Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Initial Testing Project Server SP1

I tested the deployment of SP1 on our VPC Image and it was straight forward. You will need to install WSS 3.0 SP1 before you install the Project Server SP1. Also make sure that you install MS Project SP1. THis is not entirely necessary, but it does make sense to deploy the whole SP1, including the client.

After intial testing there are some small things you need to consider:
- A new version of ActiveX will need to be installed. You need to make sure that users have the right to install ActiveX or need to deploy it via group policy

- Publishing a Project via PWA still causes errors, in particular traffic lights. I have run multiple tests, publishing the project via PWA, but the traffic light is not calculated. Only after I published the project via Project Professional will the traffic light be re-calculated :( that is disappointing.

- When approving tasks updates the changed hours entered in the task approval screen are now in red, making it easier to see what actually has been updated. That will make the approval easier.

- The cube build after SP1 was ok, even though I did get an event log error. Not sure if this is my environment and since the cubes build successfully and are working fine, it may well be that this is only on my environment. I will monitor and update the blog should issues occur.

All in all the installation is easy and at this stage no major issues have occurred. I have not made an end to end test, but the typical things like task update, approval, generation of views, added new resource etc I have done and it all works well.

Now that is a nice Christmas present :) Enjoy upgrading and please don't forget to follow the instruction Microsoft gave, especially PLEASE backup your environment before deploying SP1. If you have any customisation ( reports, custom web parts and a like) you will need to make sure to extra test them.

ENJOY :)

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Microsofts SP1 Christmas present

Apparently Microsoft announced the release of SP1 for Project and Project Serverfor the next 2 weeks. That would mean before Christmas. Well, who doesn't believe in miracles anymore :) Thanks Microsoft that is an excellent present.