Project Server 2007 questions.. mostly newbie

[shayanb]

I just joined this company and I've been asked to get people familiar
with MS Project 2007 (which I'm familiar with). However, what I'm not
familiar with at all (and neither is anyone at the firm) is Project
Server 2007, MOSS and PWA for 2007.

Here are my questions, I'll be really grateful for any answers:

-I've been given an URL, http://...main-server:4040 and been told that
is MS Project. Turns out, it is only the Sharepoint site. How do I
access PWA? Would it have to have been activated during installation
of Project Server? If I can enable it now, where do I go to enable it?

-Does the company need Project Pro 2007 licenses (we have 15 Server
licenses) to effectively use Project Server?

-Does Project Server include even one copy of Project Pro or does this
need to be purchased separately and installed (since I would think
atleast one computer should run Project Pro since PWA isn't a very
comfortable place doing everything).

I know a lot of these require professionals trained in this to setup
and work around. I'm going to suggest we hire a firm to do it for us.
But if I could even attempt any of these myself, it's a start.

Thanks!

 

[Paul Conroy]

Open sharepoint central admin on the project server. Then open the Shared
Service Provider Admin pages and select PWA sites. You will see a list of
PWA sites and URLs provisioned on the farm. If there is no list then you
need to create one. See the deployment guide on technet for instructions

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/0c43062d-30e3-49b1-9705-ed447ad1d2561033.mspx

You need a Project Server 2007 licence for every server in the farm that has
Project Server Installed.

You need a Project Pro 2007 Licence for every user using Project Pro
(Regardless of whether it connects to server or not)

You need a Project Server 2007 CAL for each user that access data held
within the Project Server Database via PWA or other means (Project Pro
includes a CAL for server)

If your using SQL you will also need a CAL for SQL for each user.

On top of this you also require a Windows Server 2003 CAL for each user.

AFAIK, Project Server is not bundled with a Pro license, but check with your
licence provider.

I would strongly recommend getting some professional consulting firm to help
you implement Project Server. If you don't have the funds available for
professional consulting, buy a book, download articles from Technet, work
very closely with your users, test, test and test again. Be sure you fully
understand the workflow of projects throughout your organisation and where PS
plays it's parts.

Test again, and then think about rolling it out in a production environment.

Project Server will exaggerate the lack of process and planning and is only
as good as the data people enter.

 

[shayanb]

Open sharepoint central admin on the project server.  Then open the Shared
Service Provider Admin pages and select PWA sites.  You will see a list of
PWA sites and URLs provisioned on the farm.  If there is no list then you
need to create one.  See the deployment guide on technet for instructions

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/0c43062d-30e3-49b1...

You need a Project Server 2007 licence for every server in the farm that has
Project Server Installed.

You need a Project Pro 2007 Licence for every user using Project Pro
(Regardless of whether it connects to server or not)

You need a Project Server 2007 CAL for each user that access data held
within the Project Server Database via PWA or other means (Project Pro
includes a CAL for server)

If your using SQL you will also need a CAL for SQL for each user.

On top of this you also require a Windows Server 2003 CAL for each user.

AFAIK, Project Server is not bundled with a Pro license, but check with your
licence provider.

I would strongly recommend getting some professional consulting firm to help
you implement Project Server.  If you don't have the funds available for
professional consulting, buy a book, download articles from Technet, work
very closely with your users, test, test and test again.  Be sure you fully
understand the workflow of projects throughout your organisation and wherePS
plays it's parts.

Test again, and then think about rolling it out in a production environment.

Project Server will exaggerate the lack of process and planning and is only
as good as the data people enter.











- Show quoted text -

Thank you so much. I will now and try and atleast configure PWA with
the Technet instructions, since it seems doable. As for the rest, I
absolutely agree on professional consulting. I think I can get that
approved. As for the licenses, looks like we have 15 CALs for Project
Server. I suppose we'll need atleast one or two for Project Pro.

I have one final question. Since I've never worked with PWA before, is
it a sufficient replacement for Project Pro or in your experience is
it functionally limited (since that will determine how many Pro
licenses to get).

Thanks again.

 

[Paul Conroy]

Whilst PWA can be used for light weight planning/proposals, any user who is
required to complete detailed scheduling will require Project Pro.

In general PM's would use Pro, whilst other users (execs, team members etc)
would use PWA for time entry, task updates and reports.

HTH

Paul

 

[Mark Everett | PMP]

Use the publicly available data (TechNet, MSDN) for the install and
after you have confirmed the install works, you should spend some time
playing in the sandbox so to speak to learn how things work. I
recommend that you NOT change any default settngs for Categories and
Groups so you can use them as a fallback. If you want to play with
security, create new Groups and Categories. I also don't change the
default views - I create new ones based on the defaults, but that is
just me.

As for the licenses, the kinds and number you need are partially based
on the types of SQL license and Windows Server license you have.

As Paul said, you can use PWA only in a pretty limited way for
Proposals and Activities (light projects) but there are a number of
restrictions on that functionality. If you really want to exploit
what Project Pro will do, you should use that.

Get a good book - the MSProjectExperts book is good and readable (this
is coming from a person who wrote and/or edited about 14 chapters of a
competing book). Take your time and use this forum.

HTH

Mark Everett
www.catapultsystems.com