New EPM Partner VPC Available

If you’re a Microsoft Certified or Gold Certified Partner selling Microsoft Enterprise Project Management solutions, you might be interested in getting hold of the latest EPM Virtual PC. 

Partners can get a copy using their existing account and the Jetstream application; new partners can register on our partner site to request access:

https://partner.microsoft.com/US/program/competencies/iwsolutions/40029164

VPC size is now 18GB unzipped and 7GB zipped (13 files of 585MB).

Based on your feedback we have made the following improvements to the demo VPC:

• Improved the Project Server meta data (moved the data forward to 2008 onward, added timesheet data for the first six months, cleanup extra data…)
• Created performance dashboards using Excel Services and SQL Server Reporting Services:
• Corporate level dashboard
• Departmental level dashboard
• Resource Manager dashboards
• Capacity Planning Views
• Timesheet Scorecard
• Project level Storyboard
• Created a new demo that walks the audience through the Create, Select, Plan and Manage governance phases highlighting the capabilities of the EPM Solution (both Project Server 2007 and Project Portfolio Server 2007). The main improvement is that we are focusing on telling a PPM story vs. demoing functionality in isolation
• Highlight MOSS Integration
• Dashboards (Excel Services)
• Document Workflow
• Indexed Project Server data using Business Data Catalog and Enterprise Search
• PerformancePoint Server/ProClarity Analytics Server Integration
• In this release we have installed and the necessary Business Intelligence applications to build extensive dashboards. We’ll be working with the PPS/ProClarity team to build an updated version of the VPC that will demonstrate the full capabilities of these products.

We have created a new demo script (72 pages included in the image on the desktop) that will allow you to successfully navigate through the demo image.

We will schedule two webcast for the 9th of April 2008 (Wednesday at 8am and 5pm PST) where we will demo some of the new capabilities and answer any of your questions (invites will go out tomorrow).

We hope that the improvements in the demo will better support your sales engagements!

Next steps

During next two months we will be releasing additional VPCs for:

• Innovation Management
• Capital Planning and Investment Control solutions
• All Up BI VPC with EPM 2007

Please do not hesitate in contacting me if you have any questions.