EPM Team

The Catapult EPM team is responsible for delivering Microsoft project and portfolio management solutions. Their blog reflects team insights and real-world experiences developing world-class EPM solutions.
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Feb25

Getting Back to Scheduling Basics….

There’ve been a number of good blog posts/articles in the last week or two on the basics of scheduling and project planning.  I haven’t had the time to capture each and every one of them, but I thought it was worth collecting some of the best ones in a short list here.  If you’re in the scheduling business, then these are well worth the time to check out. Mosaic Projects on Metaplanning in Con...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Thursday, 25 Feb 2010 08:38.
1 Comment | Categories: Project Management

 
Feb19

Announcement: Nintex Workflow for Project Server 2010

From EPMSource via Twitter: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/seattle10/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100217007083&newsLang=en Looking forward to playing with this….should be a great add-in to the tool – specifically the Portfolio Management aspects of it....
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Friday, 19 Feb 2010 03:01.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Server 2010

 
Feb19

A Taxonomy of Desktop Reporting Tools

I was doing a bit of research into bolt-on desktop reporting tools, and figured I’d post some of the results.  My goal is not to point to specific 3rd party reporting packages, but rather to talk about the concept of desktop reporting tools – and propose a taxonomy that may be of help to those currently looking to supplement Microsoft Project’s native capabilities.  Note that I do not intend to...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Friday, 19 Feb 2010 07:25.
0 Comments | Categories: Business Intelligence

 
Feb15

Not all Visio Charts are Created Equal….

Following up on our last two posts about authoring resource reports in Visio: 1) Creating an org chart using Resource Pool data. 2) Marrying enterprise data to an org chart. I wanted to talk about a fundamental concept of reporting with Visio and Visio Services that’s probably self-evident in the Visio world, but requires some introduction to the Microsoft Project community at large – the co...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Monday, 15 Feb 2010 07:51.
0 Comments | Categories: Visio, Project Server 2010

 
Feb12

Repost: Catapult Systems Webinars

Reposting content from Matt McD’s blog:   Announcing Catapult Systems Web Cast Series Catapult Systems is taking the most popular in-person events and producing a series of web casts. SharePoint 2010 Webcast Series Wednesday, March 17th - 11:00am CST: Managed Metadata Wednesday, March 31st - 11:00am CST: Social Computing Wednesday, April 14th - 11:00am CST: Search Wednesday, Apri...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Friday, 12 Feb 2010 08:11.
0 Comments | Categories: SharePoint, Business Intelligence

 
Feb12

Marrying Server Data to a Resource Pool Org Chart

…still playing with the reporting options in Microsoft Office Project Server 2010 and Visio Services.  This is a follow on post to our last story on how to create an org chart using Resource Pool data.  In that post, I talked about how to export the resource data into the Visio Org Chart Wizard.  I am still not sure why, in fact, someone would choose to do this, but one possible option would be...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Friday, 12 Feb 2010 10:18.
1 Comment | Categories: Project Server 2010

 
Feb11

Exporting the Resource Pool to Visio as an Org Chart

More along the lines of playing at the intersection of Visio reporting and Microsoft Office Project Server 2010.  The question I was looking at today was how to export the Resource Pool from Project Server into an organization chart format in Visio.  I used the Microsoft demo image and was able to generate a rough Contoso org chart as appears below: The first question is why would anyone wa...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Thursday, 11 Feb 2010 06:02.
3 Comments | Categories: Project Professional 2010

 
Feb5

Goodbye KAPOW! Hello New World

I’ve seen this question show up a couple of times in the forums for Microsoft Project 2010….whatever happened to the Copy Picture to Office Wizard tool? – or as I like to call it, the CPOW (pronounced KAPOW). Here’s the tool in 2007.  If you squint your eyes, it looks kind of like a camera with a blue lens: …or it can be found in the Reports menu. And here’s what it looks like in 2010. ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Friday, 5 Feb 2010 08:30.
1 Comment | Categories: Project Professional 2010

 
Feb3

Tips and Tricks: Saving an MPP File to Access

A lot of folks ask in the newsgroups how to save a Project file to Access.  This may be done for a number of reasons: Connecting to a reporting structure. (See an old article by Neville Turbit on project reporting in Access) Connecting to a SharePoint front end.  (Richard Fennell’s take on Access Services in SharePoint 2010, a video demo of Access Services 2010) Interacting with homegrow...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Wednesday, 3 Feb 2010 07:02.
1 Comment | Categories: Project Professional 2007, Project Professional 2010

 
Feb2

Houston SharePoint Event: Search TechDive on 2/10

Reposting teammate Rafael Perez’s invite to what is sure to be a scintillating (or at least mildly interesting if you’re into such things) evening talking about search capabilities in SharePoint 2007.  Come away with ideas of how to optimize your SharePoint based PM Information System. SharePoint TechDive: http://www.sptechdives.com/  The event is at the Catapult office at Richmond & the ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Tuesday, 2 Feb 2010 08:24.
0 Comments | Categories: SharePoint