Microsoft Office Project Server 2007

Project Server 2007 and MOSS

Architecturally, Project Server 2007 runs a middle road between Office Groove Server 2007 (which doesn't need SharePoint at all) and Office Forms Server 2007 (which is wholly contained in SharePoint Enterprise). Project Server is definitely its own entity, but one that can be enhanced in combination with SharePoint.

Specific points of enhancement include integration with the Windows Workflow Foundation, document libraries, organisation-wide search capability and team work site orientation. To clear some confusion right off the bat, however, MOSS includes a list feature called Project Tasks, which offers some Gantt-style features. This is an independent feature, however, and has no relation or connection to Project Server 2007.

If you want to upgrade an existing Project 2003 server to Project 2007, you are in for some detail work. There are no easy wizards here. Migrating data is done via a special .ini file with a series of possible switch parameters that must be configured using a text editor. And, by the way, this step is mandatory. You're not going to get away with running a 2003 Project Server next to a 2007 Project Server and waiting until the data migrates itself through user interaction; Project Server 2003 and Project Server 2007 can't communicate, so the upgrade process is unavoidable.

Once you've upgraded, it's time to connect your existing Project Server 2007 farm to a new or existing MOSS farm. This isn't just a straightforward matter of enabling communication between the two, however. Your first task in this scenario is to move your Project Server machines into the SharePoint domain which unfortunately means you will need to take the SharePoint farm down for this operation. The Project Server 2007 disks will need to install files on each SharePoint Server with front-facing client functionality. Once installed there, each of those instances will need to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies wizard. After that, you'll need to decide which of those machines will become actual Project Server application servers. Only on the Project Server application servers will you need to enable the Project Application service from the Central Management console. This all sounds involved, but Microsoft's documentation makes it a fairly easy step-by-step process. The tricky part is managing your planning process properly so you know which services need to be enabled and where.

Once all that work is completed, you're still not done. Now, SharePoint is going to want to control the management of all team work sites. So the team sites you've configured under Project Server will need to be migrated to the MOSS machine as well. After that, you'll also need to unhook Project from its internal configuration manager and wire it into SharePoint's equivalent. Again, Microsoft's docs make this a fairly simple set of steps, but if you've got a choice, installing Project Server within a SharePoint farm right from the start is easier.

Finally, all the clients who were looking to Project Server for their team sites will need to be pointed at the new sites running off SharePoint -- that's the easiest part. You will need to remember that any clients looking to access Project's SharePoint features will still need to have the Office Project Professional 2007 client installed. We suppose that's reasonable given the nature of Microsoft, but we were actually hoping to see some included viewer functionality within SharePoint that would allow non-Project client users at least to see certain Project files even if they couldn't alter them. Even with the Web Access UI, however, that doesn't seem to be possible.