projectified

Use Variables w/Dynamic Content In Them to Speed up Action Creation in Microsoft Flow

First off...IM BACK! :-)

Second...I have been doing a bunch of PowerApps and Flow work and I wanted to share a tip to help you speed up your Flow development.

I have a Flow that will have a BUNCH of Switch Case branches each of which will end with a very slightly different Action that creates a new Work Item in Visual Studio Team. The Body of the work item needs to have a bunch of dynamic content from an underlying SharePoint item (this whole flow is triggered by the creation of a new item in a SharePoint list.) 

Right now (as of 1/27/2018) Flow does not yet allow you to create an Action and then copy and paste it as a new Action that you can make your change to. So to make it easier I decided to try something and IT WORKED:

I created a bunch of Variables at the start of the flow that contain blocks of dynamic content, along with the formatting Tags. Then I just have to drop those blocks into the 'Description' field of the Create Work Item Action.

1. Insert a couple "Initialize Variable" Actions up just after your Trigger event.
2. Make them 'String' type variables
3. Give them a name. I named the ones for this example as 'BlockOne' and 'BlockTwo'
4. Insert your text and dynamic content.
5. In your action just insert these variables like so:

You can see from my setup here that I also created variables for the AccountName and ProjectName settings for this action. This is because Im developing the flow on my O365 system but packaging it up an sending it to my customer to install on their system. These variables will make it so that they only have to enter their info once in the variable instead of having to touch EVERY one of the VST actions. A HUGE timesaver. :-)

I hope this helps. :-)

 

Thanksgiving MPP

It has been 8 years since I first released my Thanksgiving MPP template when the beta of 2010 had just been released. Here is a link to the original post with a working link to the MPP. :-)

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/projectified/2009/11/20/its-a-thanksgiving-beta/

Here is a permanent link on this site in case Microsoft ever kills the original link.: Download Thanksgiving

Changes to Projectified Site

I have reconfigured Projectified so that it is not just a blog but also the site for Projectified Consulting.

The blog address is now http://blog.projectified.com instead of being right at the root of the projectified.com domain.

If you subscribe via RSS this is the new address for the RSS feed: http://blog.projectified.com/projectified/atom.xml.

Thanks!

Brian Kennemer

Do You Have Any 3’s? Using Instr to check for the presence of characters in a field.

Instr is the Go Fish function. You can use it to check for the presence of a set of characters in another set of characters. The case for this is generally wanting to see if a another field contains a certain set of characters.

One example of this is when you have an outline code of some kind that is associating a task with some sort of breakdown structure. You want to mark tasks that are NOT at the top level of the breakdown structure. The outline code uses a period for the separator so the values look like this: ABC or ABC.123. So you want to know if a task has a value AFTER the first separator. To do this you just need to know if the field contains a period character. Instr to the rescue.

Add this formula to a Flag field that you call something like “SubValue?”: Instr([OutlineCode1],”.”)

Now SubValue? will equal Yes for any task that contains a period in the OutlineCode1 field and No for those tasks that do not contain a period.

 

 

Intr makes it easy to search fields for specific values. In this case it was a period but it could be whole words. You might want to search the Notes field and if it contains certain words you could flag the task. Search for yourself…

Common causes for Project Plan corruption

Many times project application crash can happen due to bad data in the project plan, which could happen during opening or saving the project plan. There is no fixed answer to what causes corruption, however some known conditions are as below, which could help to narrow down or conclude certain crashing behavior.
     • Unexpected shutdown of project application
     • Closing project applications before saving job is completed
     • Copying and pasting  links
     • Using project plans as templates
     • Opening mpp file from network share for editing (related to MPP files saved on

        network share)
     • Different patch levels of clients and server
     • Network connectivity issue , like WI-FI/VPN connection dropping frequent
     • Third party add-ins
     • Outdated printer drivers
     • Duplicate resource
     • Corrupt local cache.
     • Antivirus
     • Corrupt Enterprise global.
     • Application is not updated with recent "Stable" CU for long time.
     • Bug (Should be able to repro the issue with specific set of instructions 

         irrespective of user or system)
 
Every time Project or any office application crashes make sure to click on "Send information to Microsoft". Microsoft servers collects this information to analyze the pattern which eventually identifies common scenario to be fixed via hotfix\cu or Service pack.

Most common method to fix small corruption is "Save for sharing" round-trip.   XML round-trip should be treated as last option, since this method is known for loosing lot of information when project plan is resaved in MPP.
I agree this is not the complete list and I will be happy to see comments and looking forward to update this list
Hope this helps.

Hrishi Deshpande

Use of the Duration1-Duration10 Gantt Chart Styles in PWA

I was recently asked about how to display a custom Gantt bar in one of the PWA Gantt chart views. At first I did not see a way to do it but then tested and verified that the Duration1 –Duration10 bar styles available in several of the bar sets in PWA can be used. I had some some reading on the Internet that implied that they were non-functional but I found that they draw using the StartX-FinishX date sets for tasks. So Duration1 is drawn from Start1-Finish1, Duration9 between Start9 and Finish9.

Server Settings | Gantt Chart Formats:

Then this project draws like this:

Visual Studio Setup Registry Entries for VSTO Addin Deployment

OK so I’m building a Project 2010 addin using Visual Studio 2010 (VSTO) and I got tired of the clickonce deployment option. I added a Visual Studio installer project to my solution and went about following the advice on this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsto/ff937654.aspx

It was mostly pretty good. A bit confusingly worded in a few places but I wrote that off to me not having enough real development background to pick up on the flow as I might if I was an experienced dev. In the section on registry entries it made mention of this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386106.aspx. It also showed sample registry entries settings and how to set them up in your installer project. I followed these to the letter and matched mine up with their screenshot to make sure they matched. For the Manifest entry mine was:

"[TARGETDIR]ADDINNAME.vsto|vstolocal"

I used this and my addin installed the proper ribbon tabs and buttons which meant that the system was able to interpret my entry enough to install my code into Project 2010. But some of my code was not quite working properly.

Two of my dialog boxes should have read in a default value from an Application setting but the combobox controls that should have contained these defaults were blank. Click events for buttons were not firing off the code connected to them. The load event of a graphing control did not fire so while the graph control was there with the right visual settings it contained no data.

I spent most of last night and much of the early part of this morning trying to figure out what was going wrong. I rebuilt my setup project from scratch. I double checked dependencies and looked to make sure I was building my setup project based on the right output, etc, etc. No Joy.

I then checked in with old friend Colby Africa, one of the resident developer geniuses over at forProject to see what I was doing wrong. He had seen some roughly similar oddities in one of his projects and his research with his contacts suggested that I needed to add ‘file:///’ to the beginning of my registry setting in my Manifest key. It had something to do with the way the system interpreted the entry.

I was skeptical but did it anyway. My Manifest entry was now “file:///[TARGETDIR]ADDINNAME.vsto|vstolocal". I rebuilt my setup project and reinstalled my addin and poof! It worked!

As always, having smart friends is at least as important as being smart yourself! :-)

What do you wish Project 2010 could do, but doesn’t?

I’m working on a toolkit for Project 2010 that will have several tools and utilities that people have, over the years, asked me to write for them in VBA.

 

I'm looking for feature suggestions from the crowd. What do wish there was a button for in Project 2010? do you want to run a series of checks against your project to make sure your tasks and resources abide by a set of standard rules? Do you want to create a logfile of all the new tasks, task deletions, resource assignments, etc for that project? How about a tool to remove rates and costs from a schedule before you send it to a client or partner? What about one that lets you prepend or append some text to the Task Name of a set of selected tasks? Well my toolkit has these already. What would you like to see?

Send me an email at [email protected] and tell me what you wish there was a button for and I will try to add it to the toolkit.

‘An unknown error has occurred’ when adding an Administrative Task to a Timesheet

Just a quick post to get this into the search engines for the next person.

If you have an Administrative Task in Project Server 2010 that has either any of the following characters in the task name you cannot manually add that task to a timesheet.

&

<

>

There are likely others but these are the 3 I know of for sure.

When you add one of these tasks to a timesheet you get the error “An unknown error has occurred” as shown below.

The odd thing is that you can set one of these tasks to “Always Display” and the task will display with no problem but it cannot be manually added to the timesheet.

 

Speaking at the Project Conference in March

I found out this week that the technical session DeltaBahn proposed was accepted for the Project Conference in March.

I will be giving a talk titled “Planning and Executing a Multi-Instance, Multi-Version Project Server Migration” about the process required to merge a Project Server 2007 instance and a Project Server 2010 instance into a new Project Server 2010 instance.

Hope to see you all there!

Damn ALL the Non-Working Timescaled Values!!!

Quick note to save someone down the road some time and frustration. :-)

When working with VBA TimeScaleValue collections in Microsoft Project 2007 or Microsoft Project 2010 remember that timescaled values that fall on nonworking days are not zeros. They are also not NULLs. They are in that shadow world between numbers and NULLs. They are “”. Why is this important you ask?

It is NOT important if you are just going to set the Value directly as in:

TSV(Counter).Value = $400.00

It is VERY important if you are doing a running total of creating a rollup inside of a loop (in my case a For…Next looping through sets of Tasks, as in:

TSV(Counter).Value = TSV(Counter).Value + TaskObject.Cost10

If you fire that second line of code off and the TSV(Counter).StartDate is a nonworking day AND there is not already a number in that value then the value that is there by default is that crazy shadow “” value. The result is a Type Mismatch error because you are trying to add your TaskObject.Cost10 to a non number.

So to get around this you have to test the current value of TSV(Counter).Value to see if it is numeric:

If IsNumeric(TSV(Counter).Value) = True then

TSV(Counter).Value = TSV(Counter).Value + TaskObject.Cost10

Else

TSV(Counter.Value = TaskObject.Cost10

End If

Now the first pass through this TSV ‘slice’ will show a nonnumeric value and it will just set the value to be the Cost10 value for the TaskObject. But on the second pass through this slice it will be a numeric value since you just set it on the first pass and then it can start your ‘rollup’.

T-SQL for Returning Tasks Scheduled to Start within 7 Days

This is just a snippet of T-SQL to return the Project Name, Task Name, Task Start, and Task Finish dates for all tasks in the Project Server Reporting Database that are scheduled to start between the current SQL Server system time and the current system time plus 7 days.

The core of this is really just the use of SysDateTime and the DateAdd functions. Other than that it is a very basic query.

This gets asked for every once in a while so I will put it out here for those searching.

 

   1: SELECT     MSP_EpmProject_UserView.ProjectName, MSP_EpmTask_UserView.TaskName, 

   2:            MSP_EpmTask_UserView.TaskStartDate,MSP_EpmTask_UserView.TaskFinishDate

   3: FROM         MSP_EpmProject_UserView INNER JOIN

   4:                       MSP_EpmTask_UserView ON MSP_EpmProject_UserView.ProjectUID = 

   5:                       MSP_EpmTask_UserView.ProjectUID

   6: WHERE     (MSP_EpmTask_UserView.TaskStartDate > sysdatetime()) AND 

   7:           (MSP_EpmTask_UserView.TaskStartDate < DATEADD(dd, 7, sysdatetime()))

Sort Order of Groupings in Project Center Views

OK, so you have a nice view in Project Center and it groups by a given field, we will call it Location. You get all your projects into the system and you notice that the grouping works as expected but the sort of the grouped headings is odd. Not even alphabetical.

Now, this is an “issue” that I'm sure has been around for as long as there has been a Project Server but I only just found it because on this engagement I’m on I broke with my normal process and did not prepare my custom field information the way I normally do. Normally, I gather up the lookup table values and set them up in Excel first. By force of an old habit from other systems I would either sort them in Excel or for those that did needed to be in a non-alpha sort I would put numbers in front of the values. Then I would put them into lookup tables.

I know that Project Server allows you to control the display order of the lookup table (see  below) but I have always done this and habits are hard to break.

 

So what was my problem with the sort of my groups? Project Server views sort the group headings according to the display order set in the lookup table of the field you grouped on. My issue was that I had not put numbers in front of the values and I did not pick Sort Ascending. The default is By Row Number and that has always worked for me given my odd ‘pre sorting’ that is part of my normal routine. I went in and changed the sort order or my lookup table and my grouping was correct.

The moral of this story could be “Don’t break with your process” or maybe it is “Update your process”. I'm going to go with the idea that it is “Don’t break with your process!” :-)

When Does an Enterprise Project Field without a Default Value Setting Get a Default Value?

Almost all Project Server administrators know that when you have an enterprise custom field using a lookup table that you can pick one of the values from that lookup table to be the default value for new entities.

 

But what about a case where the field is set to NOT have a default value but some new projects are being created where when the Save button is hit on the New Project PDP a value is being entered for that field? What might cause that?

There are (at least) two possible answers.

Templates on Enterprise Project Types

When you create your enterprise project types you can associate an enterprise project template so that when a new project is created using an EPT it will automatically use that template. It is possible for a template to contain values in some enterprise fields as part of the template. If the template associated with the EPT has a value in that custom field then it can look like there was a default value set for the field, even when the field itself does not have a default set.

Two things lead to this being overlooked:

1. EPTs are a new feature to Project Server 2010 and it does not always occur to users that clicking “New” in the Project Center could call up a template to begin with.
2. Many organizations tend to strip out custom field values when saving a project as a template so the idea of there being a value in the fields for a template might not occur to everyone.

I have seen this issue at 2 different locations now and it can cause some pretty severe head-scratching.

 

Workflow Code or Custom Event Handler Code

Through workflow coding or custom event handler code there could be situations where the code would examine the values of certain custom fields when the project is initially saved and then make decisions about the values of other custom fields. An example of this is if a project is created and the user picks “Washington” as the value for the ‘Location’ field. The code might be set to assign a certain value for an Account Manager” field based on the project being located in Washington state. For some users that do not know about this coding it might appear as if there were default values on some fields.

This type of coding is much more common now in 2010 and in most cases users and certainly the administrators are likely to know about these kinds of changes. In my experience the most common cause for confusion about mystery ‘default’ values is going to be from a template on an EPT.

2010 Reporting Whitepaper Goodness!

Some old buddies of mine from the Microsoft Consulting Services EPM team went NUTS and generated about 200 super high quality pages about Project Server 2010 reporting. Blaise Novakovic, Jean-Francois LeSaux, Steven Haden, and Amit Abrol outdid even the high standards MCS sets. Nice work guys!

 

Microsoft Project Server 2010 Reporting with Excel Services and also Creating Dashboards for Microsoft Project Server 2010

Excellent work!