The Microsoft Project Central Digital Dashboard WebPart

Overview

 

The Microsoft Project Central Digital Dashboard WebPart allows you to rapidly incorporate some of the Microsoft Project Central functionality into the Digital Dashboard. Additionally, it will give some places to start if you wish to incorporate more advanced Microsoft Project Central functionality into your Dashboard.

 

This document describes the Microsoft Project Central Digital Dashboard WebPart including:

·         Installation and use of the part

·         A description of the part construction

·         Microsoft Project Central pages and query string parameters that can be used in the Microsoft Project Central WebPart

·         An introduction to customizing Microsoft Project Central Active Server Pages (ASPs) to be referenced from the Digital Dashboard

Installation and use of the part

 

The Microsoft Project Central Digital Dashboard WebPart is simple to install, understand, use, and distribute. The part allows you to display in the Dashboard any page that can be displayed within the Microsoft Project Central Web site. You can customize the WebPart to determine what Microsoft Project Central information the WebPart shows and how that information is displayed.

 

Before you use the WebPart, be sure that:

1.      Microsoft Project Central is installed on a server on your intranet.

2.      The Microsoft Project Central Server is set up to use Windows NT Authentication.

3.      The user of this part has a resource ID in Microsoft Project Central.

 

To install this part, you should have the Web Part Builder installed. If you do not have the Web Part Builder installed, use the procedure for creating this part from scratch described below.

Installing the Microsoft Project Central WebPart using the Web Part Builder

  1. Open the Web Part Properties Wizard.
  2. Click Load.
  3. Click Local File.
  4. Locate the Microsoft Project Central WebPart XML file (MinPortfolioViewWebPart.xml), and click Open.
  5. Click the Content tab.
  6. Modify the ContentLink property of the WebPart to reflect your Microsoft Project Central Server’s URL and virtual directory.
  7. Click Save.
  8. Enter the URL to your Dashboard.
  9. Select the Dashboard to which the part should be added.
  10. Click Save.
  11. Copy the MinPortfolioView.asp file into the views subdirectory of your Microsoft Project Central installation on your Microsoft Project Central Server.
  12. Open the Dashboard in which you saved the part.

Creating the Microsoft Project Central WebPart from scratch

 

  1. Open the Dashboard in which you want to include the part.
  2. Click Content
  3. Click the Create a New Web Part link.
  4. Type a name for the WebPart
  5. Select the position on the Dashboard page.
  6. In the Content Link box, type the URL and query string as described below.
  7. Select the check box to isolate the WebPart’s content.
  8. Click OK.
  9. Copy the MinPortfolioView.asp file into the views subdirectory of your Microsoft Project Central installation on your Microsoft Project Central server.
  10. Open the Dashboard in which you saved the part.

Part construction

 

The Microsoft Project Central Digital Dashboard WebPart only needs to use the ContentLink property of the WebPart to provide a view of the Microsoft Project Central Web. Microsoft Project Central enables the Dashboard to show information in a number of ways directly through the query string. To further customize the way information is displayed in the Digital Dashboard, you can customize the Microsoft Project Central ASP pages. The Microsoft Project Central WebPart includes an example of a customized ASP page that eliminates some of the nonessential user interface (UI) information included in the Microsoft Project Central portfolio view. Understanding a little about the query string parameters and the Microsoft Project Central ASP pages will provide you with the tools to create customized Dashboard views based on the Microsoft Project Central infrastructure.

 

The sample Microsoft Project Central WebPart content property contains the following query string to access Microsoft Project Central:

 

http://MyProjectCentralServer/ProjectCentral/default.asp?SimpleUI=1&NoMenu=1&DefPage=views/MinPortfolioView.asp?_ViewID=2

Microsoft Project Central Server – The address of an intranet site where Microsoft Project Central is installed.

 

Virtual Directory on Server – The path to the virtual directory where Microsoft Project Central is installed.

 

Microsoft Project Central Session Start Page – Should always be default.asp.

 

Session Customization Parameters – Query string values that customize the way the Microsoft Project Central UI is displayed. Possible parameters are described below.

 

Microsoft Project Central Page to Display – Defined in the query string starting with “DefPage=”, this is the page that you would like to render in the WebPart view. Some possible pages are described below.

 

Page Query String Parameters – Query string parameters that will customize the way the individual Microsoft Project Central page is displayed.

Microsoft Project Central query string parameters

 

Several features are built into Microsoft Project Central that make simple query string parameters very powerful.

 

All page requests to Microsoft Project Central should go through //myserver/projectcentral/default.asp. This will allow the query string parameters described below to be processed. To display the page that you chose, use the DefPage= query string parameter with the page name as described above.

Pages

 

Several Microsoft Project Central pages are recommended for use with the Microsoft Project Central Dashboard WebPart.

 

Page

Description

../Tasks/TasksPage.asp

This page is used to display tasks for the logged on user.

../Views/PortfolioView.asp

This page is a high-level view of all projects that are available to the logged on user. From the portfolio view, users have the ability to drill down into individual projects.

../Home/HomePage.asp

This page displays a list of information about tasks, views, status reports and Microsoft Project Central messages.

../default.asp

The default ASP page is used to open a session and do setup for Microsoft Project Central. All requests to Microsoft Project Central should be made through the default.asp page. The process of redirecting to the appropriate page is described in query string parameters below.

../Views/MinPortfolioView.asp

This page is not part of the standard Microsoft Project Central installation. It is included with the Microsoft Project Central WebPart to demonstrate the ability to customize Microsoft Project Central ASPs. This page is a stripped down version of the PortfolioView page included with Microsoft Project Central. It has some of the nonessential UI elements (for the purpose of the Dashboard) removed from it.

../Views/WebClientView.asp

This page is used to display assignment views defined in Microsoft Project Central. This page will accept a view ID as described below to specify the view that should be displayed.

 

Query string parameters

 

The WebPart uses query string parameters to define the way that a view should appear. These query string parameters can be session or page specific. The first two below are session specific the second two are page specific.

 

Parameter

Description

NoMenu = 1 | 0

Turns on (1) or off (0) the Microsoft Project Central top menu. Should be in the query string for the default ASP page.

SimpleUI = 1 | 0

Turns on (1) or off (0) the Microsoft Project Central top banner. Also, when on, reduces the number of buttons and options available in the Tasks page and Views page. Should be in the query string for the default ASP page.

GanttView = 1 | 0

This parameter is only valid for the Task view.

_ViewID =

This is the unique identifier for the view to show on the views page. You can use this parameter to display any of the views defined in the MSP_WEB_VIEW_REPORTS table in the Microsoft Project Central database. This query string parameter is valid for the PortfolioView page and the WebClientView page. When using the PortfolioView page only portfolio views are valid. Similarly, when using the Views page the viewID should be a normal Microsoft Project Central view (not portfolio).

 

Customizing Microsoft Project Central ASPs for the Digital Dashboard

 

The Microsoft Project Central WebPart comes with the MinPortfolioView.asp page. This page demonstrates how working with the Microsoft Project Central ASPs can provide a more compact view of Microsoft Project Central that is more efficient for use in a Digital Dashboard. This is primarily an example and introduction to customizing Microsoft Project Central. For more information on Microsoft Project Central pages look for the upcoming Microsoft Project 2000 SDK.

 

The first step to customizing a Microsoft Project Central page is to make a copy of the page you wish to customize. Directly modifying the pages that ship with Microsoft Project Central is not recommended. Modifying the pages that ship with Microsoft Project Central could disable functionality throughout the Microsoft Project Central site, and may cause problems when a future release of Microsoft Project Central is offered.

 

The ASP included with the Microsoft Project Central WebPart (MinPortfolioView.asp) shows how some relatively simple modifications to the Microsoft Project Central PortfolioView.asp page can provide a more compact UI for use in a WebPart.

 

The standard portfolio view in Microsoft Project Central is shown below. This view contains a textual description of the portfolio view that is probably not imperative to the Dashboard consumer of the portfolio view.

 

 

The customized portfolio view saves precious Dashboard real estate by eliminating this textual information from the rendered page so that it appears as shown below.

 

To create this more compact view, only two pieces of the PortfolioView.asp page were modified.

 

A large quantity of the code in the section of the portfolio view starting at line 60 is used to write the text strings (oStrings.GetString) that are included in the Microsoft Project Central portfolio view as shown below:

 

<DIV ID="idSectionHeader" CLASS="SectionHeaderInfo" STYLE="line-height: 1.6em;">

<%=oStrings.GetString(IDS_VIEWS_PORTFOLIO_HEADER_TEXT).bold()%>

</DIV>

</DIV>

<DIV ID="idBanterTextSection" CLASS="Workspace" STYLE="width: 100%; overflow: hidden;">

<DIV ID="idText" CLASS="SectionHighlight" STYLE="font-size: 70%; padding-left: 12; padding-top: 8; padding-bottom: 16; width: 100%;">

<DIV CLASS="Text" STYLE="margin-bottom: 8;"><%=oStrings.GetString(IDS_VIEWS_PORTFOLIO_BANTER_TEXT1)%></DIV>

<DIV CLASS="Text"><%=oStrings.GetString(IDS_VIEWS_PORTFOLIO_BANTER_TEXT2)%></DIV>

</DIV>

</DIV>

 

This section of code was replaced with:

 

</DIV>

 

<DIV ID="idBanterTextSection" CLASS="Workspace"></DIV>

 

Note that all of the text inserted by ASP is removed, and some of the sections within the DIV tags are removed. Note, however, that the idBanterTextSection DIV tag remains with no text. This object is referenced later in the ASP page and removing this piece causes numerous problems rendering the page.

 

The second piece of ASP that was modified is the choose view function.  This function supports the Choose a view list at the top right of the portfolio view page.

 

window.location.href = "PortfolioView.asp?<%=oPJSession.oUser.GetURLString()%>_viewID="+chooseView.value;

 

If this line were left alone, a Dashboard user could pick a new view from the dropdown and the page would change to the standard portfolio view. To fix this problem, this line was replaced with

 

window.location.href = "MinPortfolioView.asp?<%=oPJSession.oUser.GetURLString()%>_viewID="+chooseView.value;

 

You should be able to build on an example such as this to customize your own task pages, Microsoft Project Central home pages, and views pages to maximize the screen space that is afforded to your Dashboard WebPart.