Paul's Project Server and Project Online Blog

#ProjectOnline Supporting Projects and Programs Part 2 #PPM #MSProject #Office365 #PMOT #PMO #SharePoint

In part 2 of this mini series of blog posts we will look at the configuration on the Project Sites to support projects and programs. For those of you that missed part 1, see the post here: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/09/19/projectonline-supporting-projects-and-programs-part-1-ppm-msproject-office365-pmot-pmo/ 

As the Project Site are SharePoint sites, this also has many configuration options but this needs to be considered careful based on your reporting requirements. Whilst all of the data in SharePoint is accessible for reporting not all data on the Issues and Risks lists is available in the Project Online OData Reporting API. Only the data from default list columns Microsoft include on the Issues and Risks are included in the Project Online OData Reporting API. Other data from custom columns on the lists is accessible but only via the SharePoint list REST APIs but this can be tricky to report on for a cross project report. Here is an example for accessing this data in Power BI reports: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/want-to-query-cross-project-site-sharepoint-lists-in-projectonline-projectserver-powerbi-powerquery-bi-office365-excel-ppm/ As we want to keep this as simple as possible, we will ensure the data we need in synchronised to the Project Online OData API. The Category column on the Issues and Risks lists is the ideal default column to use for our requirements. By default this contains the following values:

(1) Category1
(2) Category2
(3) Category3

We will update these values for the Category columns to match the lookup table values we created for the Project Plan Type and Escalation Level PWA custom fields:

1_Program
2_Project

This is done on each list, for example access the Risks list, click the List tab then List Settings. Scroll down the page to the columns and click the Category column and update the values. Repeat for the Issues list then repeat for the other project sites. You need to be careful updating some of the default Issues and Risks columns as you can break the synchronisation processes to the Project Online reporting schema which the OData Reporting API uses. If you do break this sync, you will see queue errors in the PWA Manage Queue page. Changing just the choice values as I have will be fine and not cause sync issues but fully test changes to ensure the data syncs as expected with no queue errors. As the Issues and Risks use a list content type, these change need to be made in the site template so new project sites get new values and manually or via code in the existing project sites but that is beyond the scope of this post but here is a post that might help get you started: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/access-projectonline-project-sites-using-powershell-and-sharepoint-csom-office365/ or https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/projectonline-projectserver-project-site-provisioning-using-office365-pnp-remote-provisioning-sharepoint-powershell/ When updating existing project site lists, you will need to consider existing data on those lists as they might be using values you are wanting to remove.

Now our project sites have the correct Category values for Issues and Risks, we can tagged the items as needed as seen below on an example project:

Issues:

Risks:

You could also update the Risks and Issues view to and views that filter to just Program or Project or group by Category etc. Now the project sites are updated, when Issues and Risks are created these can be tagged with the correct category to make these visible in Program level reports.

In the final part of this blog post series we will look at using this data in example Power BI reports.

#ProjectOnline Supporting Projects and Programs Part 1 #PPM #MSProject #Office365 #PMOT #PMO

Microsoft’s Office 365 PPM tool, known as Project Online is a very flexible tool in that it is fully configurable to support your organisations PPM requirements. An intro to some of the configuration options can be found in my getting started guide I wrote a few years back: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/getting-started-with-projectonline-round-up-ps2013-office365-project-ppm-sharepointonline-pm-sp2013/ 

In this mini series of blog posts we will look at an option for supporting a simple project hierarchy of projects and programmes – known as programs across the pond. Due to the flexibility Project Online offers, there are several ways this can be done – there is no right or wrong way. The right way is the way that works for your organisation. In this example we will use custom fields to support projects and programmes, these will be at the project level, task level and also the issues and risks lists. But you could do this with Enterprise Project Types (EPTs) with different project site templates and custom fields but for the purpose of this blog post we will just use the fields and all projects are under that same EPT. In this series of posts we will look at the minimum required PWA configuration, the SharePoint configuration and then finish off with some simple example reports making use of the configuration changes we implement.

Firstly we will look at the PWA custom fields then the Project Site columns. In PWA navigate to PWA Settings > Enterprise Custom Fields and Lookup Tables. I created a new lookup table to hold the following values to determine the level, I called this Project Plan Type:

I created another lookup table called Program to list the programs used in the organisation:

As you can see, I just created two test / example program values just for the purpose of this blog post. Next I created two project level custom fields, one call Program linking to the Program lookup table and one called Project Plan Type linking to the Project Plan Type lookup table:

These are used to tag the projects with the correct project type and associate the projects to the correct program.

I also created a task level field called Escalation Level and linked that to the Project Plan Type lookup table:

This task level field is used to escalate / highlight tasks or milestones from the project plans up to the program level if needed.

These are the only fields I need to add to support my simple project / program scenario.

Next up I will configure a Project Center view to support my projects and programs, in PWA Settings navigate to Manage Views and create the new view/s as required. In this example, I copied the default Summary view, called it Programs. I then edited this new Programs view to include the two new project level fields – Program and Project Plan Type. I then added a grouping to group by Program then by Project Plan Type and sort by Project Plan Type:

Which results in – these are just test projects for the purpose of this blog post:

This view enables us to easily see the project and program data as well as aggregate the data to the summary grouping rows where applicable.

I then updated the Task Summary Project view to include the new Escalation Level field so that this new field can be used in PWA. It could also be added to an Enterprise Global view so that it was available by default in a Project Desktop client view/s. The updated view can be seen here:

Next, ensure the two new Project level fields are present on a Project Detail Page (PDP) so that users can set the values as needed.

We are now able to capture the schedule data required to support this simple scenario for projects and programs. The details for each project are managed as normal in the “2_Project” type projects, any tasks or milestones that need escalating to the program would be tagged correctly and viewed in reports. Program level activities are managed in the “1_Program” type project, all of the program level summary details such a Status Summary as seen on the PDP image above are added to the program project. In the next post we will look at how we can support this on the Issues and Risks lists on the Project Sites.