projectified-old

2007 Beta 2 Docs and Planning Guides

Get them while they are hot!

http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/help/HA101639911033.aspx

 

UPDATE: A few people have emailed me saying they thought they needed to be signed in as a beta user on the site to get to these docs. I have not found this to be true. While I am a beta tester I have not had to sign in to the site to get access to the docs. I will check into this and see what’s up.

The New SDK is Here!

Check out the Beta 2 Release of the Project 2007 SDK. Great stuff if you plan on doing any development around the new Project Server platform.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/program/project/

This Post Posted with Word 2007 Beta 2!

How cool is this? In Beta 2 of Word 2007 you can go to the New file menu and pick blog post as one of the templates. It opens a specialized document template and after you enter your blog service posting and account info you enter your post into the document and click the Publish Icon on the Ribbon and there it is!

This feature will be integrated into a right-click menu item in OneNote as well! Cool Stuff is coming!!!

Did I hear you ask for more custom fields?

Project Server 2007 makes a major change to the way that enterprise custom fields are handled. Instead of being tied to a limited set of fields (Enterprise Text1, Enterprise Text2, etc.) the new system starts with basically no custom fields and you get to add as may as you want.

The interface allows you to add a new field and that new field has several attributes that include:

• Entity (Project, Task or Resource)
• Type (Cost, Date, Flag, Duration, Number and Text)
• Summary rollup
• Whether the field will use a Lookup Table or a formula or be 'hand entered'
• Assignment 'Roll down'
• If the field will display it's value or Graphical Indicators
• If the field will be required to contain a value

Notice that Type does not include "Outline Code". There will no longer be an field type called outline code. Since any field can have a hierarchical lookup table like Project Server 2003 outline codes essentially in 2007 any enterprise custom field can be an 'outline code'.

Lookup Tables are created independently of the fields themselves which makes sharing them between fields much easier.

This brings us to the question you are likely asking yourself now: if there are no enterprise outline codes then how does the OLAP cube get user defined dimensions? Well I'm glad you asked me that...

Any Project, Resource or Task enterprise custom field can be a dimension! (Yes ANY!) There is a Cube Configuration page that allows you to pick from your defined custom fields and decide which ones should be OLAP Cube dimensions. Ready for part two of that? Any Project, Resource or Task enterprise Cost, Number or Duration field can be a measure in the cube as well. These get defined in a central page and then show up as available for any Data Analysis view (Data Analysis is what Portfolio Analyzer views are called in Project Server 2007).

Oh and all the custom field customizations happen directly in Project Web Access.

Very cool stuff coming.

Tags: project 2007, project server 2007

You have met "Roll Up" but have you met "Roll Down"?

Rolling Up is pretty common in Project It is, for those just joining us, the ability for summary tasks to contain information from the tasks 'under' themselves. This is illustrated in fields like Work or Cost where the value of the summary task field is the sum of the tasks under it. These fields are 'rolled up'.

Project 2007 adds a sibling to rollups: Roll Downs. Rolldowns, though, do not happen between summary and sub tasks but rather between Tasks and Assignments or Resources and Assignments. Rolling down is an attribute of task and resource custom fields. It allows you to specify how Assignments on a task or resource will have it's values defined for a custom field. The default is no rolldown so that an assignment custom field only gets a value if you enter it. Rolldown means that an assignment custom field will have the value of task or resource field.

You used to have to write VBA code to do this.

While this is not earth shattering stuff it is pretty cool, provided you are as geeky as I am about this kind of stuff. :-)

Oh and did I mention that you get as many fields as you want now? 30 Enterprise Project Outline Codes not enough for you? Need 50 or 75? How about 100? OK. More on this later...

Tags: custom fields, Project 2007, Project Server 2007