Psychology Technology

When creating a document library, sometimes templates will be added as a document, rather than as a custom type template.

Here is how to get your templates to appear in a document library:

• Create a template document in your favorite compatible Office application for Word, Spreadsheet, Powerpoint documents.
• Navigate to your site, and create a Custom Content Type for each template you will add later.
  • Site Actions, Site Settings, under Galleries select Site Content Types
  • Click Create
  • Provide a name and description
  • choose the appropriate parent content type (Document Content Types)
  • Choose a parent content type of ‘Document’
  • Select an existing group to add the content type in to ( Document Content Types)
• Navigate to your Document Libaray and add the Templates
  • Switch to Explorer View
  • Navigate in to the Forms folder
  • Add each of your required templates
• Choose Settings, Document Library Settings
• Advanced Settings (in the first column)
• Choose Yes for ‘Allow Management of Content Types?’ and click OK
• Navigate back to the Settings
• Now under Content Types, we can add additional Templates
  • Add from existing Content Types
  • Find your newly added Template in the list (The name you gave the ‘content type’)
  • Select it, click the Add button, then choose OK
• Now when you choose a New… document in the library, you will be able to choose from the added templates

So what are the pros of doing this?  Why not just add a document to the library and use that as the ‘master template’ ?

You will not be able to re-use that template across your enterprise.  It will only be available in that particular document library.  Also, adding the custom content type allows you to build up some rich meta-data around your documents, which will otherwise remain captured and isolated within a document.  For example, if your documents are around projects and resource hours available, you could ensure that one of the required meta-data fields to be filled in is the estimated resource in hours.  now you can report on that data in a List, or if you have MOSS, KPIs within a dashboard.

This is a humbling step from the now rather archaic method of a file/folder structure, but once your organization catches on, it can become an informationally rich resource much more than what any one document can provide.

I worked on an environment recently with the following error when trying to build a cube in our Project Server farm environment.

Analysis Services session failed with the following
error: Failed to process the Analysis Services database <DB_NAME> on the
measure group with the ID of ‘EPM Timesheet’, Name of ‘EPM Timesheet’ cannot
be processed because it contains MG dimension with the ID of ‘Task Is
Overallocated’, Name of ‘Task Is Overallocated’ with different granularity
attribute than its source object.

The first thing noticed was that the DB service and Analysis Services instances (they are on seperate instances) were out of synch (one had Cumulative update 9 with SQL 2005 SP3 applied, the other, a lesser CU).

After replicating the environment and still not getting reproducing the error, it was these links that helped point me to resolution.  The Application Server Native Client Tools for SQL had not been updated.  Once these had SP3 applied (and this doesn’t require a restart in a multi-tier farm thankfully, as the db services etcetera are not installed, just the client tools, backward compatibily and bits) the cube now builds with success once again.

In hindsight this was very straight-forward.  Unfortuneately sometimes in silo-like enviornments the cross-over from an Application to SQL Admin takes a bit of collaborative troubleshooting.

http://projectserverblogs.com/index.php?s=asadmin

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brismith/archive/2007/03/09/activex-component-can-t-create-object-cube-build-failure-against-sql-server-2005-analysis-services.aspx

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31517871/olap-database-error-after-sp1-install.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197552(office.12).aspx

while creating a test environment, I found that Project Server 2007 was giving me a difficult time, with errors that were not altogether very helpful, at least for my limited experience of Analysis Services and Cube Building.

Such things as:

Error: Cannot connect to the repository.

No process is on the other end of the pipe.

Cube build failed to connect to the Analysis Services server. Verify the data source connection is valid.

Frustratingly, none of the above links helped solve my problem (though they are informational).  What seemed to me to just need to create the Repository database after setting up the DSO information, was more than that.  I needed to created the olapobjects table with the correct schema.  That’s where this MS article comes to the rescue.  after creating the necessary table structure here for my SQL 2005 Repository db, my cubes now successfully build.

While I am setting up a test environment for devising our migration and DR documentation, I found that my VM of project server has services that will not start (namely the microsoft office project server queue, and Events services).  This has been blogged about on MSDN, and below are the steps:

1. Identify the drive on which ProjectServer was installed.
2. Open a command prompt on the front-end servers (where the error is occurring) and navigate to the following path:

C: \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin

Once you have arrived at the bin directory, type the following command:

Psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b –wait -force

Note: Since C: is the default path for the Project Server installation, C: has been used in this example. If a different drive letter has been used, use that drive letter instead.

This process will finalize any updates prior to implementing the fix.

1. Once this process has completed, open the registry editor

Start=>Run=>Regedit

Once the registry editor has been opened navigate to

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control

Here it will be necessary to create a new DWORD key with the following value:

ServicesPipeTimeout DWORD 60000 (decimal)

Note: 60000 = 60 Seconds.

1. Next, look for the WaitToKillServiceTimeout key – take note of its current value – and then change the value to 120000

Note: 120000=120 Seconds.

1. Reboot the Server.

Also thanks to this blog for bringing the article to my attention.

As a new takeup of Project Server 2007, we have just started to get in to the swing of amending our templates and applying them to our server.  Recently, we fell in to the fairly common trap where a project publishes, but the associated workspace does not link in to the new project.  This can be seen by going in to Project Server Settings, Project Workspaces, one or more of new projects may not have a workspace URL associated to it.

When you try to create the URL, you get a message saying it’s already associated to another project.  If you copy that URL and then try to edit the project to use the correct URL, you get a similar message, and the URL doesn’t save.  Madness!

Alas, after a quick read of http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brismith/archive/2007/02/28/my-queue-is-stuck-how-to-manage-your-queue-service-in-project-server-2007.aspx the issue is obvious.  Whenever the template is getting made, it’s really easy to take an ALREADY EXISTING project workspace and save that as your new template.  The above link warns against doing this, and is why when you publish your project the workspace doesn’t associate (it’s already associated to that project from when you saved the template).  The guys at Egghead also have mentioned this.

So, what to do?  Well, create a blank workspace (not from a project) for a start.  Then make all your changes and save out as a template (like before?).