Introducing Project Server

Microsoft Project Server is the link between project team members and projects across the entire enterprise. It enables project managers to assemble resources from across the company, and to create and manage complex company-wide projects. With Project Server installed, all the collaboration options of Project Professional are now available.

Note 

If your organization ran Microsoft Project 2000, you may be familiar with Project Server’s predecessor, Microsoft Project Central. Project Server is much more fully featured than Project Central, although all your old Project Central projects and databases can be easily upgraded to the Project Server formats. (See the “Upgrading from Project Central to Project Server” sidebar later in this chapter for more information.)

Project Server is designed to be installed on a network server running the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server operating system and with Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) installed. It supports both Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) databases. (MSDE—also known as SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine—is a scaled-down version of SQL Server that is included with Project Server.) The setup program makes the necessary connection between Project Server, IIS, and your selected database.

Only summary information and configuration options are stored in the Project Server database. For all team members to benefit from Project Server, you must save all your project files to a shared network location. If you store your projects on your desktop, the projects will only be available if the folder is shared and your computer is turned on. If you uninstall Project Server or delete items from the database, you still retain your entire Project files.

Users can access Project Server in several ways. Users of Project Standard can participate in Server-based enterprise projects just by logging on to the network server. Users of Project Professional can access all of Server’s collaboration functions by accessing features on the Collaborate menu, as you’ll learn in Chapter 21. And any team member can access Project Server via the company’s intranet, using the Project Web Access feature. Web Access is detailed in Chapter 22.

Note 

To configure any version of Project to use Project Server, choose Collaborate Ø Collaboration Options to access the Collaboration tab of the Options dialog box; then enter the URL of the server into the Microsoft Project Server URL box.

The bottom line is that if you want to manage large enterprise-wide projects with resources from across your company, you need to be running Project Server—and be running Project Professional on your desktop PC. Your team members can access basic Project Server features from any version of Project (Professional or Standard), or by using any web browser to access Project Server’s Web Access feature.



Mastering Microsoft Project 2002
Mastering Microsoft Project 2002
ISBN: 0782141471
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 241

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