Project Server 2007 migration scenarios

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Topic Last Modified: 2016-11-14

In this article:

  • Full migration scenario

  • Gradual migration scenario

The Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 to Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 upgrade process involves migration of data rather than an upgrade of binary files. This article uses sample migration scenarios to describe the different options you can choose when migrating project data for your organization.

A lot of planning and consideration should go into the process of migrating your data to Office Project Server 2007. Do you intend to migrate all projects at once? Does your organization have several sensitive projects that cannot be migrated at this time? Do you intend to migrate project data for a small department first? These are the kinds of questions that need to be addressed when planning for migration.

When planning to migrate to Office Project Server 2007 from Project Server 2003, there are two distinct migration approaches to contemplate.

  • Full migration: All projects are migrated to Office Project Server 2007 at one time.

  • Gradual migration: Projects are migrated in batches to Office Project Server 2007 over time.

    Important

    When planning your migration approach, remember that Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 is not able to connect to Office Project Server 2007 projects. Also, Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 is not able to connect to Project Server 2003 projects. For more information, see Project Server 2007 cross-version compatibility.

Full migration scenario

Manfred is an IT administrator for a small consulting firm that consists of 50 employees. Project Server 2003 is the firm's enterprise project management solution and is currently deployed with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 on a single server. The company has roughly 100 active projects. Because this is a small and simple deployment, Manfred decides to migrate all the projects and related workspaces at one time. He reads the migration guide and chooses to follow the "Full migration: Project Server 2003 with Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (on the same computer)" deployment option.

As a first step, Manfred installs Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. When he runs setup, the existing Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 installation is detected, and he chooses to upgrade it "in place." This upgrades the entire Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 farm to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 in one process. After this is done, he proceeds to install Office Project Server 2007 on the computer and provisions a Microsoft Office Project Web Access site (he does not have to uninstall Project Server 2003 yet). He makes sure that he is able to connect to the Office Project Web Access site, and that the site contains no data, as expected. He also installs Office Project Professional 2007 on another computer and makes sure that he can create, save, and publish projects.

Manfred then installs the migration tool from the Office Project Professional 2007 CD. He configures the migration configuration file to first migrate the global data (enterprise global template, enterprise resources, Project Web Access data) — this is a recommended best practice. He runs the migration tool. Once the tool finishes, he verifies that the global data has migrated properly. He then configures the migration configuration file to migrate all projects from Project Server 2003 to Office Project Server 2007. Once the migration tool finishes running, Manfred assigns his test team to verify the migrated data. Once he learns that everything appears to work correctly, Manfred makes a few changes to the Office Project Server 2007 server settings (such as security, cube building, and so on), uninstalls Project Server 2003, and sends an e-mail message to his team with the new Office Project Server 2007 URL and instructions on how to install the Project Professional 2007 client.

Gradual migration scenario

Nancy manages the Project Server 2003 installation in her company. The Sales and IT departments have projects on this server. Windows SharePoint Services is not installed.

There is an urgent request from the IT department to migrate to the latest version of Project Server — that department wants to start using the TimeSheet feature in the new version. Members of that department are the most active users of the current Project Server 2003 installation (850 of the 940 active projects on the server are IT projects). The sales department has just launched a series of projects for its new marketing campaign, and it does not want to do a migration in the next month. So Nancy decides to use the gradual migration approach. She reads the migration guide and chooses to follow the "Gradual migration: Project Server 2003 without Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (on the same computer)" deployment option.

Nancy decides to freeze the global items — including custom fields during this one-month lag period. Otherwise, it would be a difficult process to merge the custom fields between the 2003 version and the 2007 version. Because the Sales department will be migrating in less than a month after the IT department, she thinks this approach will be satisfactory. She also puts a process in place to be notified of any unavoidable global changes on the Project Server 2003 installation.

On the Office Project Server 2007 server, Nancy runs setup from the Office Project Server 2007 DVD. She sees that Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is installed first. A quick check of the installation guide reveals that Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is a required component for Office Project Server 2007. Once Office Project Server 2007 is installed Nancy provisions a Office Project Web Access site. She also confirms that she can still access the Project Server 2003 installation. Verifying this fact is important, because the Sales department still needs to connect to Project Server 2003.

Nancy now installs the migration tool from the Office Project Professional 2007 CD. As a best practice, Nancy first edits the migration configuration file to only migrate the global data (enterprise global template, enterprise resources, and Office Project Web Access data) — no projects. She runs the migration tool and verifies that this data has migrated properly. She then edits the migration configuration file to migrate all of the IT department's projects from Project Server 2003, and then she runs the migration tool again. All of the IT department's projects are migrated to Office Project Server 2007. She verifies again that the Project Server 2003 and Office Project Server 2007 environments are both accessible. Nancy then sends the new Office Project Server 2007 URL for Project Web Access to the IT department users along with instructions for installing Office Project Professional 2007.

A month later, when the Sales department marketing campaigns have ended, Nancy is ready to migrate projects from the other departments into the Office Project Server 2007 installation. Meanwhile, Nancy finds that a Project custom field called "Marketing Region" has been added to the Office Project Server 2003 installation. Nancy adds this manually to the Office Project Server 2007 installation. She runs the migration tool to migrate the Sales department projects into the Office Project Server 2007 installation — but knows that the values for the "Marketing Region" custom field will be lost after migration. After this, she sends an e-mail message to the Sales department project managers with the Office Project Server 2007 URL for Project Web Access, instructions for installing Project Professional 2007, and a request to set the correct value for the "Marketing Region" custom field. The project managers look at the custom field value in the Project Web Access for version 2003 and manually set it in Project Web Access for version 2007. After everything is done, Nancy uninstalls Project Server 2003.

Note

Sharing resources between Project Server 2003 and Office Project Server 2007 can cause complications: In addition to project managers handling projects in both versions, if you also have team members participating in projects in both versions, then you may have an issue related to resource availability. In the period when you are operating both Project Server 2003 and Office Project Server 2007 side-by-side, you will not get an updated resource availability view in either Project Server 2003 or Office Project Server 2007. Therefore, we recommend that you do not have a project in a side-by-side state for an extended period of time. Alternatively you could build a custom solution that gets resource availability from the two systems and presents a unified view. This is not unique to Office Project Server 2007 migration — any time that you have two Project Server instances in your environment, and resources shared between them, you will have the same management issue.

Note

In regard to gradually migrating custom fields, lookup tables, and outline codes, it is important to note that Custom field definitions and custom field values added to the Project Server 2003 system after the first migration run are not included in subsequent migration runs. The effect of this situation is that if a custom field definition changes or a new custom field gets added to Project Server 2003 after the first migration run, it must be manually fixed in Office Project Server 2007. In other words, the custom field definitions need to be added or altered in Office Project Server 2007 and the custom field values in projects and tasks need to be fixed manually. This should be taken into account when planning for gradual migration.

Download this book

This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for Project Server 2007.

See Also

Concepts

IT deployment options for migration to Project Server 2007