Special thanks to all our readers for tuning in and hope hear from you on our new blog at http://blogs.office.com/b/project/.

In our category - we recognize the best of the best Microsoft Project partners and award them the prestigious “Project and Portfolio Management Partner of the Year” award! This year - we have seen great case studies and stunning solutions that Microsoft Project partners have built - and all this underscores the great success and power of Project 2010!

Please join us to celebrate the success of Project and Portfolio Management Partner (PPM) community and congratulate the winner and finalists!

Project and Portfolio Management Partner of the Year 2012 – SharkPro Software!

Three award finalists

	BrightWork allows organizations to instantly deploy an initial affordable amount of work, project and portfolio management on SharePoint. This delivers immediate visibility and control and then over time organizations can evolve and mature by adding more templates and dashboards as needed and as ready. This best practices template approach pioneered by BrightWork allows organizations to start small and to grow and mature as ready and as needed. BrightWork uniquely supports the management of the mix of projects (in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Project Server), by aggregating the projects to one central set of dashboards in a SharePoint Portal.
	Prosperi has been focusing on Microsoft Project Server and SharePoint solutions and Consulting  since 2002. It has an impressive customer list that includes some of Brazil’s most prestigious enterprises and provides tailored solutions to companies in a range of different industries. EPMFAST: Project Server configured with project management methodology, carefully crafted to meet the requirements of diverse organizations. EPMFAST Mobile: Project Server dashboard for smartphones. METROwebpart: METRO style menu for SharePoint sites.
	UMT has consistently delivered innovative services and products that have helped transform the PPM industry. UMT has gained unparalleled understanding of customer needs by forming enduring relationships with Global 1000 organizations across a variety of industries. In June 2012, UMT announced the availability of the latest version of their financial management solution for Project Server 2010. UMT Project Essentials 2012 is arguably UMT’s most ambitious release to date providing powerful new capabilities including multi-currency support, financial snapshots, change request management and workflow design that seamlessly extend Project Server 2010. UMT Project Essentials is already being used by Project customers and partners around the world to gain visibility and control across project and portfolio financials. To learn more about this solution visit www.umtprojectessentials.com

Honorable mentions solutions

Number of solutions clearly stood out – some of them are listed below – featuring the Earned Value Management, Mobile Applications, Portfolio Management, Resource Management, Innovation Process Management and Line of the Business Integration. For more please refer to Microsoft Project 2010 Solution Spotlight.

Honorable mentions case studies

We have hand-picked 3 case studies in government and manufacturing built by the following partners. Click on the logo to learn more. For more Microsoft Project case-studies, please refer to Microsoft Project 2010 Customer Success.

Jan Kalis
http://blogs.msdn.com/jkalis/, Twitter @MeetJKalis
Product Marketing Manager | Microsoft Project/Visio
Microsoft Corporation

They started as two local kids who grew up just a few miles from the Microsoft campus. In high school they thought it was cool how you could program little LED lights to go on and off. This fascination inspired their future in software development.

They spent some time attending the University of Washington and while they were there built a spell checker app, Corrector.  Unfortunately it was the third spell checker app to the market and while InfoWorld rated it the best in the industry, they only sold 24 copies. Brian thanks his good spelling today though to having to manually enter the entire dictionary. Jeff even did some internships with Microsoft since they needed money to finance their company.

After the spell checker app, they started working on a spreadsheet product for Macs called Crunch. Shortly after that, Microsoft came out with Excel and in Brian's words "really just crunched 'Crunch' ". At this time they had a lot of connections into Microsoft from Jeff’s internships and Brian's wife working there. They were at a party with Bill Gates and he mentioned they should stop competing and start working together. Microsoft was trying to recruit developers to make GUI (graphical user interface) apps for this new platform called Windows. They already had a spreadsheet and word processor but were looking for developers to create a database application (which would go on to be Access) and a project management application. Brian and Jeff chose the latter.

While Brian and Jeff had a lot of passion around software, they didn't have much project management expertise. As Jeff said though, they were arrogant enough to know they could do it. So they dove in and looked at competitors, did a bunch of customer interviews including with another local company, Boeing, read project management books and attended conferences. It was actually while they were on a site visit to Boeing that a light bulb went off and they came to the decision that they wanted to build a toolkit that had a broad enough appeal that anyone could use it for project management. At the time, most project management applications were built by consultants and the software would back up the methodology that the consultant was selling. Most companies though already had methodologies in place and just wanted software to support it. This decision turned out to be a pivotal one and something we still strongly believe to be correct today. In Project 2010, you’ll see that you can manage projects how you want to manage them.

How does it feel that people are still using the tool you built today for huge projects totaling billions of dollars?

It feels great! We had always hoped that would be the case. - Jeff

Anything about people's reactions to it surprise you?

Right around the time the second version of Project was coming out, Windows started to just explode in popularity and along with it any software that ran on Windows. We initially saw our audience as people who had "Project Manager" in their title but found that the product had a much broader appeal. People were using it to create schedules/Gantt charts to help show their management/team that they had their acts together and were on top of things.  – Brian

That was very exciting for them and helped the product really take off. They also thank this success to their initial goal of being a toolkit instead of specific solution. This is why features such as the ability to re-title columns were available back in the original release.

What kinds of improvements did the second version of Project for Windows have over the first?

Print preview, support for macros, and improvements to the leveling algorithm were some of the top ones.

Yes, leveling was in v1. According to Jeff - "All the software solutions had it and all struggled with making it work how humans would expect".  We are still trying to make this easier today by adding features like change highlighting in Project 2007 and the Team Planner in Project 2010.

What do you think of the current version of Project?

It looks great. A lot looks familiar with the overall user interface but it definitely looks more modern (they were happy to hear that we now have more than 16 colors). Per the timeline view, that was what we were trying to achieve with the Gantt chart (sharing the schedule with stakeholders) but has an even broader appeal. - Brian

Brian went on then to create Outlook which originally started out with the goal of being a task management application. It was only during coding and after much debate that they decided to add email support to it. We think they made the right decision. Jeff worked on Project a bit longer and then went on to do Team Manager. Today they both work in the Bing organization.

Some fun facts:

· There isn't a Microsoft Project 2.0 because someone else had copyrighted Project 2.0

· Bill Gates tried to convince them to re-write Project in BASIC and they said no.

· The last bug fixed for Project 1.0 for Windows was around supporting the Gantt Chart view with the Task Form.

In short, I would like to thank Brian and Jeff for creating this great product that so many of us use every day and rely on to accomplish a wide range of projects.

Following our time in Maryland last month for Gartner's annual PPM event in the US, the Microsoft Project team will also be sponsoring this year's Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit in London. The two day event represents…

"Europe's premier gathering of program and portfolio management executives charged with improving how organizations select, implement and manage IT projects and investments. The Summit will help you anticipate portfolio fluctuations, and adapt your programs with a view to reducing risk and fully realizing the value."

We’re looking forward to hearing from users like yourselves. You can stop by our booth and join us for a panel discussion on Tuesday, plus our presentation on Wednesday.

Check back after the Summit for an update and event recap. In the meantime you can follow us on Twitter where we'll share the activity from London.

And if you haven't already, be sure to check out the exicting announcement of Microsoft's Surface

Today we're excited to share all session recordings from Project Conference 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona with the greater Project community. Over 1250 people from 44 countries made the trip--75% for the very first time. The week featured 94 handpicked sessions with 20 delivered by customers eager to share their experiences. Many sessions were standing room only and from the evaluations, many only wished they could have attended more of them. Zach Heisinger, first time attendee, tells us he's already looking forward to the next Project Conference. His only complaint? "I wish certain sessions could be offered more than once during the conference. That way I wouldn’t have to pick one great session over another great session." So, we're excited to share these recordings with all of you as it represents a collection of the best content out there from our customers, partners, and industry leaders.

This year's Conference focused on Project 2010 momentum and offered attendees both networking as well as training opportunities. We've said before, 2010 marks the biggest release in over a decade, but product innovation didn't end with its release. You'll find 87 recordings totaling over 100 hours of content. We suggest getting started by viewing both keynotes, first from Microsoft Office Division CVP Kirk Koenigsbauer and then from Microsoft Project GM Ludovic Hauduc. Then jump into some of the top rated sessions at the conference:

1. Deliver SharePoint Success: Key Steps to Reap the Business Benefits
2. Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices for Using Project Server 2010
3. The painters, the policemen and the Pope...understanding task movement in Microsoft Project 2010
4. Take Your Project Reporting To the Next Level: Dashboards and Other Tools
5. YJTJ (Your Job Tool’s Job) ™ – Working in Concert with Microsoft Project
6. Unleashing the Value of Earned Value: Applying Schedule and Cost Controls to Measure Project Performance
7. Turning Project Data into Real World Reports: An Overview of Business Intelligence Options
8. Leveraging Project 2010 with Office 365 for Project Management Success
9. Be Loved By Your Development Teams: Using the Team Foundation Server – Project Server Connector
10. Microsoft Project 2010 Desktop Overview

From all the social media buzz (2.5 million Twitter impressions) and excitement, the Project community looks to be growing stronger and stronger each day. None of this would have been possible without each of you and we're thankful for the opportunity to have met many of you in person. A special thank you to those who were able to join us this year. Hope you enjoyed all the parties and the warm weather. We can't wait for the next one! For those who couldn't make the trip this year, we hope you find the sessions informative and enough of a reason the join us next time. Let us know what you think in the comments or via Facebook/Twitter.

You can view all sessions on the Microsoft Project Showcase Channel

Usually, Project considers working time to be Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m ., with weekends off. So far so good, especially the part about the weekends.

But you can change this to any time you want. If you want everyone to work Saturdays or all evenings, so be it.

The following graphic will show you how to use the Change Working Time dialog box to change the project work calendar. In the example graphic below, Saturday is made into a four-hour working day with, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m .

That’s it. And sorry about the weekend part.

This morning, Kirk Koenigsbauer – Corporate Vice President of the Office Division Product Management Group – kicked off the Microsoft Project Conference 2012 in sunny Phoenix, Arizona with an opening keynote address.  This year’s event celebrates the success of Project 2010 and showcases how it continues to evolve in order to meet the changing collaboration and project management needs within organizations of all sizes.  At the heart of that evolution is Microsoft’s focus on an integrated platform wherein customers are better able to respond to industry trends (i.e. devices and the cloud) and have an opportunity to realize the benefits of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) beyond IT and into all areas of a business including Marketing, Finance and Resource & Development (as seen in Revlon’s example below).

Since its launch in May of 2010, Microsoft Project has quietly climbed to the top of the Project Portfolio Management market with over 20 million users of the Microsoft Project desktop to date. That’s one license sold every 20 seconds!  And, analysts agree with Gartner giving its highest rating to Microsoft in the latest Marketscope for Project and Portfolio Management.

But, you don’t have to take our word for it! Eighty-two of the Fortune 100 are Microsoft Project customers and Revlon– a global cosmetics company headquartered in New York City – is one such company.  With an excess of daily meetings, the company found that the productivity of its employees plummeted and, with 1.3 billion dollars’ worth of sales in 2010 alone, it stood to lose a lot due to inefficiencies.  The Revlon IT department was looking for a way to optimize its project planning, reduce the number of meetings and bridge the gap between developers and project managers by improving the transparency of project data. 

Enter Microsoft Project Server 2010.  Revlon implemented the technology in addition to the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack.  Bringing both into the organization produced a wealth of improved efficiencies including up to 30% less time in meetings, productivity gains of 2-5% and improved risk management through better data.  Perhaps Jacqueline Shannon – senior planner in program management for Revlon – said it best, “I think Microsoft Project Server 2010 is an incredible tool because it promotes accountability, timeliness and structure allowing us to focus more on our deliverables rather than reporting on our deliverables.”  For more information regarding Revlon’s use of Project 2010 check out this video: https://aka.ms/zdniuj!

Another reason customers, like Revlon, value Project 2010 is for its improved integration and continuous innovation with Microsoft technologies like Exchange and SharePoint providing people with a familiar user interface and connected platform that they can use to manage all their work from the simplest to the most complex projects.

• Experienced and/or accidental Project managers can plan and collaborate with teams to share schedule details quickly with Project Professional 2010 and SharePoint Online (Office 365) task list synchronization. Individuals throughout the organization can view the task list and quickly see task status and update progress in SharePoint Online—from virtually anywhere! Please refer to this Project blog post for additional information.
• SharePoint integration allows professional Project Managers to collaborate with a wider group of colleagues, important participants and “accidental project managers”, who track their tasks and progress through SharePoint.
• SharePoint 2010 integration brings powerful Business Intelligence capabilities via Excel Services, PerformancePoint Services and SQL Reporting Services, so all Project 2010 users can create enhanced dashboards that give you greater transparency across your many portfolios within the organization. Please refer to this website for additional information.
• Improved integrations with other proven Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Exchange means that users can manage and respond to project tasks effectively through Outlook—on their PC, over the mobile phone, or using Outlook Web Access.
• With the release of the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack, project managers and software development teams can use the tools that they prefer, work at the level of precision that supports their needs, share information transparently, and each use the methodology they prefer (agile or formal).

Please check out the Microsoft Project 2010 Customer Success page for more case studies. For more information about the Project Conference and a transcript of today’s keynote, please visit the Project Conference virtual press room.

Enjoy the conference!

Sincerely,

Chris Crane

Director, Project and Visio Product Marketing at Microsoft Corp.

In addition we have released the following white paper recently: Microsoft Project Server 2010 integration with SAP. This white paper, written by Advisicon, outlines the benefits and scenarios for integrating Microsoft Project Server 2010 with SAP’s ERP; in particular integrating the actual time reporting from SAP with the time-phased planning and resource forecasting power of Project Server 2010. This white paper illustrates one of the many options & approach to integrate Project Server with SAP. I also wrote this post on the same topic: Integrating Project Server 2010 with Line Of Business Applications.

Last but not least and to reinforce the points made above, please find below a list of sessions at our upcoming Microsoft Project Conference 2012 that will discuss PPM and ERP integration, don’t forget to register if you have not done so yet!

• Achieve Complete Project Cost Planning & Insight: Integrating Microsoft Project Server 2010 with financial systems like Dynamics AX
• Bean Counting in the Cloud: Merging hosted EPM and internal GL data to optimize financial reporting
• Integrating Data from External LOB Systems (SAP, ClickSoft, etc.) for Strategic Resource Planning & Forecasting
• Rapid Implementation of the Microsoft PPM solution and SAP-integration in a global Chemical company
• The comprehensive use of Microsoft EPM, SharePoint and TPG PSLink within the mining industry
• The Integration of Project Management and Project Accounting with Dynamics SL
• Project Server and Dynamics AX - Completing the Lifecycle from Project Estimation to Revenue Recognition

All sponsors (listed below) and exhibitors will be available in their booths to demonstrate how they contribute to the momentum of Project 2010!

In addition to standard expo hall hours all sponsors and exhibitors will be ready to greet you at the Welcome Reception Monday Evening – make sure to visit the Expo Hall to enjoy the food, drinks and networking!

If you have not registered for the Project Conference yet – check the reasons to attend and register!

The full list of Project conference Sponsors and Exhibitors.

See you in Phoenix!

Jan Kalis
http://blogs.msdn.com/jkalis/