Difference between “Manage Users” and “Share Project Web App” in Project Server 2013

At some point of time I was quite confused why there would be two ways to assign permission to users in Project Server and with different names and settings. These two ways are – “Manage Users” and “Share Project Web App”.

Have you ever found the difference between the two? You are guessing right… YES there is a difference. You must be aware of the fact that Project Server 2013 has two permission modes, one is the SharePoint Permission Mode and the other is Project Server Permission Mode. By default after installing Project Server 2013 setup, the Project Web App is configured in SharePoint Permission Mode.

In SharePoint Permission Mode, the Security category would be missing from PWA Settings.

The “Share Project Web App” only works when your PWA is configured in SharePoint Permission Mode. The “Share Project Web App” does not works in Project Server Permission Mode. What if you want to change your PWA permission mode from SharePoint Permission Mode to Project Server Permission Mode, is it possible? Yes it is and the steps are very simple…

Have a look: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219486.aspx

The Manage Users is available for Project Server Permission Mode. So when you have changed the permission mode, the Security category in PWA settings would be available now.

So do remember, when you have configured your PWA in Project Server Permission Mode then you must only use Security category to grant access to users and do not use “Share Project Web App.”

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Security Token Service not responding in Project Server 2013

I was facing a serious issue from past couple of days… The Project Server 2013 Web App was inaccessible. After monitoring ULS logs and Event Viewer, following exceptions I encountered. These exceptions were continuously occurring and I was not able to find the root cause. Hence after consulting Microsoft Support team, we both managed to get rid of the exceptions and finally the Project Server Web App was accessible.

The HTTP service located at http://localhost:32843/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/securitytoken.svc is unavailable.  This could be because the service is too busy or because no endpoint was found listening at the specified address. Please ensure that the address is correct and try accessing the service again later.

Application pool ‘SecurityTokenServiceApplicationPool’ is being automatically disabled due to a series of failures in the process(es) serving that application pool.

Event 8306 (SharePoint Foundation) of severity ‘Error’ occurred 58 more time(s) and was suppressed in the event log.

Event 6398 (SharePoint Foundation) of severity ‘Critical’ occurred 8 more time(s) and was suppressed in the event log.

Analysis:
Based on the error message: “A listener channel for protocol ‘HTTP’ in worker process ‘5532’ serving application pool ‘SecurityTokenServiceApplicationPool’ reported a listener channel failure.  The data field contains the error number.” and error message:” The Module DLL ‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\isapi\spnativerequestmodule.dll’ could not be loaded due to a configuration problem. The current configuration only supports loading images built for a x86 processor architecture.” The issue is probable caused by the failure during the loading of spnativerequestmodule.dll file.

Resolution:

Navigate to IIS Manager-> Application Pools-> right click the ‘SecurityTokenServiceApplicationPool’ and choose “Advanced Settings”. If “Enable 32-Bit Applications” is set to “true”, please set it to “false”, reset IIS and your are done !!

Happy accessing Project Server Web App… :)

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