also created under the folder where the script file resides which shows the detail of the lookup table and custom fields being created. Let’s discuss the various steps needed for deployment. Load Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Library in the file by writing below command at the top of the script file[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(“Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Library”) Load the Deploy -Config.PS1file to read Project Server Instance details in the script. Test-IsAdmin method is used to check user running the script has administrative rights or not. If Yes, then will move further else exit. Creating an assembly from the PSI WSDL service at run time Here, we will be generating the precompiled assembly for the custom field and lookup table PSI services. For this GetPSIServiceAssembly param([string] $webServiceUrl, [string[]] $referenceAssemblies) method is created and parameters being passed are: PSI WSDL URL and the Assemblies references required to compile the WSDL. The assembly references are: “System.dll”, “System.Web.Services.dll”, “System.Xml.dll”, “System.Data.dll”. Creation of Enterprise Project server fields. The WSDL assembly created in above step will be used to create the project server enterprise fields. A single PowerShell method LookupTable_CustomFieldsCreation is created in which we will first create the lookup tables and then the custom fields.The lookup table PSI service url is:+ “/_vti_bin/psi/LookupTable.asmx?wsdl”The custom fields PSI service url is:+ “/_vti_bin/psi/CustomFields.asmx?wsdl” Creating lookup tables Read each entry of lookup tables from ProjectServerFields.xml file. If lookup table with same name exist in project server, then continue with the next. If the lookup table doesn’t exist, then create a new lookup table row. Creating custom fields Get the entity id of the various entity type i.e. project, task and resource Get the list of existing custom fields associated with each of the entity type. Get the Lookup table id if custom field is associated to lookup table. If custom field do not exist create a new custom field row. To run the script, give the path of DeployFields-PWA.PS1 file on Windows Power Shell Console. This is how lookup tables and custom fields are created using power shell scripting. In my next blog I will be explaining how the Graphical Indicators are created using the power shell script. You can get the complete PowerShell script package from here.