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March 18 My New BLOG Has Launched! http://projectnation.netHello Everyone... For some time now, I have been saying that it really makes sense for me to have a blog space where I have more control over the look-and-feel and can be a bit more creative.
Today, I am happy to announce the new site! I will not be moving over the posts on this Windows Live site but will plan on getting the videos up-and-running on the new site shortly.
I hope you will find the new site an interesting place to visit regularly for you and me to learn and discuss technology, project management, photography and whatever else happens to come up :-).
Thank you and see you at the new site!!
-Bill July 03 Great Photography SpotsRecently I was speaking with some fellow amateur photographers and we were talking about our favorite places to shoot photographs. Although there are many favorites, the most approachable and forgiving was Vancouver. Added to my photos library are a selection of Vancouver photos I took in 2006 that highlight this beautiful city. June 27 Creating Programs in Microsoft Project ServerIf you watched my recent video blog showing how to create KPI's with SharePoint, you will have noticed I had one SharePoint site with multiple projects related to it. You really did not have a nice way of handling this in SharePoint 2.0 (2003). With SharePoint 3.0 (2007), it is quite easy to set up and Project Server supports this.
Microsoft Project Professional and Project Server 2007 fully support master projects, so you might create the first schedule as an empty one, then after all the others are creating, insert the links into the master. -Bill June 20 (update) VIDEO: Governing Programs and Projects with SharePoint KPI'sUPDATE: I meant to select "Average" in the demonstration and chose "Sum". Sorry for any confusion this may have caused. Hello All, It has been awhile since I posted a video and I hope you like this one. In looking at the new features of SharePoint Server 2007, I started looking into KPI's -- or Key Performance Indicators -- and how they can support programs and projects. This is a nice new feature and although maybe not as full-functioned as you might want it is still very powerful.
Please enjoy the video and let me know what you think. Since the video is hosted elsewhere, I am hoping you do not have problems. Please let me know if there are issues and I will address it right away.
Enjoy!
-Bill
May 13 Link me up, ScottyEvery now and again I stumble upon a restaurant that puts me into such a good mood I cannot wait to go back. Or worse, makes me want to order everything on the menu and damn the consequences. Tonight I found such a place and it is so good I hesitate to recommend it (I like keeping the really good ones to myself). It is funny how I ended up at this restaurant. While dining at Kensington Grill (http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/profiles/places/91313), a self-described “regular” sitting next to me stated with enthusiasm that I must try "this great little French restaurant on 30th". She could not remember the name but explained how to get there. Turns out I met someone actually worse at directions than me. There was no French restaurant to be found. As I meandered down 30th quaint little restaurant named The Linkery beckoned. Now this is my kind of spot. Fresh ingredients from farms the owner and his staff personally visited. Inexpensive but phenomenal wines. Laid back music, dimly lit spots and a vaulted chalk board highlighting the evening's specials. Once saddled up to the bar, Chelsea described in great detail how the menu worked and set me on my way to decide. This was not easy. The menu is made up of specials, perfectly prepared perpetuals (is that a Bush-ism?) and salads. Did I mention anything can be served with their in-house sausages? That's right; you can order a nice light salad and have them top it off with homemade sausages and even their house-made slab bacon. There is more than just pork, although I had a North Carolina pulled Pork and red onion sandwich with house-cured pickles, slaw and a side of spicy mustard. For those that know me, I am not a big beef fan. This might have ended tonight because someone ordered a burger that smelled so incredibly good I seriously thought of going back into the kitchen and greedily eating it right off the grill. This place truly makes your teeth tingle with anticipation. It was interesting to learn about this very unique venture. There is no tipping. The owner -- a former programmer -- decided to offer his staff a salary and health benefits which is covered by a service charge automatically added to your bill. If you do tip, that money goes to charities the staff selects. The walls without chalk boards were covered in beautiful framed photographs taken by refugee children ages 11-16. The artwork is years ahead of most professional photographs I've seen so check out the website listed below. The next time you are in San Diego, check out The Linkery and bring an empty stomach. Website: www.thelinkery.com Aja Refugee website: http://www.ajaproject.org/
-Bill May 06 Carlsbad Street Fair PicturesToday I went to the Carlsbad Street Fair. Touted as the largest street fair in California, it was quite large. Parking was expensive and I forgot to wear lotion so now look like a Maine Lobster fresh out the water pot. Given street fairs are pretty much all the same (biggest or not), I focused my lens on other things. There was a really nice looking fire truck the Carlsbad Fire Department has been working on as a pet project during off hours. They are very proud of it and I can see why as they are doing an amazing job. Rudolph was smiling and a fire hydrant proclaimed an end to violence. Enjoy! -Bill May 02 Update on the Blog and Earth DayWell, I have not posted much lately and am working on some interesting videos I hope to publish soon. Many of them are at your request. Please let me know if you find these to be helpful or there is anything I can do to improve them. I'm thinking about using MSN Soapbox to host new videos so let me know if you have any opinions. Today I posted some pictures that I took at Earth Day in San Diego. I took so many pictures it was hard to decide what to post but these pretty much capture it, I think. It was a little strange having these earthy-crunchy people walking around in their hemp clothes and "Once you go Organic you will never go back" buttons and the only food served in this entire event was hot dogs and hamburgers. Very strange. Anyway, hope you enjoy the pictures! -Bill March 30 San Diego PicturesLast year, I moved from Boston to San Diego. As an amateur photographer, San Diego has so much to offer. Here are some pictures I took over the last few months. I've been using these as wallpaper on my portable computer lately. -Bill March 21 Video: Use Workflow to Convert a Risk to an IssueLately, I've been playing around with Windows Workflow in SharePoint and was taking a look at how the SharePoint Designer works as well. This quickie video shows how to create a custom workflow that looks to see if an risk has aged and should be converted to an issue.
The audio is pretty bad (time to get a better headset) but hopefully you will find this helpful.
-Bill February 15 New Camera and Lens PhotsA long time ago, I liked to do photography. Once I got into consulting and started traveling, I stopped. Then, one day, I realized with my travels there were so many good photos to capture. So, I purchased a DSLR, then another and then lenses, and then, and then, and then...
Anyhow I went from enjoying photography to being outright addicted. Here are a few of my very first DSLR pictures from a year ago. Each one represents playing with a new lens (or a seond camera
February 11 Travel Pet PeevesAnyone that knows me is aware my travel schedule is about as hectic as an atom trying to keep stable in the ocean. Whatever that means.
A good friend of mine asked me to list a few travel pet peeves for her MBA program. I was happy to help out but my short little list of items turned into an all out rant on planes, trains, automobiles, hotels and everything it takes to get from point A to point B. My first cut was way too politically incorrect so I adjusted a bit and left out some obvious repeat offenders but I must say, if you are reading this and see your company mentioned, please let me and my friendly readers know of your intentions to get off the list.
Read this list and reply to add your own. I can't wait to hear some good ones! -Bill
TO THE AIRPORT:
AT THE AIRPORT TO CATCH THE PLANE:
AT THE STATION TRYING TO CATCH THE TRAIN:
ON THE PLANE:
ON THE TRAIN:
LANDING:
LEAVING THE TRAIN:
AUTOMOBILES:
HOTELS:
February 02 (UPDATED LINK) VIDEO: Resource Utilization in Project Server 2007In the last two weeks, I've had a number of discussions around how resource utilization is displayed in the Project Server 2007 environment. Basically, there are a number of ways in which you can set up resources and track their availability.
First, you typically start with a resource stored in the Enterprise Resource Pool (which is stored in a SQL Server database). Once you assign a calendar to the resource, Project Server will understand what your typically week's capacity looks like. With this knowledge, Project Managers can assign a resource to tasks in their project plans. Once published, the Project Server website (Project Web Access) will display views show how much a resource is utilized, when they are available and what the future outlook of that resource's availbaility might look like.
In Project Server 2003, it was pretty straightforward to determine a resource's availability. For the most part, you created a project plan and published it. Once published, any resources in a project plan would be updated and anyone going to the Project Web Access (PWA) site could see the updates.
With Project Server 2007, you can create two new types of project plans. These are web-based 'lightweight' projects called "Proposals" and "Activities". Both of these have two types of plans within them. One is a "Project Plan", where you can assign a resource to a task and another is a "Resource Plan", where you can just specificy resources.
But wait, there's more! You can also assign Teams to tasks now. A team member can 'assign' themselves to such tasks and that will affect their availability.
"More?" you say, well there is much more but one other common scenario is a resource updating their calendar like, say, their vacation schedule. That also affects a user's availability.
The video I created is about 45 minutes long and steps through all the scenarios you see above and shows when and how availability is updated in the Project Server 2007 suite.
Aside from just learning more than you probably want to know about resource availability, you will probably find this video very useful to learn more about lightweight projects and some of the new resource capabilities in Project Server.
EDITORS NOTE: Throughout this video, I refer to using Project Professional to publish a project plan. You do not have to use Project Pro. It can be done via the web, which was a heavily requested feature for 2007. If you want to publish via the web, you select a project in Project Center, Edit the project and click the "Save and Publish" button.
Link to the Video:
Enjoy!
-Bill
January 31 Virtual PC 2007 Beta 1 ProblemI tend to keep a number of virtual machines on an 'options' drive, which is a high-speed secondary drive on my portable computer. Since I am using Windows Vista, the only Microsoft virtual machine solution is Virtual PC 2007 Beta 1 (I found a copy at http://connect.microsoft.com/).
Recently, I had removed the drive and shared it with a colleague who needed a copy of a VM for an upcoming LiveMeeting. Once I put the drive back in my computer, I tested all the VM's to make sure they worked. One of them did not. I received an error message telling me it was not a virtual machine or it was corrupted.
This was pretty upsetting to say the least and I went about deleting the VM from the VPC control panel and re-adding it. That did not work either. Knowing all the drives worked and my colleague never touched that VM, I was suspicious (note: I did make sure I used the 'safely remove hardware' feature before ejecting the disk).
Before re-building the entire VM again, I renamed the files and just put a '2' suffix on each filename, like this: MyVPC2.VMC, MyVHD2.VHD, etc.
Using the Virtual PC control panel, I re-added the same VMC/VHD files with the '2' suffix and it worked like a charm. I'm not sure what caused this problem but since it is beta, I'm guessing there was a corrupt entry in the software for the VM and just adding what it thinks is a new set of files did the trick.
-Bill January 29 Windows Vista & Office Launch EventsTomorrow, Jan 29 '07, I will be at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for the Windows and Office Launch event. If you are considering attending, or wondering "why should I attend?", this is from the Microsoft website:
---CLIP (see link above for all details)---
Why Attend?
Attending one of the live launch events enables you to experience the latest technologies and gives you first-hand access to the new Microsoft solutions.
---CLIP--- January 18 VIDEO: What's New in the Microsoft Project 2007 UIAs you may already know, Microsoft recently released Windows Vista and a brand new Office 2007 suite of products. Included in these new products are a brand new versions of Microsoft Project, Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint. There is too much to cover in all these products, so I will talk about many of the new features over time.
Some of the key new features in the Project Professional client -- with or without Project Server -- are the new user interface (UI) enhancements. As you will see, they are designed to help anyone updating project schedules to better understand how their changes affect the overall schedule. These key new features include:
Rather than write an article on all these topics, I thought it might be a better idea to step you through the features in a video. It was designed in Flash and depending on your connection it might take up to a minute or so to begin showing the video. This is my first video and the audio and video could be better so any thoughts you have on improvements for future videos is greatly appreciated. For that matter, let me know if there is anything you think would make for a good 15-20 minute video. To view the video, clink on this link:
Welcome to my new Blog site!It has been a long time, but for many followers of my previous Blog site have pointed out, there were spam problems. After much investigation and stressing over making a final home for my blog, this is where I landed. It is a natural choice to use the Windows Live site since much of what I discuss is related to Microsoft technologies, such as Project Server, SharePoint and PerformancePoint.
One cool new thing I will be doing is posting videos, pictures and share some of my photography. If you are interested in a particular subject, I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to respond and I will check occassionally.
I will no longer post to the old Blog but the good folks at MPA have offered to keep my old Blog up for awhile. No guarantees as to when it will go down, but here is the link: http://blogs.lv0.net/mpatest/ |
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