Project disappeared from Project Server

M

M Colodzin

Help!
|
| Today I tried to open my project plan in MS Project 2003 using the File ->
| Open command and it simply wasn't there. No projects appeared in the dialog
| box from which you select the project plan you want to open. I then tried
| to open it from within PWA by selecting it in the Project Center View and
| clicking on the MS Project icon. MS Project came up and connected to the
| server as normal, but nothing opened. When I returned to PWA, I got an
error
| saying "The selected project could not be opened in Project."
|
| I verifed that the project still appears in PWA, and all information is
| present and avaiable for users. I also verified that my network connect was
| stil active and that I could access other files with no problem. These were
| non-published.mpp files from the File -> Open -> Open from File command.
| Lastly, users were able to submit timesheets without any problem.
|
| There is currently only one published project on project server so I can't
| tell if this is isolated to this particular project or a problem with the
| server (or SQL DB.)
|
| I had been working with no problems in the project plan just an hour
earlier.
|
| Any suggestions/help will be very gratefully appreciated. Needless to say,
| my client is not pleased.
|
| Many thanks in advance.
| --
| Michelle Colodzin, PMP
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Michelle --

I'm sorry your client is not pleased, but this is hardly your fault. Are
you the Project Server administrator? If not, is there any possibility that
the Project Server administrator was "screwing around" with Project Server
permissions earlier today? If they deselected the Open Project permission
for the My Projects category in the Project Managers group, or set the same
permission to Deny in another Group in which you belong, this would cause
the project to disappear from the Open dialog in Project Professional 2003
but still allow it to show in the Project Center page. So, do some
detective work and let us know what you find.
 
M

M Colodzin

Dale,

Thanks for the prompt response.

I am a fairly expereienced system administrator and I didn't change any
permissions yesterday. I had been working on the project plan iin MSP 2003
throughout the day, saving regularly. Everything was normal until suddenly
when I
tried to save I got the error saying I didn't have permissions to perform
that operation (or something similar.) At that point I closed the file
(without saving) and exited MSP. When I tried to re-open the file it was
"gone."

I found a person on the team who knows SQL and Windows Server and he looked
at the database files. It appears that the file still exists in the MSP
Projects table. From what I can gather the plan is still there but somehow I
can't "see" or access it.
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Michelle --

Thanks for the additional detail. If it were me, here's what I would do
next:

1. Delete the project from the Project Server database, but do not delete
the WSS subweb if there are Risks, Issues, or Documents associated with the
project. Refer to the following FAQ for the steps needed:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Shared Documents/DeleteProjectWithoutSubweb.htm

2. Extract the project from last night's backup of the Project Server
database, assuming it is backed up nightly, and then import the project back
into the Project Server database. Refer to the following FAQ for the steps
needed:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Shared Documents/RestoreProject.htm

Just a thought. Hope this helps.
 
M

M Colodzin

Hi Dale,

I tested adding another project (before deleting the one that's there) and
found that I can import the project as an enterprise project but I cannot
publish. I'm getting "insufficient permissions" errors in the spooler:
0x80004005.

I validated that I have permission in PWA to open a project that there are
no denys for that option in any of the groups/categories to which I belong.

I'm thinking that maybe something got changed in Windows or SQL server that
is denying me access to the database or file where the project information
resides.
I went through the security log files for the day previous to the problem
and the day the problem occured. The only thing I noticed is that this
happened on the second day of production use.

Do you know of a way to determine if a change was made to the SQL and/or
Windows servers that would affect my permissions?
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Michelle --

I'm not a technical guru with the backend applications that run with Project
Server. I suspect you are correct in your assessment, but I couldn't even
begin to tell you where to look. Given the fact that you have gathered even
more info about this problem, I would propose that you post it as a new
question, and include all of the relevant information gathered thus far.
This way some of our technical gurus can take a stab at assisting you. Hope
this helps.
 
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