Hi, I found this list of a very fantastic videos with each of 3-5 minutes duration. I am sure that you will start watching one and continue till you watch all.

Now I will leave you with this collection

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/CH100740881033.aspx

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

Dear All,

I would like to take this opportunity to invite you and your teams to register and attend the FREE deep  dive workshops that took place on a yearly basis at InfoCenter.

Also feel free to register in my session “ Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (MS EPM)”  using the below link

http://www.infocenter.com.kw/InfoEDUDAY2009/infoEducation%20Day/ProjectManagement.htm

For more details please read below ..

50 FREE Deep Dive Workshops @

Info Edu Day 2009

Saturday March 28, 2009

Kuwait City, Duwalia Building, 5^th Floor

Infocenter Institute

Seats Are Limited, Register Now!

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

A nice article that list a lot of links for useful Support & Reference links

http://projectserver201.blogspot.com/2007/08/microsoft-epm-enterprise-project.html

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

A series of 8 video (shot ones) that covers the project management life cycle using MS Project.

it covers the basics of Project Management and will illustrate the Project 2007 interface. It also explain how to start new project, how to define tasks, how to assign resources to tasks, how to estimate the cost and how to report the project progress

here is the link

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/HA102820011033.aspx

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

A good tips collection from CriticalTools 

http://www.criticaltools.com/Tips.htm

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

This is one of the best articles that I ever read, it is highlighting the most BIG MISTAKES that might result in bad outcome of using MS Project

http://www.pmconnection.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=32

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

At IT Evolution 08, get a front row seat as we unveil technologies like Hyper-V, App-V and Virtual Machine Manager that will help you ride the hottest trend in IT today -Virtualization.
Come and attend this big show as per your country schedule below

A cool article that brings you back to basics, but still it is very important to understand

Subject: Back to Basics: Understanding task dependencies

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

Microsoft published new Quick reference guide for Project Managers and another one for Team members. These are really great where I have been asked by a lot from my customer to provide with such a quick references

Here are the links

For Project Managers: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC102865051033.aspx

For Team Members: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC102880551033.aspx?pid=CT101441451033

now they are free and in Word format

Best Regards

I have installed the latest infrastructure update for both SharePoint WSS 30.0 and Project Server 2007. I was really impressed with the GREAT enhancement that has been done through.

The most feature I liked was the Timephased view. But I faced one problem where suddenly this view was not showing and i was back to the normal view before applying the infrastructure.

Needless to mention what I did to fix this out but finally I figured it out.  So the reason behind not showing the Timephased view (Calendar view) was because I have modified the My Assignment view and have removed the "Progress [Assignment]" field in the related view.!

This field should be there to get the Timephased view showing correctly, for me I was trying to make this screen simple for my customer and % Work Complete was the main field. That is why I removed the rest.

As a conclusion, don't change the default selected fields for this view in order to get the My Tasks page shows the views as expected.

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

Did you get the chance to explore the Project server Database, if yes then I am sure that you wonder why there are 4 databases created for each instance of the PWA. I will not answer why but I will till you in brief what is the purpose of each

 

1. The Draft database contains tables for saving unpublished projects from Project Professional and other applications. Project Web Access does not show project data in the Draft database.
2. The Published database contains all of the published projects as well as enterprise resources, the enterprise global template, and other project templates. Published projects are visible in Project Web Access. The Published database also contains tables that are specific to Project Web Access (timesheets, models, views, and so on), and global data tables (outline codes, security, and metadata).
3. The Archive database saves backup and older versions of projects and other data.
4. The Reporting database is the staging area for generating reports and OLAP cubes. Data in the Reporting database is comprehensive and is updated nearly in real time. The Reporting tables are optimized for read-only report generation.

For more details please read this article

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms513875.aspx

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

Microsoft announced the latest Infra Structure update and it contains a fixes to the claimed bugs.

For more details please visit MSDN Official blog for Project 2007

To download this infrastructure you can follow this link . Install Infrastructure update for Project Professional

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

I have some implementations of the EPM where I used the Forms authentication to authenticate the EPM users. I have wrote my notes and would like to share it with you regarding this

Why to go for Forms Authentication

1. Some of the EPM users are not part of the organization domain
2. There is no Active Directory
3. The user can not access the organization domain

Why NOT to go for that?

Well, do you want me to speak technically or from implementation prospective?

I guess you said both?

• Technically
1. leakage of information for MS Sharepoint Forms Authentication as it is not embedded by default
2. Poor user control functionality.
3. No out of the box tool for editing users online
• Implementation
1. Poor approach to design the security Rules for passwords
2. Most of the customer forgot their Forms Passwords but they don't do the same with AD passwords
3. Accordingly getting the users accounts locked, this is not the issue, the issue is the poor approach to get them back.
4. Integration with Outlook is another bad thing, once you open the outlook and entered your AD password you will get asked to enter your forms credential. Most of my users consider it as a double job that they don't like

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

I was away from my lovely blog for the last two months, That was something that is not under my control where my movement to my new work got 100% of my time. Now I am going slowly back to track and found some good time to blog.

I will resume by continue writing about according to the best practice that I got through my experience in implementing MS EPM solution.

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

Another good article about Backup/Restore your EPM Server

http://blogs.msdn.com/project/archive/2006/12/08/backup-and-restore-project-server-2007.aspx

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

This link is interesting

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;951648&sd=rss&spid=11388

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

  The Workshop for MS EPM titled as "You Road Map To  Project Management using MS EPM Solution" has started as scheduled on 18th of May 2008. IT Managers, Project Managers and IT Professionals from big companies like NBK bank, Burgan bank, Diyar United, Alargan Intr. Real Estate, Safat, PACE  and some other companies in kuwait

Actually this post is created for those who attend to post their questions, I will try my best to answer them. Besides, you can leave your comments, feedback or share your ideas with the others. to do so you need to click on "Add Comments".

Best regards

Bilal Okour

Yes, MS EPM is now hitting hard in Kuwait and a lot wanted to start utilizing the power of it. As a series of increasing the awareness and importance of this solution I have conducted a lot of sessions in different large events in Kuwait

The MS EPM flight is landing in MIC (Microsoft Innovation Center, Kuwait) now and the seats are so limited :)

You can download the invitation letter from my blog (please follow this link to download), fill it and email it back to the email address mentioned in the invitation document itself.

The Workshop title will be :: Your Road Map to Project Management using MS EPM Solution and the workshop will cover the following topics (spanned into 5 days, 3 hours a day, 6-9 PM)

Day 1

Getting Started with Office Project Server 2007

Initiating Projects

Planning Projects—Context and Framework

Day 2

Planning Projects—Scope and Schedule Management

Planning Projects—Staffing Management Plan

Planning Projects—Resource Assignments

Day 3

Planning Projects—Cost, Risk and Other Management Plans

Executing Projects—Processes, Resources, and Deliverables

Executing Projects—Manage Timesheets and Personal Settings

Day 4

Monitoring and Controlling Projects—Context and Framework

Monitoring and Controlling Projects—Tracking Task and Project Progress

Day 5

Monitoring and Controlling Projects—Measuring Performance and Reporting Progress

Closing Projects

Complete Life Cycle case

For more information you can

Call me at +965 7205246

Email me: bilal@arabilla.net

Or post a comment here

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

I guess so many people are happy with the windows authentication features that comes with MS Project Server and found it very easy to setup and to use. But did they know that there is another way of authenticating users, i am sure that they knew but they never think when and how to use it

First let me focus on facts about each and when each one is recommended to be used?

Windows Authentication

• It authenticates users against the AD that the Project Server is joint to. So, it can use only one AD. So if all of your users belong to one domain then this will be your right choice.
• Roles and groups (or any AD classification) are not used in EPM, remember that the post title is all about Authentication, not authorization. Authorization is run through the security model embedded with the Project server itself.
• Project Server users list and the AD users list are not linked or in synch. You need to schedule synch job from within Project Server itself, this means if a user became inactive then this will not be reflected in the Project Server. (needless to say that if the user became inactive or blocked in AD then he/she will not get authenticated to AD but he can be still used as a resource in Project Server)

Forms Authentication

• Conceptually, it is very similar to the AD authentication, except that Membership Provider will be used instead of AD
• More flexible to contain users regardless of the AD they belongs to and even if they don't belong to.
• Difficult (or not straight forward to setup) to setup and maintain the users credentials.
• No synch tool is available out of the box except for the "PjFormsAuthUpgrade" tool that comes with Project server

I will be posting more articles about Forms authentication, be tuned

Best Regards

Bilal Okour

The confusion of how to use the EPM in the right way is common everywhere. The main two player in this environment (Project Managers & Team Members) find sometimes difficult to understand why the EPM is not reflecting the progress information for any published project. To understand this you can take it simply like this

1. PM :: Publish the project to PWA (Using Project Pro)
2. Team Resource :: Submit the progress update to his PM (using PWA)
3. PM :: Approve the updates received by his resources (using Project Pro) 
4. PM :: Apply the approved updates to be reflected into the plan  (Using Project Pro)
5. PM :: Adjust (if required) and then Publish the project plan again to PWA (using Project Pro)

The picture below can tell this in a better way

Best Regards

Bilal Okour