Microsoft Project Server 2010

Integration with SharePoint Server

Project Server 2010 is based on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, the successor of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The new features of Microsoft Project Web App require SharePoint Server 2010, pages that use the Report Center on SharePoint Server to store and view reports, workflows necessary for proposal management and business intelligence features for reporting.
Portfolio analysis is also fully integrated with the architecture of SharePoint Workflow Server. To install Project Server 2010, Enterprise edition of SharePoint Server 2010 must be installed.

Unified management of projects and portfolios

The core functionality of Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 is now integrated and extended on Project Server 2010. PSI web services are extended to include portfolio analysis, workflows and business drivers. Among the advantages of having portfolio analysis capabilities in Project Server 2010 these are included:

• Project Web App provides project management functionalities and portfolio in one application with an extensible and consistent user interface of SharePoint Server.
• A common data store eliminates the need of Gateway Project Server.
• Administration is centralized.
• Duplicate functionality is deleted as a module to capture project applications
• Common objects model gives much better scalability and integration with other applications
• Reports and OLAP can easily provide integrated views.

The main feature of Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 is the optimizer. Integration with Project Server 2010 offers the following:

• Analyzes a set of project proposals according with the priorities of the business drive.
• Improved ease of optimizer use and provides integrated security with Project Server permissions, international scope and ease of implementation.
• Provides access to libraries, business drivers, costs restrictions and project entities related through SharePoint Server 2010 lists and Web Parts.

Proposal Administration

Proposal administration involves capturing all work proposals in one place, a government process of several stages for those proposals. It also involves making decisions on which proposals are approved and a monitored progress of its implementation until the work is completed.

A main component of the proposal administration is the governement model on workflow that has already been implemented in Project Server.
Proposal Administrations on Office Project Server 2007 helps capture the proposals in one place, but it is not flexible enough and does not have a complete government workflow.

The module generator of Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 is an administration paradigm of flexible proposals, but it does not have the familiar look of Office Project Server and Office SharePoint Server and it also has some problems of usability and scalability.
The proposal administration functionality of Project Server 2010 is designed to be flexible and easy to use.

Project details pages (PDP)

The proposal administration of projects and planning processes of Project Web Apps uses project details pages (PDP) to be integrated with workflows.

The PDP are Web elements pages and are created with SharePoint Server infrastructure to display or edit the details of the company's project planning, such as project information, resources, programming or strategic impact.

Additional infrastructure of the PDP in Project Server 2010 incorporates the business oportuniy functionality on Office Project Portfolio Server 2007.

Las PDP pueden integrar Project Web App con varios escenarios de administración de proyectos diferentes, como los siguientes:

• Assess the impact of proposed strategic objectives.
• Provide controlled capture on workflows of proposed project
• Provide strategic alignment controlled by workflows, for example, obtain an executive purchase before a particular phase.
• Perform portfolio analysis according to costs and resource capacity restrictions.
• Perform project cost budget.
• Have a custom resource planning.
• Provide a detailed schedule of tasks step by step.

Workflow Integration

Workflows are a key feature of the project portfolio administration. The life cycle of a project can involve long processes with multiple phases. Among government phases project proposals are included, business impact analysis, selection, creation, planning, administration and monitoring.

While Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 includes workflows, Project Portfolio Server is not extensible and it is difficult to create workflows. Project Server 2010 integration of project and portfolio administration provides an extensible and rich platform to create workflows based on workflow platforms of SharePoint Server 2010.

Project Server 2010 workflows extend security model of SharePoint Server workflows. A server farm of SharePoint Server can be installed and multiple users can have access with the appropriate permissions in Project Server. Workflows are executed by a special Project Server user .
The use of proxy assemblies let users of Project Server workflows call Project Server Interface (PSI) within the application server, instead of calling through the front-end web server (Project Web Access) .

Business Intelligence

With Business intelligence you can have a view amalgamated data as answers to customer questions.
In Project Server 2010, Excel Services are integrated with Project Server to make custom reports easier. As part of this integration predefined reports are provided and spreadsheets attached to blank data.

Moreover, the available data for reports were expanded and now included custom fields of timesheets, project properties, organizer and data portfolio optimizer. Now predefined cubes can be customized with PWA to include only data from one department.

Exchange Server Integration

Office Project Server 2007 is integrated with the client application of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 so that the members of the team are able to see and report assignments when using an Outlook complement.

On the other hand, Project Server 2010 is integrated directly with Exchange Server 2007 SP1, not Outlook, so that team members with remote access to Exchange Server can interact with mapping data from Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Web App.

Project Server sends updated information on assignments and tasks to Exchange Server, which serves all customer interactions with Outlook and Outlook Web Access Exchange Server Project Server notifies when an Outlook client changes mapping data.
Project Server generates a queued work that gets data from Exchange Server, and then uses the public API to update status information on Project Web Access