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 the latest SharePoint Online / Project Online CSOM version (16.1.5521.1200) now includes the Resource Engagement classes and properties:

http://bit.ly/2bedgMM

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 this post we will look at creating a very basic Power BI report that includes hyperlinks to various entities in Microsoft’s Office 365 PPM Project Online PWA site. The report created here will be purely to show you how to create links to the Project Site, Project Detail Page, Issues and Risks items.

Firstly I will create my OData URLs I need for my datasets, these can be seen below:

• Projects: <PWA site URL>/_api/ProjectData/Projects()?$filter=ProjectType ne 7
• Issues: <PWA site URL>/_api/ProjectData/Issues
• Risks: <PWA site URL>/_api/ProjectData/Risks

Now launch the Power BI desktop and click Get Data > OData Feed as seen below:

Enter the Projects URL and click OK:

On the next screen click Edit:

In the Query Editor window click Choose Columns:

In the Choose Columns window, uncheck all of the columns – quickest way is the uncheck Select All Columns:

Now select the following columns: ProjectId, ProjectName, ProjectWorkspaceInternalUrl

Click OK and the query will only contain those columns:

Rename ProjectName to “Project Name” and ProjectWorkspaceInternalUrl to “Project Site URL”, this is done by right clicking on the column heading and selecting Rename:

I have also changed the query name to Projects:

Now click Add Column > Add Custom Column:

Enter the name “Project Link” and the formula:

"<PWA site URL>/project%20detail%20pages/schedule.aspx?projuid=" & [ProjectId]

Update the PWA site URL to your Project Online PWA site URL and update the PDP if required, this one uses the Schedule PDP.

Click OK. The Projects dataset table is now ready, we now need to add in the Issues data. From within the Query Editor window, click New Source > OData Feed:

Enter the Issues URL and click OK:

Click OK on the preview window then you will see the 2nd query added:

Now we need to Choose Columns, remove them all and select the following: ProjectId, IssueId, ItemRelativeUrlPath, Title

Click OK. Rename the query to Issues then that dataset table is complete:

We now need to add in the Risks data. From within the Query Editor window, click New Source > OData Feed:

Enter the Risks URL and click OK, click OK on the preview window then you will see the 3rd query added:

Now we need to Choose Columns, remove them all and select the following: ProjectId, RiskId, ItemRelativeUrlPath, Title

Click OK. Rename the query to Risks then that dataset table is complete:

Now we need to merge the Issues table with the Projects table so that we can get the Project Site URL in the the Issues table. Select the Issues dataset table then click the Merge Queries option:

In the Merge window select the Projects table and ProjectId from both as seen below:

Click OK and you will see a new column appear:

Click the button on the new column to choose the columns to expand from the joined table:

Select just the Project Site URL:

Click OK and you will see the Project Site URL appear:

Rename the column to remove the NewColumn. prefix. Now click Add Column > Add Custom Column:

Enter a name “Issue Link” then enter the formula for the new column:

[Project Site URL] & "/" & Text.Range([ItemRelativeUrlPath],0,13) & "DispForm.aspx?ID=" & Text.Range([ItemRelativeUrlPath],13,1)

Click OK. Click on a row and ensure the URL is correct – copy in the browser to test:

Now select the Risks dataset table to repeat the steps. Click Merge Queries with the same steps as before and click OK. In the new column expand the Project Site URL then rename the column to remove the NewColumn. prefix. Add the custom column called “Risk Link” with the following formula:

[Project Site URL] & "/" & Text.Range([ItemRelativeUrlPath],0,12) & "DispForm.aspx?ID=" & Text.Range([ItemRelativeUrlPath],12,1)

Click OK then click on a row and ensure the URL is correct – copy in the browser to test:

Then click Close & Apply:

Then the Apply Query Changes window will load whilst the data model loads:

Once loaded, check the table relationships are ok and change if needed:

Now you are ready to build the Project links report as you would normally build a Power BI report. One additional step that you will need to do it make the URL columns into Web Urls. For example, select the “Project Site URL” from the Projects dataset then click the Modelling ribbon and under the Data Category option chose Web URL:

Repeat this for the three custom columns created: Issue Link, Risk Link and Project Link.

A very simple report has been created below to show the hyperlinks:

This is a very plain report as you can see, but this demonstrates how to create hyperlinks to keys areas of the project from a Power BI report.

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 those of you that are familiar with the project ideas lists in Microsoft’s PPM PWA application you might want to skip this first paragraph. Any list you create in the PWA site collection at the top level you will see a button Create Projects, if you are not familiar with this feature take a look at this blog post: http://bit.ly/2aeWGwK.

The purpose of this post isn’t to revisit that feature, this post covers getting access to some of the data on that list that is hidden from the views and creating an enhanced view for the Project Ideas type list.

If you look at the view details, you can see below the columns I can add to this view:

Yet if I look at the columns available on this list using the REST API I see a few more, a key one being MSPWAPROJUID as seen below:

This column gets updated with the Project GUID when you create a project from the list. As this is a hidden column it can’t be added to any views which is a shame as that would be very useful. I thought ok, simple, I will just update the field hidden property false then add it to the view. Whilst that change is very simple with a few lines of code this appears to break the column getting updated with the Project GUID so I don’t recommend doing that currently. If I found a way to get this working I will create a post. So as that didn’t work that lead me on to the next idea, lets build my own view on a page. This can be seen below:

I have made the Item Title clickable to open the list item in a new window and where an idea item has been converted into a project, the Project GUID is a clickable link to the view the project. This opens the schedule Project Detail Page. The columns are sortable, by default it is sorted by Item ID, to change this use the arrows in the table column heading. As you can see, I don’t have much data on my test system and only one idea has been created into a project.

I have made the code available on the Microsoft code gallery, it can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/29ZXh8M

To get the script to work for your PWA instance in Project Online you will need to update the listName variable to set the correct list title for your project ideas list:

Replace ProjectIdeas with the correct title. Save the JavaScript file in a document library in the PWA site collection then create a web part page in the PWA site collection, for example I created the page and uploaded the script to the Shared Documents library:

On the new web page page I added a content editor web part and linked to the JavaScript file:

Click Apply then OK and the data should load if the listName variable is correct. You can then add a link to the new page from the PWA quick launch if needed.

A nice simple solution that provides more functionality than the standard SharePoint view.

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 left you know about an update to the Resource Engagements feature activation. When this was released around a year ago in Project Online, it was stated that all Project Online instances would have the feature enabled by September 2016 with the resource plan data migrated. There has been an update to, this date has been delayed for now, see the comment below from the article:

“The feature will no longer be automatically activated on September 22, 2016.”

http://bit.ly/2aesLFf

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

http://bit.ly/29uazZV

Project 2016 July 2016 update:
http://bit.ly/29vq2Fb

SharePoint Server 2016 July 2016 update – Project Server 2016 fixes: 
http://bit.ly/29uaDJd & http://bit.ly/29vq9AF

The Office 2013 July 2016 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/29uazZV

Project Server 2013 July 2016 CU Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/29ub7ix

Project Server 2013 July 2016 update:
http://bit.ly/29vpY8A

Project 2013 July 2016 update:
http://bit.ly/29uaFk0

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install Service Pack 1 http://bit.ly/1uorn2C first if installing the July 2016 CU.

The Office 2010 July 2016 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/29uazZV

Project Server 2010 July 2016 CU Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/29ub4mC

Project Server 2010 July 2016 update:
< no update this month>

Project 2010 July 2016 update:
< no update this month>

SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 July 2016 updates.

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 PowerShell script will use the Project Reporting OData API to get a list of all the Project Sites in the PWA Site Collection linked to a project. It will then access each of those project sites to enable you to easily update / review the site if needed. This example just lists all of the list titles for each site but can be used as a starting script for modifying a particular list or adding a new list on all project sites etc. This could be used to help rollout changes to existing Project Sites, the code here will help you get connected and access each Project Site object using CSOM. You could even use this example to get the project site URLs then use the approach I blogged about the other month with the PnP PowerShell to month the sites. The example is for Project Online but could easily be updated for Project Server 2013 / 2016.

The user running the script will need to update the source PWA instance URL, username and password. The account will need access to the OData API in PWA and access to all of the project sites.

This script example can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/29tPnA9

To get the script to work you will need to reference the DLL as seen in the image below:

This can be installed from the SharePoint Online Client components / management shell. I used the dll from the SharePoint Online Management Shell in this example.

Please note, this has only been tested in PowerShell 3.0 and might not work in other versions. If you have any issues try this in PowerShell 3.0.

The good thing about using the OData API to return the list of Project Site URLs is that if you have certain sites for each Enterprise Project Type you could easily filter the OData query to only return the project site URLs for the correct Enterprise Project Type.

Once the variables have been updated correctly, placeholder values seen below:

Save and run the PowerShell script (fully test on a non-production PWA site collection before Production), firstly this example will give you a count of project sites:

Then for each of those sites it will list all of the SharePoint lists on each site:

As mentioned, this just lists all of the lists so probably isn’t that useful unless you wanted to check each Project Site had the correct lists. The script could be modified to update those project sites or lists fairly easily depending on what the changes were. All I would say is that if you are looking to update / make changes to the project sites, fully test your modified script on a non-production PWA instance first as you could cause a lot of damage if you weren’t careful!

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)

The Office 2016 June 2016 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/28JxtCh

Project 2016 June 2016 update:
http://bit.ly/1UcFLsq

SharePoint Server 2016 June2016 update – Project Server 2016 fixes:
http://bit.ly/28Jy9aJ & http://bit.ly/1UcESjB

The Office 2013 June 2016 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/28JxtCh

Project Server 2013 June 2016 CU Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/28Jy1YQ

Project Server 2013 June 2016 update:
http://bit.ly/1UcFQwj

Project 2013 June 2016 update:
http://bit.ly/28JxvKp

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install Service Pack 1 http://bit.ly/1uorn2C first if installing the June 2016 CU.

The Office 2010 June 2016 updates and cumulative updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://bit.ly/28JxtCh

Project Server 2010 June 2016 CU Server Roll up package:
http://bit.ly/28Jy1rM

Project Server 2010 June 2016 update:
< no update this month>

Project 2010 June 2016 update:
< no update this month>

SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 June 2016 updates.

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 part 2 for the Microsoft Planner overview, for those of you that missed the first part a link can be seen below:

http://bit.ly/1UD4GEY

In this post we will look at creating a new plan in Planner with some tasks and assignments. From the Planner hub, click New Plan from the left navigation pane:

Complete the new plan form as below:

The form will validate the plan name, email address (used for conversations / discussions), enable the plan to be visible to all the members of the organisation or private – private means only members added to the plan can see it and finally give the plan a description. Click Create Plan and Planner will go off and create your plan:

Once completed you will see your plan:

At this point the plan can be updated with tasks and team members but other options such as conversations and calendars will take a bit longer to be available as this is waiting for the Office 365 group to be created:

Whilst that is provisioning I will create 5 tasks for my plan using the add task option:

I will also set a Due Date:

Then click Add Task. Repeat this process for the required tasks or activities:

Now I will switch to the Buckets view:

Here I will create some new Buckets to group my tasks:

Now I will move all of my tasks into the buckets by dragging the task cards to the correct bucket:

Now I need to add the team members to my plan using the Add Members functionality in the top right corner:

Type the name of the user then you can select the correct user to add:

The team members are now added:

I can now assign the tasks to the team members, to do this click on the task card to load the task detail pop up:

Click the Assign button and select the team member:

At this point I’ve also added a description to the task so the user CPS knows what is required and also as the Office 365 group is now set up I have started a conversation about an issue I have with the current app:

Notice the email notification too for the new comment. Repeat this for all tasks as required:

Switching to the Assigned To view you can easily see who has what assigned:

The next thing to do would be to set start dates for the tasks if needed, this is done on the task details popup:

Repeat this for all tasks as required. I also set some labels for keys tasks:

These are then visible to the right of the task card:

You can also add attachments to the tasks, when you first try to do this the storage might not yet be available as seen below:

Once this is available you can attached a file already in the OneDrive site for this plan or upload a file:

As this is a new plan I need to upload a file:

This uploads the file to the OneDrive storage that is created as part of the Office 365 group for this plan. I’ve set the document to be the preview on the task card to get a nice visual on the card:

I’ve done this for a few tasks:

Planner will take one image / the first page from the uploaded document and use that as a preview.

Also I want to set a new logo for my plan to replace the red square with PM. To do this I navigate to the Group page for my plan by clicking the Conversations link:

This loads:

From here I can edit the Group settings including the logo, just click the current logo and the group properties pane will appear:

Change the logo as required. This might take a while to sync with Planner but once it has completed you will see the updated logo:

That is the basic plan set up and ready for the team members to start work on the tasks and join in any conversations for the tasks. On the planner hub page the project can be added as a favourite to get quick visibility of the plan status:

Planner data can be accessed and edited programmatically using the Graph API, this is currently only in Beta, see the reference link below for details:

http://bit.ly/1Xe7cYz

That’s it for the Microsoft Planner overview, look out for more posts on Planner 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)

This week marked the start of Office 365 Planner being generally available, the official post can be see here: http://bit.ly/1UD3YYm

In this post I will give a quick overview of Planner then in the second post I will cover using planner with creating new plans, tasks and assignments.

Firstly, what is Planner. Microsoft Office 365 Planner is Microsoft’s new task or work management tool for managing plans and tasks with task boards using drag and drop in an intuitive, modern interface. This tool is great for managing teams with tasks or buckets of work using a simple but effective interface. For this post we will look at Planner on my Microsoft Office Demo tenant as this contains some example plans already. When accessing Planner the users see the Planner Hub:

This view shows all of the plans available in Planner. The user has the ability to tag plans as favourites to move them to the favourites section. This is done by hovering over a plan and clicking the ellipsis then clicking “Add to favorites”:

That project will then move to the favourites section, to remove a project from favourites click “Remove from favorites”:

When plans are added to the favourites section the task status is visible in a doughnut chart and a legend with a count of tasks in each status.

Clicking anywhere on the Online Marketing plan card will take you to the plan’s board:

There are different views available on the board that group the tasks differently, this can be changed in the top right corner:

The different views or groupings display the tasks either by Buckets:

Buckets are away of tagging or grouping tasks that are related in some way for example an event or work package.

Assigned to:

This view shows tasks grouped by assigned to, a useful view to see which tasks are not assigned to a team member.

Progress:

The progress grouping is useful for seeing the status of the tasks.

Back on the Buckets view it is easy to create a new bucket by clicking “Add new bucket” and type a name:

Tasks can then be added to that bucket by drag and drop or clicking the task and opening the task details view then using the bucket dropdown menu in the top left corner:

Tasks can have labels set such as the red urgent label on the Media Outlets task, this is very useful for flagging / highlighting tasks:

As well as the board views there is a Chart view, click Charts next to Boards and the chart page will load for that plan:

Notice the Task pane on the right, by default there is No grouping set, clicking on the doughnut or legend on the Status card will update the Task pane view:

In this example I clicked the Late segment on the doughnut, the Tasks pane then set a group by of Due Date and scrolls to bring the late tasks in view.

Clicking a team member in the Members views will then add a filter to the Tasks pane to show only that team members tasks:

Each Plan that gets created creates a group in Office 365, this is used for the plans collaboration. The plan can have documents that can be attached to tasks, team members can comment on tasks, the plan can have a calendar and also a OneNote notebook, this is provided by the Office 365 Groups functionality and accessible using the ellipsis menu:

To navigate back to the planner hub use the left navigation pane. You will also see a useful view here called My tasks, that will show a view for all of your own tasks:

This defaults to a progress grouping but can be grouped by plan too:

Planner also provide full notifications via emails to the team members.

There are some great features in development on the roadmap for Planner:

That’s it for this post, in the next post we will look at creating a new plan with a team and tasks. Some additional links for Planner can be seen below:

Microsoft Planner for Admins: http://bit.ly/1WGe295

Common Support Issues for Planner: http://bit.ly/1UD4BRE & http://bit.ly/1WGdVdH

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 am pleased to announce that CPS’ PS+ solution was an Award Winner in the recent Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards 2016 in the Project and Portfolio Management Competency.

For a full list of winners and finalists see:

http://bit.ly/25xwdzo

Great work to all the partners that received awards.