Prior to reading this you may wish to visit our product page at http://www.projectedconsulting.com/index.php/products/microsoft-project to get an overview of how the integration works. This contains some text and a short desk top video

Oracle Development recently released the major rollup patch to both fix and enhance the Microsoft Projects to Oracle Project Management Integration functionality. This is a standard interface that allows details of plans, created in either product, to be updated on a seamless platform. As part of the ongoing development of this integration process I was asked to work with several other interested parties on the testing of both products following the application of the above patch.

After an initial conference call, headed up by Ryan Denner from Viasat and attended by other interested parties, we were issued with a testing matrix and decided on a 4 week testing plan with follow up conference calls during testing.

The patch, along with its pre-reqs, was successfully applied to a test Vision environment and the testing went well for all areas of functionality. Issues arose when multiple updates were introduced into the newly created MSP plans, i.e. new tasks, new resources and rescheduled dates. This gave rise to a “Task Element version” error which, on reviewing Metalink required the patch 9245443 to be applied. Having applied this patch the testing then proceeded satisfactorily using shared plans.

Generally the testing of shared structures went well and the patch’s mentioned above go along way to further improving the integration between MSP and PJT.

It should be noted that we did experience a few issues with parent-child relationships when other structures were introduced. This was also discovered by other test group members so it is expected that an SR is going to be raised with Oracle Support. It should be noted that the issue with the integrity of the parent-child relationships in structures other than shared is a previous problem that has its own standalone patch fix. Unfortunately the rollup patch seems to have resurrected this error, so probably a relatively easy one to fix for Oracle Support. We await the results of the investigation by Oracle Development once the SR has been raised.

Ryan discovered a workaround whereby if the plan, whatever the structure used, is published on sending from MSP to Oracle Project Management, the parent-child relationships are maintained correctly. This is fine for clients that want to publish and who have project managers with the authority to do so but may cause problems for those users that wish to ensure the final working version is satisfactory before publication.

We were very pleased with the testing of progress following the application of a further patch 8437560. It is worth noting that the “Deliverables” added to templates are not brought through to any project if it is created in MSP.

In summary, we are very pleased with the integration and position it in all applicable solutions to our clients. We understand the gaps and through our testing and involvement in the global user group, continue to apply pressure on Oracle Development to further improve the interface. We will continue to make regular updates on the website. Please add your comments; we’re keen to collate all feedback and experiences.