Microsoft has released a cumulative update for Project Server.  Such updates typically include components of both Project Server and Microsoft Office SharePointe Server (MOSS).  You’ll find the relative information below.

Webcast on the June Cumulative Update:
Information About Microsoft Project and Project Server Cumulative June Update

How to deploy cumulative updates for Project and Project Server
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239177.aspx

Rollup Packages:
This is a set of two rollup packages which contains all the fixes for WSS, Project Server and MOSS.  These packages should be used when MOSS is part of the deployment and/or you have language packs installed.  The Server Rollup Packages are much larger (~200MB each) but they will greatly simplify MOSS patch deployment.

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Cumulative Update Server Hotfix Package (WSS server-package): June 29, 2010
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983311
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Cumulative Update server hotfix package (MOSS server-package): June 29, 2010
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983310/

Individual Product Packages:
Individual Packages are specific to a particular product like WSS and Project Server.  These are smaller downloads but they do not include language packs or patches for other products so patches for those products would have to be downloaded and installed separately. 

• Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (sts-x-none.msp): June 29, 2010 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983307
• Description of the Project Server 2007 hotfix package (Pjsrvapp-x-none.msp; Pjsrvwfe-x-none.msp): June 29, 2010 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983312
• Description of the Office Project 2007 hotfix package (project-x-none.msp): June 29, 2010 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028571

Client Installation:

In order to install this hotfix, you will need to have Microsoft Project 2007 SP1 installed on the client: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937154/en-us

NOTE: Microsoft strongly recommends testing within a NON-Production environment prior to rollout.

Heather O’Cull from the Microsoft Project Development team has a great blog post explaining how Project deals with the rate to consume a resource on a task through the Assignment Units field.  You’ll see there’s some debate from commenters on whether the change in this functionality is the right move but whether you agree or not, this is a key element of Project’s Calculation engine that it’s important to know about just so you know how it works behind the scenes.  For those who do resource calculations in Microsoft Project, I encourage you to take a look.   You can find the post at the Project Dev Team Blog.

Well, we told you it was coming and now the release of Microsoft Project and Project Server is just about upon us. On May 1st, Microsoft’s Enterprise clients and its partners will be able to access the official release of Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010. While the official name of the products has dropped the word “Office” (It was quite a mouthful), both products continue to be part of the Microsoft Office family of products and will be released at the same time.

That’s not an accident.

Microsoft has made it quite clear that its strategy is to leverage client’s interest in one product line by tying it to another. The Office group has done this very successfully. You don’t think anymore of just buying Word or just buying Excel. No, you buy one of the bundles of Office and those products are contained within it.

Project and Project Server will continue to have their own licneces and aren’t available as part of any of the Office bubdles for now but there a bunch of other things that have changed.

Say bye-bye to Office Project Portfolio Server
One big change is how Microsoft has rolled some of the most popular Portfolio Selection functionality from Portfolio Server 2007 into Project Server 2010. There will not be a Portfolio Server 2010 product and, while existing users of Portfolio Server 2007 will see updates of that stand-alone product for some time, any new development on Portfolio management will focus on Project Server.

Did you say 32bit? Bite your tongue!
It’s all 64 all the time for server installations now. Installing Project Server will no longer be possible on a 32bit version of Windows Server. The new 64bit architecture makes a lot more memory available to Project Server but may cause some companies to take pause as the consider the costs of hardware.

Project Standard and Project Professional will still work on both 64bit and 32 bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows7.

Gotta love SharePoint
Previous versions of Project Server could be installed with either the free Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) of the licensed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). (Don’t you love how many acronyms we use in this industry?) Project Server will require users to have a MOSS license. The system will now longer support just the free WSS. This may be a license cost issue for some users.

So that’s the bad news. What’s the good news?
There’s good news in this release in a couple of areas. First of all, the underlying architecture of Project Server and Project Desktop hasn’t changed since 2007 and that will almost certainly mean the stability of the product at release time will be better than 2007 was.

Rather than rewriting the system’s architecture, there are new features that should be popular including Project Data Pages that allow Project data questionaires to be gathered online and then woven into a workflow, some improvements in the timesheet that will be great for those tring to do a full timesheet week and then update the project progress, some easier dashboarding tools that should allow people with intermediate skills to create great graphical representations of their data and, of course, the aforementioned Portfolio Selection functionality.

On the Desktop look for a distinction between Project Standard and Project Professional that will no doubt result in some kind of push to have people upgrade to the more powerful version.

Project Professional will have a new Timeline View and a new Team Management view which I think will go over well.
The scheduling tool will not default to automatic scheduling and you’ll be able to enter a description rather than a duration iin the duraton column as a sort of placeholder for the data to be entered later. Purists may howl at this. It’s another sign of how Microsoft Project has become so ubiquitous and how the product must now cater much more to non professional project managers.

Expect the Microsoft marketing beast to crank up to a fever pitch in the coming weeks. It’s already been moving forward at a pedestrian speed for months but as the product hits the market, Microsoft will do what it does best as it announces everything new in the Office 2010 family of products.

It’s called “The Stack” over at Microsoft.  It refers to the layers of technology that are required to get the Microsoft EPM functional.  For those who only have experience with Project Desktop this will sound unfamiliar.  After all, what’s to know?  You put the DVD in the box, you hear a whirring sound.  When it’s over the DVD pops out and you start entering tasks in Project. 

 If only Project Server were that simple. 

Microsoft made the decision years ago to leverage the  different technologies that Microsoft produces for its server products.  When we’re asked to deploy the Microsoft EPM “Solution” for Project 2007, here are the Microsoft Products we need to think about:

Windows Server
Internet Information Services (IIS)
Active Directory
SQL Server
SQL OLAP Services
SQL Reporting Services
Microsoft Office
SharePoint Services (WSS) or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
Project Professional
Project Server
Project Web Access (PWA CALs)
Portfolio Server
Portfolio CALs

That’s pretty much been the list since Project Server was first introduced and later when Portfolio Server was introduced.  With Project 2010, we know the list will change a little:

Windows Server
Internet Information Services (IIS)
Active Directory
Exchange Server
SQL Server
SQL OLAP Services
SQL Reporting Services
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2010 is now required
Project Professional
Project Server
Project Web Access (PWA CALs)

At first glance the list doesn’t seem that different.  The Portfolio Server license is now woven into Project Server and a new option for Exchange Server is added.  But, let’s take a peek below the hood.

In Project 2010 you will need MOSS.  The Project team is leveraging technology available only in MOSS so it’s not an option and the option to use Windows SharePoint Services is discontinued.  Ok, that may have an impact on your licenses or perhaps not but lets think about the impllications.

SharePoint is the fastest growing server product in Microsoft’s history.  A large number of organizations have adopted the platform in its 2007 incarnation.  Let’s imagine that you’ve *just* finished deploying SharePoint 2007 and now Microsoft comes along to explain how great Project Server 2010 will be.  But, in order to take advantage of Project Server 2010, you had to adopt “the Stack”.  That means you’ll need to upgrade your SharePoint from 2007 to 2010.  That may be quite a challenge.  You might have extensive customizaiton in SharePoint 2007 that would have to be migrated.  You might have applications that only work with SharePoint 2007 and not yet with SharePoint 2010 or that might have to be upgraded themselves to work with the new SharePoint. 

Only a version ago, Project Server was viewed as the vanguard; the product that would “pull-through” technologies like SharePoint into the organization.  Now, however, that same link may have organizations think twice about going to the new technology because of the platform they’ve adopted.

Interestlingly I had a conversation about this just last week with my friends at Occam who have been doing Project Server hosting for years.   Hosting the new technology might be an attractive solution for many project offices who are keen for the new technology.  It has been attractive for a minority of users thus far, but if going to a hosted model eliminates the challenge of confronting “the Stack” then it may well be attractive when Project Server 2010 hits the streets next year.

I was talking last week about the announcement of Project Server 2010.  It’s part of a much larger communication of course.  The whole release that’s due in the first part of next year will be Office 2010 and that includes a whole pile of products.  It’s worthwhile keeping note of that because the new information available in Microsoft Project may well get lost in the noise of what is to come when the Office Marketing machine gets cranked up to full speed as it always does for a big launch.

One of the biggest elements of the Information Worker Division at Microsoft (that’s the part that releases business products like Office) is the next release of SharePoint.  SharePoint has become the go-to platform for Microsoft and almost every other part of Microsoft is working on leveraging it. 

What does this mean in practical terms?  It means that Microsoft Dynamics accounting software will have an interface based in SharePoint.  It means that the Browser-based interface of Visual Studio Team Services is based on SharePoint.  And, like the last 2 versions, it means that Project Server’s Web Access (PWA) Interface is based on SharePoint.  The interface of Project Portfolio Server has now been woven into the PWA interface also and therefore it too now is based on SharePoint.

Project Server is not the most algorithmic product.  It’s strength is not based on the incredible resource levelling calculation or it’s the flexibility of its critical path methodology calculations.  Project Server’s power is in being a collaborative project management tool.  For an organization that says “We’re not interested in collaboration.  We just want a heavy project scheduling calculation engine then working with a desktop product may be more appropriate.  There are many to choose from.  Primavera, Deltek and Planview all have desktop versions that are very powerful.  Even Microsoft Project Standard might be more palatable for that kind of requirement.

Project Server, however, is squarely targeting those interested in collaborative project management and SharePoint becomes a big part of that.  In fact, when you take the requirements apart, the ability of SharePoint to collaborate may make the addition of Project Server more of an afterthought and don’t think that Microsoft hasn’t thought of that already. 

Already when we go to clients who ask “Should we upgrade from Project Server 2003 to Project Server 2007 now or should we wait for Project Server 2010 next year?” the answer has little to do with the relative functionality in each version.

“What are your plans for SharePoint?” we ask.  If the company has already adopted SharePoint 2007 and has no intent to upgrade straight away next year, then we recommend Project Server 2007.  If the company is already committed to SharePoint 2010 or isn’t committed at all to a collaboration platform then we can consider waiting until the new version.  There’s plenty to do in the meantime if the plan is to go with 2010.  Architectural plans, pilot groups, training and system design can all be worked on now with an intent to roll out at the middle of next year.  The key is SharePoint.

Can we be that far away from Microsoft saying “Project Server is just another blade of a SharePoint Server?”

Often when I’m speaking in the blog people assume that when I say EPM System, that I mean one large integrated EPM package.  It’s an easy assumption to make.  But enterprise systems can be made up of a myriad collection of tools and if those systems are accompanied by a strong enterprise process, then they can be very effective.  With the new announcements this week on Project Desktop 2010 it has me thinking.

I teach Advanced Project Management at McGill from time to time and one of the things that I always challenge my students on is to challenge assumptions. And a challenge I love to throw at them is to prove to me that an enterprise system is better than individual systems.  I mean, if you’re an organization, it must be better to be integrated into a single enterprise system, mustn’t it? 

Well, that’s a good question and before we’re done I often have the students make a case for having project management integrated into an enterprise system or leaving individual project managers with their own tools.

This debate comes in handy when I’m consulting organizations who are certain they want to implement an enterprise system. 

“Why?” I’ll ask. 

This often takes them aback.  Aren’t I the salesperson who should be trying to push an enterprise system on them?

“What specific business benefits do you expect to realize,” I ask.  Sometimes the answers are obvious.  By far the most popular request is that the enterprise system help with resource capacity management and forward capacity planning. 

But there are a lot of paths to getting to your goals. 

With the incredible penetration of Project Desktop it’s interesting to think about how effective project managers might be if they continued to manage some of their workload as individuals and collaborated on other elements.

How about this for an idea:

Use Project Desktop as a desktop tool.  Let individual project managers manage their individual projects on their own.

Use SharePoint for the team communication and collaboration that has become so important in today’s fast-paced project management world.  Document management, work flow with forms and list management could all live there.  Even milestone management to track deliverables could be in SharePoint.

Use Excel Services to do resource aggregation at the highest skill level.  It won’t do resource levelling of course but that might not be the biggest challenge.  A graphical representation of resource overloads at the skill level might be enough to overcome the biggest demands of resource capacity planning; determining if there *is* a problem.

With the ability of Project Professional 2010 to now import a list of tasks from SharePoint 2010 and keep that task list synchronized and the new Team View there may be more and more organizations interested in making a Sharepoint/Project Desktop organizational environment.

With all the talking I’ve done about Project Server 2010 and its new functionality, I didn’t want to forget about Project Desktop. The desktop versions of Project 2007 are still divided into two flavours: Standard and Professional but there are a few differences and some interesting new features.

First of all, Standard and Professional 2010 will be available in both 32bit and 64bit versions. If a 64bit architecture doesn’t sound attractive you’ve never loaded a mega project into Project Standard. The great news about a 64bit environment and a 64bit version of Project is that it can access memory beyond the 2GB limit of 32bit. If you are loading large projects or many projects as part of a program then this is a huge improvement.

One change that is common to both Project Standard 2010 and Project Professional 2010 is the Fluent UI – you may have heard this referred to as the Menu Ribbon. This new feature was completely expected since the release of the Ribbon in Office 2007. The ribbon will make the look and feel of Project Desktop match the rest of Office.

The new Timeline view is one of my favourites. It shows a single bar at the top of the screen very similar to the timeline object in Visio that represents the entire project schedule. A zoom control shows how much of the total timeline bar is being shown in the schedule at the bottom. Want to zoom to the 2nd half of the schedule? Want to see the whole schedule? Want to slide forward to the end of the year?

In previous versions of Project Standard vs. Project Professional the major distinction was Project Professional’s ability to connect to Project Server. That distinction is still present in Project Desktop 2007. However, there are several features in Project Professional that will not be present in Project Standard. Microsoft sees this as an opportunity to entice users to move up from Standard to Professional. These “Project Professional only” features include:

One of the other features that’s sure to be popular with Project Desktop 2010 is the enhancement to the copy/paste functionality. Now tasks from Excel can be copied and pasted while retaining formatting and other key data.

Team Planner View
This new view in Project Professional 2010 is a new dynamic view in the desktop application that shows unassigned tasks in one window and above it a list of tasks organized by resource. So a team leader can see the existing work for their team and then drag tasks into the schedule of their team.

Inactive Tasks
A much-requested feature that appears in Project Professional 2010 but not in Standard 2010 is the ability to declare a task as inactive without having to delete it. An inactive task will no longer affect the schedule but it may contain critical information such as actual costs or baseline information that we’d like to maintain.

Sync with SharePoint tasks
Project Professional 2010 will include an ability to load a list of tasks from SharePoint and then to keep that schedule synchronized with the SharePoint list.

What about backwards compatibility?
You’ll be happy to know that Project Standard and Professional 2010 are able not only to open a Project Standard or Professional 2007 with reduced functionality in a compatibility mode and save the files in the older format. The new desktop tools can also open and save data in Project 2000-2003 or Project 98 formats. Project Standard and Professional 2010 can even create a new project and save it in these older formats. Of course some functionality may not be available in these older compatibility formats.

There’s lots more but as you can see there’s been a big focus on the Desktop for the 2010 release!.

The release of Project Server 2010 is interesting from an architectural perspective. When Project Server 2002 was first released, it was a completely new environment. The quality however was a challenge. It is perhaps not a surprise given how much of the underpinnings had to be created from scratch.

A year and a half later Project Server 2003 was released and users were delighted with the quality of the release. The angst of the 2002 release was soon forgotten. Project Server 2003 was not an architectural release. It was written on top of the basic structure of the 2002 product but took the interface and functionality forward.

Project Server 2007 was an architectural release. The basic connection to the database switched to the new PSI from the PDS that had been in Project Server 2002/2003. The Desktop connected through the PSI rather than directly through the database, the Project Queue was created, as was the Project Cache. The architecture was an incredible hurdle and even though it was under the surface, it represented the majority of work on the new product.

As an architectural release, users complained about the stability of Project Server 2007 when it was first released. With the release of Service Pack 1, this got a lot better and Service Pack 2 has made things even better. But with the sting of that experience not that old, many are wondering if they can expect something similar from Project 2010.

Project 2010 is not a change in architecture and therefore it is entirely likely that the stability of the product upon release will be much better than 2007′s. Even now, several months before release, we know that there are a number of beta clients who have been able to use the new product in a production mode prior to release. This was not possible with 2007. By the time of release, testing in the field with clients had been very limited.

So the experience of the stability of Project and Project Server is likely to be much more like the experience of 2003 than 2007.

Microsoft has taken advantage of the Users Conference to launch its campaign for Project 2010. This is known internally as part of Office version 14. For people who keep track of such things, the current version of Project (and Office is version 12). If the next version of Project will be 14 wondering what happened to version 13 seems fair. Microsoft elected to skip the number 13 to avoid the bad luck that so many attribute to this hapless number. Anyway, now you have some trivia you can impress your friends and neighbours with.

But I digress.

If you’re worried you won’t have time to get Project 2010 deployed in your organization by this Christmas you can put your fears to bed. The product won’t be released until the “First half of 2010″ according to the keynote address here. Project’s launch is part of Office 2010 so any news you see for the release date of Office 2010 will apply also to Project.

Partners such as my firm have been given early access to the product as part of the beta test program. Microsoft refers to this as the Technology Adoptipn Program. It gives consultants and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) a chance to test the product early and give some QA feedback to Microsoft before the final release. Also (and importantly for HMS) ISVs can work on the link of their products now to the new version so products like our TimeControl timesheet will work with Project 2010 as soon as it’s released.

Ok, on to the important news. What’s in it? A few big changes.

Portfolio Server will not be sold separately. Much of the Portfolio Server functionality has been rewritten right into Project Server and not only is the look and feel just like Project Server but the data is now altogether. You’ll note I said “much” not all. Some Portfolio Server users will not be quick to upgrade.

ActiveX’s are gone. The old installation of ActiveX components has been replaced with Dynamic HTML code. (CIOs are now clapping as they won’t have to “push” ActiveX’s to all their users anymore.)

There are some new dependencies:

Project Server will now require MOSS 2010 64bit. In fact Project Server is 64 bit. If you’ve worked with the free Windows. Sharepoint Services up until now, you’ll need to buy full MOSS licences to move to Project Server 2010. If your current Project Server is part of a huge SharePoint 2007 (or 2003) deployment you’ll need to upgrade that to 2010 to move to this version of Project Server.

The message from the conference floor is that Project is best thought of as an extension to SharePoint.

Well that’s all about Project Server which of course is of great interest to me but the more interesting initiative is with Project Desktop which I’ll talk about in a separate post

Stay tuned.  I’ll be blogging from the floor of the Microsoft Project Conference in Phoenix this week  as Microsoft kicks off its promotions for what’s to come in the next year with Microsoft Project, Project Server and Portfolio Server.

Over the next few days, the Non-Disclosure agreements for much of what is in Project 2010 will expire and we’ll be able to talk a lot more about what you’ll find in the next version of Project here in the blog.