SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

I have been playing around with Project Server 2013 for a while now and there is a specific, for the lack of a better term feature (I will refer it as a feature for the rest of this post) that from my point of view is easy to use and can add a lot of value. In Project Server 2013 you are able to make a site and in this site you are able to make a custom list. While that is not that interesting, it becomes a lot more interesting when you know that new items in that custom list can be promoted to Enterprise Projects.

Being able to promote custom list items to Enterprise Projects and able to map these list items to a specific Enterprise Project Type gives an organization a lot of options like:

Idea Center:

Letting employees fill the custom list with ideas that would benefit the organization in some way. When one of these idea’s is chosen to be implemented and is big enough to be a project you are able to easily take that idea and promote it to an Enterprise Project so that a Project Manager can start managing that project.

Proposal Center:

A sales department of an organization can enter all the proposals that are sent out to clients in the custom list. When a client accepts a proposals it can be immediately be promoted to an Enterprise Project.

I think people can think up a lot more ways to use this feature then these two example but it just shows how it can be used in an organization.

So how does it work?

I will start with the immediate drawback. To be able to promote custom list items from a site it needs to be a site that is under the /PWA site collection. The reason why I call this a drawback is that I rather see it being a SharePoint site like an intranet to make it easier for users to contribute idea’s for instances.

The site you create doesn’t really matter and for this example I am using a Team Site.

When done making a new site the next step is making a custom list. When you created a custom list you can fill it with the columns you need.

As you can see in the screenshot I created some Project Idea’s. Now if you want to promote a idea to a Enterprise Project select the item in the list and under the tab items select “Create Projects”. You will now get a screen that allows you to map info to custom fields that are present in Project Server 2013. Select your Enterprise Project Type and click on ok.

Project Server 2013 will take the information you entered and will start making it an Enterprise Project Type and will be creating everything that is defined under that Enterprise Project Type for example: Workflows will be started and the Project Site and Project Plan Template will be created.

When Project Server 2013 is done the Project Manager can go to work on the project like you do with regular projects. This feature gives an organization another option to create projects and works really well and easy to use and I hope most of you will agree.

via SpeakingSilent » Robin Kruithof http://speakingsilent.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/using-custom-list-entries-to-create-enterprise-projects/

I am Robin Kruithof. I am working at CXS in the Netherlands as a Microsoft Project Consultant. My passion lies in Project Management and everything in the Project Management domain. This article has been cross posted from speakingsilent.wordpress.com/ (original article)