Everyone's Thoughts: Proj Serv 2007 - Upgrade or Wait It Out?

[Andy S]

Hello,

We have launched a test version of Project Server 2007, and our
company is asking my opinion on moving our production environment from
2003 to 2007. I have not been pleased with the "unexplained
phenomena" of 2007, and I am wondering how the community feels about
the current state of Project Server 2007. I realize you all don't
know my companies specific needs, but in general, would you recommend
a upgrade to 2007 if 2003 is working good enough for our
organization? Are all the 2007 issues I hear about typical for a new
software launch, or is Proj Serv 2007 going above and beyond normal
growing pains? What disturbs me most is that a variety of 2007
questions here are unresolved, and I know this is a smart community
based on the dozens of 2003 solutions I found here. Does anyone know
if Microsoft's SP2 will address these issues?

Everyone's input is welcome. Much appreciated.

Andy

 

[HB]

I use MOSS and PWA in a small network/business environment, in a relatively
limited fashion. It's a peer-to-peer network without Active Directory, and
therein lies a headache. The 2K3 version wasn't so tightly tied to AD;
everything that I needed to use worked fine. The new dependency/integration
with AD broke a number of capabilities; the 'My Site' feature, for instance,
doesn't function correctly anymore (on XP or Vista; still works if the OS is
Win2K) unless AD is implemented. There is a fair bit of other functionality
that no longer works with my network configuration.

My advice would be to stick with what works, if it does what you need.
Marching in lock-step with MS is pointless unless it is going to provide
real gain for your business, and as the Vista experience illustrates, 'real
gain for your business' isn't defined as 'requiring users to buy new
hardware/install new software to get basically the same functionality they
had to begin with'.

 

[Dave]

There have been no significant changes made to PS 2007. If you looking at a
plain vanilla version of Project Server without MOSS/WSS customization, then
DO NOT shift to PS 2007. It should have been PS 2009 not PS 2007, they just
wanted to get it out with Office 2007. Just to put it in perspective we have
deployed Office 2007 and Project Server 2007 to one department in our
organization and I probably spend 10 times more time troubleshooting PS 2007
that I spend troubleshooting Office 2007 and then there is Microsoft Support
(if you can call it that), they take 1-2 weeks to resolve a issue and by
that time you have two other issues and the best part is you can never tell
if it is a bug or if it is "by design" ( Microsoft's way of telling you that
they know it is a bug but they can't/won't fix it ) and we have 4 times more
help desk requests with PS 2007 as compared to PS 2003.

The only thing that is slightly good about PS 2007 is that it has a
reporting DB and even normal users can pretty much pull any report they want
with a bit of training.

So before you deploy PS 2007 find out if you really need it or if PS 2003 is
good enough and if you do decide to migrate make sure you find a very good
Microsoft partner and make sure you sign a long term support contract with
them, Premier support with burn up your department budget real fast and if
sign a support contract with the partner, you can at least peacefully.

Regards,
Dave

 

[Jim]

Andy,

Given our testing of PS2007 SP1, I have decided to postpone movement from
PS2003 until at least SP2. For my organization's needs, PS2003 possesses
superior functionality in areas involving the publishing and viewing of
assigned tasks. The hassle we would endure w/ PS2007 SP1 would far exceed
the benefits to be achieved. The new approach in PS2007 by which tasks are
separate from the timesheets in PWA has not been very cleanly executed. It
needs considerable polishing by Microsoft before it is ready for use. Just
as you have asked, I have another post out there asking for dates and content
of SP2.

 

[James Fraser]

I realize you all don't
know my companies specific needs, but in general, would you recommend
a upgrade to 2007 if 2003 is working good enough for our
organization? Are all the 2007 issues I hear about typical for a new
software launch, or is Proj Serv 2007 going above and beyond normal
growing pains? What disturbs me most is that a variety of 2007
questions here are unresolved, and I know this is a smart community
based on the dozens of 2003 solutions I found here. Does anyone know
if Microsoft's SP2 will address these issues?

Similar questions have been asked in several threads here before. I
disagree with the "No significant changes" statement of another
poster. Some differences off the top of my head:
- Multiple undo on Project Pro (yes, it's a small thing, but once you
have it, you realize how useful it is.)
- Timesheets (This has some strengths and some weaknesses.)
- Task level custom data inclusion in OLAP reporting (Huge, huge
advantage for many organizations.)
- Simpler reporting database (again, some strengths and some
weaknesses.)
- 2007 has superior scalability. The Views Notification Processor in
2003 was single threaded, so a multi core machine didn't necessarily
help. The 2007 queue scales up nicely.
- WAN compatibility! Have you ever tried 2003 across a vpn or from
home?

After SP1, I recommend the January hotfix roll ups. (I don't have
specific numbers handy, but there was one for the client and one for
the server.) These seem to have resolved most of the initial issues
with 2007.

So depends on what you need, but in general, we do recommend that our
clients move to 2007. The split timesheet/task reporting is a major
negative, but the TSST Tied mode codeplex extensions are helpful for
resolving that.


James Fraser

 

[Langhorne]

James, can you say more about "TSST Tied Mode codeplex extensions"? I
couldn't find anything about that after a quick search. I'd be interested in
anything that helps address the split timesheet/task reporting drawbacks of
PS07.

As for the original question, I think WSS 3.0 is a major improvement over
2.0 (recycle bins, how it handles checkouts/ins, that sort of thing).
Unfortunately we can't use it until we upgrade to 07 and several things are
holding us back from doing that.

- L.

 

[James Fraser]

James, can you say more about "TSST Tied Mode codeplex extensions"? I
couldn't find anything about that after a quick search. I'd be interested in
anything that helps address the split timesheet/task reporting drawbacks of
PS07.

http://www.codeplex.com/AutoStatusService is one of two solutions on
CodePlex (Microsoft's open source sharing site.) This version seems to
get more attention, but is a little more complex than the other.
(Search codeplex for "EPM" to find other Project solutions.)

This code automatically imports Timesheet time to the My Tasks page.


James Fraser