Project 2010 desktop bug found for Projects >4500 tasks

Leave it to one of our customers and their 'power' users to find one of the first bugs in Project 2010! Here's the scenario:

1. You create a Project Plan in Project 2010 with more than 4000 tasks

2. Each task on the project has at least 2 resource assignments

3. Each task is linked in a FS relationship

4. You try to change the duration of any task - in my case, I changed one task's duration from 3d to 4d.

Result: It takes more than 30 seconds to update the duration field.

Based upon these results, we forwarded the case to Microsoft who then did further testing and indeed confirmed there is a bug. Note that Project Server need not be a part of the scenario - this is purely a desktop issue. Here is what Microsoft found:

1. Change duration with calculation ON = ~ 33 seconds.
2. Change duration with calculation OFF = ~21 seconds.

3. One very interesting thing is that if the duration increases, the time to change was about 13 seconds whereas decreasing the duration was about 29 seconds.

Of course the next logical question is: What's the remedy?

Well, a hotfix of course! But because we are dealing with the scheduling engine, it may be a while. So during testing, Microsoft discovered that the new 'Heat' resource indicator - or 'man on fire' symbol, letting you know that you have overallocated resources on a task, is the culprit behind all of this.

Since we can't remove that one indicator, we need to hide the indicator column from any view within Project 2010. (The Indicators column is the column with the blue background and the white 'I') This will allow you to work with very large projects and still change the duration column without experiencing severe delays.

Let me know if you are experiencing this, and I'll post the hotfix info as soon as we have it!

SharePoint 2010 Developer Conference Papers Released

You can now download the presentations from the SharePoint 2010 Developer's Conference. Click here for the session file links.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Project Server 2010 CU Links

Here are the JUNE 2010 CU links for SharePoint 2010 and Project Server 2010:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028568 - Description of the SharePoint Foundation 2010 hotfix package - June 29, 2010
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2075990 - Description of the Project Server 2010 hotfix package - June 29, 2010
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983497 - Description of the SharePoint Server 2010 hotfix package - June 29, 2010

SharePoint and Project Server 2010 First CUs released

The very first CUs for Project Server 2010 and SharPoint 2010 are ready for release this August! Join the TechNet Webcast here.

Microsoft a Leader in Gartner 2010 Magic Quadrant

As a person who has experience with many Enterprise Project Management (EPM) tools, I am always interested to read what Gartner has to say about the pros and cons of the leaders in its 'Magic Quadrant.' I'll leave it up to you to decide how much importance there is in these studies, but below is an excerpt from this year's summary on Microsoft's 2010 EPM tool:

Strengths

• The 2010 version of EPM is built on Microsoft SharePoint Server, providing support and inclusion of SharePoint's business collaboration capabilities, a common user interface, data integration, search functions, and reporting infrastructures.
• The 2010 version of EPM combines Microsoft's portfolio management capabilities and its centralized project management features (previously in two separate but integrated products) into a single, unified product with a common repository and data flow.
• The 2010 release of EPM adds support for managing projects and work requests during the demand collection, proposal, business case generation, and approval/rejection phases of a typical project life cycle.

Cautions

• Currently, Microsoft only offers a SaaS version of EPM through its network of certified EPM hosting partners.
• Microsoft EPM provides limited preconfigured reports and dashboards. Users will need to create and modify their own reports using Excel and Excel Services, the added Report Wizard, or the PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer. Alternatively, more-advanced reports can also be developed using SQL Reporting Services, which generally require a skilled IT resource.
• Microsoft EPM does not yet provide strong, out-of-the-box "budget versus actuals" reporting at the portfolio level, but customers can meet these requirements with custom fields, by extending Excel Services integration or with a number of existing add-on modules available from the Microsoft partner network. In addition, EPM provides integration and bridges to third-party financial management systems.

Read the full report here

First CU Released for Microsoft Project 2010

The very first cumulative update (CU) has been released for Microsoft Project 2010. The download and description can be found by clicking here. No word yet on any server releases for 2010.

Ribbon References

For those of you finding it a bit of a challenge adapting to the new Ribbon interface in Microsoft Project 2010 (or any other Office tool for that matter!), Microsoft has published some great Quick References on finding the 2007 commands in the new 2010 tools. You can download these in .xls format by clicking here. I've found it to be very helpful, especially since I had the 2003/2007 Project menus memorized!

Solution Starters for Project Server 2010

Great news EPM gurus! Microsoft has released a series of Solution Starters for Project Server 2010. Take a look at the great features here and see if these can help you or your customers!

All of Office 2010 - including servers -released on MSDN

Those of you using MSDN will be pleasantly surprised to find that
Microsoft Office 2010, including Project, Project Server, SharePoint and Office Professional Plus, have all been released for download. These are not the betas but the actual production-ready images.