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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Jul19

Two Cool Blog Posts For Today

I wasn’t planning on pushing anything out today, but a couple of really good blog posts on Project desktop caught my eye, and I wanted to make sure you all saw them:   1) Dale Howard from MS Project Experts on deploying the default 2000-2007 macros to Project 2010.  These macros have always been underused and underappreciated, but the Format_Duration macro has saved my project plans on many o...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Monday, 19 Jul 2010 03:52.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Professional 2010

 
Jun17

PMI Houston Follow Up

Thanks to everyone in Houston for attending my three presentations yesterday.  I am already envisioning a couple of ideas to pitch for next year’s conference.  (How does Project Management Lessons from Genghis Khan sound to you?) Here’re a list of references that came up in discussion in the final session on MS Project 2010 changes:   Support Forums: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Foru...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Thursday, 17 Jun 2010 08:27.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Professional 2010

 
May10

On Release Eve, a Look Back

Feeling a bit nostalgic as of late.  Perhaps it was seeing Dan Aykroyd grand marshalling a parade over the weekend.  More likely, it’s the Project 2010 release happening this week. For some reason, the event has made me a bit nostalgic for versions of old.  I started poking around the Internet and found the following link, which is sure to tug at the heartstrings of those who’ve been using MS...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Monday, 10 May 2010 08:08.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Server 2010, Project Professional 2010

 
Apr18

All I Want for Festivus: My Reporting Wishlist

The fine folks at with the Microsoft Product Team issued a request for the community to help them out with real world reporting examples (here).  Borrowing from the current Windows 7 campaign concept, this prompted me to come up with my own reporting wish list for future versions of MS Project.  Note that most of this functionality is available currently through various workarounds, Excel acrob...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Sunday, 18 Apr 2010 05:04.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Professional 2010

 
Apr12

EPMSource on Extending the Backstage

Looks like a good series of posts from newly minted Project MVP, Alex Burton – How to extend the Project 2010 Backstage: http://epmsource.com/2010/04/11/extending-the-project-backstage-getting-the-data/...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Monday, 12 Apr 2010 08:16.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Professional 2010, 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.
0 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

 
Jan27

What-If Analysis with Microsoft Project 2010

I’ve attended a couple Microsoft Project 2010 events as of late, but of yet, I haven’t seen this functionality getting much play.  On first glance, I think this could be one of the most compelling new features added to Project: the task level Active field. Usage Scenarios Scenario #1: The project manager has been requested to calculate the cost and schedule impact of a potential change order....
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Wednesday, 27 Jan 2010 07:58.
3 Comments | Categories: Project Professional 2010, Project Server 2010