Microsoft Office Project Server

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Microsoft Office Project Server is a project management server solution made by Microsoft. It leverages Windows SharePoint Services as its foundation, and utilizes both a web interface and Microsoft Project as the client application.

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[edit] Versions for Windows

  • 2007 - Office Project Server 2007
  • 2003 - Office Project Server 2003
  • 2002 - Project Server 2002
  • 2000 - Project Central Server

[edit] Description

Microsoft extends the capabilities of Microsoft Project with Project Server and Web Access. Microsoft Project Server stores project information in a central database, protected from unauthorized access and corruption. A Project Administrator can control security defining users and access rights.

The Project Center supports reports across an organization at the project level. Managers can drill down into project details.

The project manager needs to communicate project plans and to distribute task assignments to team members. The assignment of tasks can be distributed to team member home pages in Web Access. They need to communicate status and changes to keep the project manager up to date. Project Server supports electronic communication over the web via Web Access.

Resource workloads can be analyzed by project and by resource with the Resource Center, allowing organizations to forecast future resource requirements and make more efficient use of resources.

The view definition is easier to understand and more robust with Web Access than with Microsoft Project. Views can be protected to assist standardization. Project Server stores custom calendars, views, tables, filters, and fields, in an Enterprise Global area where users have access to the latest version every time they restart Microsoft Project.

[edit] Changes in Office Project Server 2007

The architecture of Project Server 2007 contains significant changes.

The 2003 Microsoft Project version employed ODBC to connect to the server, which is problematic over low bandwidth and high latency connections. This problem is often skirted by remotely using a PC with the same network (LAN) as the server.

The 2007 version leverages SOAP to access the server. Although this facilitates clients over low bandwidth / high latency connections, it adds a level of complexity (in the form of a Queue) that must be managed by an administrator. Specifically, a job in the queue could get stuck and block other jobs from completion.

The 2007 version has 14 OLAP cubes which can be used to do Data Analysis with. It is an improvement over the 2003 version which only had 1 OLAP cube. With the new cube Calculated measures can be added to the cubes, which enables reporting on custom created fields.

Project Server 2007 features a local cache which effectively allows the user to have 2 copies of a Project Schedule. Changes made after the first save will just be synchronised rather than replacing the server copy which speeds up response times. But currently there are known cache issues.

[edit] See also