Extending #ProjectfortheWeb Part1 #PPM #CDS #MSDyn365 #PowerPlatform #MSProject #PowerApps
December 13, 2019 at 12:52 am | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information | Leave a commentTags: CDS, Dynamics 365, MS Project, Office365, Power Platform, Project for the Web
This is the first of a few blog posts containing examples for extending the Project for the Web application. For those of you that have not seen any previous blog posts on Project for the Web here is a link: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/tag/project-for-the-web/ & a video: https://youtu.be/4OeegM8ScMk that I published when Project for the Web was released.
As you are all probably aware by now, Project for the Web is the new Project service built by the Project team at Microsoft. This new service is not built in SharePoint like Project Online, this is built on the Power Platform Common Data Service for Apps. There are two interfaces to access Project for the Web, the Office interface as accessed here https://project.microsoft.com/ or via the Power Apps interface accessing the Project model-driven app. Extending the Office UI is not possible so all customisations are via the Power Apps interface. In this blog post we will start adding an Issues entity to the app. The example can be seen below in my new model-driven app called “Project PPM”:
New “Logs” grouping with Issues on the site map and “Number of Issues” in the project view
Issues entity with related project – clicking the project name navigates to that project:
New Issue form – a few example fields:
Project view with Issues tab and “Number of Issues” field that counts the number of issues for the current project:
Issues tab in the current project:
Clicking New Issue here loads the New Issue form but with the current project pre-selected:
As you can see, this is a very simple customisation but shows various basic steps that can be repurposed to extend the app further. The steps below will walkthrough making these changes.
Access https://make.powerapps.com/ and ensure you’re in the default organisation where the new Project for the Web service is deployed. These steps below add the entity directly rather than via a solution, I’d recommend creating everything via a solution so that it can easily be exported / imported to different environments if needed. Items can be added to solutions after if required, this post does not cover solutions though. Under Data click Entities and add a new Entity, I called mine “Issues”:
Add the fields you want such as Due Date, Description, Owner, Status etc. and save the entity. Also create a field such as “Related Project” that is a lookup to the Project entity – this is important if you want that relationship:
Next access the Views option in the Issues entity and modify / create views as needed, here I’ve just modified the default “Active Issues” view to add my new fields in – Publish the changes:
Now access the Forms option in the Issues entity and update the Main form to add the new fields in – Publish the changes:
Save the Issues entity and access the Project entity, here I added a new rollup field called “Number of Issues”:
I updated the view/s to add the “Number of Issues” field in where applicable and Published the views. The Information form was updated to include the Number of Issues on the Summary tab:
A new 1-column tab component was added to the form, I called this “Issues” and then a Subgrid related data component was added and linked to the new related Issues entity:
The form was then published and the entity saved as required.
That’s all the changes to the entities for this example. Next up is creating the new model-driven app. With the changes just carried out, the default “Project” app will include the changes to the Project entity but you wont have the new Issues entity on the left nav:
In the next post we will look at creating the app seen at the start of the post with future posts planned on more additions such as Risks, a process flow, Programs etc.
#Office365 #ProjectfortheWeb #MicrosoftTeams integration #PowerAutomate #ProjectManagement #PPM #MSProject #PowerPlatform #AdaptiveCards Part 4
December 12, 2019 at 1:22 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Customisation, Functionality, Information | Leave a commentTags: Adaptive Cards, Microsoft Teams, MS Project, Office365, Power Platform, PPM, Project for the Web, Project Online
In part 4 of this series we will create a simple Power Automate Flow that posts a message to a Team when a project is overdue. For part 3 of the series, here is the link if you missed it where we looked at adding a Bot for Project for the web into Teams: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/11/22/office365-projectfortheweb-microsoftteams-integration-projectmanagement-ppm-msproject-powerplatform-powervirtualagents-part-3/
This post will use Teams messages and Adaptive Cards in Teams, this will be similar to the posts I created in the summer for Project Online: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/tag/adaptive-cards/
Firstly create the Power Automate Flow to get the data, in this simple example I have a scheduled Flow that runs once a week, queries the Projects entity in the CDS with a filter as seen below to only return the projects that are not 100% complete and the Finish date is before todays date:
Then an Apply to each action is used as the List Overdue Projects is more than likely to return more than one project:
Here you can see some additional Compose actions as I calculate the days overdue and also build up a Project Link, these are used in the Post a message action. The message is switched to code view so that I could build up a HTML link. I created most of the message when in the HTML view then switched it to the code view to create the Project Link. When this runs this posts a message for each project overdue, in my example test tenant I have two test projects that are overdue:
Before we move on to the adaptive card example, I will detail the example compose actions I have:
FinDateTickValue = ticks(items(‘Apply_to_each’)[‘msdyn_finish’])
TodayTickValue = ticks(utcNow())
DateDifference = div(sub(outputs(‘TodayTickValue’),outputs(‘FinDateTickValue’)),864000000000)
ProjLink = concat(‘https://project.microsoft.com/?org=cdsOrg#/taskgrid?projectId=projectId’,items(‘Apply_to_each’)[‘msdyn_projectid’]) – cdsOrg would be updated to your correct CDS org like below:
concat(‘https://project.microsoft.com/?org=orgxxxxxxx.crm11.dynamics.com#/taskgrid?projectId=’,items(‘Apply_to_each’)[‘msdyn_projectid’])
In the next example I will use the Teams Adaptive Card action to post this message as a card rather than a standard message:
The card is authored in JSON, I used the same process here as I documented my previous posts for Project Online, no need to hand craft the JSON, use adaptive card designer here: https://adaptivecards.io/designer. Once you have the card built and designed in the designer, copy the card JSON and paste into the Flow message input:
Add the dynamic content to the JSON message as seen below to pass in the correct data based on your card design:
When this Flow runs it posts cards to the Teams channel for the overdue projects as seen below:
The cards can be made to be as engaging as you like with images, text, fonts etc. this is just a basic example for this blog post.
There are many use cases for this type of simple Project for the Web and Microsoft Teams integration using Power Automate, I will look to post some other examples in the future.
#ProjectfortheWeb new Copy link to task feature #MSProject #ProjectManagement #WorkManagement #CDS
December 12, 2019 at 9:03 am | Posted in Administration, Configuration, Functionality, Information | Leave a commentTags: MS Project, Office365, Power Platform, PPM, Project for the Web
Just a quick post to highlight a new feature that was turned on this week in Project for the web, the “Copy link to task” option on the task callout menu as seen below:
This option is on all of the task call out menus so that you can easily copy a link to a task and send to another user. The link will always load the task on the task board view with the task dialog loaded:
For other posts on Project for the Web, see this link: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/tag/project-for-the-web/
#ProjectServer 2019 missing data in #OLAP cube? #SSAS #Reporting #Excel
November 29, 2019 at 10:56 pm | Posted in Administration, Configuration, Fixes, Functionality, Information, Installation, Issue | Leave a commentTags: Excel, OLAP, PPM, Project Server 2019, SQL
Just a quick post and one related to Project Server on-premises which I haven’t done for a long time! A colleague escalated an issue to me where by data was missing in the OLAP cube in a new Project Server 2019 deployment. The symptoms where that data appeared to be missing from the Portfolio Analyzer cube. For example, adding Project List into the pivot table didn’t display any projects but when looking at the values in the Project List dimension from the Pivot Table fields menu you could see the projects:
Adding the Project List to the Pivot table, no Project Names included:
If another cube was used such as the Project Non Timephased, the Projects displayed on the pivot table as expected. If the built in measures where removed from the OLAP cube configuration and the cube rebuilt, the Project List then displayed fine on any OLAP cube. The fix is a simple one, it relates to a the Reporting Timephased Data change that on new installs this is set to Never which is the same behaviour for new PWA site collections in Project Online. Change the Reporting setting to another option such as daily:
Then publish the projects, once the projects are published, ensure the built in measure are enabled as required in the OLAP cube configuration if you have changed these and set the OLAP cube to build. Once processed the OLAP cubes will all work as expected.
#Office365 #ProjectfortheWeb #MicrosoftTeams integration #ProjectManagement #PPM #MSProject #PowerPlatform #PowerVirtualAgents Part 3
November 22, 2019 at 7:16 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Functionality, Information, Workflow | 1 CommentTags: Bots, Microsoft Teams, MS Project, Office365, Power Platform, Power Virtual Agents, PPM, Project for the Web, Project Online
In part 3 of this series we will look at adding the sample bot created in part 2 in to Microsoft Teams. If you missed part 2 it can be found here: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/11/20/office365-projectfortheweb-microsoftteams-integration-projectmanagement-ppm-msproject-powerplatform-part-2/
Now we have a working Power Virtual Agent (PVA) for creating projects in Project for the Web we can now embed this into other applications such as Microsoft Teams, custom web applications, Cortana, Facebook etc. Do remember that PVAs are currently only in preview and not generally available yet. For this example we will add this into Microsoft Teams. Firstly we need to publish the bot from the Publish page:
Once published at least once you will then be able to try out your bot in the demo website:
Each time you make a change to the bot, once ready you will need to publish it again. Now that it’s published we click Channels under the Manage menu, then in this example click Microsoft Teams:
Now click the Add button and this generates the App ID:
Copy the App ID for a later step. Now load the Teams App Studio (or add it to Teams if you don’t have this yet). In the App Studio click Manifest editor and the click “Create a new app”. Complete the form as required:
Now using the left hand menu, click Bots under “2 Capabilities”:
Click “Set up”. Then click “Existing bot”, add the bot name then paste in the App ID copied in the previous step when adding the Teams channel in the Power Virtual Agents window and set the scope to Personal then click Save:
Now click on Test and distribute under “3 Finish”:
Here you can install the app in Teams for testing or Download. In this example I’m downloading it then in Teams click Apps > Upload a custom app:
Once uploaded, from the Bots filter in Apps you will see the bot:
Click that then you will be able to Add it and it will appear in your personal Chat and you can create a project from there:
For more details see this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/power-virtual-agents/publication-add-bot-to-microsoft-teams
I will add some more Microsoft Teams integration options for Project for the Web soon!
#Office365 #ProjectfortheWeb #MicrosoftTeams integration #ProjectManagement #PPM #MSProject #PowerPlatform Part 2
November 20, 2019 at 8:47 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information, Workflow | 1 CommentTags: Bots, Microsoft Teams, MS Project, Office365, Power Platform, Power Virtual Agents, PPM, Project for the Web, Project Online
In the last post we started looking at integration options for Project for the Web in Microsoft Teams, this post can be found here: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/11/16/office365-projectfortheweb-microsoftteams-integration-projectmanagement-ppm-msproject-powerplatform-part-1/
This post continues with the Project for the Web and Microsoft Teams integration theme but this time creating a Project directly from Teams using a bot. This makes use of the new Power Virtual Agents feature that is currently in preview: https://powervirtualagents.microsoft.com/ In this post we will build a very simple Power Virtual Agent, PVA for short, that will enable to user to create a project in the Project for the Web service.
In the first part (Part 2 of the series) we create the PVA bot and Power Automate Flow. Firstly access the Power Virtual Agents preview and create a new bot, I’ve created one called “Project Creation”:
I wont cover all the possible options for the PVAs as these are well documented here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/, I will just cover the minimum to get started creating a project. Click the “Customize your greeting” button to load the default Greeting topic editor:
Here on the canvas you can create / edit the steps for the greeting topic. I’ve deleted some of the default messages, updated a message and about to add a question:
I’ve created my first question that the bot will ask the user:
This is taking the entire response as the answer and saving it to the projectName variable. The next question is asking for the start date:
This is identifying the responses as Date and time and saving it to the startDate variable. As you can see this added two conditions in but I will delete those as they are not required in this bot. The final question is asking the user which department is the project for. Department is a custom field I have in the project entity:
This is a multiple choice question to give the user a option to select, I’ve matched the options here that are available my custom Department Option set in the CDS. The answer will be saved to the department variable. As you can see this added three conditions in but I will delete those as they are not required in this bot. Next we need to call an action to create the project. This will call a Flow, create the Flow using the “Create a flow” option if you do not have the Flow yet:
That will take you to the Flow editor with the Power Virtual Agents Flow Template loaded:
Modify this Flow as needed and update the name. Here is my Flow:
Key changes highlighted below:
Updated the JSON schema to support the data the PVA is passing in:
Added a switch action to handle the different departments:
Then within each case, add a “Create a new record” CDS action to create the project, here is the Marketing project example:
Pass in the details as needed, the key parts for this post is that I’m passing in the Name value and the Start Date value from the PVA bot. I’ve hard coded items like the Project Manager in this example. For other setting, see this post for details: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/office365-projectfortheweb-project-request-process-using-microsoftforms-cds-and-powerautomate-projectmanagement-ppm-msproject-powerplatform/ Repeat this for each case in the switch action. The final action is the response to the PVA, this has been updated with the correct outputs that I want to post back:
For this Flow to be available, it needs to be added to a solution. To do this navigate to the Power Apps home and click Solutions > New solution and complete the form then click create. Access the new solution and click Add exiting from the command bar:
Select Flow then click Outside Solutions and select the Flow then click Add:
Now back in the PVA bot editor window, click “Call an action” again" and select the Flow that was added to the solution and set the variables:
We then add another message to inform the user that the project has been created and end the conversation:
Save the bot and test it:
We can now see the new empty project that has been created:
That’s it for part 2 of this series, in part 3 we will look at adding this bot in to Microsoft Teams. Power Virtual Agents are pretty awesome for low / no code bots, try out the preview and see what you think!
#Office365 #ProjectfortheWeb #MicrosoftTeams integration #ProjectManagement #PPM #MSProject #PowerPlatform Part 1
November 16, 2019 at 12:15 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information | 1 CommentTags: Microsoft Teams, MS Project, Office365, Power Platform, PPM, Project for the Web, Project Online
This is a new mini series for the new Project for the Web application that will look at various ways / examples for integrating with Microsoft Teams for improved collaboration. This blog series will talk about Project for the Web: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/tag/project-for-the-web/.
I previously posted a examples on integrating Office 365 Project Online with Microsoft Teams, here are many examples for Project Online: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/tag/microsoft-teams/. This series will build similar integrations but for Project for the Web.
In this first post, we will keep it very simple and just surface the Project in a new Team linked to the Office 365 Group used for the Project. Firstly for this example, as we want to link the Project in a Tab in a Team Channel, we will create a new Team linked to Office 365 Group. If your Project is not linked to an Office 365 Group yet, for example if you haven’t added any team members yet, access the Project and link this to an existing Office 365 Group or create a new Office 365 Group as required. To create / link the Project to an Office 365 Group, access the Project then click “Group members” in the top right corner:
Here use the menu to either create a new group or add to a group. For this example I’m going to use this project and group:
This Office 365 Group doesn’t current have a Microsoft Team associated. Now jump into Microsoft Teams and click Join or create a team at the bottom left below the Teams you are a member of then click Create a team:
Click Create from…
Then Office 365 group:
Scroll and find the group you want, in this example I selected the group I created for the Project:
Now click Create. We now have the new Team linked to the Office 365 group associated with the project:
In the General Channel I will create a new Website tab to link to the project:
The URL used here is as follows:
https://project.microsoft.com/?org=cdsOrg#/taskgrid?projectId=projectId&dynamicsUI=true
Where {cdsOrg} is the Organization project for the web is deployed to, {projectId} is the project ID for the project. The last query string on the end is dynamicsUI=true, this is to remove the Office 365 header and the left navigation pane to give a better embedded experience. Without the dynamicsUI query sting:
With the dynamicsUI query string:
Back in Microsoft Teams, we can now access the Project plan inside Microsoft Teams:
This could be automated if needed but the manual steps are so simple. Next up we look at adding more Microsoft Teams integration for Project for the Web.
#Office365 #ProjectfortheWeb Project Request process using #MicrosoftForms #CDS and #PowerAutomate #ProjectManagement #PPM #MSProject #PowerPlatform
November 11, 2019 at 10:05 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information, Workflow | 1 CommentTags: CDS, Flow, Microsoft Flow, MS Project, Office365, Power Automate, Power Platform, PPM, Project, Project for the Web
A couple of weeks back I posted how to create a project request process for Office 365 Project Online using Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Flow, now known as Power Automate, and SharePoint, for those that missed that post, it can be found here: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/10/23/office365-projectonline-project-request-process-using-microsoftforms-and-microsoftflow-projectmanagement-ppm-msproject-sharepoint-powerplatform/. Since the official release of the new Microsoft Project application, known as Project for the Web, I’ve built a similar example that uses Microsoft Forms, Power Automate and the Power Platform Common Data Service (CDS). For those of you that haven’t seen my posts on the new Project for the Web service, here is a link: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/tag/project-for-the-web/.
The components required for this project request process are Microsoft Forms, Power Automate, the CDS and Project for the Web. Firstly for the entry point to initiate the project request – I’ve used a simple Form as seen below but this could also just as easily have been a Power App.
As with the Project Online example, we could ask whatever details we need to support the project request process but this is just a simple example. The department question is key for this example as that is used to control who approves this project request. I’ve only got two options here to keep it simple but you will see later on in the post how / where to add to this. The next component is the CDS Entity. I’ve created this new Project Requests entity in the default org:
I’ve filtered the fields above to show the custom fields I’ve created in this new Project Requests entity. These are summarised below:
- Project Name – used to store the Project Name from the request form
- Description – used to store the Project Description from the request form
- Project Department – used to store the project department from the request form
- Project Justification – used to store the project justification from the request form
- Reviewed By – used to store the Flow Approval reviewer
- Review Status – used to store Flow Approval status
- Reviewer Comments – used to store the Flow Approval reviewer comments
- Project Requested By – used to store the email address of the user who completed the request form
- Project ID – used to store the Project ID from Project for the Web for project that gets created by the Flow
- Project ID Linked – links to the project in the Project entity for project that gets created by the Flow
To support this process, I’ve also added the “Project Department” field to the Project entity as an option set – add the option values as required.
Options:
The next component is the Power Automate Flow, this is used to automate the process from receiving the project request form response, sending out the approval and creating / updating the CDS entities accordingly. The Power Automate Flow can be seen below with one of the switch cases expanded:
The Flow is covered in more detail below. The final component required is Project for the Web.
This Flow is triggered when a new form response is submitted to the Project Request form. The first action is to initialize a Project Manager variable that is set later on. It then uses an Apply to each loop with a list of the response notifications passed in from the trigger. The first step inside the Apply to each action is the Get response details Form action with the form response ID passed in.
The next action inside the loop is the Get user profile action, here we pass in the Project Request responders email address then the Flow uses the List records CDS action to query the Users entity, a filter is added as we pass in the users ID from the Office 365 Get user profile action. Here it is assumed that the user who completed the Form response is a user in the CDS Users entity. We then set the Project Manager variable inside a 2nd Apply to each loop. Whilst our List records example will only return one result, the List records action could return multiple results so Flow automatically adds the Apply to each. The input for the Apply to each 2 action is the output from the List records actions. The value used to set the ProjectManager variable is in this example is “items(‘Apply_to_each_2’)?[‘systemuserid’] but just pick “User” from the List records dynamic content:
The Flow then uses a Switch action to have different paths based on the department value, the “Which department is the project for?” form answer is used to switch on:
The Flow then has different cases in the Switch action, one for each of the possible values for the “Which department is the project for?” question. I’ve just got 2 cases in this example but this is where you would expand this for more departments:
Expanding one of the cases to see the details and I will point out the differences between each case:
As you can see, the first action is a Flow Approval that is set to “Approve/Reject – First to respond”. I’ve set the Title to be “Marketing Project Request”, update this for other departments as need. I’ve assigned this to the admin account but this where you would assign it to the user who approves the marketing projects. In the details section I’ve added the Project Request form responses for the “Get responses details” action to give the reviewer the details needed. The Condition check action is used to check the approval outcome. Then for requests that were approved the Flow uses another loop. The loop is required as the default Approval action can have more than one response in some cases but in this case it will only have one. Inside the loop there are 3 CDS actions:
Firstly to create a new record in the Project Request entity by passing in the form response value and the approval details:
The second CDS action in this loop is to create the project in the Project entity, here the Calendar Id is required but this is set by the service, here I just put a 1 in there as a value is required in the action, the Name is passed in from the Form value. The Contracting Unit is the Organizational Unit ID found in the Organizational Unit entity, Project Manager is set with the Project Manager variable. The Work hour template is set to the correct Work Template ID found in the Work template entity. The final field set in this example is the Project Department value, here we set Marketing but set this based on the correct Project Department:
The final CDS action in the loop is to update the original Project Request record in the CDS with the newly created Project identifier Project record:
If the project is rejected, in this example a record is created in the Project Request entity only but typically you would also send an email etc. to notify the requester. This action is similar to the first action in the approved side but the Review Status is set to Rejected:
That’s it, a very simple Power Automate, Microsoft Forms and Power Platform CDS project request process for Project for the Web. I will post a short video on my YouTube channel demoing this in action later this week along with a video for the Project Online version too: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_b_pa1ADKlUqIpLK9AmR1g?sub_confirmation=1
Welcome to the new Project – getting started Part 2 #MSProject #PPM #Office365 #PowerPlatform #ProjectMangement #ModernWorkManagement #CDS #PMOT #PMO
October 30, 2019 at 4:11 pm | Posted in Administration, App, Functionality, Information | Leave a commentTags: CDS, Office365, Power Platform, PowerBI, PPM, Project, Project for the Web, Project Home
Following on from yesterday’s blog post: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/welcome-to-the-new-project-getting-started-part-1-msproject-ppm-office365-powerplatform-projectmangement-modernworkmanagement-cds-pmot-pmo/ walking through the new Project, here is part 2. In the post we will look at the backend to the new Project and look at two Power BI report packs I released yesterday. Links were in the part 1 but for completeness here they are again:
Power BI report for Project: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Power-BI-Report-Pack-4506f183
Power BI report to combine Project and Project Online data (1 PWA instance): https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/and-Online-Power-BI-Report-d1fbca1b
Project is built on the Power Platform’s Common Data Service for Apps (CDS), the data is stored in Entities in the CDS – the same as Roadmap – lots of links about Roadmap here: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/project-roadmap-cds-app-overview-ppm-projectmanagement-msproject-projectonline-office365-powerplatfom-dynamics365/ Let’s take a look at the solutions deployed for Project, to do this I’ve accessed the Dynamics 365 Admin Center from the Office 365 Admin centers which loads this:
Project is deployed to the default organisation, on this tenant I only have 1 organisation – click the Open arrow on the Default org. This loads the PowerApps interface, from here click the Settings cog > Advanced Settings:
This takes you to the Dynamics 365 Settings:
Click the Settings > Solutions:
This then loads the solutions deployed to this instance:
You can also see the solutions from the familiar PowerApps interface:
Sticking with the Dynamics 365 Admin interface for the moment, let’s have a quick look at the msdyn_ProjectServiceCore solution:
We can then view the components that form this solution, I wont go into them all but here are a few. Looking at the Entities we can see the Entities used in this solution, here I’ve drilled down to the fields in the Project entity:
I will go into more details on the fields via the PowerApps interface. Looking at the Model-driven Apps we can see Project:
Now lets switch to the PowerApps interface (make.powerapps.com) and view some of the entity fields. Click Data > Entities from the left navigation menu:
Change the view from Default to Managed in the top right corner and scroll down to Project:
Click Project to view the Project entity details:
Here we can see the fields, relationships, rules, views etc. We can also view the current data stored in that entity:
The current main entities used by Project are:
- Bookable Resource
- Project
- Project Bucket
- Project Task
- Project Task Dependency
- Project Team Member
- Resource Assignment
- User
There are others such as Replay Log Section, Work template etc. but those above are where the core data is stored that you see in the UI. Some of these entities are new for Project but some have just been extended or updated to add new components, for example, adding new views or fields to existing entities to support Project. More on the entities later on when we explore the Power BI report pack I created as that is a good way to visualise the data model and the relationships between the entities. Let’s click Apps from the left navigation menu, select Project and click edit:
This then loads the app designer displaying the new Project app – this is what you see when you are in the Dynamics interface that we looked at yesterday. This shows the components that make up the model-driven Project app – more on this in future blogs posts.
Now lets go back to looking at the entities / data model for Project, for this I will use the Power BI template I published yesterday https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Power-BI-Report-Pack-4506f183 Once downloaded and opened in Power BI desktop you will need to provide the CDSUrl for the parameter. There are several ways to get the correct URL for your default CDS instance. Your Office 365 Administrator can access the PowerApps Admin Center, click Environments, click the default environment which loads this:
Then click See all:
Copy the Environment URL. Or you can get it from the browser when accessing project.microsoft.com. When accessing that page, open the browser dev tools and access the Network tab then reload the page, look for GetModProdCdsEndpoint then click the Response tab and find the cdsUrl property value:
Once you have the correct CDS URL, enter that into the CDSUrl parameter input – minus the trailing slash:
Click Load and sign in when prompted. To access all data, the account used here will need Read access at the business unit level to the Project CDS entities used plus the other default roles a normal user is assigned to. If the user account doesn’t have the correct access the connections will fail. You could create a new “project report access” role in the Dynamics 365 instance where Project is deployed if needed. To do that, access the Dynamics 365 admin center from the Office 365 Admin center using the Global Admin account. Open the default Dynamics 365 instance (this is where Project is deployed to) then click the Settings Cog > Advanced Settings. Then click Settings > Security > Security Roles > New. Give the new role Read access at the business unit level to the 8 entities used in the report:
-
- Bookable Resource
- Project
- Project Bucket
- Project Task
- Project Task Dependency
- Project Team Member
- Resource Assignment
- User
Then access the user account that will be used for the report from the Dynamics Security admin in the Users page then assigned the new role to this account using the Manage Roles option. Other roles and role assignments are as per the default settings. I covered this for the Roadmap report pack I released at the start of the year: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/project-roadmap-powerbi-report-pack-ppm-projectmanagement-msproject-projectonline-office365-powerplatform-dynamics365/ – for Project the role needs access to different entities. Once the data has loaded in the Power BI report, click on the Model button on the left navigation menu to view the data model:
Click the Manage Relationships button to view the relationship table:
Here you can see how the different entities / tables are related.
I also published a report yesterday that combines the Project (CDS) data with the Project Online data (1 PWA instance) https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/and-Online-Power-BI-Report-d1fbca1b This report uses the slightly less CDS entities:
- Bookable Resource
- Project
- Project Task
- Resource Assignment
- User
It also uses the following tables in the Project Reporting API:
- Assignments
- Projects
- Resources
- Tasks
This reporting combines the following tables:
- Assignments and Resource Assignments
- Projects and Project
- Project Task and Tasks
- Resources and Bookable Resource
- Resources (Filtered to users) and Users
I will create separate blogs post dedicated to these Power BI Reports in the next week or two but download them and see what you think, hopefully they either give you want you need for reporting or help you build the reports you do need.
Look out for more blog posts and videos on Project in the future!
Welcome to the new Project – getting started Part 1 #MSProject #PPM #Office365 #PowerPlatform #ProjectMangement #ModernWorkManagement #CDS #PMOT #PMO
October 29, 2019 at 5:08 pm | Posted in App, Functionality, Information | 1 CommentTags: CDS, Office365, Power Platform, PowerBI, PPM, Project, Project for the Web, Project Home
As you might have seen, the new Project started rolling out a week just over a week ago but the official release is today, here is the blog post from Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/10/29/new-microsoft-project-rolls-out-worldwide/ If you didn’t see the earlier Microsoft blog post announcement about the start of the rollout it can be found here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Project-Blog/The-new-Project-is-rolling-out/ba-p/909721 In the blog post there are a few links that are worth spending time reading both as Project partner and a Microsoft Project user.
In this blog post we will take a look at the new Project.
How do I access the new Project?
Once the new Project has reached your tenant, creating new projects is via the Project Home, the same place new Roadmaps are created: https://project.microsoft.com/
You can also access this via the Dynamics interface as seen later on in this post.
Clicking the + New blank project button will launch the page:
Building the project schedule
Straightaway you you can start creating tasks on the grid. The first thing to do is give the project a name – click the “Untitled project” and the project name panel will launch:
Here you can give your project a name, change the project owner and project start date if required. Click the “Add new task” row and you can enter the the first task:
Enter the tasks as required:
Hover over the task and you you will see an i icon and an ellipsis, clicking the ellipsis launches the task callout with actions for the task – you can also right click on the task to see the task callout:
Clicking the i icon or the Open details on the task callout launches the task details panel:
Build the schedule as needed, here is my simple example:
At this point there are no dates associated with the tasks. I will now add some durations as this will add start and finish dates to the tasks:
So we now have some tasks, durations and dates, what about the other information like task links, % complete etc.? These columns can be added by clicking the + Add column button:
Add in the columns required – notice that Successor and Predecessor have been renamed. Here I have added in the columns I want:
Columns can be reordered by dragging the column to the required position, column widths can also be adjusted as needed too. The columns added here and the ordering is persistent for this project for all users who have access to it. Let’s add some task links. There are several way to do this, from the Task Details panel using the Add dependency button:
Click it and you can select a task:
Now the Task Details panel updates to the show the linked task with the finish date of the linked and a label to show the task is “Driving”, Task1 in this case is driving Task2:
The Grid has also updated to show the task IDs for the task links in the Dependents (after) and Depends on (before) columns:
You can also create task links by directly clicking in the Dependents or Depends on cells and select the task/s from the list:
Or type the task ID or task name in the cell:
The other way I want to show you is the slickest way by far, click the Timeline button next to the project name. This loads the interactive Gantt chart:
As you hover over a task bar on the Gantt you see controls appear:
Here I can drag the end of one task to the start of another to create the task link:
The Gantt will then update to move the tasks as required:
I have now created my simple project task schedule:
Assigning Resources
Who used to get fed up having to build the team to be able to assign an enterprise resource? Well not anymore! Hover over the Assign to cell next to the task and click the + person icon:
This launches the control to add a resource:
Now simply start typing the name of the resource to search the tenant directory and click the resource to add them:
Clicking the user will launch a modal pop up:
As you can see from the pop up, I firstly need to connect my new project to an Office 365 Group. I can either create a new Office 365 Group or link to an existing one. For this project I will create a new Office 365 Group. Clicking the proposed group name loads the Office 365 Group menu – update as required:
Then click Create and assign to assign the resource. When adding other resources to the project, you will see another modal pop up:
This is just to warn you that the user will be added to the group and have access to the project data, groups files and Microsoft Teams etc. – more on this in the Project Access Model. One point to note, you can no longer assign anyone to a summary task:
This was bad practice anyway but it’s great Project now prevents this!
You might also want to plan and manage your plan in an Kanban type task board, this is covered using the Board view, this is accessed by clicking the Board button next to the Project Name:
There are different view options available on the menu here:
The default view is the “Group by Progress” view which has 3 fixed columns for Not Started, In Progress and Completed – more on this view when we cover task progress. Switching to the Bucket view, new buckets can be added:
Click the “Add Bucket” button to create a new bucket. Task cards can then be dragged into the new bucket/s:
Switching to Group by Finish Date and you see the Task group in Next Week and Future:
Just note, if you drag a task from the Next Week column into the Future column, this will update the task’s and any linked dependent task’s Finish dates to the future. Notice on all of the Board views, Summary Tasks are filtered out.
Project / Task Progress
There are several ways to progress a task in Project. Starting with the Grid view, you can click in the % complete cell and type:
Click out of the cell and you will see the progress:
You can open the Task Details panel and type the progress in the % Complete input:
In the Board view using the “Group by Progress” view, you can drag a task card to “In Progress” and this will update the task % complete to 50% or drag a task card to the Completed and this will update the task % complete to 100%:
You can also click the empty circles you see next to the Task names on all views, when you hover over these you see a tick appear inside:
Clicking the empty circle marks the task as complete, the same feature that exists in Microsoft To-Do:
Project Saving and Editing
The project auto saves so no need to worry about saving and the concept of publishing no longer exists – how cool is that! Need to undo / redo something, just use Ctrl + z to undo and Ctrl + y to redo.
The new Project also supports co-authoring so multiple users can edit the project at the same time!
Project Access Model
The security for the new Project is built on the Office 365 Groups model – just like Project Roadmap. When you assign a user to a task, they are added to the Office 365 Group. All users in that Office 365 Group have edit access to the project. You can check group access very easily via the Group Members button in the top right corner:
It is a very simple access model, you either can access and edit the project by being in the Office 365 Group or not access to the project at all.
Access via Dynamics 365
As mentioned at the start of this post, you can create new projects via the Project Home but also via the Dynamics interface. Access the Dynamics home https://home.dynamics.com and click the Project app, this will load the Project app:
From here you can create new projects or edit / view existing projects, see below my test project opened in the Dynamics interface:
Summary View:
Tasks View:
I can edit the project directly here or for a better experience, click the “Open in Project” button to edit in the full page experience this post has covered. I will cover more of the Dynamics interface in future posts.
Extensibility Options
As the new Project is built on the Power Platform Common Data Service for Apps (CDS), you have the power of the Power Platform to extend / build on top of Project using PowerApps, Flow and Power BI. I will have many posts in the future for extending / adding features for the new Project, maybe even one or two later this week / early next!
Reporting
All of the data is stored in entities in the CDS so reporting is very simple from tools like Power BI. I do have a Power BI report pack for the new Project, this can be downloaded here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Power-BI-Report-Pack-4506f183 In part 2 of this getting started series I will cover the Power BI Report pack. Here are some screenshots of the reports:
You can also add Projects from the new Project (I wonder how long I will keep calling it that!) into Roadmap.
I have also created a Power BI report pack that displays both Project (CDS) and Project Online data in the same reports to help with the transition where you might be using both applications side by side, this can be downloaded here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/and-Online-Power-BI-Report-d1fbca1b The reports look very similar the the Project reports above.
Summary
Well the wait is finally over, the new Project is here, go give it a try! This post covers most of the end user features, in part 2 I will cover the backend. Project Online will still be a part of the Microsoft PPM offering so I will still continue to include blog posts / videos for Project Online. I have also published an intro video here: https://youtu.be/4OeegM8ScMk
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