Paul's Project Server and Project Online Blog

Getting started with #ProjectOnline Part 8 #PS2013 #Office365 #Project #PPM #SharePointOnline #PM #SP2013

This is part 8 of the “Getting started with Project Online” series. I was hoping to get this post published before now, sorry for the delay. In this post we will look at the various places in the Project Web App that data can viewed and edited. In the last post we looked at populating the enterprise resource pool and various ways to create projects. If you missed the last post, see the link below:

https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/getting-started-with-projectonline-part-7-ps2013-office365-project-ppm-sharepointonline-pm-sp2013/

Firstly navigate to the Project Web App homepage:

As you can see there are various ways to get to certain areas in the Project Web App. You can use the quick launch or the tiles. We will look at the Project Center, the Tasks page, the Resource Center and the project site. The first area we will look at is the Project Center, this can be accessed either from the Projects link on the Quick Launch menu (left hand side of the page) or by clicking the Projects tile on the “Track your work” web part. This page will look something the image below:

Different views can be configured for this page, we covered this in part 4, we created a new Project Center view called “Project Status by Programme”. To switch to this view or another view click the PROJECTS tab at the top of the page then click the drop down menu next to view:

Here you will see all the Project Center views that you have access to. Click a different view and the page will refresh:

The data is now grouped by our Programme field. The view filtering and grouping can be changed on the fly using the filter and group by options on the ribbon. You will see there is also a timeline that currently contains no projects. Projects and tasks can be added to the timeline using the two buttons on the ribbon, Add Project and Add Tasks. To add a project, select the project row and click the Add Project button:

To add a task, select the project and click the Add Tasks button. A new window will appear that will allow you to select the tasks:

Select the task or tasks and click OK:

We now have the project and two of the project tasks on the timeline. The timeline can be formatted. Selecting the timeline will show a TIMELINE ribbon tab:

The colour formatting of the bars and fonts can be changed, the data / information displayed and how the information is displayed (callouts etc.):

Clicking the project name will load the project detail pages for that project:

On the left hand side menu you will see the different PDP’s associated with this enterprise project type (EPT’s). We covered PDP’s and EPT’s in part 5. Clicking one of the PDP’s will load different information and display different information that can be edited. Below shows the Project Status Information PDP:

The project plan can be edited on the schedule PDP, click the Task tab then Edit > In Browser to edit in the Project Web App

The project then checks out to you and the ribbon buttons are active:

Once the changes are complete you have the save and publish options.

We will now take a look at the Tasks page, this is where team members see their assignments. Starting on the Project Web App homepage, there are two links to the Tasks page, either the Tasks link on the quick launch or the Tasks tile. The tasks tile will also give a count of new tasks, notice “Tasks: 1 New” below on the 3rd tile on the “Track your work” web part:

Clicking either the Tasks tile or the Tasks quick launch link takes you to the Tasks page below:

Here team members can either just view the assignments using the different views, update progress or even delete assignments. Any changes such as updating progress or deleting has to be approved by the task status manager, they will get notified of the change. Clicking the task name loads the task details page:

Next we look at the Resource center page, from the Project Web App homepage click the Resources link on the quick launch menu. The following page will then load:

Here you can create new resources or edit existing resource providing you have the correct permissions. Different views are available here, we will switch to the “Full Time Resources” view that we created in part 4:

From the Resource center we can quickly see resource availability and assignment details. Check the resource/s that you want to review, in this case I will look at myself:

You will then see the two end buttons on the ribbon become active. Click the Resource Assignments button to see the assignments:

From this page I can also click the Resource Availability button to see the resource availability:

Different view options can be set to see data. Below the graph is a table displaying the details:

The next area we will look at is the project site. There are several ways which the project site can be access. Either from the Project Web App site site cog > Site contents option:

Then scroll down to subsites:

The second method is from the project center, click the ellipsis next to the project then click the ellipsis on the pop up then click “Go to Project Site”:

Another method is from the project details view, click the project site link under the PDPs:

Once on the project site you will see the following:

You will see different lists etc. based on the template you created \ chose, this example site is based on the site template created in part 6. Here you can update the lists and documents related to the project. Below a new Issue has been created, set to active and assigned to myself:

The Issues and Risks list tie in closely to the project in the Project Web App. If I look at the Project Web App homepage I will see 1 Active Issue now:

Notice the 4th tile on the “Track your work” web part. I edited the “Track your work” web part to display Issues and Risks. Clicking the Issues or Risks tile loads the follow page:

You can click the project name to load either the issues or risks lists on that project site.

Also the project center will display an icon next to the project to indicate an issue:

You can click the icon to load the issues list for that project site. The same functionality exists for risks and documents. Issues, risks and documents can also be linked to tasks or other list items, I have covered that previously here.

Next up, we look at creating reports to surface data in Excel / Excel Web App. I have previously covered creating Project Online reports, the links are below:

https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/projectserver-projectonline-highlight-report-example-ps2013-sp2013-excel-bi-office/

https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/projectserver-projectonline-example-report-ps2013-sp2013-office365-bi-excel-powerpivot/

The next post will look at creating the ODATA feed URLs then using the same process described in the links above we will create reports.

Getting started with #ProjectOnline Part 7 #PS2013 #Office365 #Project #PPM #SharePointOnline #PM #SP2013

This is part 7 of the “Getting started with Project Online” series. If you have been following this series you will hopefully by now have an understanding of how you can configure your new Project Online Project Web App instance to meet your requirements. There are other configuration options that I haven’t covered, but the core or basics have been covered. In the last post we looked at project plan and project site template creation, the link to that post can be seen below:

https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/getting-started-with-projectonline-part-6-ps2013-office365-project-ppm-sharepointonline-pm-sp2013/

Now we have the basic configuration completed we can start to populate data and start making use of the system. Firstly we will look at populating our enterprise resource pool / adding users to the system then an overview on creating projects.

Let’s look at some of the options we have for populating the resource pool. Firstly we will look at the Active Directory Resource Pool Synchronisation option, this is found on the PWA Settings page under the Operational Policies heading:

Clicking this link loads the following page:

Here you can type the name of a security group that contains all of the users you want as resources in Project Web App. For Project Online, the security groups are set up on the Office 365 tenant as are the user accounts. To show you this we will navigate to our Office 365 Admin Center. To get to this site click the Admin menu then click Office 365:

You will need a tenant admin account to access this site. Once the site is loaded click Users and Groups then click Security Groups:

As you can see, I have already created a group on this tenant (and the users already exist, to add users click the active users link then the + button). To create a new group, click the + button then complete the details on the page:

Give the group a name, I have called this “Test Group”, add a description if required then add the users by clicking the + button. Once complete just click save. After few minutes this group will be available to use in the Project Web App. Switching back to the Project Web App Active Directory Resource Pool Synchronisation page we can enter our AD security group information:

As you can see, start typing the name of the group and your group will be available to click without having to type the exact name. Once selected, click the Save and Synchronise now button. After a few moments you will see that the users from the chosen security group will appear in the Resource Center in the Project Web App:

The users above will be available to projects as resources. Currently, even though these resources are users in Office 365, they are not yet users in the Project Web App, they wouldn’t be able to log in to the Project Web App. Before we go on to add a users, I just want to detail the differences between users and resources. So you can have users that can log in to the system but might not necessarily be available to be assigned on a tasks, to be able to be assigned on a task the user needs to also be a resource. Flip that around, you can have resources that can be assigned to tasks but might not be able to log in. To give these users access will varying depending on the permission mode, if your Project Web App instance is using the Project Permission Mode you can just select the resource, click the edit button then check the checkbox “Associate resource with a user account” then enter the User logon account and select the security group. If you are in the SharePoint Permission Mode, which our example Project Web App instance is, you just share the site with those users. Lets look at that, navigate the the Project Web App homepage and click the “Share” button in the top right corner:

The Share button will load the following window:

Add the user name, then click “Show Options”, this will enable you to choose the correct group:

The default is “Team Members for Project Web App [Contribute]” but you can change this to another Project Web App group if required:

The correct group depends on the level of access this user needs. The SharePoint permission group details can be seen here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219510.aspx. Once the correct group has been chosen click the Share button. That is one way to add resources (and users). You can also add resources manually either via the Project Web App or Project Professional. Let’s look at the Project Web App first. In the Project Web App, navigate to the Resource Center (link on the quick launch), click the Resources tab then click the New button:

This will load a new page, complete the required details then click Save. In this example I am going to create a new generic resource:

After clicking save I see the new resource appear in the resource center:

That is it for creating resources in the Project Web App. The other option is to create the resources via Project Professional, from the Resource Center, click the Open button:

You will need to have at least one resource selected for this to work. This will then open the enterprise resource pool in Project Professional (you will also need the account set up in Project Professional 2013 for that Project Web App instance):

You can create resources on this table, or copy and paste from Excel etc. For the purpose of this post I will just create one additional resource:

Now click the Save button and the resource will be created, see the resource center now:

With Project Online it would be recommended to use enterprise resources (we have created enterprise resources above) rather than using local resources. This way you can get good visibility of the resource assignments / demand. That is the intro to creating resources and users for the Project Web App instance. Next we look at the various ways to create projects in the system. Project Professional 2013 can be used, either a blank project, a template project or even an offline mpp file. Projects can also be created from the Project Web App, either from a project idea type list, from a SharePoint task list or from the Project Center. Full details can be seen here. For the purpose of this post we will look at using Project Professional 2013 and the Project Center. Firstly from Project Professional 2013, launch Project Pro and connect to the Project Web App instance, build the schedule:

Now build the team to add the enterprise resources to the project, either the Resource tab > Add Resources > Built Team from Enterprise or just press Ctrl +T:

That will load the Build Team window:

Here add the resources you might need on the project team. If you have access to a large resource pool, there are options to filter / group the list of resources. Select the resource and click the Add button:

Click OK. Now in the Resource Name column you can select the resource or resources for that task:

You can also double click the task name to load the Task Information window. Click the Resources tab and you add your resource here:

Once the project plan is ready, click the Save button then Save under Project Web App and a new window will appear:

Enter the project name, complete the project level fields and click Save. That data will then be sent to Project Online but not visible in the Project Web App. To make this visible in the Project Web App the project will need to be published. To publish the project click File > Publish:

This will load another window to create the associated project site:

Click Publish. Once the jobs complete in Project Online, this project will be visible to users with the correct permissions in Project Web App:

You can also create a project from a template, in Project Professional 2013 click File > New:

Here are several templates available, you can also click the Enterprise link to load the project templates you have created and saved to Project Web App:

Here we can see the project plan template we created in a previous post. Selecting one of the templates will load the template project plan, modify this as required then use the same Save and Publish options. Worth noting, when creating projects from Project Professional the default EPT will be used.

Now we will move the the Project Web App and review some of the options in the Project Center. When you first navigate to the Project Center on a new Project Web App instance you will see the following:

This gives a link to create a new project. We will look at using the EPTs, click the Projects tab then click New:

For this example we will use the Project Design EPT that we created in an earlier post. Click the Project Design EPT and the new project Project Detail Page will appear:

Enter the details and click Save, once complete the schedule PDP will appear:

As this was created from the Project Design EPT, the associated project plan template was used, hence the tasks displayed. Edit the project as required then click Save. Now we can build the team in the Project Web App. Click the Project Tab then Build Team:

Clicking this button loads the following page:

Select the resource you need in the project and click Add and they will appear on the right hand side:

Click the Save & Close button and you will be taken back the the schedule PDP, here you can assign the resources:

Once you have completed the project plan updates, click the Save button. Once the save has completed, click the Publish button to make this project visible. Click the other PDPs on the left hand side to complete the other details required, in this example we click the Project Details PDP:

Complete the details and click Save. When finished Close and check in the project:

Now you will see the project in the Project Center:

That covers the intro for creating projects. Next up we look at where in the system we can see the data (Tasks, Resource Center etc.).