Project Server 2007 ActiveX Web Controls

This is a very obscure bit of Project Server minutiae - but since I spent 10 minutes digging for where I had it written down, figured I'd share it.

Project Server 2007 auto downloads a series of ActiveX controls to your browser to render most of its data on published projects. 

 
These controls are stored as objects inside Internet Explorer's Temprary Internet Files cache, and will be auto-installed as required.  However, during troubleshooting, you may need to "force" the reinstallation after manual removal.  To force this, just go to the Project Web Access web site and add the following to the end of the URL: "/_layouts/pwa/download/download.aspx"

so you are going to the site

http://[HostName]/[PWASite]/_layouts/pwa/download/download.aspx

substituting the host name and site name for your PWA implementation.

Project Server 2010 doesn't use ActiveX controls, fyi.  It's AJAX based to support multiple browsers (hooray!) so this will be less of a concern gong forward.

 

Comments

[Alex]

Officially Project Server 2010 only support IE 7 & 8 despite the introduction of the Ajax control, not quite sure why though :(

http://blogs.technet.com/epmbr/archive/2009/05/25/news-about-project-2010.aspx

[KMA]

Interesting point - my comment was based on conversations with various staff at the SharePoint Conference in Octover 2009. I suspect that the AJAX controls will work just fine on Firefox. We're scheduled to test this out in another month or two, and will advise based on what we find.