Microsoft Project Server (EPM/PPM) and SharePoint

Project Online – Performance Improvements related to Create & Publish operations

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 09:20:00 +0000

New changes are being rolled out as of 1st Oct 2018

How does this affect me?

After these changes takes place, your users will be able to: - Change the way After events are handled in Project Online with Asynchronous After Event Handling. Project detail pages will load more quickly if they use add-ins that rely on After events. Work with the developer of your add-ins to see if you can benefit from this change. If so, enable the new “Turn on Asynchronous After event processing” setting available in the Additional Server Settings page of your Project Online administration panel. - Get back to work quickly during a Publish Job. We are changing the way the Publish function works in Project Online. Now, when a Publish job is started (either by the user pressing ‘Publish’ or a Project Detail Page triggering it), the user will be able to get back to work quickly. - Start projects sooner with shorter wait times in the Project Create feature. We’ve moved the ‘Create Summary Resource Assignment’ task to a separate queue job. These feature changes are rolling out now and the rollout is anticipated to be complete by mid-October.

What do I need to do to prepare for these changes?

You don’t need to do anything to prepare for these changes. Microsoft is gradually starting to roll these changes out now.

Access Web Apps are being retired from SharePoint Online

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 09:27:00 +0000

Last reminder from Microsoft: Access Web Apps are being retired from SharePoint Online

Action required by 1 July 2018

As originally announced in March 2017 and communicated again over the last year, Microsoft no longer recommends Access Services for new apps. This feature is being retired from Office 365.

How does this affect me?

Starting on April 2, 2018, Access Web Apps databases were set as read-only. Starting July 1, 2018, Access Web Apps will be uninstalled (and underlying databases will be deleted).

What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

We encourage you to take immediate actions to migrate valuable data from active Access Web Apps. There are multiple ways to migrate Access web apps data; export to SharePoint Lists, export to local Access database (.ACCDB) and export to SQL Server – are a few examples. In SharePoint Server this feature will be supported in accordance with the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. This announcement has no impact on the Access Desktop product, and on Access Desktop databases (.accdb). We recommend customers explore PowerApps as the successor of Access web apps, and the future for declarative business applications.

If you need further assistance please contact: support@projectsolution.com

Office 365 Changes (21st May 2018)

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Mon, 21 May 2018 07:49:00 +0000

Notification of NEW and UPDATED from Microsoft Office 365;

New feature: Customized Sharing Defaults per SharePoint Site Collection
In SharePoint Online, Default sharing link types and Default sharing link permissions are now available to be customized per site collection. We've begun rolling this out now, and it will be available worldwide by the end of June. While our goal is to ensure we notify you in advance of upcoming changes, we acknowledge we did not provide timely notice for this change. We will continue to look for ways to improve our notifications.

Updated feature: Versioning settings in OneDrive for Business, and team sites in SharePoint Online
Major Update: Announcement
We're enabling versioning on all Document Libraries in OneDrive for Business, and team sites in SharePoint Online, including both group-connected team sites and team sites not connected to an Office 365 Group. We'll be gradually rolling this out to Targeted Release customers in early June, and the roll out will be completed worldwide by the end of July.

Updated feature: StaffHub admin page
We have updated consent information on the Microsoft StaffHub admin settings page. This is located in the Office 365 admin center, under Settings > Services & add-ins. StaffHub is now using TeleSign Corporation to deliver certain limited and ancillary services for StaffHub

Project Online desktop client with Project Server 2013

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Wed, 09 May 2018 08:58:00 +0000

Important Note from Microsoft;

We continue to upgrade our Cloud offerings, including the Project Online Desktop, to provide our customers with the latest capabilities and up-to-date online experiences. Due to these ongoing updates, beginning September 15, 2018, we will be removing the ability for the Project Online desktop client to connect to those versions of Project Server outside of mainstream support, including Project Server 2013.

Overall, this milestone is part of the end-of-life journey for Project 2013 Standard, Professional and Server. Prior to this, support for the connection between Project Professional 2013 and Project Online ended on August 31, 2017 while April 10, 2018 marked the end of mainstream support for Project Server 2013.

SharePoint Online Social Bar (Major Update)

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 12:08:00 +0000

New feature: SharePoint Online Social Bar

	Major update: General Availability rollout started
	Applied to: All customers

The Social Bar is a new Office 365 feature. This feature is scheduled to roll out to Targeted Release customers later this week, and it will be available for all organizations on April 1, 2018.

This message is associated with Office 365 Roadmap ID: 23708.

[How does this affect me?]
The Social Bar will appear on all modern SharePoint Online pages with the exception of the home page of a site. It will give your users the ability to like a page, see the number of views, likes, and comments on a page, and see the people who have liked a page. This visibility will be available to anyone that has been granted access to view the page.
This feature will be launched default on. As administrator, if you wish to disable Social Bar for your organization, you can do so with the following PowerShell command:

To disable Social Bar on a tenant level:
Set-SPOTenant -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $true

To disable social bar on a site level (for https://prepspo.spgrid.com site):
Set-SPOSite -Identity https://prepspo.spgrid.com -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $true

[What do I need to do to prepare for this change?]
There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. Please click Additional Information to learn more.

Microsoft recognized as a leader in analytics and BI platforms for 11 years

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 17:32:00 +0000

Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 2018 edition .*

Microsoft is also positioned furthest for completeness of vision in the Leaders quadrant.

Power BI has helped transform hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world by providing:

Ease of use and complexity of analysis.
Tools that continue to be upgraded, protecting the investment of today’s buyers.
A low cost of ownership, including free availability of key features and a competitive subscription cost.

Mainstream support for SharePoint & Project Server 2013 will end in 4 months

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 14:41:00 +0000

Just a heads-up in case that you still have SharePoint environments running on SharePoint 2013:

Mainstream support for SharePoint 2013 will end on April 10th, 2018:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=sharepoint%202013

After this date only security fixes will be provided for SharePoint 2013. Regular hotfixes can no longer be requested.

If not already done we recommend to start planning the migration to SharePoint Server 2016 as soon as possible.

This is not the only thing to consider after this date: starting with April 10th, 2018 the required patch level to request support for SharePoint 2013 will also change.

Currently all patch levels starting with SharePoint 2013 SP1 are supported. Starting with April 10th, 2018 this will change. In order to request support from Microsoft after April 10th, 2018 the SharePoint server farm has be on a patch level of April 2017 CU or later. A year later, after April 10th, 2019, the SharePoint server farm has be on a patch level of April 2018 CU or later.

This change is outlined in the Updated Product Servicing Policy for SharePoint 2013 published on TechNet.

Below is a table which outlines the required patch level for SharePoint 2013 till end of the extended support phase:

SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Foundation 2013 Releases
Support End Date

Service Pack 1
4/10/2018

April 2017 CU – March 2018 CU
4/10/2019

April 2018 CU – all future CU
4/11/2023

How much of a team player are you, really?

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 09:16:00 +0000

Discover how close you are to being a champion of teamwork

Take Microsoft’s quiz and you'll:

See how well you promote working together, based on your responses to 12 statements.
Get a teamwork score and advice on what to do next.
Learn if you need to talk to your CEO and develop a strategy to help people work better in teams.

(Click image to Download the quiz)

Microsoft Project 2016 Step by Step 50% discount offer (Microsoft Press Store)

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 11:38:00 +0000

ebook deal: Microsoft Project 2016 Step by Step 50% off offer expires Oct 1 at 7AM GMT #ProjectServer #ProjectOnline http://ow.ly/W2v430fuhvI

The quick way to learn Microsoft Project 2016!
This is learning made easy. Get more done quickly with Project 2016. Jump in wherever you need answers–brisk lessons and colorful screenshots show you exactly what to do, step by step.

Quickly start a new plan, build task lists, and assign resources
Share your plan and track your progress
Capture and fine-tune work and cost details
Use Gantt charts and other views and reports to visualize project schedules
Share resources across multiple plans and consolidate projects
Master project management best practices while you learn Project
Look up just the tasks and lessons you need

Office 2019 and SharePoint 2019

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 15:50:00 +0000

Yesterday 26th Sep 2017, at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando, Microsoft announced Office 2019—the next perpetual update for Office. This release, scheduled for the second half of 2018, will include perpetual versions of the Office apps (including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) and servers (including Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype for Business). Previews of the new products will start shipping mid-year 2018.

Office 2019 will add new user and IT capabilities for customers who aren’t yet ready for the cloud. For example, new and improved inking features—like pressure sensitivity, tilt effects, and ink replay—will allow you to work more naturally. New formulas and charts will make data analysis for Excel more powerful. Visual animation features—like Morph and Zoom—will add polish to PowerPoint presentations. Server enhancements will include updates to IT manageability, usability, voice, and security.

Cloud-powered innovation is a major theme at Ignite this week. But we recognize that moving to the cloud is a journey with many considerations along the way. Office 2019 will be a valuable upgrade for customers who feel that they need to keep some or all of their apps and servers on-premises, and we look forward to sharing more details about the release in the coming months.

Changes to SharePoint Online pages

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 11:06:00 +0000

Update note from Microsoft regarding SharePoint Online Pages

***UPDATE: After further consideration, we are not rolling out this change, now. Based on your feedback, we have a few things we’re going to work on. If we roll this out, in the future, you will see a new message center post.*** Original Message read: We're making some changes to SharePoint Online pages running the classic user experience. We're changing the default document mode of all classic pages to be Edge mode, instead of Internet Explorer (IE) 10 mode. This change does not apply to sites that are using custom theming, or sites that have the modern list experience disabled at the site or tenant level. This change will begin rolling out Tuesday, October 1, and will complete by the end of October.

How does this affect me?

For most users, this change will just increase performance and reliability of pages. However, some custom master pages or custom web parts may contain custom code that takes a dependency on the older IE10 document mode.

What do I need to do the prepare for this change?

If you have sites with this kind of customization, the sites can be reverted to use the IE10 document mode by doing the following: 1. Open the site in SharePoint Designer. 2. Edit the master page that is in use. 3. Find this line: <SharePoint:IECompatibleMetaTag runat="server" /> And replace it with: <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=10"/> 4. Save the page and reload the site. Please click Additional Information to learn more about document mode changes.

Additional information

SharePoint & Project Server 2016 Upgrade Error after Windows Update

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 18:16:00 +0000

Applies: SharePoint Server 2016, Project Server 2016

So, you have decided to apply Windows Server updates? Following this, it is important to remember to check if there are some pending updates for SharePoint and Project Server 2016. Sometimes there are security updates that apply to SharePoint and Project Server, which may not my not be obvious just by looking at the updates, prior to applying them.

After windows server updates are applied, it is best practice to ensure that your farm is in a healthy state. You can do this by running the SharePoint Configuration Wizard (SCW). If you have multiple Web/App Servers, Start by running this on the one that hosts the Central Admin (CA) portal.

You may encounter upgrade issue as shown in fig below.

Fig (1) – SharePoint Config Wizard Upgrade Error

If this happens, run the below CMD on each of the Web/App Servers, starting with the main server (hosting the CA)

psconfig.exe -cmd helpcollections -installall -cmd secureresources -cmd services -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force –wait

Fig (2) – Upgrade CMD

Hopefully this will resolve your issue, as per fig (3) below.

Fig (3) – Successful Upgrade

Hope this helps.

Guest access in Microsoft Teams

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 10:33:00 +0000

Applies To: Office 365 Admin Microsoft Teams

Guest access in Microsoft Teams allows teams in your organization to collaborate with people outside your organization by granting them access to teams and channels. A guest is someone who isn't an employee, student, or member of your organization. They don't have a school or work account with your organization. For example, guests may include partners, vendors, suppliers, or consultants.

Organizations using Microsoft Teams can provide external access to teams, documents in channels, resources, chats, and applications to their partners, while maintaining complete control over their own corporate data.

Microsoft Teams is built upon Office 365 Groups and provides a new way to access shared assets for an Office 365 group. Microsoft Teams is the best solution for persistent chat among group/team members. Office 365 Groups is a service that provides cross-application membership for a set of shared team assets, like a SharePoint site or a Power BI dashboard, so that the team can collaborate effectively and securely.



How a guest joins a team

A team owner in Microsoft Teams can add and manage guests in their teams via the web or desktop. Only users who have an email address corresponding to an Azure Active Directory or Office 365 work or school account can be added as a guest user.

Note: Before guests can join a team, an admin must enable guest access in Microsoft Teams. To do that, sign in with your Office 365 global admin account. Then, choose Settings > Services & add-ins > Microsoft Teams. Select Guest in Select the user/license type you want to configure, and select On in Turn Microsoft Teams on or off for all users of this type. It can take up to an hour for the settings to take effect. For more details, see "Turn on or off guest access for Microsoft Teams" on this article's Manage tab.

Here's how a guest becomes a member of a team:

Step 1 A team owner or an Office 365 admin adds a guest to a team.
Step 2 The Office 365 admin or the team owner can manage a guest's capabilities as necessary. For example, allowing a guest to add or delete channels or disabling access to files.
Step 3 The guest receives a welcome email from the team owner, inviting them to join the team. After accepting the invitation, the guest can participate in teams and channels, receive and respond to channel messages, access files in channels, and participate in chat. While using Microsoft Teams, a combination of text and icons gives all team members clear indication of guest participation in a team. For more details, see What the guest experience is like.

Guests can leave the team at any time via Microsoft Teams web and desktop clients. For details, see How do I leave a team?

Note: Only people who are outside of your organization, such as partners or consultants, can be added as guests. People from within your organization can join as regular team members.

What the guest experience is like

When a guest is invited to join a team, they receive a welcome email message that includes some information about the team and what to expect now that they're a member. The guest must redeem the invitation in the email message before they can access the team and its channels.

All team members see a message in the channel thread announcing that the team owner has added a guest and providing the guest's name. Everyone on the team can identify easily who is a guest. As shown in the following screenshot of a sample team, a banner indicates "This team has guests" and a "GUEST" label appears next to each guest's name.

The following table compares the Microsoft Teams functionality available for an organization's team members to the functionality available for a guest user on the team.

Capability in Teams	Teams user in the organization	Guest user
Create a channel Team owners control this setting.
Participate in a private chat
Participate in a channel conversation
Post, delete, and edit messages
Share a channel file
Share a chat file
Add apps (tabs, bots, or connectors)
Create tenant-wide and teams/channels guest access policies
Invite a user outside the Office 365 tenant's domain
Create a team
Discover and join a public team
View organization chart

Note: Office 365 admins control the features available to guests.

Guest access is included with all Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 Enterprise, and Office 365 Education subscriptions. No additional Office 365 license is necessary.

Microsoft Teams guest access is a tenant-level setting and is turned off by default. Admins can manage guest access via the Office 365 admin center. For more details, see Manage guest access to Microsoft Teams and Control guest access to Microsoft Teams.

Note: The Microsoft Teams guest access tenant setting only prevents guest sign-in. Team owners will be able to invite new guests and add existing directory guest users to their respective teams. As a reminder, Microsoft Teams always honor Azure Active Directory external settings to allow or prevent guest user addition to the tenant.

In addition, you can use the Azure Active Directory portal to manage guests and their access to Office 365 and Microsoft Teams resources. Microsoft Teams guest access makes use of Azure Active Directory business-to-business (B2B) collaboration capabilities as the underlying infrastructure to store security principles information such as identity properties, memberships, and multi-factor authentication settings. To learn more about Azure Active Directory B2B, see What is Azure AD B2B collaboration? and Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration FAQs.

Related key services and dependencies

Microsoft Teams relies on SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business to store files and documents for channels and chat conversations. In addition, Microsoft Teams relies on Office 365 groups to store teams' memberships and other properties such as team data classification settings.

To enable the full Microsoft Teams guest access experience, Office 365 admins need to select On for the following settings:

In SharePoint Online: Only allow sharing with external users already in the directory
For more information, see Manage external sharing for your SharePoint Online environment.
In Office 365 groups: Let group owners add people outside the organization to groups
For more information, see Control guest access to Microsoft Teams.

Control guest access to Microsoft Teams

Turn on or off guest access for Microsoft Teams

Sign in with your Office 365 global admin account at https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home.
In the navigation menu, choose Settings and then select Services & add-ins.
Select Microsoft Teams.
In Select the user/license type you want to configure, select Guest.
Click or tap the toggle next to Turn Microsoft Teams on or off for all users of this type to On to turn on Teams and guest access for your organization, and then choose Save.

Note: It can take up to an hour for the settings to take effect.

Control adding guest users to Microsoft Teams and Office 365 groups

Sign in with your Office 365 global admin account at https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home.
In the navigation menu, choose Settings and then select Services & add-ins.
Select Office 365 Groups.
On the Office 365 Groups page, set the toggle to On or Off, depending if you want to let team and group owners outside your organization access Office 365 groups. Click or tap the toggle to On next to Let group owners add people outside the organization to groups.

Turn on or off the Sharing option for Office 365

The Sharing option allows guests to be added to your organization. By default, the Sharing option is enabled. For information about how to turn off the Sharing option, see Turn on or off the Sharing option.

Important: If you turn off the Sharing option, guest access isn't available.

Use PowerShell to control guest access

In addition to using the Office 365 admin center and the Azure Active Directory portal, you can use Windows PowerShell to control guest access. With PowerShell, you can do the following:

Allow or block guest access to all teams and Office 365 groups
Allow guests to be added to all teams and Office 365 groups
Allow or block guest users from a specific team or Office 365 group

For more details, see Use PowerShell to control guest access.

You can also use PowerShell to allow or block a guest user based on their domain. For example, let's say your business (Contoso) has a partnership with another business (Fabrikam). You can add Fabrikam to your Allow list so your users can add those guests to their groups. For more information, see Allow/Block guest access to Office 365 groups.

Manage guest access to Microsoft Teams

View guest users

Sign in with your Office 365 global admin account at https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home.
Go to Users > Guest users.

Invite guest users

A team owner or an Office 365 admin can invite a guest to a team on an individual basis. However, admins can't use the Office 365 admin center or the Azure Active Directory portal to invite multiple guests in one action. To invite guests centrally, consider using the Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration preview. For more information, see About the Azure AD B2B collaboration preview.

Edit guest user information

Currently, you can't edit guest information from the Office 365 admin center or the Exchange admin center. To edit guest accounts (such as display name or profile photo), go to your Azure Active Directory portal. For more information, see Understanding Office 365 Identity and Azure Active Directory.

Frequently asked questions for admins

Here are common questions Office 365 admins have about inviting guests to join a team in Microsoft Teams.

What is a guest?

A guest is not an employee, student, or member of your organization. They don't have a school or work account with your organization.

Who can be added as a guest user?

Only users who have an email address corresponding to an Azure Active Directory or Office 365 work or school account can be added as a guest user.

Can users add people within my organization who are not part of the team as a guest?

Only people who are outside of your organization, such as partners or consultants, can be added as guests. Users can invite people from within your organization to join as regular team members or subscribers.

Why does a user get the message "Contact your administrator" when they try to add a guest to their team?

As the Office 365 admin, you must enable the guest feature before you or your organization's users (specifically, team owners) can add guests. When a user sees that message, it's likely that the guest feature hasn't been enabled.

How can a global admin add a new guest user to the organization?

As a global admin, you can add a new guest user to the organization in a couple ways:

Global admins who are owners of a team and owners of a team can add a guest to a team through either the Microsoft Teams desktop or the web clients.
Add guests to your organization through Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration. Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration allows a global admin to invite and authorize a set of external users by uploading a comma-separated values (CSV) file of no more than 2,000 lines to the B2B collaboration portal. For more details, check out Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration.

Is there a way to block individual guest users?

No, individual guest users can't be blocked.

Can global admins block guests in teams and still allow guests to access SharePoint sites?

Yes, global admins can use Azure Active Directory Powershell cmdlets to disable the AllowGuestAccessToGroups parameter on the Company object, assuming external sharing is turned on for SharePoint sites.

What other controls are available to IT admins to manage guests in Microsoft Teams?

IT admins can add guests at the tenant level, set and manage guest user policies and permissions, determine which users can invite guests, and pull reports on guest user activity. These controls are available through the Office 365 admin center. Guest user content and activities are under the same compliance and auditing protection as the rest of Office 365.

Can users share a team file with an external user who isn't a member of the team?

No. Users can only share Microsoft Teams files with guests who have been invited to join the team.

Is an additional Office 365 license required for guest access?

No additional license is required. Guest access is included with all Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 Enterprise, and Office 365 Education subscriptions.

Do Office 365 and Azure Active Directory service limits apply to guests?

Yes, guests are subject to Office 365 and Azure Active Directory service limits.

How long does it take until the guest user settings take effect in the Office 365 organization?

The guest settings are set in Azure Active Directory. It takes 2 hours to 24 hours for the changes to be effective across your Office 365 organization.

Can a global admin manage SharePoint Online external user settings for the Teams connected team site?

Yes, you can manage SharePoint Online external user settings for the Teams connected team site. For more details, see Manage your SharePoint team site settings.

How does conditional access work with guest access?

With Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration, organizations can enforce conditional access and multi-factor authentication (MFA) policies for B2B users. These policies can be enforced at the tenant, app, or individual user level, the same way that they are enabled for full-time employees and members of the organization. Such policies are enforced at the resource organization. For more information, see Conditional access for B2B collaboration users.

More information

Administrator settings for Microsoft Teams

Frequently asked questions about Microsoft Teams – Admin Help

Adding guests to teams

Updated feature: Project Online Rollup of Task and Assignment Timephased Data

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 08:03:00 +0000

Here is a communication update from Microsoft O365 support team, affecting Project Online.

-----------------------------------------

MC106623

Published On : June 21, 2017

Expires On : October 31, 2017

Action required by September 18, 2017

We’re adding the ability for a PWA admin to set how to rollup task and assignment timephased data. We’ll support weekly, monthly, fiscal period, or the previously supported by day grouping for timephased data. You could also choose to have no timephased data. You’ll have the option to choose which one you’d like to use.

How does this affect me?

If you choose to use this new option, you may benefit from simplified report building, reduced storage requirements, and improved report generation performance. However, existing reports that make use of the following entities could be impacted by this change:

- AssignmentBaselineTimephasedDataSet

- AssignmentTimephasedDataSet

- TaskBaselineTimephasedDataSet

- TaskTimephasedDataSet

We'll be gradually rolling this out in September, and the rollout will be completed by the end of October.

What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

Please review any reports that make use of the task and assignment by day information from the Project Online OData service once this feature is available to your organization. If your reports are rolling up timephased task and assignment data by one of the following new units: weekly, monthly, or by fiscal period, we recommend updating your reports to take advantage of the rollups for better performance. If you have an app that queries all the properties without specifying the property names, it may be impacted by this change. We recommend you set the apps query for specific properties. Read More below.

------------------------------

Configure rollup of timephased reporting data in Project Online

Applies To: Project Online

IMPORTANT: This article describes the Timephased Data configuration settings that will soon be available. The purpose of this article is to help you plan for this upcoming feature, as it could offer you better performance when using reports that make use of the task and assignment by day information from the Project Online OData service.

Project admins can configure Project Online to roll up timephased reporting data to different levels of granularity. They can choose to roll up their data daily, weekly, monthly, or by fiscal period and retrieve the data through the timephased OData endpoints:

AssignmentBaselineTimephasedDataSet
AssignmentTimephasedDataSet
TaskBaselineTimephasedDataSet
TaskTimephasedDataSet

Benefits

A key benefit this provides is that it can help to improve report generation performance, especially in organization that have a lot of Project Online reporting data. While retrieving task and assignment timephased reporting data by day was the only option available previously, many organizations do not need this level of granularity. Being able to retrieve their data on a broader scope (such as weekly or month) can greatly improve report generation performance by reducing the amount of records that need to be downloaded. For example, instead of needing to retrieve 300,000 records when set to daily, setting to monthly could reduce this to a much lower number, such as 10,000 records.

Additionally, other benefits can include simplified report building, and reduced storage requirements.

How do I configure this setting?

In Project Online home page, select Server Settings.
On the Server Settings page, in the Enterprise Data section, select Reporting.
On the Reporting page, in the Timephased Data section, select the option that you need:
- Never
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly
- By fiscal period

Tip: If you don't use any of the timephased Odata feeds, we highly recommend setting the Timephased Data option to "Never" which provides the added benefit of much faster Reporting Publish queue jobs.

Planning considerations I need to make

Republish existing projects - After changing the Timephased data setting, it will only take affect in an existing project if it is republished.
NOTE: If you have many projects to republish, you can programmatically publish your Project Online projects. You should plan to do this at a time that will be least likely to impact your organization.
New instances - In new Project Online instances, note that the Timephased data default setting is Never. Make sure to select the appropriate Timephased data setting after creating your new instance to prevent the need to republish all your projects at a later time. Do also consider the tradeoffs associated with a more granular setting e.g. Daily vs Monthly with regards to the time it takes to Publish as well as pull down the timephased OData feed.

Updated feature: Calculated field in SharePoint lists and libraries

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 19:53:00 +0000

Please be aware of the upcoming change.

Action required by June 14, 2017

Calculated fields in SharePoint lists and libraries running in the classic UI mode can be used to create conditional or derived values to display to users as if there were native metadata on the item or document. Some users have added HTML markup or script elements to calculated fields. This is an undocumented use of the feature, and Microsoft will begin blocking execution of custom markup in calculated fields in SharePoint Online on June 13, 2017. And, they are providing this option to SharePoint Server 2016 and SharePoint Server 2013 in the June 2017 and subsequent Public Updates, adding the option for the same optional capability on-premises.

How does this affect me?

Your administrators will have been notified if you have one or more SharePoint Online lists and libraries in your organization that are using unsupported calculated fields. Beginning June 13, 2017, markup contained in calculated fields will be ignored. In many cases, calculated fields containing markup will be displayed as blank values in list and library views.

What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

You can request a one-time extension, until September 10, 2017, during which time unsupported markup will be rendered by calculated fields. Please click Additional information to learn more.

Feature Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2016 now available

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 15:08:00 +0000

When Microsoft launched SharePoint Server 2016, they shared their vision that it would be a foundational release, born in the cloud and built for continuous innovation. On 8th November Microsoft announced their next step on this journey with the availability of Feature Pack 1.

Through the November 2016 Public Update for SharePoint Server 2016, Microsoft delivered several new features based on customer feedback, extending support for hybrid scenarios and developer needs, including:

Administrative actions logging for common SharePoint administrative actions.
MinRole enhancements to support small and medium-sized farms.
A OneDrive for Business modern experience.
Custom tiles in the SharePoint app launcher.
SharePoint hybrid auditing unified across site collections on-premises and in Office 365.
Hybrid taxonomy unified across on-premises and Office 365.
OneDrive API for SharePoint on-premises.

Collaboration platforms vs. best-of-breed. What to Consider When Planning Your Collaboration Infrastructure

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Tue, 24 May 2016 09:31:00 +0000

Why Your Organization Should Buy a Collaboration Platform Instead of Best of-Breed Solutions?

Collaboration platforms vs. best-of-breed solutions

“Should we use a group of products from a single vendor or purchase different features from multiple specialized vendors?” This question, otherwise known as “suites versus best-of-breed,” is one of the oldest and most important that IT decision makers have to answer. But is the question still valid?

A recent study from Constellation Research, Inc. argues for the suite approach. Read the report to see why.

What's new for admins in SharePoint Server 2016

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 15:50:00 +0000

Here is a demonstration of what's new in SharePoint Server 2016. If you've been testing the Release Candidate or Preview releases of SharePoint Server 2016, you'll be aware of the foundational updates we've made. Bill Baer shows what's been recently added - durable links, new admin experiences and updated hybrid capabilities when connecting to Office 365 services.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Mechanics/Whats-new-for-admins-in-SharePoint-Server-2016

SharePoint Server 2016 and Project Server 2016 Release Candidate available

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 22:42:00 +0000

Building on the announcement of SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 in November, here is SharePoint Server 2016 Release Candidate (RC). SharePoint Server 2016 RC is mostly feature complete and represents an important milestone for customers and partners looking to deploy and evaluate SharePoint Server 2016 before general availability in Spring 2016.

Read more >> https://blogs.office.com/2016/01/20/sharepoint-server-2016-and-project-server-2016-release-candidate-available/

Beware!! Jan 2016 Security Patch MS16-004 (KB3124585) Breaks SharePoint 2013

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 17:03:00 +0000

January Security Patch Can Break SharePoint 2013. Read more>>>

Please be mindful that just applying the security update for SharePoint servers, without the full SharePoint/Project Server CU can cause issues. I would high recommend that user don't enable Automatic Updates on SharePoint Server, but instead, download and install them manually. Be in control of what is being applied to the servers. Not only does a 'bad' patch break SharePoint, it cannot be uninstalled.

Project Management and Red Tape - Holding back Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 07:24:00 +0000

This is an excellent article from HBR;
Project engineers possess a wealth of good ideas and creative solutions, but too often these ideas are just not able to carry the day inside the bureaucracy of large capital projects. Project executives also understand that entrepreneurial and creative engineers can be their best allies in delivering quality, cost-efficient, timely new builds. So what is holding these engineers back?

Some of the most common barriers are the unintended consequences of well-intentioned efforts to mitigate risk:

A sense that blanket design philosophies, technical standards, and previous designs cannot be questioned. While common standards across companies and industries foster consistency, they can blind stakeholders to potential breakthroughs — unless a culture of healthy challenging and questioning is encouraged.
Removing responsibility for key technical decisions from the project team. Most organizations that undertake capital projects centralize the ultimate arbiters of technical design decisions (the very best subject-matter experts and engineers) in order to leverage economies of scale and achieve consistency. This can often mean that the most talented engineers have no skin in the game on any single project (except to ensure there are no major technical shortcomings) and develop a bias toward conservatism.
An inability to easily determine the value of ideas. The rigmarole required to financially model most projects can make evaluating ideas extremely difficult for engineers, so they often assume that any deviation will produce nominal (or negative) value.
A preoccupation with benchmarking against other projects. Comparing project costs can create a false ceiling by inherently casting doubt on innovative ideas that create value beyond the benchmark.
Missing the forest for the trees. In managing the tremendous volume and complexity of work required to develop and build a large capital project, the notion of creating value is often lost in the flurry of activity to complete engineering deliverables.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 16:02:00 +0000

To all friends, colleagues and readers;

Microsoft conferences 2015-2016

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 06:55:00 +0000

Here is the current 2016 event schedule, as provided by Chris Capossela, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer:

Build	Spring 2016 in San Francisco
Convergence	April 4-7, 2016 in New Orleans
WPC	July 10-14, 2016 in Toronto
Microsoft Ignite	September 26-30, 2016 in Atlanta
Convergence EMEA	Barcelona, November 30 – December 2.
Microsoft Cloud Roadshows	-

Looking forward to seeing you all in Barelona!!

The project manager’s guide to planning a perfect project

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 10:24:00 +0000

Being a project manager is a tough job. There are constant demands on your time, people to keep on track, pressure to do a certain amount of work in what often seems like an impossibly short amount of time and much more.

But it’s also a necessary role that can bring extraordinary value to your company. In fact, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, more than 60 percent of project failures are linked to internal issues such as insufficient resources or missed deadlines—i.e., situations a project manager can help avoid. In addition, it’s a growing industry, as more and more companies realize the importance of solid project management.

Unlocking the Mystery of Patching SharePoint & Project Server

noreply@blogger.com (PJ) — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 09:37:00 +0000

Real-world, best practice approach for patching SharePoint and Project Server 2010/2013.

Applies: SharePoint and Project Server 2010/2013. The post below assumes that the reader has administrative knowledge of maintaining a SharePoint farm. Also observe the planning notes below.

Planning

As always, before embarking on SharePoint/Project Server update on your production system, answer these two questions;

A) Is the update necessary? Is it solving an existing problem?

Do not simply rush into applying the latest updates just because it has been released!!

That said, do ensure that you are not too far behind on patching your environment, that you have an unsupported system. Remember that patching is not just about SharePoint and Project. You need to ensure that SQL Server (and related components) are also at a supported patch level.

B) Have you successfully tested the patch/update on development/test environment with a copy of live data prior to applying on the production system?

By testing, I do not just mean the successful patching of the servers, but ALSO ensure that the key business processes and solutions are tested thoroughly.

Here are some guidance notes – The Mystery behind patching;

Step (1) – Existing System Validation

Run SharePoint Configuration Wizard (SCW) to validate existing farm configuration to validate the the existing state of the farm. If issues are encountered you need to resolve them first.

You need only run this on one of the Web/App servers, preferably the one hosting SharePoint Central Administration (CA).

Ensure all the core services are running after the validation.

Step (2) – Preparation

On each of the web server(s) running SharePoint Server 2013, starting with the one hosting SharePoint Central Administration portal, stop the following Windows Services in this order:

World Wide Publishing Service
SharePoint Time Service
SharePoint Server Search
SharePoint Administration
SharePoint Tracing Service
SharePoint Search Host Controller*
AppFabric Caching Service*

If Project Server is installed;

Microsoft Project Server Calculation Service*
Microsoft Project Server Event Service
Microsoft Project Server Queue Service

Note: The reason why you need to stop the SPTimerV4 service first is because the SPTimerV4 service monitors the SPSearchHostController service. The SPTimerV4 service will start the SPSearchHostController service it if it finds that the SPSearchHostController is stopped. Therefore, if the SPTimerV4 service is running after you stop the SPSearchHostController service, the SPTimerV4 service might start the SPSearchHostController without you noticing it.

*Note: SP/PS2013 Services.

You may also be required to stop the following services during the patch installation.

In a multi Web/App server environment, this needs to be done on all the servers starting with the one hosting the CA.

Step (3a) – Update

Install the update package on the server by following the instructions that come with the update package. In this step the package is extracted and updated files/components are installed.

Note: In a multi Web/App server environment, this needs to be installed on all the servers starting with the one hosting the CA. DO NOT run SharePoint configuration Wizard (Steps 4 & 5) until all servers are updated. Example on-premise environment with 6 web/apps servers is shown in fig below.

You may be required to reboot the server, but do this only after this update has been applied on ALL the Web/App Servers in the farm, staring with the one hosting the CA portal.

Step (3b) – Update

Restart the Windows Services in the following order:

World Wide Publishing Service
SharePoint Server Search
SharePoint Time Service
SharePoint Administration
SharePoint Tracing Service
SharePoint Search Host Controller*
AppFabric Caching Service*

If Project Server is installed;

Microsoft Project Server Calculation Service*
Microsoft Project Server Event Service
Microsoft Project Server Queue Service

Note: In a multi Web/App server environment, this needs to be done on all server, ONLY after all the servers are updated (Step 3).

Step (4a)- Upgrade

Finally, Run SharePoint Configuration Wizard (SCW) to upgrade the system incl database schema.

I would recommend that you use the farm administrator account to install the update and run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. If you use a different account, that account may not have the appropriate rights and permissions.

Note: You may need to run this a SECOND time to ensure successful completion.

In a multi Web/App server environment, this needs to be run on all the servers starting with the one hosting the CA.

If you encounter a failure when running SCW, you can try to force the upgrade using the following approach in Step (4b).

Step (4b)- Force Upgrade using b2b command

If for any reason, your upgrade fails, you can try forcing the upgrade using the following method.

Note: first review logs and assess the reasons for any failure. It may be some data or feature related issue. As always, approach the following with due care and attention and test thoroughly, prior to applying on live production system.

Stop SharePoint Admin and Timer service
Navigate to Drive:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID and delete all the XML files from the directory. DONOT delete the cache.ini
On Command prompt navigate to c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\bin and run: stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
Open the cache.ini with Notepad and reset the number to 1. Save and close the file.
Now start the SharePoint Admin and timer service and
Finally, Run the following command using the CMD prompt (run as Admin) from 12\bin directory “psconfig -cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait –force”

Note: Sometimes you need to run the following SharePoint PS command if you have some data/feature issues; psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

Note: it very important that while the above command is being run, the SharePoint Admin and timer service is running i.e. STARTED. I did encounter a couple of instances where these had stopped. You need to ensure these are running while the above command is run.

After you have a successful outcome as in figure above, I would recommend that you run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard again to verify all is ok.

Step (5)- Post Update Checks

After all that hard work, ensure that all is working as expected. Check the following in SharePoint Central Admin Portal;

a) Verify Version (via CA > System Settings > Servers in the Farm)

b) Database Upgrade Status (via CA > Upgrade and Migration > Check Upgrade status and Review Database Status)

c) Verify User Profile Service Application

Note: if this service is not running verify if the FIM Windows Services is running.

d) AD Connection (ensure you have used Admin rights and using the credential for USP Admin to review this)

If you have an issue with one the Service Application Database then you will need to run a command

(Get-SPDatabase | ?{$_.type -eq"Microsoft.SharePoint.BusinessData.SharedService.BdcServiceDatabase"}).Provision()

Verify if all the key Application pools and Websites are running on IIS

It is also advisable to verify the status of the SQL DB if all are online and verify the key content DB Versions.

That’s all folks!!

If need have any queries or need any assistance, you can reach out to me.