Microsoft Project Server Basics

Microsoft Project Server Basics
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So what exactly is Project Server?
 Project Server is Microsoft’s Project Management
 allows one to do project management, portfolio

management, work management and related things
for an Organization.
 Can be used for project planning (deciding how
much time, people, cost it will take to complete a
project), create tasks, assign those tasks to resources
(team members) and track those tasks

What are the Components of Project Server?
 At a very high level, Project Server is made up of a

server component (the ‘server’ software) that can be
accessed and operated from clients
 Client can be either Project Professional (which is a
desktop product) or Project Web App (which is a
browser based software) or a custom-made
application

How do I use Project Server?
 Project Server is typically used by different user roles such as









Project Manager, Team Member, Portfolio Manager & Site
Administrator.
These users use a client like Project Web App
Project Web App sits on top of SharePoint & uses basic
SharePoint services such as administration, security and
reporting
Thus, to use Project Server, you need to have SharePoint in
place
Through Project Web App, the users use a SharePoint-like site
to interact with projects, tasks, schedules and resources.
PWA uses Project Server Web Parts and other standard
SharePoint web parts.

Architecture Layers of Project Server

Architecture Layers of Project Server
 Front end:
 Project Professional or PWA (or a custom application)
 Project Web App Server
 This is both, a physical and a logical entity
 Physically, it constitutes of one or more servers hosting the
web application
 Logically, it constitutes a set of ASP.Net pages, web parts and a
component called PSI Forwarder.
 This PSI Forwarder intercepts requests coming from Clients
like Project Professional and PWA and relays them to Project
Server.

Architecture Layers of Project Server (continued)
 Project Server:
 It is the main software that hosts and orchestrates many
different software components such as Project Server Interface
(PSI), Business Objects, Data Access Layer, the Scheduling
Engine, Project Server workflow system etc
 Project Server Interface (PSI):
 This is the API of Project Server.
 It exposes core functionality of Project Server through ASMX
and WCF web services
 Business Objects:
 The object model of Project Server that wraps various entities
and behavior into objects.

 Data Access Layer:
 Architectural layer that does the job of saving and fetching
data from the business layer to actual Project Server databases.
 It also helps encapsulate connection handling and transaction
management.
 The DAL is not exposed to any client applications. Its very
much internal to the Project Server.
 All that the clients have access to is the web service interface
via PSI.

 The Databases:


Project server 2010 stores data in below 5 databases:
Archive: Stores online backups from Project Server site. This is not
visible to PWA.
 Draft: Stores projects data of unpublished projects created either in
Project Professional or PSI web services
 Published: Data of all published projects. This is visible in Project
Web App
 Reporting: Same data as that of Published projects but optimized for
reporting and OLAP cubes. This data is comprehensive and is updated
in real time
 SharePoint Config & Content DBs: Stores config & content data of
project site content such as workflows, documents, lists, issues, risks
etc


Can I directly access data of Project Server projects?
 Yes. PSI is the interface through which Project Server

data can be accessed. It’s a set of ASMX and WCF
services.
 Project Server data can also be handled to some extent
through SharePoint workflows.
 PSI is built using .Net (in case of Project Server 2010,
its .Net 3.5) and allows client applications to access
Project Server data. It exposes 3 types of APIs:





General-purpose API exposing generic services such as Project,
Task, Timesheet etc
Project Server specific API which can be used for purposes like
upgrading to newer version of Project Server or for integrating
with MS Exchange
API meant to be used only with Project Professional

Can I directly access data of Project Server projects?
 The web services are wrappers around the classes in

PSI and expose web methods to operate on those
classes.
 The web methods return or consume information
related to entities like Project, Task etc in the form of
DataSet objects.
 Example:


Project.ReadProjectTeam returns ProjectTeamDataSet that
gives information about project’s resources whereas
Project.ReadProjectEntities gives information about Tasks,
Dependencies etc.

Microsoft Project Server Basics

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