MS Project Server Update

I'm almost done with the MS Project Server connector setup.

All I can say is, "WOW!!!!"

Information from Solomon flows seemlessly into Microsoft Project - it's really cool. I uploaded a picture of MS Project with the profit pane. Hopefully I've done the upload correctly and you'll see a screen shot.

All of the actuals for the profit pane come directly from Dynamics SL, so it's really a great tool.

Later today, I'm going to add some graphical indicators that will show whether we're on-budget at a glance.



Here are a couple of Microsoft Websites you might find helpful:

Planning your Enterprise Project Management Solution Implementaion
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA011537871033.aspx

Creating Enterprise Custom Fields
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA011537871033.aspx

Project Server 2003 IT Documentation
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/projservadmin/HA101714291033.aspx

Next Step: Project Server/Dynamics Integration

The next step we're going to take is to fully integrate MS Project and MS Dynamics SL. Starting tomorrow, we'll be setting up the integration on my IIS server. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Thanks Synergy & Steve Toth

My initial implementation of MS Dynamics/Spitfire is complete. It's a huge project - trust me, and I'm glad that it's over.

When I got to the end of the project, some of my people were still not comfortable with the software, so Steve Toth made a special stop by here, just to make sure that everything is going well. Steve did a little training, and put in place some fixes that we needed.

So I just wanted to say thanks publically to Synergy and especially Steve Toth for making sure that this project worked.

I love BFA Part 2

This morning, I had a conversation with Dennis Stroud of Spitfire Project Management about BFA. Dennis is the gentleman that did the design work for BFA. I asked him about the difference between Budgeting, Project Analysis, and Forecasting. He summarized it in the following way:

Project Analysis

A snapshot of where you are today, that is current and created everytime you ask for a project analysis.


Budget

In the budget, the actuals are frozen on the date that you create the budget.


Forecasting

Forecasting is predictive. It takes the Actual vs. The Budget and makes some basic projections.



Stay tuned, because I'll talk a little about some of the very cool stuff I've been able to do in BFA.

You're going to love BFA!!!! Part Uno

What is BFA you ask?

Well, we could probably come up with all sorts of creative uses for the initials BFA, but in the parlance of Spitfire, BFA stands for Budgeting, Forecasting, and Analysis.

In Spitfire Documentation, BFA is referred to Budgeting, Project Analysis, and Forecasting; but you're goind to have to talk to someone smarter than me to find out why it's called BFA and not BPAF, or just BPF. But whatever you call it, it works SLICK!!!! BFA is one of the best reasons to purchase Spitfire - which is saying a lot, because the program has lots of cool features.

As the Controller/Project Account/Chief Cook & Bottle Washer here at work, I never have enough time to do the things I need to do. So one of the things that's always fallen by the wayside is keeping up project budgets and forecasts - it's just one of those non-essential duties (unlike payroll) that can be overlooked.

With BFA it's easy to keep up with Revised Budgets and Forecasts


BFA is probably the easiest thing I've ever seen for Budgeting. What I love about BFA is that it's written in MS Excel! Which is really cool for me cause I have some high and exalted Microsoft Excel Professional Certification - something like Grand Pumba of All Things Excel (or some similarly silly Microsoft conferred title). But it's also really cool for everybody because now that MS Office is the de facto standard, it means that almost everbody knows Excel. Which translates into smaller learning curves - which means I have to do less training!!!

The next cool thing about BFA is that you can link your BFA worksheet to other worksheeets. There's a technical whitepaper on that process, but I'll explain it in Part II.