New projects and sites number limit & EPT configuration

Beginning of April, Microsoft announced in this article of few improvements, mostly related to Project Online performance, such as the new check-boxes in the Project Center I described in my last post. Another major improvement concerns the limit of projects created in a Project Online instance increased from 5,000 to 30,000. With this improvement comes another one concerning the project sites. The limit used to be 2,000 project sites. If you needed more than 2,000 sites, you had to create and work with several PWA instances. Now there is a one-to-one relationship, meaning that you can have 5,000 projects with 5,000 sites.

In order to optimize PWA instances performance with those news projects and sites limits, the EPT (Enterprise Project Type) configuration has also been updated. 

Previously the synchronization settings were at instance level, they are now at EPT level. Moreover, you can set a site creation location for each EPT. 

How you should use this new configuration? Here is how I see it. 

• You might have an EPT with a large number of small projects running on a short period. In this case, you'll not create any project site and consequently you'll not check the sync permission options.
• In parallel you might have another EPT with an small number of standard projects. In this case, you'll automatically create a project site, you'll check the sync options and locate the site creation in the normal PWA address.
• Finally, you might have an EPT with specific long term projects dedicated to specific stakeholder with a large set of documentation. You'll also automatically create a site with sync options checked, but you'll locate the site creation in another site collection.

Consequently, since those options have been rolled down at EPT level, you won't see them anymore where they used to be. If you go to the Connected SharePoint Sites section in the server settings, you'll see that there is no more "Settings" button.

Also under "Manage User Sync Settings", you won't find anymore the site sync.

Check-out the Microsoft blog to see the other improvements, such as the modified dates added to some Odata entities.



What is happening if you already have some project sites created in the "old" way? (a jérome's edit)?

Well, the story is a bit more complicate then. By default, you have to know that the options are not as set as you would expect.
1. While the Project Site creation will be set to the choice which was made in the "old" menu


2. The synchronization options are both disabled. The impact is that all the team members are losing (or not gaining) the access to the project sites while the project is published. Tasks as well stops to be synchronized which means that no more seen in the home page nor in the tasks menu of the Project Site

It is also worth noticing that the Project site is now created at next publish and not at project creation as it was previously enabling a rapid project creation

So, to wrap-up, if your environment is already having project sites created, I would advise the to take the following steps:
1. Validate that the setting for each Enterprise Project Type is the expected one
2. Open the schedule and publish it (either from Project Online or from Project Professional) - that will trigger a tasks synchronization
3. Change your project team temporarily in adding or removing a resource (who can connect) and publish to trigger the Project Site Permission Synchronization. Then revert the change.

You should now be good to go. let me know if you find any weird behaviours, Guillaume and I would be happy to further complement that post.

As a cross-reference, I would like to link the great work done by Nate Auchter here https://www.senseiprojectsolutions.com/2017/05/26/manage-site-creation/

How to bulk change projects' EPT?

Good morning Community!

Nowadays, it is quite challenging to find new interesting subjects for blogging. We are a small but active Project Server community and the quality of blog posts and articles is really impressive. By the way I'm looking forward to share and read articles to and from the community about the next Project Server version.

One subject I did not find much references about is bulk changing projects' EPT (Enterprise Project Type). Moreover I've been asked this procedure many times on the Technet Forums, consequently I'll write down in this blog this procedure so I can share it more easlily. The procedures below are applicable for Project Server 2010, 2013 and Project Online.

As a preamble, I'll share here an excellent blog post about what is an EPT and how it can be configured written by a fellow new MVP, Jérémy Cottino. Note that EPT is quite a key feature helping structuring Project Server data and governance since Project Server 2010.

So where does the need come from? Typically, the project EPT drives the project governance. It will trigger which PDPs (including custom fields, reports, eventually custom code for business rules) will be associated to the project. Note that an EPT can be easily updated. For example, if you need to add a project custom field to an EPT, there is absolutely no need to create a new EPT adding the custom field and associate all projects from the old EPT to the new one. You can simply add the custom field to the webpart in the PDP and it will be added to all projects associated with the given EPT. Changing a project's EPT is more related to a governance change. In my point of view, a typical use case can be when a project has a scope increase and must go from a EPT with simple rules, few custom fields in few PDP to a more complex EPT providing a wider governance with a larger number of PDPs, custom fields, reports, business rules supported by jquery code...

We'll go through 2 methods.

Project Center: change EPT for a single project

First I'll start by explaining the default method to change a project's EPT from the project center. This method is applicable to a single project and cannot be used for bulk changing EPT. Note also that this method does not allow the administrator updating the project's stages if it is associated with a workflow. First navigate to the Project Center and select a project. The trick here is not to click on the project name but on another column of the project's row, otherwise it will open the project details.

Figure 1: opening the interface for changing a project's EPT from the project center

Once the project selected, you can click on the "change" button in the "Project Type" group of the ribbon. The functionnality requires having the "change workflow" global permission. This will open a simple dialog box showing you the current project type and proposing a drop-down menu with the available project types.

Figure 2: changing the project type

If the project is currently checked out, the operation cannot be performed until the project is checked in and the new project type drop-down menu will be greyed out.

Figure 3: dialog box for a checked out project

This operation will associate the project with a new project type. It is important to understand that it will not create, update, delete any custom field values. Meaning that if the source EPT contains custom fields not in the destination EPT, the values will still remain but the field will not be displayed nor used in any PDP. On the contrary, if the destination EPT contains custom fields not in the source EPT, they will be displayed in the new PDP with no value. 

Server settings: bulk changing EPT for a set of projects

The other way to change EPT is through the server settings. This method is quite interesting since it allows the administrator to perform this operation for a set of projects. The procedure starts by navigating to the "change or restart workflows" menu.

Figure 4: bulk change project type from the server settings

This menu will open a new page where you'll be able to select the source EPT, the projects belonging to this EPT and the destination EPT. Note that if you need to update projects having different types, you'll need to perform the operation several times, one per project types. Since this interface is designed in order to manage the project workflow phases/stages, those information are also integrated in the available project information. Here is the detailed procedure:

1. select the source project type: this will automatically update the project list with the corresponding projects,
2. select the projects to be updated,
3. copy them using the arrow in the target list,
4. select the destination project type. Eventually you can use this functionnality to restart the projects' workflow.

Figure 5: bulk change project type

Note that finally you can choose (if applicable) in which stage the selected projects will jump in.

Figure 6: skip to a specific workflow stage

Now that the procedure is crystal clear (at least I hope...), let's review some important considerations regarding changing the project type. You are aware that the EPT is like an container for the following items and it is important to understand what consequences updating the project type will have on those items.

• PDP: changing the EPT will associate the corresponding PDP to the project,
• Workflow: as we just saw, changing the EPT will also allow you (assuming you do it through the server settings and not the project center) updating the project into a given workflow stage,
• Project template: a project template is associated to an EPT. Since it is just relevant for the project creation, it seems logical that changing the EPT after the project creation will have to impact on the existing project schedule, meaning that the new EPT's project template will not be applied. I would say "hopefully", since it would be a mess (or even impossible) to merge an existing project with actual data with a new project template.
• Site template: similarly, a project site template is associated with the EPT. Changing the EPT will not have any consequence on the project site. This is the same principle than for the project template. The site template is only used at the site creation thus changing the template on an existing project will not have any consequence. If you do need to create a new project site based on a new template, you can create separately the new site from the appropriate template, migrate the content (this would be a manual operation) and associate the new site to the project using the "Connected SharePoint Sites" menu.

Hope you enjoy it!!