Project Sites: MOSS or PWA?

[JoelB]

We're moving from file-based document storage, and public-folder-based email
storage to SharePoint. We're a project-driven business, and figure the
obvious approach is to have a site for each project. We have Project Server,
and ultimately want integrated scheduling for milestones, staff resourcing,
employee vacations, task assignment, etc.

My question is, should we use PWA-sourced project sites, or MOSS-sourced
team sites for our projects. Pros? Cons? If we use PWA, do we pick up
scheduling advantages based on the project integration? Do we give up
anything in terms of customization options, template modification, etc? What
are the big differences?

Any insights and advice would be welcomed!

TIA,
Joel

 

[Ray McCoppin]

The queston is really what is the difference in WSS and MOSS. Standard PWA
uses WSS but you can also install Project Sever on a MOSS farm.

MOSS gives these and many other things that could be used for you Project
Management system.

- enterprise search
- excel services (nice for reports)
- many more web parts including the Sharepoint list query rollup webpart
(good for roll up of lists)
- Business Data Catalog good for searching Project Server database or other
databases

Hope this helps

--
Ray McCoppin

http://www.randsmanagement.com
Project Server 2007 Automation Tool
Project Server 2007 Arcgive Tool
SRS gantt charts

 

[JoelB]

Ray,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I have some familiarity with the
differences between WSS and MOSS, but I am hoping to find out what PWA adds.

Your reponse evokes these questions:

1. If PWA is installed on the same server as MOSS, does that mean that the
advantages you mentioned from MOSS will apply to both MOSS sites and PWA
sites?

2. What additional functionality is built into the PWA site template (i.e. -
it's just a basic WSS site)?

When I query a PWA-generated site, I see that it was created from the
following template:

ID: 6215
Title: PWS
Description:
A site that supports team collaboration on projects. This site includes
Project
Documents, Project Issues, Project Risks, and Project Deliverables lists
which
may be linked to tasks in Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.

That makes it sound like at the very least sites created from PWA maintain
some sort of relationship with project server that a MOSS site would lack.
If they also inherit the benefits of MOSS, it would seem preferable to use
them for our projects, right?

Thanks!
Joel

 

[Gary Chefetz]

Joel:

The PWA Project Workspaces contain custom web parts for Issues, Risks,
Deliverables and the ability to link these and documents back to tasks. You
don't need to use any MOSS features to enable these. If you happen to
install on MOSS, then you'll have the additional niceties available through
MOSS to enhance your implementation and you can take advantage of these by
customizing the base Project Workspace template. You can break the
connection between Project Server and the workspaces if you do not take care
in updating the template. If you have a license for MOSS, by all means use
it.