Getting Starting with #ProjectOnline and #PowerApps #PVC18 presentation links #PPM #PMOT #Apps #Office365 #MSProject
June 14, 2018 at 7:59 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information, Mobile | 1 CommentTags: Apps, Office365, PowerApps, Project Online
Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the awesome Project Virtual Conference 2018. During my session I referenced existing blog posts and code samples that I had previously published on my blog. As promised in the presentation, here is a blog post containing all of the relevant links to help get you started using PowerApps for Project Online. A link to my session is here: http://projectvirtualconference.com/sessions/getting-started-with-project-online-and-powerapps/
Firstly here is a link to the official PowerApps site: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/build-powerapps/
The first example app we looked at was a navigation PowerApp for Project Online, this made use of the SharePoint Online connector in PowerApps. As discussed, you would need a process to get the required Project Online data into the target SharePoint list for this approach. Here a link to an example solution starter PowerShell script that will do just that: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/projectonline-powershell-to-keep-ppm-data-in-sync-on-sharepoint-list-pmot-o365/
Once the data is available, here are the two links that walkthrough creating this example navigation app:
The next example PowerApp we looked at in the presentation made use of the Project Online connector in PowerApps to give examples of using some of the actions available in the connector. This works directly with Project Online so does not require any background process to get data into SharePoint. As mentioned in the presentation, the properties available are fairly limited, hence for the navigation app I had to get the data from Project Online into SharePoint list first as I needed the Project Site URL which is not in the Project data set in the Project Online connector for PowerApps. This example app did make use of the Project Online connector in PowerApps: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/
Here are the three links that walkthrough creating this example app:
As mentioned in the presentation, you can create a PowerApp that make use of both the SharePoint connector and Project Online or any number of connectors available for PowerApps – there are lots!
PowerApps are a great way to build business applications without having to write any code!
#ProjectOnline #PowerApps using the Project Online Connector #PPM #Apps #MSProject #O365 Part2
April 11, 2018 at 12:20 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation | 2 CommentsTags: Office365, PowerApps, PPM, Project 2016, Project Online
In part two of this series of blog posts we will look at using the ListTasks action from the Project Online PowerApps Connector. For those of you that missed part 1, here is a link: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/projectonline-powerapps-using-the-project-online-connector-ppm-apps-msproject-o365-part1/
The ListTasks action is: ProjectOnline.ListTasks("{ProjectGUID}","{"PWASiteURL}).value
As you can see we need to pass in two parameters here, the Project GUID and the PWA Site URL. As this requires the Project GUID, we will use the PowerApp we started with in part 1 and pass in the Project GUID from the first screen. Add another screen to your PowerApp, in this example I have just added a blank screen and renamed it to Tasks:
Now add a data table to this new screen:
With the new data table selected, click the Advanced option in the right pane:
Now on the advanced settings pane, in DATA > Items enter:
ProjectOnline.ListTasks(Gallery2.Selected.Id,https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa).value
Update the query as required, for example update to the correct gallery name and update to the correct PWA URL.
Click “Choose the fields you want to add from the customization pane”, in this example I have selected Name and PercentComplete:
Now I will add a label at the top of the screen to display the Project Name. With the label added to the screen, select the label and click the advanced setting pane:
In DATA > Text starting typing the name of your gallery added to the first screen, select it then type “.” then click selected then “.” then click Name:
Now the project name for the first project in the gallery will display:
You could look to include an option here to add new tasks if you wanted, the action to use would be: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/#creates-new-task
Now we need to add in a control to be able to navigate back to the projects screen, I have just added a left arrow icon then updated the OnSelect property in the advanced settings pane to navigate to the projects screen:
Now on the Projects screen we need to update the next icon on the gallery to navigate to the Tasks screen, select the icon and update the OnSelect property on the advanced pane:
Now you have an app that will display a list of all projects directly from Project Online, then access the tasks from that selected project.
Next up we will look at create new projects in Project Online using the CreateProject action.
#ProjectOnline #PowerApps using the Project Online Connector #PPM #Apps #MSProject #O365 Part1
March 14, 2018 at 10:39 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation | 2 CommentsTags: Office365, PowerApps, PPM, Project 2016, Project Online
I recently published two articles on creating a navigation type app for Project Online using PowerApps, here is a screen shot of the project details screen from that example app:
For those of you that missed those posts, the links are below:
That particular example used a SharePoint list as the data source as there were certain properties I needed such as the Project Site URL that are not available in the native Project Online connector for PowerApps. I also stored project images in that source SharePoint list and displayed those in my example app. I used a custom process to populate the SharePoint list with the Project Online data and kept that data in sync. In this series of blog posts we will look at how to use the native Project Online PowerApps connector: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/.
This connector allows us to perform certain actions in PowerApps such as read the list of Projects directly from the PWA site collection: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/#List_projects or creating a new project: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/#Creates_new_project for example.
This series of blog posts wont build a full PowerApp using this connector but it will show snippets on how to use some of the Project Online PowerApps connector functions.
The first one we will look at is displaying a list of projects in PowerApps using the list projects function.
This series of posts assume that you have set up a Project Online Connection to Project Online:
If you haven’t set up a Project Online connection yet, it is very simple, just click the + New Connection link and find Project Online then add.
Using the PowerApps studio, either desktop or web, we will start with a blank app:
The first thing to do is to add the Project Online data source, click “connect to data”. This will load all of your connections you have added to PowerApps / Flow, select the Project Online connection:
Then close the Data window. Now decide on the visual that you need to display the projects, I inserted a gallery:
Then set the layout to just Title as I only will just display the project name for the purpose of this blog post:
Click Advanced on the Gallery settings pane and you will notice it states “CustomGallerySample” in the DATA > Items field. Update this to:
ProjectOnline.ListProjects("{PWASiteURL}").value
Now you can select a property to display on the gallery, in this example I will select Name:
Now all of your projects will appear in the gallery directly from Project Online:
In the next post we will look at how to use the ListTasks function in the Project Online PowerApps connector.
#ProjectOnline workaround for Project app link on #O365 waffle app launcher #PPM #PMOT #Office365
March 8, 2018 at 2:42 am | Posted in Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Fixes, Functionality, Information | 2 CommentsTags: Office365, PPM, Project 2016, Project Online
For organisations that only have one Project Web App (PWA) instance and use /PWA, today using the Project app link on the Office 365 waffle app launcher works as expected. For those organisations that have multiple PWA instances this can be an issue. The link I am talking about can be seen below:
This points to /MyProjects as seen above but when Project Online is present on the tenant it will always redirect to /sites/PWA as seen below:
This can be a problem for those customers that either have multiple PWA instances or do not use the default /PWA instance. Unfortunately the Project link on the waffle app launcher is not configurable so one workaround we have done for clients before is to not use the /PWA instance at all apart from using it as a landing page for the other PWA instances in the organisation. If you are in the planning stage for rolling out Project Online and know that you will have multiple PWA instances on the same Office 365 tenant, this might be a good option for you to consider and explore.
Firstly create the following css file that will be used to remove the PWA quick launch menu:
Save this on the /PWA site somewhere such as the Style Library:
Now edit the PWA homepage and delete the “Track your work” web part and add a content editor web part, in the content editor web part reference the .css file and change the chrome type to None:
Click Apply then click OK and the quick launch will disappear. Add another content editor web part and update the Title to “Project Web App sites” or a more appropriate name as required:
Click the new content editor web part where is states click here to add new content then add in the links to all the PWA instances that you have on the tenant using the content editor web part controls – you have lots of options and can make it look as nice as you like. In this example I have just used a simple table:
Click Stop editing on the Page tab and you will see the following:
Then ensure all users of Project Online have read access to the /PWA site (do not grant higher access as you do not want them incorrectly creating projects here):
This way if a user clicks the “Project” app link on the Office 365 waffle app launcher they can at least then easily navigate onto the correct PWA instance.
You could take this even further and have multiple content editor web parts on the page, one for each PWA instance then use SharePoint’s audience targeting feature to show the correct PWA instance/s for the logged on user.
#ProjectOnline #PowerShell to keep #PPM data in sync on #SharePoint list #PMOT #O365
March 1, 2018 at 1:38 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information | 1 CommentTags: Office365, PowerApps, PowerShell, PPM, Project Online, SharePoint Online
Following on from my two PowerApps posts on creating an example Project Online PowerApps app, I thought I would publish the example PowerShell script that I used to populate and update my SharePoint list in the Project Web App site collection. For those that missed my Project Online PowerApps posts, please find the links below:
The script sample can be downloaded from the Microsoft Script Gallery here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Keep-Online-data-in-sync-06a1bf8d
This PowerShell script will use the Project Reporting OData API to get all of the published projects in the Project Online PWA Site Collection, then for each project it will then create or update a list item on the specified SharePoint list. If the project has already been created on the SharePoint list on a previous run, the items will be updated rather than creating a new item.The user setting up the script will need to make some changes to the script, this is covered in the blog post.
The account used will need access to the OData API in PWA and contribute access to the target SharePoint list. The SharePoint list will also need to be created beforehand with the required columns.
To get the script to work you will need to reference the DLL as seen in the image below:
This can be installed from the SharePoint Online Client components / management shell. I used the dll from the SharePoint Online Management Shell in this example.
Firstly decide what project level fields you want to include in your PowerApp / SharePoint list, this will determine the list column requirements. Then create the SharePoint list in the PWA site collection with the required columns, for this example I created a list called ProjectData with the columns below:
Title is used for my Project Names in this example. You will then need to update the list item update / creation part of the sample script to map to the correct SharePoint column names you created and the project fields:
Also ensure the variables have been updated correctly, placeholder values seen below:
Save and run the PowerShell script (fully test on a non-production PWA site collection before Production) to ensure the data is captured correctly in the target SharePoint list. This script could be run manually on demand or on schedule using a scheduled task if running on a server or a scheduled Azure Function or other methods. This script could also be updated to work based on the project publish event using a combination of Flow / Logic App and an Azure Function based on previous examples I have blogged: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/running-projectonline-powershell-in-azure-using-azurefunctions-ppm-cloud-flow-logicapp-part2/
Whilst the purpose of this script was to enable us to get the data into a SharePoint list and keep the data in sync for our PowerApp, it can be used for other purposes. For example, you could use this example script to modified the last script I published for HTLM fields to update existing items rather than creating new items each run. Do keep in mind that this SharePoint list would not be security trimmed like a Project Center view though, so you might want to restrict access to the SharePoint list depending on your data / security policies for your PPM data.
The script is provided "As is" with no warranties etc.
#ProjectOnline #PowerApps example #Office365 #PPM #PMOT #Apps #MSProject #SharePoint Part2
February 24, 2018 at 10:17 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information, Mobile | 2 CommentsTags: Office365, PowerApps, PPM, Project 2016, Project Online, SharePoint Online
In part 2 of this series we look at continuing with the example PowerApp for Project Online for project details and project navigation. For those of you that missed part 1, a link to the post can be found below:
In part 2 we will update the detail screen to display the data we want and include links to PWA for the associated project. If you are following, open the app you started in part 1:
Using the tree view on the left, click DetailScreen1 to load the detail screen or click the chevron next to a project from the browse screen:
Firstly I updated the screen label to “Project Details” and deleted the delete and edit icons:
Next two buttons were added to the top bar, one for the Site and one for the Tasks. The Site button will launch DataCardValue8 which in my case is the Project Site URL as seen below:
The Tasks button will launch the Project Schedule PDP but concatenating the PWA URL for the schedule PDP (or whatever PDP you want to link to) then using the ProjectID, in my case DataCardValue2, from the detail screen for the projuid URL parameter:
The buttons were added to the screen using the insert menu:
As you can see, there are lots of options on the insert ribbon! Other quick links could easily be added such as Issues, Risks, New Risk etc. That is it for the detail view, we have some project details and two buttons that link out to PWA for the associated project:
Just for fun I also added a new screen in for a chart. I inserted a bar chart and created a project count by progress chart:
For the Items, I entered the following formula to count the number of projects Completed, Not Starter or In Progress:
The formula is below for my data, ProjectData is the name of my SharePoint list and Progress is the column on my SharePoint list that contains the % complete value for each project:
Table(
{Column: "Completed", Value: CountIf(ProjectData, Progress = 100)
},
{Column: "Not Started", Value: CountIf(ProjectData, Progress = 0)
},
{Column: "In Progress", Value: CountIf(ProjectData, Progress <> 0 && Progress <> 100)
}
)
Then set the item colours:
I then added the back arrow to navigate back to the main browse screen:
The final change was to add an icon to the main browse screen that enabled navigation to the chart screen:
To preview your app in PowerApps, press F5:
Main screen: list of projects with search and sort using project name, link for each project to project detail screen, access to chart screen, refresh the data and link to create a new project in Project Online
Details screen: project details with button links to the project site or schedule PDP in Project Online PWA and a back button to the main screen
Chart screen: bar chart display project count by progress for Completed, Not Started and In Progress with a back button to the main screen
Once you are happy with your app you can share it to your organisation. Before you do, access the App Settings view and give it a name, set the icon and description:
Then click Save and save it to your organisations PowerApps environment then share the app:
For details on Saving, publishing and sharing your apps see the links here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/save-publish-app & https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/share-app Users can then access your app using the browser, PowerApps Studio or the PowerApps mobile app!
Hopefully that has given you enough to get started or given you some ideas for Project Online PowerApps. There are so many features to PowerApps, they are very powerful! For getting started guides on PowerApps start here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/getting-started
Have fun!
#ProjectOnline #PowerApps example #Office365 #PPM #PMOT #Apps #MSProject Part1
February 21, 2018 at 11:47 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information, Mobile | 3 CommentsTags: Office365, PowerApps, PPM, Project 2016, Project Online
PowerApps aren’t a new feature in Office 365 but not one that I have blogged about before, mainly due to the lack of native support for Project Online, but I have created apps before using PowerApps – it’s an awesome application! PowerApps provide a great way for users to create powerful business apps without writing code. You can use the same connectors that have use for Flow etc. so there is great support for SharePoint Online but no so much for Project Online. There is a connector in preview but it doesn’t return the properties I needed for this example. To get around this, the easiest approach is to have your Project Online data in a SharePoint list, I have covered a few examples with code samples before:
In this series of posts, we will create a simple navigation type app for Project Online using PowerApps. In part 1 we look at getting started and creating / updating the browse / home screen. To do this we will need the Project Online data in a SharePoint list using a similar process as the examples above. This post assumes you already have your Project Online data available in a SharePoint Online list and a process to keep this updated as your Project Online changes, similar to the list below:
Access PowerApps from the Office 365 app launcher:
This will launch PowerApps:
If you haven’t used SharePoint Online in Flow or PowerApps before, firstly you will need to click Connections > New Connections > Type SharePoint in the Search bar and add the SharePoint connection:
Once you have the connection you can create the app. To create the PowerApp you can either use the web based PowerApps Studio that can be accessed on the Apps page:
Or there is an App available in the Microsoft Store:
For the purpose of this blog post I will be using the Windows 10 App but the steps are the same.
Once the App launches, you can Open existing apps:
Or create a new one, click the New button:
From here you can create an app starting with your data, start from a blank canvas or start from a template. The templates options will present you with template previews to select from:
For the purpose of the this blog post and to keep the blog post shorter, we will start with our SharePoint data, if this is your first PowerApp this might be the best option to start with until you’re familiar with PowerApps:
Type the URL of the site that contains the list:
Press Go then select the correct list and press Connect, in this example it is ProjectData:
PowerApps will then build a working app for you based on the data in your SharePoint list:
Once finished, home / browse screen is displayed:
Clicking the chevron for a project loads the detail screen:
That might be good enough for some scenarios – pretty awesome given it was a click of a button! As mentioned, we will look to make a navigation type app that displays some high level project information so we will make some minor tweaks to the base app PowerApps kindly created for us.
Clicking on different areas on the canvas will enable different settings or you can click the elements using the left hand tree view. The first item we will change is the ProjectData label which by default takes the source list name. This property is the LblAppName1:
Moving down the screen, we want to change the search feature so that the search box and sorting work on the Project Name. To do this, select BrowseGallery1 from the left hand tree view, then click Advanced, finally update the Data items. Replace ComplianceAssetId with Title as seen below in two places:
The search box and sort icon will now work on the Project Name – in our case this is Title on the source SharePoint list.
Next up we want to see Project Name and Project Owner on the project summary section. Using the left hand tree view, click Title1 then access the Advanced menu. In the DATA section under the Text property, update this to “ThisItem.Title”:
Notice the Project Name now appears. Repeat for Subtitle1 and select a different project property or multiple properties, I will set the Project Owner and % complete:
I will also change the Body1 property to display the Project Start and Finish Dates:
The final change for the browse screen in part 1 of this blog post is to change the IconNewItem1, this is the + symbol in the top right corner. In the default app, this will load the edit screen to create a new list item, for this example we will point this to load the create project page in Project Online. Select the IconNewItem1 from the left hand tree view, replace the OnSelect “NewForm(EditForm1;Navigate(EditScreen1, None) with Launch(https://PWASiteURL/_layouts/15/PWA/Wizards/CreateProject.aspx) and update the tooltip as seen below:
The browse screen should look something like this now:
With the ability to search and sort on Project Name:
Worth noting is that this project data will not be security trimmed etc.
We have barely touched the surface of PowerApps but that is it for Part 1. In Part 2 we look at updating the detail view and adding in links to navigate to the project in PWA.
Running #ProjectOnline #PowerShell in #Azure using #AzureFunctions #PPM #Cloud #Flow #LogicApp Part1
July 28, 2017 at 4:50 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Configuration, Customisation, Fixes, Functionality, Information, PowerShell, Workflow | 4 CommentsTags: Azure Function, Flow, Office365, PowerShell, PPM, Project 2016, Project Online
Following on from my last post where I published an example solution starter PowerShell script for adding project team users to the Project Site, here I mentioned about running the script in an Azure Function and even running this sync from a Project Online event. The blog post can be seen below if you missed that:
Whilst I will use that example PowerShell script from my last blog post as an example, the concept will work for any PowerShell script.
I wont cover the details in setting up the Azure Function in part 1 as there is plenty of support out there for this – for this example I created an Http Trigger – PowerShell function.
I then uploaded the SharePoint DLLs and copied in the PowerShell script into the editor:
The project site user sync script didn’t work as is as I had to make some minor changes to get this to run from the Azure Function. This included change the way the SharePoint CSOM DLLs where loaded in. In the example script I used Add-Type to load the DLLs but in the Azure Function I had to switch this out to use Import-Module:
The next change I had to make was to comment out all of the feedback to the console, so all of the write-hosts. I also had to remove the functions within the script so that is was one block. After these changes I could execute the PowerShell script to add the project team members from my example project into the associated project site from the Azure Function. As this was an HTTP Trigger Azure Function, you can get the URL to the function and access that URL to execute the function.
This opens up lots of possibilities to easily execute this Azure Function from other applications that can make the HTTP call. For example you build easily execute this script once the project has been published either using a remote event receiver (RER) or a Microsoft Flow / Azure Logic App. The example script would need to be made generic and pass in a variable into the Azure Function for it to be a workable solution.
In part 2 of this blog post we will look at make a full event driven solution that is fired on project publish then executing the Azure Function and passing in a variable.
#ProjectOnline project user sync to project sites #PPM #O365 #PowerShell #SharePoint
July 7, 2017 at 4:13 pm | Posted in Add-on, Administration, App, Customisation, Functionality, Information, PowerShell, Workarounds | 1 CommentTags: Office365, PowerShell, PPM, Project 2016, Project Online
This is a supporting blog post for an example solution starter PowerShell script I wrote for Microsoft’s Office 365 PPM tool Project Online. With the great improvement from Microsoft to now support up to 30,000 Projects and Project Sites in one Project Online Project Web App site collection, there are some limitations such as not being able to sync the users to project sites outside of the PWA site collection. For details on this change see the post here:
This solution starter script just demonstrates one method to sync the project team members into the associated Project Site- the concept would also be useful when using the SharePoint permission mode in PWA. The example script is fixed to one example project / project site and only adds the team members to the members SharePoint group on that site. It doesn’t loop through all projects or remove users from the project sites etc. This could all easily be done but is beyond the scope of the code sample / solution starter.
The code sample / solution starter can be downloaded from here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Online-User-Sync-to-7a75ef77
To get the script to work, there will need to be some environment variables set and a DLL available, these are detailed below.
To get the script to work you will need to reference the DLL as seen in the image below:
This can be installed from the SharePoint Online Client components / management shell. I used the dll from the SharePoint Online Management Shell in this example.
You will then need to update the environment detail placeholders as seen below:
Add the Full PWA URL, username and password for an account that is a full admin on the PWA site collection. Select an example project to test with on a non-production PWA project / project site. Use a project that is not syncing the users to the project site automatically – for example a project site outside of the PWA site collection. Copy the Project GUID – it will be similar to this: 4b75dfb8-4051-e711-80c9-00155da85037 and update the script with the project GUID. An easy way to get the Project GUID is from the PWA PDP URL when accessing the project. For the same project, copy the full project site URL and update the script then find the name of the correct SharePoint group to add the users to. For example it could be the members group. The groups can be found from the project site > Settings cog > Site Settings > Site Permissions.
Once these variable placeholders are set, save the script. Run the script using PowerShell and you will see the users added to the specified group on the project site. Fully test this on a non-production PWA instance first. The code should really be updated to production standard code before using on a production PWA instance and handle removing users, adding users to different permissions groups based on role and dynamically getting the projects and project site urls etc.
Below you can see the output from the PowerShell ISE when running against my example project / project site on my test PWA instance:
Looking at the project site you can see the users here:
A production version of the PowerShell script could be set to run each day / night etc. as required. The code could also easily be run using an Azure Function and executed from a URL – you could then build is an event driven type user sync – more on that in my next blog post.
The script is provided "As is" with no warranties etc. – this is just a free solution starter so is use at your own risk.
#ProjectOnline – 1 PWA site collection for all or 1 per department? #O365 #PPM #PMOT #Office365 #MSProject
March 20, 2017 at 6:55 pm | Posted in App, Configuration, Customisation, Functionality, Information, Installation | Comments Off on #ProjectOnline – 1 PWA site collection for all or 1 per department? #O365 #PPM #PMOT #Office365 #MSProjectTags: Office 2016, Office365, PPM, Project 2013, Project 2016, Project Online
A question I hear a few times from organisations is “We have a new department or business unit coming on-board with Project Online, do we need a new PWA instance for them or can we use the one we already have?” The answer isn’t normally a straightforward yes or no. This post aims to cover most of the questions you need to ask when considering using the existing PWA site collection or creating a new one for a new department / business unit.
The first thing to consider is the Project Online limitations for the data such as number of projects per PWA site, check out the limits here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Project-Online-software-boundaries-and-limits-5a09dbce-1e68-4a7b-b099-d5f1b21ba489. Check how many projects you currently have in the PWA site collection and how many more the new business unit expect to add into the PWA site collection – if you are going to be reaching the limits on a PWA site collection then consider a dedicated PWA site collection for the new business unit. The number of PWA site collections in each Office 365 tenant will not be an issue – you can have up to 9,999. Just because you can have lots of PWA site collection doesn’t automatically mean the answer is a new PWA site collection each time!
One PWA site collection will support different PWA configurations for each business unit or department (custom fields , Enterprise Project Types etc.) by making use of the Department functionality to separate those configuration items. So for example, the R&D department only see configuration items relevant to them. So if the new business unit has different custom field / EPT requirements, that shouldn’t be a problem using a single PWA instance.
Whilst talking about configuration items, there are some items that are at the PWA site collection level that can’t be configured / tailored to each business unit or department. These would be some of the Time and Task Management options such as Time Reporting Periods, Timesheet settings and Task settings. Also some settings under the Operational Policies such as Additional Server Settings. If the new business unit has different requirements for time capturing they would need a dedicated PWA instance.
Another important aspect to consider is – will these different business units require access to the same enterprise resources to assign to tasks? Will they need to view the true resource demand / availability for these resources in one place? If this is the case then the easiest option is for the new business unit to use the same PWA site collection.
If there is a requirement to see the data from each business unit together in PWA, for example in a project center view then a single PWA site collection would be required. Similarly, if both business units projects needed to be included in the organisations portfolio strategic analysis for cost and resource requirements, a single PWA site collection will be required.
Reporting is another key factor, if the reports need to show data from all business units / departments then a single PWA instance is easier but it is still possible to generate reports that use data from multiple PWA site collections. With multiple PWA site collections this is something that can be worked around providing there was common metadata between the PWA site collections to enable projects from both PWA site collections to be viewed in the same report.
Then there is the management of the PWA site collection/s. It might be that the organisation has a central PMO function that administers the PWA site collection – adding another PWA site collection will increase their workload.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, here are just a few of the things to consider when deciding on using the existing PWA site collection or a new PWA site collection when a new business unit / department are coming on board.
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