Hello Amber,
Yes VisTrails executes from it's own full installation of Python so that it doesn't run into library incompatibilities with what's already installed. Installing new packages into this independent Python install can be a bit confusing at first, but it sounds like you got that figured out.
The error you're getting in PARC is related to the switch from 2.0.3 to 2.1beta of VisTrails. The VisTrails developers changed the organization of the VisTrails components in this update. They did add some functionality to make this change backwards compatible but it doesn't seem to be working our for the sahm package always. In this case from core.configuration import ConfigurationObject needs to now be from vistrails.core.configuration import ConfigurationObject. This same pattern occurs several other places in our code. I'll check with them to see if there is an easy solution, but it might be a few days before I can make the change and make sure everything still works.
I'll post to the group when this is finished. In the meantime you could try to run it from a 2.0.3 version. Or if you're on Windows the VisTrails:sahm installer has been fairly trouble free. If you're not on windows there are some some changes to the package and the tutorial that I'll need to provide you.