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)

The Office 2013 August 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1L3qmrP

Project Server 2013 August 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1J2o2Sp

Project Server 2013 August 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1J2o50p

Project 2013 August 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1L3qmrT

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install Service Pack 1 http://bit.ly/1uorn2C first if installing the August 2015 CU.

The Office 2010 August 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1L3qmrP

Project Server 2010 August 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1L3qpDZ

Project Server 2010 August 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1J2o50r

Project 2010 August 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1L3qmrV

SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 August 2015 CUs.

As always, fully test these updates on a replica test environment before deploying to production.

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)

This is the second post for the Project Online reporting with Power BI intro I created earlier this week. If you missed it, a link to the post can be found below:

http://bit.ly/1M9xYMm

In this post we will look at creating new reports using the Power BI Desktop tool then adding these to Power BI.

Firstly if you haven’t already, download the Power BI Desktop: http://bit.ly/1giTosP.

Once launched you will see a getting started type page:

Close this and you will see a blank canvas:

The first thing we need to do is get the data, to do this click the Get Data button on the ribbon then OData feed:

In the  next window, paste in your Project Online OData feed, in this example I am using:

http://bit.ly/1W61jKW

Click OK and you will see your data:

At this point you can click OK to load the data but I would Edit the data to only select the fields you want. So in this example I will click the Edit button to load the query editor. The Query editor is very similar to the Power Query editor you see in Excel:

I only want certain columns so I will select the columns I want then remove the others. To select the columns just click the first one and hold down the Ctrl key then click the rest:

Or use the Choose Columns button on the ribbon:

Once all selected, click the Remove Columns > Remove Other Columns:

Notice in the Query Settings pane you see the Applied Steps, so you can easily undo a step if required:

That is the project data loaded, now I want to load the task data. In the Query Editor click New Source > OData feed:

Paste in the URL for the Tasks feed:

Click OK to add the new source. I then selected the columns I wanted and named the query:

There is also an advanced editor that I used to filter out the summary tasks by modifying the URL:

The advanced editor can be used to type the code to manipulate the data but use the UI where possible.

Now we have two individual datasets / queries, we need to merge the queries to create the join, click the Merge Queries button:

Chose the columns and table to join then the join type:

Click OK.

Once you are happy with the data click Close & Load > Close & Load:

This will load the dataset to the report, see the fields pane:

Then add your visualisations on, the first one I added is the Treemap:

Then drag the fields to the visualisation settings on the pane, in this example I use Project Name for the group property and % complete in the values property:

Add the other visualisations you need, the example I created looks like this:

I then added another page to visualise some task information:

A very basic report but that gives you the idea how easy it is to create visualisations of your Project Online data using the Power BI Desktop.

The next stage is to add this to Power BI. To do this I can either publish the report using the Publish button or from the Power BI site, upload the file. For this example I clicked the Publish button:

The report will then be available in Power BI. The manual way from the Power BI portal site is to click the Get Data button:

Then chose the type of data, for this example I will use Files:

Then click local file:

Locate the Power BI file (or can be Excel etc. but this was a Power BI file) and add the file:

Once loaded, Power BI will create the dataset, the report and create a dashboard with a link to the report (note, I removed everything from my Power BI portal so that is was clean for the screen shots :))

Clicking the link under the Reports heading will load my report:

Clicking on an element from a visualisation will filter the data in the other visualisations:

The first thing to do is set up the dataset to refresh, to do this click the ellipsis next to the dataset then click Schedule Refresh button on the fly out menu:

Expand Manage Data Sources:

Enter the credentials for both sources, click the Edit Credentials link, select the oAuth2 for the Authentication Method and click Sign in:

Enter the credentials for the Project Online tenant and click sign in. Repeat for the other data source.

Now expand the Schedule Refresh section and turn on the “Keep your data up-to-date”:

Click Apply. The data sources will update Daily now but you can also update it on demand using the Refresh Now option:

When the data is refreshing you will see a spinning icon next to the dataset:

Now lets look at the dashboard. I will create a new Dashboard called “Dashboard Example” using the + button next to the Dashboards heading:

Once created you will see a blank canvas:

Now I can pin visualisations to this dashboard. To start with access the report previous loaded, hover over a visualisation and click the pin icon:

Navigate back to the dashboard and you will see the visualisation:

Repeat this process until you have the dashboard you need, for example:

You can also create new visualisations from the dashboard using the natural language query “Ask a question…” field, start typing a question about the data, for example “show project work” will create a visualisation for the total project work in the dashboard:

This visualisation can then be pined using the pin too. You can also change the default visualisation for the data returned using the visualisation pane, see the example below for a different query:

Once finished, the visualisations can be been seen on the dashboard:

The properties of the tiles can be edited using the pencil icon:

This loads the Tile detail pane:

Clicking on a visualisation that was added from a report will navigate you to that report directly.

You can then share your dashboard out to other people in your organisation using the Share Dashboard option, this loads the following window:

Enter the email addresses and click Share.

This is just touching the surface of what you can do with Power BI, take a look today – it will be your favourite reporting tool!

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)

Since Power BI 2.0 was released a week or so ago I thought it was time I created a blog post on Power BI and show off some of the cool functionality Power BI has to offer. In this first blog post we will take a look around Power BI and see what it has to offer and include some useful links to help you get started.

So firstly, what is Power BI? In short Power BI is a cloud reporting tool that enables you to create great visualisations for your data. I won’t go into details here as there is plenty of information available – a good place to start is here: http://bit.ly/1M9xXbf

On my Power BI instance I have created some example reports and a report dashboard already as you can see below:

Displayed above is my example Report Dashboard displaying various visualisations for % complete, Work and Cost.

The first thing you need to do before you can create the dashboards is get the data available in Power BI. You can do this by clicking the Get Data button. This will load the screen below:

In my example I selected the Files option and loaded up a file that contained my data. This could be an Excel file, CSV file, Power BI Desktop file etc. As I wanted to see my Project Online data here I chose a file I had already created earlier using Power BI Desktop that displayed my Project Online data – more on Power BI Desktop in a later post when we look at creating a new report and dashboard.

Once the report file is added you will see it appear under the Datasets heading on the left navigation pane and under the Reports heading:

Clicking on the link under the dataset enables you to create new report:

Clicking the ellipsis allows you to refresh the data or schedule a refresh. This functionality will depend on the data source you use in the file – for Project Online OData, both of these work:

Firstly you will need to click the schedule refresh option, expand Manage Data Sources:

Click Edit Credentials then chose oAuth2 and click sign in then enter the credentials for a user that had access to the OData API.

Clicking on the link under the Reports heading displays the report file I uploaded as a data source (created in Power BI Desktop but could be Excel etc.):

From the report you can add visualisations to the dashboard using the “Pin Visual” pin option. This becomes visible when you hover over a visualisation on the report:

You can create many different data sources, reports and dashboards. From the dashboard you can click a visualisation and it will drill down to the report itself. In this example if I click on my % complete treemap visualisation on the dashboard it will load the source report:

Clicking the treemap:

Loads the source report:

From the dashboard I can also create new visualisations and pin those, to do this I can use the natural language search – use the “Ask a question about the data on the dashboard” field:

For example, I might want to see a count of projects for each project owner, so I start typing “count of projectname by ProjectOwnerName”:

You can see Power BI already started to get the data and create a visualisation that matched the data type. Once I had finished typing my query it gave me this:

You can then change the visualisation using the options on the right hand pane, in this example I switched it to a multi row card:

I can then use the pin to pin the visualisation to my dashboard:

Clicking the pin will give you a notification and add the visualisation to the dashboard:

Now if I look at my dashboard I can see it has added the new visualisation at the bottom:

Next up I will walkthrough creating a new report using Power BI Desktop and load that to Power BI.

In the meantime here are some useful links for Power BI:

Power BI site: http://bit.ly/1P4vk8X

Power BI overview: http://bit.ly/1M9xXrP 

Support: http://bit.ly/1P4vk8Y

Power BI blog: http://bit.ly/1M9xXrT

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)

Inspired by my colleague Alan Eardley’s recent webinar on Office 365 groups, I thought it might be good to blog about this from a project perspective.

For many types of projects, team collaboration is very important. There are many different options currently to support team collaboration. The default one being the project site in a Microsoft PPM environment. Other options include email distribution groups, shared mailboxes, Yammer etc. The latest option to consider is Office 365 groups, this feature was released towards the end of last year in Office 365. A good intro video on Office 365 groups can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3OLvYXepvE

Groups are managed via the Outlook Web App on your Office 365 tenant, you will see the Groups section below the folders in the left pane:

Clicking the blue + symbol next to the Groups heading or the “Create group” link will load a pane of the right hand side:

Give the group and a description. The Group ID will be generated automatically from the name you enter but can be modified if required.

Then choose the privacy level, typically you would probably only want the project team members or a subset of the project team to have access so in this example it will be set to Private.

I have also enabled the subscribe option so that members receive group conversations and calendar events in their inboxes.

Then click the Create button at the top of the pane and the group will be created:

Next I need to add the members to the group:

For this example I have only added a generic CPS user account, once all the users have been selected click the Add button at the top of the pane and you will see an adding members message:

Your group is then created:

The group name, description and image can easily be edited by clicking the edit icon on the group image or the edit group option on the ellipsis menu.

You can also let people outside of the organisation email the group too – these appear as normal conversations in the group. Once the changes are made click save. In this example I clicked discard then you can view the group / updates to the group.

From here members can easily start new conversations:

Easily reply or like a message:

Members can navigate to the group calendar, notebook or file share:

Easily create meetings in the group calendar and invite the group members:

Each group has a dedicated OneDrive site to share documents:

Keep in mind that if the group is deleted the documents will be lost so key documents probably want to be stored in the project site / document management portal.

You can then add a link on the Project Site to the Office 365 group if needed:

Take a look and see what you think.

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)

The Office 2013 July 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1I3wfqU

Project Server 2013 July 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1SnR8N8

Project Server 2013 July 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1I3wfqV

Project 2013 July 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1SnRaEz

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install Service Pack 1 http://bit.ly/1uorn2C first if installing the July 2015 CU.

The Office 2010 July 2015 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/1I3wfqU

Project Server 2010 July 2015 Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/1SnRaEA

Project Server 2010 July 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1I3wfr0

Project 2010 July 2015 CU:
http://bit.ly/1SnR8N9

SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 July 2015 CUs.

As always, fully test these updates on a replica test environment before deploying to production.

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 a post / script I created a year or so ago to bulk create project sites, there have been requests to be able to bulk delete projects sites. I have been reluctant to do that as i am always cautious when “bulk” deleting! The script i have created reads the list of projects from a text file so that the user running the script knows exactly what project sites they are going to be delete. The script can be downloaded from the Microsoft Script gallery below:

http://bit.ly/1QSXuZb

The text file will need to be created with a list of projects names from your PWA instance – ONLY INCLUDE project names for the project sites you want to delete – all site data (lists, documents etc.) will be deleted as the site will be deleted! The only scenario I would really use a script like this is if I wanted to delete all of my project sites, if I only needed to remove a handful I would do it manually via the UI. The example text file can be seen below:

Update the location of the text file and text file name for the Get-Content command.

The web service proxy URLs will need to be updated for your PWA instance, replace the http://vm753/pwa with the correct URL.

The script can be seen running and deleting sites below:

From the PowerShell ISE:

All data from the project sites will be lost so please use this with care and only enter project names in the text file for projects sites and project site data you no longer need.

Run the script with a PWA administrator account.

Fully test this script on a test / non-production PWA instance before running on any production environment. As a precaution, take full database backups (PWA and SharePoint Content) before running the script on the production environment so that you can roll back if needed.

The script is provided "As is" with no warranties etc.

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 post the other week regarding the announcment of the Project Virtual Conference, post here: http://bit.ly/1FEnY67, the call for speakers is now open:

http://bit.ly/1e3krHx

If you are interested in speaking at this event, please do submit your sessions before 24th July.