Last week I presented a Webinar for EPM Partners on integrating EPM with other Line of Business systems, the recording is now available on You Tube below.
The session is a general overview of some of the drivers behind integrating with EPM and discusses at a high level a number of options available both from Microsoft and the partner space. So if you’re thinking of going down that path you might find it useful.
I’ve been a bit quiet over here the last couple of months while I’ve been working on my next App for Project Server, I’m just putting the final touches on it now so I thought it’s worth a post with some preliminary information!
One of the great challenges when working in the Cloud is the lack of full access to the back-end, i.e. databases, that along with fact that Administrative Backup and Restore has been disabled on Project Online, leaves us poor Admins and Consultants with few options when it comes to the normal day-to-day configuration, change management and deployment.
There is one company out there with a solution to this (which I quite like actually), but I found myself wanting something much simpler as 90% all I want to do is copy or restore a bunch of fields to a new customer instance (and don’t want to have to go through IT to get some software installed locally, etc etc).
So, here’s my solution to this problem;
Config Tool is a configuration management tool for Project Server enabling the backup, migration and restoration of PWA configurations between farms or project instances.
Config Tool is designed to be simple to use and easy to install on any Project Server deployment with the App Store, to enable the quick and easy backup, restore and migration of configuration between instances.
In the same vein keeping things simple means that the initial version will support only; Enterprise Custom Fields and Lookup Tables, Workflow Stages and Phases and EPTs. With more features to come in the future including PDPs, resources and so on.
Config Tool will be available through the SharePoint App store in the coming days / weeks so keep watch this blog for the release announcement.
For now you can see some screenshots and read some more about the full features of Config Tool here on the draft product info page.
A new version of Bulk Edit should be available to update any time now via the SharePoint store (check your Site Contents list for the update if you’ve already installed).
Over the next week a completely new Bulk Edit package will roll out to the SharePoint Store, this will replace the old packaging requiring those with any previous version installed will (one day) have to re-install in order to get any future updates after v1.0.2. The reason for this is account related and unfortunately cannot be avoided so apologies in advance.
The updated Bulk Edit has been submitted to the app store and existing users may now see two versions of Bulk Edit in the store, although the old version of Bulk Edit will keep working as is for the future, in order to get future updates please check that you are using a version higher than v1.0.2.2.
Note: No change other than the publisher profile will happen for Bulk Edit, it will remain free and feature complete now and forever. This change is only required to consolidate Nearbaseline’s App store profiles so I apologize for this inconvenience.
If you’ve worked with large lookup tables in Project Server before you know how unwieldy they can get very quickly, in 2013 the page control you use now includes a nice search feature to help but the default four lines displayed really doesn’t show much! See this example where you can see the scroll bar on the right is already very cramped:
To give some more flexibility with the size I have written the following JavaScript (jQuery actually) to increase the size of a list of specific lookup tables when opened on the PDP:
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
function resizeLKTables() {
setTimeout(function () {
var incHeight = 150;
var ltId = ['Blueprint Deliverables', 'Definition Deliverables'];
for (var i = 0; i < ltId.length; i++) {
var ltDiv = $("input[title='" + ltId[i] + "']").parent().children("div");
ltDiv.height(175 + incHeight);
ltDiv.find('div.outer-container').height(168 + incHeight);
ltDiv.find('div.outer-container').find('div.results-padder').height(88 + incHeight);
ltDiv.find('div.outer-container').find('div.general-results').height(86 + incHeight);
}
},50);
}
$('button').on("click", resizeLKTables);
</script>
Much better.
To use this script copy the script source above and save into notepad as something like “resizetables.js“, now on lines 6 and 7 you need to update the two variables used:
Once updated, upload the script somewhere in PWA (Site Assets maybe) then edit your PDPs and add a content editor webpart to the bottom of the page which links to your uploaded resizetables.js file.
Enjoy!
Just approved on the SharePoint App store is an update to Bulk Edit, if you’ve already installed then in the next 24 hours it should notify you of the update from Site Contents in PWA.
Go to the Bulk Edit page for Download and Support links.
Please leave any feedback here or support questions in the Support Forum.
Also if you use / like this app then please review and rate it it on the Microsoft App store!