Creating Monthly Archives and Snapshots from Project Server

[Tito]

Hello all!

We recently transitioned to Project Server and haven't figured out the
Project Server equivalent of creating monthly snapshots for archiving
purposes and how best to share our data with people outside of the network.

In the past if we needed to create a month-end snapshot of the schedules we
simply created a folder and copied the entire contents of the current folder
into a folder we created for purposes of archiving. Now that our data is in
Server we're unsure on how best to do this....

We also have the task of sharing our data with external auditors on a montly
basis but whenever we create an MPP version of our Server data we lose all of
the Lookup Table data.

Some background on our environment:

-We use consolidated schedules extensively and have tons of dependencies
across the subprojects.
-We use calculated fields and lookup tables.
-Our subprojects range from 500-2K activities so our consolidated schedules
are typically in the range of 15K activities.
-Only some of the schedules are resource loaded.
-We recently installed SP1 for Project Server 2007.

I would greatly appreciate any help on the above questions.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Tito,

Try posting on the microsoft.public.project.server newsgroup (forum).
Please see FAQ Item: 24. Project Newsgroups. FAQs, companion products and
other useful Project information can be seen at this web address:
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Mark E. Read]

Hello all!

We recently transitioned to Project Server and haven't figured out the
Project Server equivalent of creating monthly snapshots for archiving
purposes and how best to share our data with people outside of the network.  

In the past if we needed to create a month-end snapshot of the schedules we
simply created a folder and copied the entire contents of the current folder
into a folder we created for purposes of archiving.  Now that our data is in
Server we're unsure on how best to do this....

We also have the task of sharing our data with external auditors on a montly
basis but whenever we create an MPP version of our Server data we lose all of
the Lookup Table data.

Some background on our environment:

-We use consolidated schedules extensively and have tons of dependencies
across the subprojects.
-We use calculated fields and lookup tables.
-Our subprojects range from 500-2K activities so our consolidated schedules
are typically in the range of 15K activities.
-Only some of the schedules are resource loaded.
-We recently installed SP1 for Project Server 2007.

I would greatly appreciate any help on the above questions.

Hello Tito,

I would check in with your auditors and see if they have a legitimate
need for the schedules themselves, or if they are really looking at a
few pieces of critical data.

If it is the latter, I would highly recommend using the snapshot
functionality of SQL Reporting Services to extract key information
into PDF, Excel or some other more portable format. There is some
subscription automation capability, so the whole exercise is much less
labor intensive, and you can overcome the 11 baseline limit very
easily.

--Mark
Mark E. Read
Principal,
Sequence Advisors, Inc.

 

[Tito]

I appreciate the suggestion but yes they require the actual MPP files; they
run their own set of network integrity checks against the data.

 

[Tito]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out now.

 

[Mike Glen]

You're welcome, Tito

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials