One of the core features of Project Server that integrates the tool into an organisation are Enterprise Custom Fields or ECF’s. ECF’s allow the recording of business specific metadata which is used to classify the various aspects of an organisation across a project, resource and task level. During the planning stages of a Project Server implementation a significant amount of time is spent understanding the custom fields that need to be configured in order for the tool to meet the requirements of the business.

As noted over on Christophe’s blog, Microsoft have now made available free of charge online EPMU training courses covering: Microsoft EPMU – Admin Professional – Functional Implementation & Configuration of Project Server 2007 (On-Demand Recorded Training) Microsoft EPMU – IT Professional – Technical Implementation & Configuration of Project Server 2007 (On-Demand Recorded Training) Microsoft EPMU – Office Project Server 2007 Developer Training (On-Demand Recorded Training) Microsoft EPMU – Deploying Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 (On-Demand Recorded Training) Certainly an excellent way of spending some downtime if you want to skill up on all things EPM.

Update****: It appears that this feature isn’t new, but rather something that was in the previous version of Project but buried deep on a right click toolbar menu. So instead of a new feature, this is the perfect example of an old feature that has been surfaced due to the introduction of the ribbon. As a project manager at a consulting company one of the jobs that I frequently had was running bids for new pieces of work.

All too often when you are working on a project, the schedule can evolve from what you originally thought the schedule would be when you built it, to what the reality is. For example, in the schedule below there are three tasks, it turns out that Task 2 is no longer required. In Project 2007 there are two options to remove the task… Leave the task on the plan and set the remaining work to 0