Interviewer Wizard Project Guides: BizTalk Server Deployment and Product Launch

The Interviewer Wizard sample Project Guides are part of the Project Guide 101 download for Microsoft® Office Project 2003. The Interviewer wizards are custom Project Guides that walk users through a series of questions, and generate appropriately scheduled project plans. For any one interview, the resulting project plan is a customized version of the master plan, based on a user's responses to the wizard.

There are two wizards: one for a product launch plan, and the other for a Microsoft® BizTalk® Server deployment plan. For the user's convenience, after completing an interview, the wizard used stores responses in the master plan; interviews can be edited or deleted at any time.

The following figure shows the Interviewer main goal area side pane, with the three top-level goal area tasks in the drop-down list of the Project Guide toolbar. The main view area shows the default tasks for deploying a BizTalk Server solution.

Project Guide Interviewer sample for a BizTalk Server deployment project

The next figure shows the Interviewer Wizard side pane, with the wizard that helps create a product launch plan. The main view area shows the default tasks for a product launch project plan.

Project Guide Interviewer Wizard for a product launch plan

Installing the Interviewer Wizard Project Guide

When you execute the pj11ProjectGuide101.exe download file, the sample files are installed in the following default paths:

• Interviewer Wizard common files: [Program Files]\Microsoft Office 2003 SDKs\Microsoft Office Project 2003 SDK\Project Guide 101\Samples\CustomProjectGuides\Interviewer
• Subdirectory for BizTalk Server Deployment template: BizTalk Deployment
• Subdirectory for Product Launch template: Product Launch

Note  The .mpp project template files are saved with the default directory set for the Project Guide. If you install the sample files in another directory, you need to change the Project Guide directory options in Project to use the Interview Wizard.

To change the Project Guide directory options:

1. Start Project 2003, and then open one of the Interviewer template projects: BizTalk Server Analysis and Deployment Template.mpp, or Product Launch Template.mpp.
2. On the Tools menu, click Options. In the Options dialog box, click the Interface tab.
3. In Project Guide Functionality and Layout Page, click Use a custom page, and then type or paste the path to interview_mainpage.htm into the URL box that appears.
4. In Project Guide Content, click Use custom content, and then type or paste the path to interview_gbui.xml into the URL box that appears.
5. Click OK. The Project Guide refreshes to show the Interviewer side pane and the Interviewer goal area of the Project Guide toolbar.

Using the Interviewer Wizard Custom Project Guides

Following are some tips for working with the Interviewer Wizard custom Project Guides. You can customize the Product Launch Interviewer Wizard or the BizTalk Server Deployment Interviewer Wizard Project Guides and template files to create your own custom interviewer questions.

Note  Both of the Interviewer Wizard samples function the same way; only the interview questions and master project differ.

Creating a Project Using the Product Launch Interview Wizard

The following procedures show the steps of the Interviewer Wizard custom Project Guide for the Product Launch sample.

To create a new project using the Product Launch Interview Wizard:

1. Click New Interview in the main side pane to start a new interview.

2. Give your interview a name and click Start the Interview.

   Note  As you progress through the wizard, your responses are stored in the project's ProjectGuideSaveBuffer property, which allows you to store and retrieve previous wizard sessions and responses from the master project plan.

3. In steps four and five of the wizard, you can enter dates that set deadlines on tasks in the generated project plan appropriately.

4. Click Save and Finish in the wizard footer to generate your project plan, tailored to your responses in the wizard.

   You are asked to save the generated project plan by using the default Save As dialog box. Save the project to the desired location.

To use or modify a saved project:

1. Start Project and re-open the master product launch project plan (for the Product Launch interview, that is the Product Launch Template.mpp file in the directory previously noted).

   The only changes to the project are in the ProjectGuideSaveBuffer property, which stores responses to the interviews you have saved.

2. Click Edit Interview and then select one of the interviews you saved.

   As you proceed through the Interviewer Wizard, controls are prepopulated based on your previous responses. This is particularly useful if you want to change only one or two answers from the previous interview.

Troubleshooting the Custom Project Guides

Ensure the Project Guide is on and that the main side pane is displayed.

To turn on the Project Guide:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Interface tab.
2. Make sure Display Project Guide is selected.

Notes

• The Product Launch Interviewer Wizard has six steps. Respond to as many questions as you can as you advance through the wizard. You can go back to a previous step at any time by using the links in the wizard footer.

• Both Interviewer Wizards use a third frameset running horizontally across the top of the document window. This customized layout is defined in interview_shared_scripts.js used by interview_mainpage.htm, the Wizards' custom mainpage.

• The custom Project Guides contain only one goal area: Interviewer.

• The Product Launch master project plan contains 292 tasks. The BizTalk Server Deployment master project plan contains 149 tasks.

• You can create your own subdirectory, with a different interview and master task project template. To do that, in addition to modifying the task definition and side pane files, you would need to modify and load the default contents of the ProjectGuideSaveBuffer property by creating a Microsoft Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) macro using the Visual Basic Editor in Project. For example:

  Option Explicit
  
  Sub LoadSaveBuffer()
      Dim fso As FileSystemObject
      Dim f As File
      Dim ts As TextStream
  
      Set fso = New FileSystemObject
      Set f = fso.GetFile _
         ("[ProjectSDKpath]\Project Guide 101\Samples\Interviewer\" _
         & "Product Launch\PL PGSaveBuffer_SingleLine.txt")
      Set ts = f.OpenAsTextStream(ForReading, TristateUseDefault)
  
      ' There is only one line in PL PGSaveBuffer_SingleLine.txt
      ActiveProject.ProjectGuideSaveBuffer = ts.ReadLine
      ts.Close
  End Sub
  

• For more information about ProjectGuideSaveBuffer, see Persisting the Project Guide's State.

Files for the Interviewer Wizard Custom Project Guides

The Interviewer Wizard master projects use the following files in the \Project Guide 101\Samples\CustomProjectGuides\Interviewer directory of the installed samples.