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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May20

1 Year & 100 Posts – You’d Think We Almost Planned That

Yep, our little ol’ blog was officially 1 year old last month.  That means we’re ready to graduate from the baby cereal stuff to something with substance.  I hope you’re all getting half as much out of reading this blog as we get out of writing it. Here’s a self-selected best of listing of some of the posts that we’ve published…. Category Post Deployment Epistemological Challe...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Thursday, 20 May 2010 10:36.
1 Comment | Categories: Administration, Business Intelligence, Project Server 2010, SharePoint, Reporting

 
May7

Optimizing Drilling Schedules with Microsoft Project Server 2010 (Part 3) – Creating the Visio File

This is part three of a series on optimizing drilling schedules in Microsoft Office Project Server 2010 and surfacing the data in a Visio map.  In this case again, I owe credit to Visio guru, David Parker, for a couple of tips in a blog post on how to get maps out of Bing – and to Rob Schneider an Edinburgh-based Microsoft Project consultant and Executive Secretary of the Scottish Oil Club, who...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Friday, 7 May 2010 09:28.
0 Comments | Categories: Business Intelligence, Project Server 2010

 
May3

Optimizing Drilling Schedules with Microsoft Project Server 2010 (Part 2) – Leveling the Rig Schedule

This is part two in our series on optimizing drilling schedules with Microsoft Project Server 2010.  In our previous post, we discussed how this series is designed to be a case study in managing resource constrained projects.  In this case, our goal is to optimize a rig drilling schedule across multiple oil wells and then to report this data in an easy to use graphical format. For Part I – ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Monday, 3 May 2010 01:39.
0 Comments | Categories: Business Intelligence, Project Server 2010

 
Apr30

Optimizing Drilling Schedules with Microsoft Project 2010 (Part 1) – Setting the Stage

When I started writing a previous post on how to map a Visio Services timeline to live Project Server data, I was looking for a relevant example of how to use Visio’s graphical representation capabilities to surface Project Server data – a topic on which I’ve already posted quite a bit.  This is the actual post that I started writing at the time which then got sidelined for a little while…how t...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Friday, 30 Apr 2010 05:39.
0 Comments | Categories: Business Intelligence, Project Server 2010

 
Apr28

2010 Business Intelligence, Now in PlexVision

A recent webinar I recorded has been posted here.  Feel free to check it out for a brief overview of some of the BI opportunities in the Project Server and SharePoint 2010 stack.  This is essentially a mashup of the presentation I gave at the Microsoft Houston Project Roadshow event in January of this year….with a couple of tweaks: 1) This was my first attempt to deliver a presentation using ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Wednesday, 28 Apr 2010 04:39.
1 Comment | Categories: Business Intelligence

 
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

 
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

 
Jan21

Creating a Dynamic Project Timeline Using Visio Services

Continuing with the BI thread, I was demoing dynamic reporting using SharePoint 2010 Visio Services during a recent Project Server BI spiel in Houston.  What struck me with the crowd, which was primarily from the oil and gas industry, was the interest in the Visio timeline.  I must admit, having used Microsoft Project for so long, I kinda forgot how many folks still use the Visio timeline view ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Thursday, 21 Jan 2010 01:12.
7 Comments | Categories: Business Intelligence, Project Server 2010

 
Jan11

Repost: Austin SharePoint UG 1/13 Presentation on SharePoint Insights BI

This seemed topical (from Matt McDermott’s blog). Austin SharePoint User Group: Insights Sid Atkinson, Sr. Lead Consultant, Catapult Systems, will provide an overview of the great new Business Intelligence features of SharePoint 2010. This session will cover the Insights Business Intelligence platform in SharePoint 2010.  Microsoft made a significant investment in BI and has made available ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Monday, 11 Jan 2010 01:56.
0 Comments | Categories: Business Intelligence, SharePoint