Internet Explorer 11, Windows 8.1 and Project Server 2013.

Hey people,

This is a very specific post only useful for the lucky few. Answer the following questions with Yes and this post will be for you:

  1. Do you have a Project Server 2013 tennent running in your company?
  2. Do you use a Windows 8.1 tablet or desktop?
  3. Are you using Internet Explorer 11 (comes with Windows 8.1)?

Yes,Yes,Yes? Then let me congratulate you with your choices for the newest and greatest Microsoft products :).

Now here comes the pain, be prepared: IE11 will not show you your schedule in any PDP or webpart by default!

Here is a screenshot of a Project schedule opened with IE11 in all its default settings.

Picture of no schedule webpart

Here is the desired and expected screenshot.

Pucture of Using the F12tools showing the Schedule webpart

This post is about getting IE11 and Project Server 2013 to work correctly again.

The problem (why does it happen?)

I think it is due to user agent sniffing, the browser manipulates the page before you see it. The problem was also noticed in the earlier version EPM2010, back then it showed a error message: ‘This Project Server 2010 feature requires at least Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0’.

PPM2013 doesn’t give a message but the solution that worked in EPM2010 works in PPM2013 all the same.

The solution (F12 tools)

Thankfully the solution is easy: go to the settings gear in the top right and activate the F12 developer tools. This will bring up the developer tools where you can set the compatibility mode of the browser. In the Emulator tab change the document mode and the Useragent string to anything but the standard, I use IE10 myself.

Sometimes the user agent string field isn’t a dropdownbox but a textfield. Typing the following will give the desired result:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0)

Project Online doesn’t seem to have the same problem. That is a nice indication that there will be a hotfix or servicepack coming that will solve this problem. If and when it’s here I’ll note it in this post.

******************************************************************

Edit 28 feb 2014: Service pack 1 has been released! I have not seen the issue after installing it to my test servers. Give it a try on your own test environment (you do have a test environment don’t you?).

Here is the link to the Project Server 2013 Service Pack 1 download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42011

2016 correction: this is the correct link for the Service Pack 1 download: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42545

10 thoughts on “Internet Explorer 11, Windows 8.1 and Project Server 2013.”

  1. In my tests this does not nessesary have anything with SP1 to do.
    I have an PS2013 (SP1) enviroment with 3 servers, all with the exact same version of IE 11 and windows. When accessing the PWA i got:

    Web Front End Server
    – Error not present
    App Server
    – Error present
    SQL Server
    – Error present

    Adding the url to Local Intranet (in Security Settings) in IE solved the problem on the 2 other servers. Guessing this is a IE Security Setting, but i could not locate which one.

    1. Hmm interesting theory. However, setting the Internet Explorer to “compatibility mode” fixes the issue. There is no policy at the Project Server side that manages this that’s for sure.

Comments are closed.