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 previous post on getting started with the portfolio analysis / strategy functionality where we looked at setting up the drivers and prioritisations we will now look at the analysis part. If you missed the first part, see the link below

http://bit.ly/1N0J4Co

In PWA, click the Portfolio Analyses link from the quick launch menu:

Firstly you might want to set up any project dependencies using the Project Dependencies button on the ribbon:

Dependencies are used to include or exclude projects, there are four options:

A “Dependency” is used if you have a situation where one project is selected (primary project) another group of projects are then required. A “Mutual Inclusion” is used if you have a situation where you have a group of projects that all need to be selected if one is selected. A “Mutual Exclusion” is used in the opposite situation to the Mutual Inclusion, if one of the projects is selected then the other projects in the group must not be selected. A “Finish to Start” is used if one project is selected (primary project) then the other projects in the group can’t start until the primary project is finished.

For this post, I have not set up any project dependencies as my data set is very small so we will now create an analysis.

Click the Portfolio Analyses link from the quick launch menu then click the New button on the ribbon and complete the details on the page, this includes a name and description, choosing the prioritisation type, selecting the projects to include and the cost custom field to use for the cost constrain analysis:

As you can see, there is also the option to analyse resource constraints, we will check this check box and more options will appear:

The options here include setting the start and end dates for the planning period to review, the planning granularity (months or quarters), the role custom field – in this example this was updated the “Primary Skill” custom field that was created. There are other settings to filter the resources either by department or RBS, the assignment booking type to use (committed only or committed and proposed assignments) and the project start and finish dates. In this example these were left as default apart from the role custom field.

Next click the Prioritize Projects button in the bottom right corner, this will show the project driver impacts as previously set on the Strategic Impact PDP:

The values can be changed here if needed by clicking in the cell. Click the Review Priorities button in the bottom right corner and the project priorities will be displayed:

Next click the Analyze Cost button in the bottom right corner:

The “Budgeted Cost” field will include the total from all of the projects in the analysis – this is the baseline scenario. If cost wasn’t a constraint we could just leave it there as all projects are selected. What we will do now is reduce the cost limit to $400,000 and recalculate:

Now a project has been moved out of the selection and the strategic value has reduced from 100% to 78%.There are two different charts to view, the default is the Efficient Frontier but there is also a Strategic Alignment chart:

You can also switch from a grid view (default) to a Scatter chart view:

Back on the grid view we can see it moved out the “Migrate Project Server to Project Online” project:

This might be a project we need to run so at that point we can force it in:

Now click the recalculate button on the ribbon to see the impact, it moved out the “New Document Management Solution” project but this also reduced the overall strategic impact to 76%:

This might be the scenario we need so as this point click the Save As button on the ribbon:

You can create multiple scenarios and compare these using the Compare button on the ribbon, this will give you a report like below:

Click close to return to the analysis. You can switch between the scenarios using the Scenario drop down menu:

Now the cost analysis has been done the resource analysis can be reviewed if required, click the Analyze Resources button on the ribbon:

As you can see, analysing the resources has also de-selected another project, the “Migrate Project Server to Project Online” project. This is due to lack of resource availability. At this point you can view the Deficit and Surplus reports:

In the screen shot above you can see that I have negative availability values for the IT Admin role in September and October. Detailed screen shot below:

You can also use the Requirements Details report – this is useful to see where there is a lack of resource availability for the projects, you can see in the resource availability grid the IT Admin role has 0 for September and October and project requirements grid highlights the resource deficit for the de-selected project in red:

You can also highlight the deficit in the resource availability grid using the check box in the top corner:

So now we have two options, we can either change the start date for one of the projects or hire additional resources. Switch back to the Gantt Chart view and in the Metrics sections, add 1 in the hired resources field:

Then press the recalculate button on the ribbon and both projects will be selected:

I will save this scenario as 1 hired resource:

In this example we know we needed an IT Admin for two months but in a large real world portfolio it is likely you would need many resources, the Hired Resource report will detail the type of resources you need, what projects they need to work on and how long you need them for:

Hiring resources is a great option if you are able to do so and when the project deadlines can’t slip.

The other option without hiring resources is to change the start of a project, switch back the the Gantt Chart and change the scenario to the baseline:

We are now back to the original resource analysis where only one project is selected, in the New Start date column for the de-selected project, change the date to July 2015 and recalculate:

Now the project is selected as the IT Admin role has availability then. This scenario can then be saved if required.

The next steps would be to commit the selected portfolio using the Commit button:

This action updates certain fields for the project and can also be used in a project workflow event for moving a project between stages – workflow will be coved in the next mini series of getting started.

Clicking on the quick launch link for the Portfolio Analyses will show all of the scenarios you just saved with links to each:

That is it for the getting started series for the Portfolio Analysis / Strategy functionality – a very quick intro but hopefully enough to get you started if you haven’t used this feature before.

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 very popular series of blog posts on “Getting Started with Project Online” I have decided to extend that with another Getting Started series of posts for two areas I didn’t cover in the original getting started series found here: http://bit.ly/1IFInbc

The first mini getting started series will cover the Portfolio Strategy / analysis functionality then we will do the same for Project Workflow.

The Portfolio Strategy feature enables you to align projects with defined business drivers and objectives, the tool can then prioritise the projects based on how they fit with the business driver prioritisation. Further analysis can be done based on cost / resource constraints to work out the projects to run for the best strategic value. A detailed white paper for Project Server 2010 can be found here: Portfolio strategy with Project Server 2010 (white paper). The feature is the same in Project Online. This post will give a quick getting started intro to this feature.

For the purpose of this post I have a vanilla PWA instance with very little data. I have created a new Project Level custom field called “Budgeted Cost” and a new Resource level look up table field called “Primary Skill” – these will be used later. I have also created three very simple projects with values for “Budgeted Cost” and assigned resources to the tasks – these resources also have Primary Skills tagged against them. The projects contain some over allocations to show the resource analysis part. The projects I have are:

Here are the resources:

Now I can get get on with configuring the Portfolio Analysis part. Firstly I will create 5 business drivers. First I need to enable the Strategy links on the quick launch menu, click Edit Links on the left hand quick launch menu:

Check the check box for Strategy and the three links below the Strategy heading:

Click Save & Close from the ribbon menu. Now you should see these links appear on the quick launch menu:

Now we can see the Strategy links we can set up the drivers. To do this click on the Driver Library link and you will see the following:

Click the New button on the ribbon menu and complete the form for the first driver:

Complete each of the fields as required – only the Name is a mandatory field. Once you have created your drivers the Driver Library screen will look like this:

As you can see I have created the following drivers:

• Increase Market Share
• Increase Sales
• Decrease Internal Costs
• Improve Staff Morale

Now the drivers need to be prioritised, click the Drive Prioritization link on the quick launch menu and you will see the page below:

Click the New button on the ribbon and complete the form:

Click the button on the bottom right corner of the page to “Prioritize Drivers” and you will see the page to rate the drivers against each other:

In the example above I clicked the arrow in the “Select a Rating” box and choose how “Decrease Internal Costs” rates against the other drivers like below:

Once the first driver is completed it will look like this:

Click the Next Driver button in the bottom right corner to set the ratings for the next driver. Repeat this process until you get to the final driver then click the Review Priorities button in the bottom right corner. You will then see the driver priority as below:

What is key here is that the rating has been consistent, expand the Consistency Ratio option:

This should be at least 80%, the higher the better. You can create multiple driver prioritisations for different scenarios etc.

The next part is the analysis but before we look at that we will jump back to the Project Center and edit each project to set the impact of each project against the drivers, this is done on the Strategic Impact PDP as seen below for one of the example projects:

This was done for the 3 example projects I have created.

Now that is set up the next part is to create an analysis but that will be covered in Part 2 that will follow.

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.