Project Hosts Blog

Project Hosts is one of only 15 companies worldwide that has attained Microsoft’s Gold Competency in Project and Portfolio Management (PPM). This Competency requires passing of multiple technical exams along with a proven track record of successful Project Server and SharePoint solutions, verified by many positive customer references.

Project Hosts is the only hosting company that has achieved a Gold PPM Competency.

The advantage enjoyed by our 300+ customers is that when we deliver online, private cloud Project Server solutions to our customers, they can rest assured that their environment is being managed by engineers who have unmatched experience in supporting Microsoft Project Server, SharePoint Server, and the full Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution.

Many of our customers are interested in single sign-on, so their users can connect to our online services without having to enter a username and password each time.

There are a number of single sign-on solutions on the market that enable access to browser-based applications. These solutions use technologies like Microsoft Live ID, Active Directory Federation Services, SAML, or even Project Hosts’ own ARGON solution (look for an upcoming blog post). They are great as long as all you want to do is to access web applications via your browser. But they typically do not work for access using Excel (connecting to Excel Services), Project Professional (connecting to Project Server), or from other local applications running on your PC.

We have found that the best and most flexible single sign-on solution is to use the Windows Credential Manager. This feature is built into Windows and provides a mechanism to store user credentials in a encrypted vault associated with the user’s profile. More than 90% of our customers have chosen this solution. The solution requires us to issue a username and password for each user based on an Active Directory domain associated with the hosted application. The first time a user logs in, he or she can simply check the box “Remember my password” to store them in Credential manager. As long as users have permission on their system to use the Windows Credential Manager and have trusted our site in their browsers, they will automatically login to application without any additional logon prompts. Users can connect using a browser, they can view an Excel Services report online then open it in Excel on their PC, they can launch Project Professional on their PC and have it automatically connect in the background to Project Server – it is a completely seamless experience with no additional logins necessary. None of the other single sign-on solutions mentioned above work for all of these access methods.

Please email info@projecthosts.com if you would like more information about Windows Credential Manager or if you would like our white paper comparing various Single Sign-On options.

Document collaboration has become an integral part of good Customer Relationship Management. SharePoint is increasingly used to collaborate on, update, and manage versions of sales presentations, collateral, Statement of Work templates, agreements, and service contracts.

Previously, for these kinds of documents to be included in CRM-enabled communications with customers, they had to be stored inside CRM — in addition to SharePoint. Alternatively, it was possible to pull certain parts of SharePoint into an iframe inside a CRM entity. But now with Microsoft CRM 2011, there is a native integration with SharePoint 2010 that allows SharePoint-stored documents to be easliy accessed and referenced from within the CRM application.

On February 15 at noon Eastern (9am Pacific), I will be giving a webcast to demonstrate these new features and give out 2 free online trial environments of CRM 2011 + SharePoint 2010.

Please join us by Registering for the webcast.

Project Server 2010 has taken the integration with SharePoint to a new level. As a result, users of Project Server have four main choices of Business Intelligence (BI) tools to use for reporting: Project Server Views, Performance Point, SQL Reporting Services, and Excel Services. Excel Services has the advantage that Microsoft Office Excel can be used as the tool to develop or modify reports.

But there are some subtleties that must be addressed when accessing Excel Services reports over the Internet (or even within a corporate network). This is because by default, Excel will try to make a direct connection to the data source. If the data source is a database (like the Reporting Database for Project Server), then this direct connection may not be available over the Internet (or in a corporate network).

By changing configurations from their default values, the Project Hosts Operations team has developed methods to get around this problem, allowing users to open Excel Services reports from Excel on their PCs. If you are interested in learning more about these methods, please email info@projecthosts.com, and we will send you a document describing them.

This week at Microsoft’s Project Momentum Conference in Barcelona, Project Hosts announced the opening of its new London data center.

Project Hosts has been providing Online hosting services to customers in Europe for more than six years, but until now, they have all been hosted from one of our four data centers in the United States. As demand for Software as a Service has continued to grow in Europe, our partners that provide consulting, configuration, and training services have begun hearing more requests for European-hosted options from their customers and prospects. They are now actively promoting the new online services our new EU-based data center (or should I say data centre) has opened to them.

Pricing for hosted EPM or SharePoint or CRM from our London data center is quoted in either pounds sterling or Euros, removing the currency risk that dollar-priced hosting has carried in the past.

For more information, please email info@projecthosts.com.

Microsoft Project 2010 is launching today and the buzz at the launch is that this is best Project release in ten years.

People are asking how to test out the new Sync between Project Professional and SharePoint 2010 or how to get their hands on a Project Server 2010 environment. The good news is that Project 2010 Online Services are here.

Project Hosts has developed four cloud-based offerings for Project 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Project Server 2010:

• Project View Online: Publish your Project Pro 2010 projects to SharePoint Foundation Server 2010. $5/user/month with a free 30-day trial.
• Project Share Online: Add portfolio views, documents, issues, and risks to Project View Online. $25/user/month with a free 30-day trial.
• Project Connect Online: A team or departmental version of Project Server 2010 online. $50/user/month.
• EPM Online: A full Enterprise Project Management environment built on Project Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise. Configure your price.

Email info@projecthosts.com to get setup with an environment.

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At the Microsoft Project Conference last week in Phoenix, there was a lot of talk about hosting, online, and cloud-based solutions.

In his keynote, Project GM Ludo Hauduc brought onstage Shannon Kirchoff with Fireman’s Fund who talked about how her company’s EPM deployment has helped them get a handle on skyrocketing IT costs. She described how Pcubed’s consulting services combined with Project Hosts’ hosting allowed her to get up and running for over 1,000 users far faster than if she had to make deploying EPM yet another project for her overworked IT department.

Of course the big story was the unveiling of Project 2010. It’s web-based project management, native portfolio functionality, and incredible BI capabilities had companies wondering how soon they could get it. But the fact that Project 2010 requires 64-bit hardware, Windows 2008 and MOSS Enterprise made some companies realize that their IT department might not be ready for it right away. No problem — they realized they could start hosted and always move onsite later.

Later, there was a lot of buzz about Project Migration Online — a service that migrates companies from 2003 to 2007 (and later 2010) for a flat $10,000. It’s hard to say which was more popular — the flat fee or the fact that the migration would be done by EPM engineers who had already done hundreds of other migrations.

Business applications are moving online, and Project is no exception!

2 years ago, Jones Lang LaSalle saw the value of using the relationship management capabilities of Dynamics CRM in a non-traditional way. They engaged a partner to extend and combine it with a real estate application to create a custom facilities management solution, which we hosted to get it deployed quickly and economically.

Expanding the definition of ‘relationship management’ to ‘any person, thing or function’ enables Dynamics to become a platform for all kinds of applications. We host Dynamics CRM, SharePoint and PerformancePoint, and see growing demand to bring them together, which makes xRM very interesting to customers and partners. Because Project Hosts can support all kinds of xRM customizations and extensions to these platforms on dedicated servers, very specific functionality can be developed and delivered quickly in a Software + Services model.

xRM is more aligned with business process and less dependent on the technical sophistication of users, whether they are internal or external. At WWPC last month, Microsoft cited a couple of examples: 311 non-emergency telephone information services , where operator turnover is high; and the public sector, where web self-service must reach diverse populations the vastly different interests and needs. In each case, the xRM systems are ‘virtual experts’ that guide users – with almost no learning curve – from multiple points of view.

When we think about enriching and streamlining the visibility of information to a variety of stakeholders, an xRM approach has clear value. Because it is designed to automate end-to-end workflow, xRM can also enable rapid development of Dynamics-driven Project applications that can maintain optimal relationships with all of the stakeholders needed to deliver successful projects in the cloud.

We think it’s a great step forward that fills real needs in our customer and partner community, and improves the overall integration, value and usability of Microsoft technology. We’d love to know your thoughts.

There’s a lot of buzz about Project 2010 because it includes some great features that improve ease of use and extend web-based capabilities. There are some good reasons to start planning your migration strategy now. Project Server 2003 users in particular, can realize substantial savings by first migrating to Project Server 2007. For example, customers that buy 2007 licenses with Subscription Advantage now will not need to purchase SharePoint Server (MOSS) licenses when they later move to 2010 (which requires MOSS).

In migrating from Project Server 2003 to 2007, it is best to test and tune the migrated 2007 environment on separate servers before moving off of 2003 production. Many customers use hosting for this. They keep their onsite 2003 environment going while testing a hosted, migrated 2007 environment. When the new environment is ready, they redirect their users to the hosted environment. So the changeover is instantaneous with minimal disruption to end users.

Our customers tell us that hosting made a huge difference in the speed and simplicity of their migration – days instead of months. They like the fact that our staff has done scores of previous migrations, so they know the best practices. And they like the fact that with our month-to-month contracts, they can start with an onsite deployment, use hosting for migration, then return to an onsite environment at any time.

If you’re using Project, it’s time to plan your next move. And, if you’re not using Project Server, check it out here (you can try it for free ).

Other interesting links:
A guide for 2003 to 2007 migration

An invitation to participate in the 2010 Airlift at the 2009 Project Conference in September

I’ve been fielding a number of questions from our customers about this SharePoint SP2 bug because it can affect Project Server users, but hasn’t been completely explained in the postings to date. 

I have had good news for Project Hosts customers …

Because we do not deploy either Service Packs OR hot fixes without thorough testing, we normally know about any bug like this well before it comes anywhere near production. If necessary, we implement workarounds that mask the problem from our users (such as the one mentioned in this Project support blog). As I write this, we’re monitoring the issue while testing SP2 and the workaround, but we don’t expect any disruption for our users.

Below is the statement from the blog of SharePoint Corporate VP Jeff Teper:

During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users.

We are working to release a hotfix to automatically fix this issue. A manual work-around is currently available and involves customers re-entering their Product ID number (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration.  For more information and detailed steps please read the KB article [that will be published by Sunday, May 24] at  KB Article.