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)

When programmatically working with projects in Office 365 Project Online, if you wish to edit a project, you will only be able to do this if the project is not already checked out. Below is a simple example using Microsoft Flow to check if the projects are checked out:

The Flow is detailed below. Firstly the Flow will query the ProjectServer API which is the CSOM REST API using a SharePoint HTTP action:

This queries the Projects endpoint and includes the IsCheckedOut property. NOTE: Use an account for the SharePoint connection that has full edit access to all project in the PWA site collection as the ProjectServer API is security trimmed.

Then the Flow uses an Apply to each loop, the dataset returned from the previous action is used which is body(‘CheckIfProjectsCheckedOut’)[‘value’]. Then a condition action is used, this is where the Flow will check if the project is checked out. The value passed into the check is the IsCheckedOut property using items(‘Apply_to_each_project’)[‘IsCheckedOut’], here we check if this is false:

Now at this point you would continue with your project update if this check was true (project is not checked out) and not proceed with the update if this check was false (project is checked out). For the purpose of this example Flow, I just send an email but in a real world example, this is where your actions would go to update the projects, log which projects could not be updated etc.

A simple solution to help build more robust Flows for Project Online.