Author: Brooks White
Brooks White is a Senior Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft supporting SharePoint. He has worked in the collaboration space for 11 years, helping enterprise companies of 100,000-plus users upgrade their SharePoint and Project Server farms. He approaches these large and complex upgrades by tackling each component separately and creating "how to" documentation throughout the process. Long before joining Microsoft, Brooks served as a classical ballet dancer. Now he's a bicycling enthusiast. Reach Brooks through LinkedIn here.
Periodic Tasks for Project Server Administrators
As a Microsoft PFE supporting Microsoft Project Server, I often get asked what Project Server administrators should do as part of their regular job. Here’s my suggested list. Daily Check the queue for Failed and Blocking jobs. Review the errors related to failed and blocking jobs to troubleshoot. Check for nightly cube build failures. Cancel Failed and Blocking jobs. Weekly Review application and event logs on web front end (WFE) servers, APP servers and the SQL Server. Use the Unified Logging Service (ULS logs) as needed, based on the finding in the application and system event logs. Use Merge-SPLogFile PowerShell cmdlet to filter output from all servers: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607721(v=office.15).aspx Check Active Directory synchronization jobs to ensure they were successful. Update Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) values for new users. Newly synched users won’t have an RBS. Note: This may be the job of the PMO. Clear any overly long delegation sessions in Server Settings | Delete Enterprise Objects | User Delegation. Monthly Provide timesheet training to new users. Provide project manager training to new project managers. Quarterly Close timesheet periods for the previous quarter plus one or some similar period. For example, if you are in Q4, close the timesheet reporting periods for Q2. The interval will be based on business or reporting needs. Check with the project manager first, then close tasks to updates on projects that are complete or mostly compete or that have older tasks. Archive and delete projects/sites for old completed project plans. (But first create an archive plan that is documented and adhered to.) Generally speaking, don’t ever delete any resources from Server Settings | Delete Enterprise Objects. Delete timesheets from the past. Again, this will be defined by a policy that is based on business needs for reporting timesheet data. Yearly Create fiscal periods for the next calendar year. Create timesheet periods for the next calendar year. The prefix might equal “Week.”, starting at 1, and the suffix might be the calendar year, such as “.2016”. Week 1’s period will show as “Week.1.2016”. Consider deleting timesheets for long-ago periods. Do you have your own schedule of administrative tasks? Share them with the MPUG community in the comments below. A version of this article originally appeared on Brooks White’s TechNet blog.