EPM, Microsoft Project and You

I have the privilege of giving a couple webinars in the MPUG (Microsoft Project Users Group) Certificate Series for Microsoft Project 2010.  There will be nine separate one hour webinars.  This is a great way to learn more about Microsoft Project (and bits of Project Server 2010) in easy to manage chunks.  Here is the listing of webinars with the dates that they will be given:

• Fluent User Interface, 12 May 2010
• Timeline view, 23 June 2010
• Creating and Managing views, tables, sorting, and grouping, 7 July 2010
• Macros, 14 July 2010
• Compatibility, 21 July 2010
• Multiple Version Installation, 28 July 2010
• Manually Scheduled Tasks, 4 August 2010
• SharePoint Integration with Project, 11 August 2010
• Resource Management, 18 August 2010

 The list of instructors for the webinars is impressive and I am glad to be in the same grouping as them. 

 Directly from the MPUG site, here is some overview information:

Synopsis:
Microsoft Project Essentials Certificate series delivered via the web

 Overview:
Are you ready to start using Microsoft Project 2010? This certificate course is for users of Microsoft Project who need to plan projects, track projects, and communicate effectively with the latest version of Microsoft Project 2010. Each session of the series is taught by an MPUG expert presenter as ranked by our community members. The series will cover the new and improved features in Microsoft Project 2010 by reviewing and demonstrating how to do tasks with each. Tasks introduced through the series will also be supported by community dialog, articles and blog posts.

 See more details about the series:

http://www.mpug.com/Pages/MPUGCertificate.aspx

 See the short biographies of the instructors:

http://www.mpug.com/Pages/MPUGCertificateInstructors.aspx

By: Tanya Foster

I have had several people ask me about Project Portfolio Server, so it seems that this may be a good time to start blogging about the subject.  Let’s start with Microsoft TechNet.  You can find documentation and How To info on just about anything you want (Microsoft related of course).  Here’s the link in case you want to visit the site http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/projportserver/default.aspx

One of the main things that I like about Portfolio Server is that it can be tightly integrated with Microsoft Project 2007.  Let’s start there and talk about how it all works together.  Portfolio Server has a Project Server Gateway.  This gateway provides a link to Project Server 2007 so that you can import, export, and synchronize information between the two environments.  Information such as schedule phases, milestones, resource requirement info, resource availability, and even enterprise fields.    It also meshes with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 for document storage.

Now that we have our information in Portfolio Server from Project Server, we can begin to look at our portfolio of projects and determine which ones are viable and which ones can be put on the back burner or canceled all together.  Now this blog entry is all about the high level stuff.  The next few blog entries will be diving a little deeper into the Portfolio Server subject…. So stay tuned!