Project Server Call Logging 101

As someone whom frequents the forums in attempt to help people resolve issues and to get help i do come across some really badly phrased questions and comments. 

Now simply stating "PWA Broken - Please Help" is enough to have 99% of the Industries Professionals look other way when browsing public forums support requests. You find that someone asks you to add more info, but more than often you will be ignored. 

So what exactly makes it a good call ?

1. Start with a good topic."Project Server 2007: PWA access denied for new resource"
2. State your Version in the body with your Update / Patch Level "Project Server 2007 Feb 2010 CU" 
3. Give a detailed description of the problem, indicate things like "When does it happen, does it happen for everyone, has it worked before and very importantly "What has Changed" To further elaborate on this point. a Simple thing like making a field compulsory after already having a bunch of project on the server could cause cube build jobs to fail! So by stating that change it will make it easier for the Professionals to support you!!
4. Then enlighten us on what you have done already to troubleshoot the problems. “We have tried removing the custom field from the cube and re-built, but it is still failing”
5. State any additional information that you think might be applicable.

That all being said there are wonderful tools called search engines J Before jumping on a forum and asking a question “Google or Bing” it first. You might just find the issue has already been addressed or could point you in the right direction for you to be able to help yourself and learn from the issues.

ULS Logs …. That’s pretty much the Alpha and Omega of this environment and troubleshooting anything Server Related. There are some nice tools out there to help you better display the ULS Logs as it can be intimidating trying to understand and find what you are looking for.

Go into the ULS files see if you can find anything, perhaps look for “Error and Critical” events and post it with your support call.

Here are some samples of what I think is some good calls : (It might not have everything in it as mentioned above but its a good example.)

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-ZW/projectserver2010general/thread/75b8f6af-0060-4870-a50d-45d44b58cf5f

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/projectserver2010general/thread/cd8546ee-e624-439f-8269-4e7693fc43a2

And lastly “Please do provide feedback” Whether it did or did not work please post back. If you have managed to solve it by yourself, please do go through the trouble of posting the solution, as it may just help someone else in the future.