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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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

 
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

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.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Server 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

 
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.
6 Comments | Categories: Business Intelligence, Project Server 2010

 
Jan19

Modifying the Default ODC Files to Filter on Specific Projects

This is another posting from our BI presentations last week in Houston and Dallas.  This is the first part of creating a dynamic Visio report, with the second part coming out later this week.  For that post, I plan to tackle the question of creating a dynamic Visio timeline linked to project data.  In the meantime, this is the prerequisite information on how to modify the Office Data Connector ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Tuesday, 19 Jan 2010 06:45.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Server 2010, SharePoint

 
Jan18

Project Server 2010 BI Presentation Posted

Thanks to everyone for turning out to the Project Server 2010 BI Reporting presentations we did this week at the Microsoft offices in Dallas and Houston.  As per request, I am posting the slide deck of the Houston delivery (which has only several minor modifications from the Dallas version): PDF Version If you’d like to chat about the presentation or arrange an on-line presentation for coll...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Monday, 18 Jan 2010 10:09.
1 Comment | Categories: Project Server 2010

 
Jan12

Document Automation with the REST.API

One of the top client requests I often see is document automation.  Many clients have bits and pieces of reusable content that they wish to automatically populate into PowerPoint or Word documents.  Ira Brown of Project Widgets did an impressive webinar the other day on using macros to automatically move data from MPP files to Office files.  Continuing on the BI thread this week, here’s how you...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Tuesday, 12 Jan 2010 07:40.
0 Comments | Categories: Project Server 2010, SharePoint

 
Jan10

First Thoughts: Project Server 2010 and ReportBuilder 2.0

It would seem to be BI Week in the Project Server blogosphere (see here and here, with an excellent recorded webinar on the topic by Marc Soester here).  I guess that’s kind of like Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, but thankfully without the blood and rotting fish.  Seeing as I have been spending a fair amount of time putting together a BI presentation of late, I figured I’d add my contribu...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Sunday, 10 Jan 2010 07:34.
1 Comment | Categories: Project Server 2010

 
Nov16

Architecting a Migration Ready 2007 Deployment

Parked this one aside back in September, and just realized that it never went out.  Here's a flashback to what I was thinking just a month or two ago: Watching the Ignite presentation today on the migration path from 2007 to 2010, it just confirmed that if you’re planning a 2007 deployment right now, you should deploy it as follows: PWA in its own site collection and content db. Project ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on Monday, 16 Nov 2009 08:26.
0 Comments | Categories: MOPS 2007, Project Server 2010