E-Mail alerts and reminders for Project Online!

Another great day with Project Online! Why am I so excited? I've just been rolled out with another nice new feature on my Online tenant! No installation, no testing, no migration to prod environnement, no testing again, nothing! Microsoft did all those steps for me and I can just start using the new feature. Still don't have Project Online??

So, what are we talking about today?

We are often asked about the benefits of Project Online versus Project Server on-prem.. Usual question, usual answer... Immediate start, no deployment, automatic upgrades... But what about the alerts and reminders? euhhh, yes you're right, there are no alerts and reminders with Project Online whereas this is available for Project Server. Of course, Brian Smith who is our brilliant escalation engineer at Microsoft for Project is always a great support for partners and brought us a nice workaround, using alerts on the task list on the project site.

But this was before...

Do you remember a while ago when I blogged about the O365 roadmap for Project? At this time, there was no evidence that such a feature was under development.

If you now come back to the O365 roadmap, you see that:

So we now have the task notifications in Project Online! At least when you'll be rolled out as well.. This is definitely a good news for organizations who are relying on this mode of communication for tasks and projects.

Now let's see how to use it.

First of all, to activate the feature, go to the "additional server settings" and turn the notifications service on.

Now if you go to the server settings, you'll see 2 additional items under the personal settings:

Every user will be able to set alerts and reminders for his own tasks and status report (also queue job failure). 

Project managers (more precisely project owners) will also be able, using the 2nd link, to set alerts and reminders for their team members. Note that this feature also includes resource request from engagements notifications.

Try it, it is actually very convenient that every single user and project owner can do his own settings.

O365 Roadmap - Project focus

Coming back from the TechDays 2015 in Paris, I've been reading a couple of articles about O365 which is going to be a particular target for MS developers and innovation in the coming years. I've ended on this roadmap which lists "updates that are currently planned for applicable subscribers. Updates are at various stages from being in development to rolling-out to customers to being generally available for applicable customers world-wide". 

If you search for "Project" updates, you'll find 4 interesting updates. Obviously being a MVP has some advantages and I already heard of those improvments to come. But the question was more about the NDA on those new developments which prevents me blogging. Now it is public, let me summarize for you what you can expect about Project.

1. Apps for Project Pro for Office 365 write support

Apps for Project Pro for Office 365 will be able to write-back and update the project plan. 

2. Capacity Management capabilities in Project Online

Resource Managers can benefit from configurable color coded heatmaps to better predict the utilization of   their resource pool in Project Online. These heatmaps will also support seamless drill-down capabilities all the way down to individual resources and their assigned projects. 

3. Multiple timeline bars in Project Pro for Office 365

In Project Pro for Office 365 you will be able to create multiple timeline bars within the Timeline view. You will also be able to set a custom date range for each timeline bar in order to just highlight a certain time period of the project in the Timeline view. 

4. Resource Engagement Workflow in Project Online

Project managers, working in Project Pro for Office365 can systematically place resource requests in order to build their project teams.  Soon thereafter, Resource managers working in Project Online willbe able to view, modify, accept or reject those requests. Also, decisions made by Resource managers  will be available to Project Managers within Project Pro for Office 365 to review and plan accordingly.  

Do not hesitate to drill down into the several updates in the list, particulary around O365 which will for sure have a positive side effect on the Project word, such as the O365 notification pane or Power View integration in Excel Online.