Speed Issues when Loading a Project in MS Project Professional 2013

Question

Hi Again All!,

My employer has recently completed the transition of MS SharePoint (and MS Project Server) from the 2007 products to the 2013 versions.  Once all of our data was migrated over, and all projects were published to load the enterprise resources into the projects (the projects seemed to come over without the specific resources loaded into the "Build Team from Enterprise" section), we noticed that opening a project (and subsequently opening the "Build Team from Enterprise" tab) both take an incredibly long time to open when compared to the same project in the 2007 environment.  I've posted below how long various projects we're working on took to open in our 2007 Production Environment, followed by how long the same project took to open in our 2013 Environment.  BTFE stands for how long it took to open the "Build Team from Enterprise" section of the project when we needed to add/remove an individual from a project.  This was done from different computers at different times of the day, and the results posted are the typical amount of time the project took to open (rounded to the nearest whole second - this was done using a stopwatch):

One thing that seems to be a common thread is that, the more individuals attached to a project (and the more tasks involved), the longer the project takes to open (i.e. larger projects took more time to open).  We've been working with our Systems Administrator to resolve the issue, but seem to have hit a road block at this point.

For me (a person who has very little technical knowledge in this area), it feels like what's happening is that whenever we open up MS Project Professional, it's trying to synchronize the data to the resources from PWA (which comes from our company's Active Directory), and link them up to those tasks.  Projects that have no resources attached initially open and close quite quickly (even with lots of tasks listed), and if I put in the name of a fake person (as opposed to using a person in the Build Team from Enterprise section), everything also opens very quickly (similar to the 2007 environment), but as more Enterprise Resources are added to the project, and more tasks are assigned to them, whenever I go to open the project, it takes longer than before they were added.

And so my question is this:

Has anyone dealt with a similar issue, and if so, how did they resolve it?  If not, any ideas (or thoughts on how I could better explain this to the administrator - who doesn't have much familiarity with MS Project and Project Server, just as I have very little with the other side of the coin) on what steps I should take next?

As always, any help is greatly appreciated, and I thank you for your time in advance!  And Dale, if you're the person who helps me again, I cannot thank you enough for the countless times you've helped me in the past!

Respectfully,

Daryl Wiser

Answer 1

The best source of answers for Project Server questions is in:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=projectserver2010general%2Cprojectonline&filter=unanswered&sort=lastpostdesc

However, were you at SP3 with Project Server 2007 and ideally plus the latest cumulative update before migrating? If not I would update PS2007 to SP3 + CUs first, then migrate to PS2013 SP1.

You will also need to search MSDN for white papers on best server setup for 2010, its quite different from 2007 as Project Server is now based entirely on SharePoint.

You could also buy a seat for Project Online (about US$39/month) and test your project files on it as a performance comparison.