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)

Just a quick post to highlight a feature in Project Online when changing the rollup of timephased reporting data in Project Online as posted here:

https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/projectonline-time-phased-data-rollup-for-odata-reporting-ppm-pmot-bi-excel-powerbi/

As per the Microsoft support article below:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Configure-rollup-of-timephased-reporting-data-in-Project-Online-da8487fe-899e-4510-a264-e2ebc948928c

This mentions only the following endpoints in relation to this change:

You will also find that the ResourceDemandTimephasedDataSet endpoint is also impacted by this reporting setting if your projects are set to calculate the resource utilisation from the Project Plan / Project Plan Until. For example, if you have the timephased data setting set to Never as seen below and your projects resource utilisation is set to the Project Plan, the resource demand for those projects will not appear in the ResourceDemandTimephasedDataSet endpoint.

Just something to be aware of.

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 2016 May 2018 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4133083

Project 2016 May 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018373

SharePoint Server 2016 / Project Server 2016 May 2018 update: 
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018386 & https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018381

The Office 2013 May 2018 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4133083

Project Server 2013 May 2018 CU Server Roll up package:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018395

Project Server 2013 May 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4022130

Project 2013 May 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018379

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install Service Pack 1 http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2880556 first if installing the May 2018 CU for 2013.

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)

Just a quick blog post to highlight a change the is required when querying Project Online / SharePoint Online REST APIs in code when using the WebRequest class. Previously the PowerShell code sample below would work and authenticate with no issues:

#add SharePoint Online DLL - update the location if required
$programFiles = [environment]::getfolderpath("programfiles")
add-type -Path $programFiles'\SharePoint Online Management Shell\Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll'

#set the environment details
$PWAInstanceURL = "https://PWAURL"
$username = "username" 
$password = "password"
$securePass = ConvertTo-SecureString $password -AsPlainText -Force

#set the Odata URL with the correct project fields needed,
$url = $PWAInstanceURL + "/_api/ProjectData/Projects()?`$Filter=ProjectType ne 7&`$Select=ProjectId,ProjectName,ProjectPercentCompleted,ProjectOwnerName"

#get all of the data from the OData URL
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials]$spocreds = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($username, $securePass)  
$webrequest = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create($url)
$webrequest.Credentials = $spocreds
$webrequest.Accept = "application/json;odata=verbose"
$webrequest.Headers.Add("X-FORMS_BASED_AUTH_ACCEPTED", "f")
$response = $webrequest.GetResponse()
$reader = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader $response.GetResponseStream()
$data = $reader.ReadToEnd()
$results = ConvertFrom-Json -InputObject $data
$results.d.results 

There has been a change in Office365 and this would now generate a 401 unauthorized error as seen below:

It is now required to use the authentication cookie, not sure if this is a permanent change or a temporary issue. Adding the line below resolves the issue:

$webrequest.Headers["Cookie"] = $spocreds.GetAuthenticationCookie($url)

#get all of the data from the OData URL
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials]$spocreds = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($username, $securePass)  
$webrequest = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create($url)
$webrequest.Credentials = $spocreds
$webrequest.Accept = "application/json;odata=verbose"
$webrequest.Headers["Cookie"] = $spocreds.GetAuthenticationCookie($url)
$webrequest.Headers.Add("X-FORMS_BASED_AUTH_ACCEPTED", "f")
$response = $webrequest.GetResponse()

This change would be applicable to all of my PowerShell code samples that query the Project Online OData API found here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/site/search?f%5B0%5D.Type=User&f%5B0%5D.Value=PWMather&sortBy=Date

Hope that helps

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)

In part three of this series of blog posts we will look at using the CreateProject action from the Project Online PowerApps Connector. For those of you that missed part 1, here is a link: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/projectonline-powerapps-using-the-project-online-connector-ppm-apps-msproject-o365-part1/ and part 2: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/04/11/projectonline-powerapps-using-the-project-online-connector-ppm-apps-msproject-o365-part2/

The CreateProject action is: ProjectOnline.CreateProject({“PWASiteURL”}, {“ProjectName”},{Optional parameters}). As you can see, there is the PWA Site as one required parameter and the Project Name as the other. There are also optional parameters for description and start date as documented here. In this post we will add a new page to our example PowerApp to provide inputs to the parameters for the CreateProject action. Add a new blank screen to the PowerApp, in this example I called the new page NewProject:

Next I added a label to the page to add “Create a new project:” then two text input boxes, one for the Project Name and one for the Project Description. The two text input box properties were updated to remove the default text and add hint text as seen below for the Project Name input box:

Next a date picker was added to select the project start date along with two buttons, one to create the project and one to cancel / navigate back to the homepage. The button text was updated as required and the back button OnSelect property updated to navigate to the Projects page:

The create button action for OnSelect would be ProjectOnline.CreateProject("PWAURL", TextInput1.Text,{Description: TextInput2.Text, Start: DatePicker1.SelectedDate}) as seen below:

Update the control references such as TextInput1 as required. That is the minimum needed to create a new project but really there should be checks to ensure the name is set as that is a required parameter and also do things like clear the inputs once the project is created / navigate back the homepage automatically. Below is a simple example to ensure the project name input is not blank. Firstly add a new label with the text “Project Name is empty” then add a X icon:

Now select both of those elements from the left menu and group them together:

Now set the group visible property to Off:

Select the X icon and update the OnSelect action to UpdateContext({alert:false}):

Select the grouping then select the Visible property and change the value from false to alert:

Now click the Create button as the OnSelect action needs to be updated to If(IsBlank(TextInput1.Text),UpdateContext({alert:true}),ProjectOnline.CreateProject("PWAURL", TextInput1.Text,{Description: TextInput2.Text, Start: DatePicker1.SelectedDate})) as seen below:

Update the control references such as TextInput1 as required. Now if the Project Name input, in my example TextInput1, is empty the alert will be displayed with the X to close the alert:

The final part of this app is to add a button / icon from the home screen to be able to create a new project by navigating to the NewProject screen:

That’s it for now but hopefully enough to get you started with the Project Online Connector for PowerApps, there are more actions available for this connector and so much more you can do with PowerApps! Look out for more Project Online related PowerApps blog posts in the future.

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)

In part two of this series of blog posts we will look at using the ListTasks action from the Project Online PowerApps Connector. For those of you that missed part 1, here is a link: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/projectonline-powerapps-using-the-project-online-connector-ppm-apps-msproject-o365-part1/

The ListTasks action is: ProjectOnline.ListTasks("{ProjectGUID}","{"PWASiteURL}).value

As you can see we need to pass in two parameters here, the Project GUID and the PWA Site URL. As this requires the Project GUID, we will use the PowerApp we started with in part 1 and pass in the Project GUID from the first screen. Add another screen to your PowerApp, in this example I have just added a blank screen and renamed it to Tasks:

Now add a data table to this new screen:

With the new data table selected, click the Advanced option in the right pane:

Now on the advanced settings pane, in DATA > Items enter:

ProjectOnline.ListTasks(Gallery2.Selected.Id,https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa).value

Update the query as required, for example update to the correct gallery name and update to the correct PWA URL.

Click “Choose the fields you want to add from the customization pane”, in this example I have selected Name and PercentComplete:

Now I will add a label at the top of the screen to display the Project Name. With the label added to the screen, select the label and click the advanced setting pane:

In DATA > Text starting typing the name of your gallery added to the first screen, select it then type “.” then click selected then “.” then click Name:

Now the project name for the first project in the gallery will display:

You could look to include an option here to add new tasks if you wanted, the action to use would be: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/#creates-new-task

Now we need to add in a control to be able to navigate back to the projects screen, I have just added a left arrow icon then updated the OnSelect property in the advanced settings pane to navigate to the projects screen:

Now on the Projects screen we need to update the next icon on the gallery to navigate to the Tasks screen, select the icon and update the OnSelect property on the advanced pane:

Now you have an app that will display a list of all projects directly from Project Online, then access the tasks from that selected project.

Next up we will look at create new projects in Project Online using the CreateProject action.

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 2016 April 2018 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4098622

Project 2016 April 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018320

SharePoint Server 2016 / Project Server 2016 April 2018 update: 
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018340 & https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018336

The Office 2013 April 2018 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4098622

Project Server 2013 April 2018 CU Server Roll up package:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018346

Project Server 2013 April 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018352

Project 2013 April 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018335

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install Service Pack 1 http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2880556 first if installing the April 2018 CU for 2013.

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)

There are some updates / improvements to the Agile feature in Project Online Desktop client, these follow on from the first release in October last year: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/agile-now-available-in-msproject-kanban-scrum-sprints-tasks/ 

These updates are available in the latest release of the Office Insider version of the Office click-to-run client.

Two new features in this release for updating the % complete on boards as you move tasks between a status and the ability to filter tasks on the boards using the summary tasks and resources. These are seen below.

% complete on boards

Opening a board view such as the Backlog Board or the Current Sprint Board you will now see a “Set % Complete” row. As seen on the screenshot below this can also be hidden from the view:

Clicking the “Set % Complete” enables you to type the desired % complete for that status:

As you move a task into that status column, the task % complete will update as per the % complete value for the column:

Filters

On the board views you have the ability to filter tasks using the summary tasks and resources:

You can select multiple values from the two filter menus, the tasks will then filter on the board based on your filters:

The filters are not persistent, as you change views the filters will be reset.

A great addition to the agile feature in Project Online Desktop client. If you’re on the Insider version of Office click-to-run, 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 2016 March 2018 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4090988

Project 2016 March 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4011734

SharePoint Server 2016 / Project Server 2016 March 2018 update: 
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018293 & https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4011687

The Office 2013 March 2018 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4090988

Project Server 2013 March 2018 CU Server Roll up package:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018301

Project Server 2013 March 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018305

Project 2013 March 2018 update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/4018292

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install Service Pack 1 http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2880556 first if installing the March 2018 CU for 2013.

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)

I recently published two articles on creating a navigation type app for Project Online using PowerApps, here is a screen shot of the project details screen from that example app:

For those of you that missed those posts, the links are below:

https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/projectonline-powerapps-example-office365-ppm-pmot-apps-msproject-part1/

https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/projectonline-powerapps-example-office365-ppm-pmot-apps-msproject-sharepoint-part2/

That particular example used a SharePoint list as the data source as there were certain properties I needed such as the Project Site URL that are not available in the native Project Online connector for PowerApps. I also stored project images in that source SharePoint list and displayed those in my example app. I used a custom process to populate the SharePoint list with the Project Online data and kept that data in sync. In this series of blog posts we will look at how to use the native Project Online PowerApps connector: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/.

This connector allows us to perform certain actions in PowerApps such as read the list of Projects directly from the PWA site collection: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/#List_projects or creating a new project: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/projectonline/#Creates_new_project for example.

This series of blog posts wont build a full PowerApp using this connector but it will show snippets on how to use some of the Project Online PowerApps connector functions.

The first one we will look at is displaying a list of projects in PowerApps using the list projects function.

This series of posts assume that you have set up a Project Online Connection to Project Online:

If you haven’t set up a Project Online connection yet, it is very simple, just click the + New Connection link and find Project Online then add.

Using the PowerApps studio, either desktop or web, we will start with a blank app:

The first thing to do is to add the Project Online data source, click “connect to data”. This will load all of your connections you have added to PowerApps / Flow, select the Project Online connection:

Then close the Data window. Now decide on the visual that you need to display the projects, I inserted a gallery:

Then set the layout to just Title as I only will just display the project name for the purpose of this blog post:

Click Advanced on the Gallery settings pane and you will notice it states “CustomGallerySample” in the DATA > Items field. Update this to:

ProjectOnline.ListProjects("{PWASiteURL}").value

Now you can select a property to display on the gallery, in this example I will select Name:

Now all of your projects will appear in the gallery directly from Project Online:

In the next post we will look at how to use the ListTasks function in the Project Online PowerApps connector.

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)

For organisations that only have one Project Web App (PWA) instance and use /PWA, today using the Project app link on the Office 365 waffle app launcher works as expected. For those organisations that have multiple PWA instances this can be an issue. The link I am talking about can be seen below:

This points to /MyProjects as seen above but when Project Online is present on the tenant it will always redirect to /sites/PWA as seen below:

This can be a problem for those customers that either have multiple PWA instances or do not use the default /PWA instance. Unfortunately the Project link on the waffle app launcher is not configurable so one workaround we have done for clients before is to not use the /PWA instance at all apart from using it as a landing page for the other PWA instances in the organisation. If you are in the planning stage for rolling out Project Online and know that you will have multiple PWA instances on the same Office 365 tenant, this might be a good option for you to consider and explore.

Firstly create the following css file that will be used to remove the PWA quick launch menu:

Save this on the /PWA site somewhere such as the Style Library:

Now edit the PWA homepage and delete the “Track your work” web part and add a content editor web part, in the content editor web part reference the .css file and change the chrome type to None:

Click Apply then click OK and the quick launch will disappear. Add another content editor web part and update the Title to “Project Web App sites” or a more appropriate name as required:

Click the new content editor web part where is states click here to add new content then add in the links to all the PWA instances that you have on the tenant using the content editor web part controls – you have lots of options and can make it look as nice as you like. In this example I have just used a simple table:

Click Stop editing on the Page tab and you will see the following:

Then ensure all users of Project Online have read access to the /PWA site (do not grant higher access as you do not want them incorrectly creating projects here):

This way if a user clicks the “Project” app link on the Office 365 waffle app launcher they can at least then easily navigate onto the correct PWA instance.

You could take this even further and have multiple content editor web parts on the page, one for each PWA instance then use SharePoint’s audience targeting feature to show the correct PWA instance/s for the logged on user.