Troubleshooting OLAP access

[Al Himler]

Over the past 2 months, I've been troubleshooting why I (as sys admin) can
only access the Portfolio Analyzer view. I think I have a new clue now, but
am not sure what to do with it.

Configuration - Project Server 2003; SQL Server 2005 with patches up to
Patch 2a.

If I log directly onto the Project Server machine and use PWA by going to
http://localhost/projectserver, I can log in, go to resources and see the
Project Analyzer view that I have set up fine.

However, if I bring up a same browser and refer to the project server
instance using the ip address (http://xx.xx.x.xxx/projectserver where
xx.xx.x.xxx is my ip address), I can log in, go to resources, BUT when I try
to bring up the Project Analyzer view, I get the message "Unable to access
the Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Analyzer OLAP cube. The cube may not
exist, or you may not have permissions to access the cube."

Why would it treat it differently if I'm the same user with the same
credentials on the same server, but where I reference projectserver using
"localhost" rather than the ip address in the URL?

Help please!

Al

 

[rt]

Over the past 2 months, I've been troubleshooting why I (as sys admin) can
only access the Portfolio Analyzer view. I think I have a new clue now, but
am not sure what to do with it.

Configuration - Project Server 2003; SQL Server 2005 with patches up to
Patch 2a.

If I log directly onto the Project Server machine and use PWA by going tohttp://localhost/projectserver, I can log in, go to resources and see the
Project Analyzer view that I have set up fine.

However, if I bring up a same browser and refer to the project server
instance using the ip address (http://xx.xx.x.xxx/projectserverwhere
xx.xx.x.xxx is my ip address), I can log in, go to resources, BUT when I try
to bring up the Project Analyzer view, I get the message "Unable to access
the Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Analyzer OLAP cube. The cube may not
exist, or you may not have permissions to access the cube."

Why would it treat it differently if I'm the same user with the same
credentials on the same server, but where I reference projectserver using
"localhost" rather than the ip address in the URL?

Help please!

Al

Hi Al,

I'm not a technical person myelf, but an issue I have run into a few
times already is the membership of the OLAP-admin group on the server
itself. For instance, our SQL-server is on two nodes and when our
outsourcing partner switched nodes one day, everybody lost access to
the portfolio analyzer. Turned out we had added the users to the OLAP
admin group on one node but not the other.

Not sure if this makes any sense to your problem, but in general,
access to the portfolio analyzer is only a matter of 3 things:

- you need office web components
- you need the proper authorization
- you need to be in the OLAP admin group

In my experience, it's usually the last requirement that causes
trouble.

 

[Al Himler]

Thanks for the reply rt.

The roles / permissions with OLAP did give me a problem at the start, but I
think that is ok now. The reason that I think that is OK, is that I get
different results as the same user logged onto the server. If I use the
http://localhost/projectserver as my URL to reach PWA, then I can access
Portfolio Analyzer and see everything fine. So for that user, the roles /
permissions and everything else seem good.

When I close the browser and open another browser (as the same user) and use
the URL http://<ip address of server>/projectserver, I can get into PWA and
do everything else, except access Portfolio Analyzer.

--Al

 

[Crook]

Hi Al,

Check the security settings in MSIE. In order to work properly, your PWA
site must be in the trusted sites zone and "access data sources across
domains" must be enabled (or at least prompt). Otherwise, MSIE will block
data from your cube.

HTH,
Crook