SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

I am a Project Server and SharePoint consultant but my main focus currently is around Project Server. I have been working with Project Server for nearly five years since 2007 for a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in the UK, I have also been awared with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011. I am also a certified Prince2 Practitioner. This article has been cross posted from pwmather.wordpress.com (original article)

Following on from my last post where we walkthrough using the new Roadmap service for Microsoft PPM, in this post we take a quick look at some of the backend architecture within Dynamics 365. For those of you that missed the first post on Roadmap, a link is here: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/12/19/project-roadmap-is-live-ppm-projectmanagement-msproject-projectonline-office365-powerplatfom/

The new Roadmap Service is built on top of the Common Data Service (CDS) for Apps that is part of the Power Platform offering. Details on the CDS for Apps can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/common-data-service/data-platform-intro. For this post we start in the Office 365 admin center, click the Admin Center icon from the left nav then click Dynamics 365. This will load the Dynamics 365 Administration Center:

On this Microsoft Demo instance I have one instance, this is where Roadmap is deployed to. Clicking the Open button will open this instance in a new window:

It defaults to the Administration screen. Using the Settings menu you can access other settings:

Most of these settings are either empty or contain the default entities / settings but a few do contain specific settings for the Roadmap service – also known as the Portfolio Service as you will seen further on in this post. If you access the Customizations menu:

Then click Publishers and you will see the Publishers this App uses:

Notice “Microsoft Project” – this is the Roadmap part of the app. Go back to the Customizations page and click Solutions, you will then see the solutions that this app uses:

Notice the two Portfolio Service solutions – these are part of the Roadmap solution. You can click the “Portfolio Service” display name and this will load the solution information / components:

Here you can navigate the various components such as entities then the fields within those entities:

We will explore the fields in part 2. You will notice the status bar informing us that we cannot edit components that are within a managed solution, these are managed by the Portfolio Service solution.

In part 2 we will look at the fields used by the Roadmap service and the data in the CDS database for Roadmap.