As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t posted at EPMFAQ recently. Since joining MSProjectExperts in 2008, I’ve been primarily participating in our group blog. Truth be told, it’s just not feasible to maintain two blogs that both cover the same subject.

That’s why I’ve decided that as of December 1st 2009, I will be blogging exclusively at ProjectServerHelp, which is our group blog at MSProjectExperts. I’ll maintain EPMFAQ for archival purposes, but I do not plan to actively post on this site for the foreseeable future.

I’d like to thank everyone who has read EPMFAQ for the past two years — I’ve really enjoyed sharing knowledge about Project with all of you.

See you at the new house!

-Steve

Popularity: 45%

Save $150 by being one of the first 500 attendees to register! Register now at https://pc2009.dynamiceventsreg.com/ to secure your Early Bird discount rate of $699.

And, we wanted to be sure you also received this: Your personal invitation to present at Project Conference.

New this year! The Project Conference team has received a tremendous amount of interest from customers and partners to present content at Project Conference 2009. In response, we are formally offering customers, partners and you an opportunity to contribute to and present content at Project Conference 2009. We encourage customers, partners and you to utilize the content submission form at https://pc2009cfc.dynamiceventsreg.com to propose content ideas and speakers. Time is limited – let your customers and partners know and act now!

Popularity: 63%

Update: Please see Christophe Fiessinger’s blog post concerning Known Issues with the Infrastructure Update

Popularity: 77%

While reviewing the white paper that describes the recent Project 2007 Infrastructure Update in detail, I came upon some interesting information at the end of the document.

Before I start, I first want to thank and congratulate Microsoft on a job well done with the quality and quantity of documentation they’ve provided for this update. Compared to the sometimes-cryptic KB Articles that typically accompany hotfixes and updates, the Infrastructure Update’s documentation is outstanding.

That being said, I do have some concerns relating to the changes in Cost Resources, which are a new way in Project 2007 of accounting for costs associated with a project. Cost Resources are typically used to account for non-work costs such as travel expenses. The Infrastructure Update makes some significant changes to the way that Cost Resources function, and while I am a big fan of the idea of Cost Resources, I cannot help but be concerned by some of the caveats I’ve quoted below:

Gary Chefetz has made an interesting post over at ProjectServerHelp on how to write a great post when you look for help in the Microsoft communities newsgroups. He makes several interesting points:

• Always include version information
• If possible, always include specific error information (preferably a stack trace or direct copy from the event/ULS log
• Include information about any troubleshooting performed to-date
• Do not assume that similar error messages equate to similar problems, since software tends to use “catch-all” errors for many problems.

As someone who frequently answers questions in the newsgroups, I think that these are all very important. They cover some of the biggest timewasters in the newsgroups (for both users and experts alike). When posting, try to follow his advice — doing so should help cut down on the time-to-resolution for users seeking assistance in the newsgroups.

You can check out his post here.

For those of you that haven’t heard yet, yesterday morning Microsoft released the long-awaited Infrastructure Update for WSS, the Office Servers (including Project Server), and Project 2007.

You can read an overview of updates here, and read detailed information in this white paper.

This update promises significant performance and stability improvements to the entire line of Office Servers, WSS, and the Project Client. If you haven’t already (or have only read the overview), I strongly recommend you read the white paper. It contains 30 pages of information about the update, and contains a lot of important information (including user scenarios to avoid).

From the overview:

Project Server

• Timesheets and My Tasks stability and usability improvements
• Queue Management user interface improvements
• Logging Tracing improvements
• Project Server performance improvements
• Project Server 2003 to Project Server 2007 migration fixes

I recently encountered a situation where users attempting to login to a SharePoint 3.0 site when using the “Sign In” link were recieving an “Internet Explorer cannot display the Web Page” error. The Web Application was configured to allow Anonymous Access and to also use Integrated Windows Authentication.

No errors showed in either the Application or System logs. The IIS Logs displayed a 401 error:
2008-06-20 14:55:01 W3SVC96982807 ServerIP GET /_layouts/Authenticate.aspx Source=%2Fdefault%2Easpx 80 - ClientIP Mozilla/4.0+(BrowserIdentificationString) 401 1 0. Examination of the HTTP traffic with Fiddler showed the same 401.1 error.

Investigation of the Web Site’s properties in IIS showed that HTTP Keep-Alives were disabled — enabling them resolved the problem.

Integrated Windows Authentication (NTLM) requires HTTP Keep-Alives; this is because Microsoft’s NTLM for HTTP authenticates connections, not requests. This means that the HTTP connection must be kept open while the NTLM handshake completes. More technical information can be found here. There is no method that I know of to get around this limitation other than to not use NTLM.

For those of you who don’t already know, I’ve recently taken a job as a Principal Consultant with MSProjectExperts. My new role is essentially the same as it was with BT; I will be providing Project Management and Project-focused consulting services in the areas of implementation, custom development, custom reporting, and training. I am honored by the opportunity to work alongside Gary Chefetz, Dale Howard, and Tony Zink. I’ll have some pretty big footsteps to walk in, but I’m excited for the challenge.

As part of my role with MSProjectExperts, I will be posting to our newly launched group blog, called ProjectServerHelp. For the forseeable future, I will be continuing to post to EPMFAQ and will be maintaining the EPMFAQ Forums.

I look forward to continuing to serve my readers and the EPM community-at-large in this new role. Please contact me using the if you have any questions, and as always, you are welcome to post in the EPMFAQ Blog Posts Forum.

Thank you for reading EPMFAQ!

Hey All. Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still alive and blogging — my day job has been keeping me away the past couple weeks. I’m on four simultaneous client engagements, so as you can imagine I’ve been more than occupied.

I have a couple of posts in the works, so don’t worry — I’ll be back soon. I expect to have a new post up shortly. In the meantime, feel free to poke around the forums.

Thanks!
Steve

Popularity: 53%

Back in April, I posted an article where I recommended that you install the latest CU for SQL 2005 (CU7).

Since then, I’ve recieved feedback regarding some issues introduced by this CU. It would appear that they are more of an issue than I originally thought. Based on this feedback, I’m going to recommend that you all stick with CU6 for the time being.

Popularity: 63%