Change your default PWA site in Project Home

Thank you Brian (see article)! We can now change the default PWA site in Project Home. 

This is a nice improvment, in the same direction than the permission mode being configurable from PWA settings (versus the SP CA). Now orgnizations tend to have more PWA sites and do need more flexibility to manage several PWA sites. This is also why proposing the new Project Home was very relevant.

From Project Home, you'll find this new "Default PWA site" option.

Then you can select a new PWA url.

When you select a PWA site, Project Online checks if the active account has the right permissions on the new defaut site.

Then what's new? When you'll create a new project from Project Home, it will use the new default PWA. Also the "Go to Project Web App" link will open the default PWA site.

If you are curious, you'll notice when you hit the "Go to Project Web App" that the URL is the following, using the "default" property.

Project Online permission mode directly accessible from PWA settings

When Project Online was released back in 2013, Microsoft introduced the SharePoint permission mode. I've never understood why but this SP permission mode has always been the default mode, where as in most of the cases, the Project Server permission mode was the one to choose.

Indeed the SP permission mode requests to manually give permissions to user in both SharePoint and Project Online, on every projects. Where as the well known Project Server permission mode, even if it is more complex (groups, categories, RBS), is much more simpler to manage once define. It embeds a synchronisation between projects and Sharepoint sites. It also allows defining permissions at group/category level and only requires adding users to groups.

At this time, we only had a few PWA site available for creation : 3 in 2013, then 10 few years later. But now we have up to 9999 PWA sites available, so organizations use to create more PWA site for test, demo, training, different departments, etc...

So at every PWA site creation, the administator has either to change the permission mode in the SharePoint CA (Project Online) or to run a Powershell command (Project Server) to switch from SP permission mode to Project Server permission mode.

This is now over since the permission mode can be set from the PWA setting in the additional server settings.

New SharePoint Central Admin for PWA site creation

Just a quick post since this morning, trying to create a new PWA site, I noticed that the interface changed.

The SharePoint Central Admin has now the modern interface. You can choose to create a new site and pick up the PWA site template. Then you'll select a name and an administrator.

Of course you can still come back to the classic interface.

Create your own carousel on the PWA home page!!

Hi,

The PWA homepage is really user friendly and pleasant to use since the carousels and tiles have been introduced in Project Server 2013 and Project Online. But wouldn't it be nice to create your own carousel integrating for example your own corporate links, or anything which might be relevant for your users? We can think about BI Center report librairies, document librairies, external links. This could look like this:

Figure 1: PWA homepage with your own carousel

So how to achieve it? The procedure is quite straight forward:

1. Create a new "promoted links" app,
2. Add your links in the "promoted links" list,
3. Add the app to your homepage.

No more than this!! So here are some more details.

1. Create a new "promoted links" app

Click on the gear icon and select "add an app". Pick-up the "promoted links" app.

Figure 2: add the "promoted links" app

Give a relevant name to your new app since it will appear (if configured accordingly) as the title of your carousel on your PWA homepage.

2. Add your links in the "promoted links" list

Before adding your links to the list (actually this promoted links app is a list containing links), you need to add the pictures that will be used for the title. Try to use a square picture, ideally PNG format, knowing that 110*110 is the standard tile format. I personnaly used for the example the "Shared Documents" librairy.

Figure 3: add the picture for the tile

Once the picture is added, you can proceed and add the link in the promoted links list.

Figure 4: add a new link to the promoted links list

You will have some properties to fill, such as the path (URL) of the link and picture. You can previously copy the picture path to paste it at the right place. You also have to add the title and description of the link. 

Figure 5: promoted link settings

Note that you can also specify the order of the tile in case you add more than one tile in the carousel, as well as the laucn behavior (new tab, page navigation, dialog box).

3. Add the app to your homepage

Once you app is configured with your link, you have to add it to your homepage (or anywhere else where a webpart can be added, such as a project site, the BI Center...). Click on the gear icon, then "edit page", "add a webpart, select the promoted links app in the "apps" section and add it.

Figure 6: adding the promoted links app to the homepage

Finally, you can edit the webpart properties to adjust some settings, such as displaying the app title above the carousel.

Figure 7: tile added to the PWA homepage

And with a few more tiles:

Figure 8: some more tiles added to your new carousel on the PWA homepage

Et voilà!!

Do not open Projects in Edit Mode unexpectedly in Project Server 2013

If you are used to open projects in Project Professional in 2010 by double clicking on a project in the open window, you should know that the project is by default opened in edit mode and though checked-out.
Project Server 2013 is bringing here a nice improvement that I, as administrator, am really happy to welcome.
All Projects in Project Professional are by default opened in read-only mode and can be opened in edit whenever you want.

Then, while opened in Read Only , as for Office in 2010 and 2013, Microsoft introduced the "Notification bar" in Project 2013 allowing you to check-out the file.

I already hear you saying: "What about my modifications made while in read-only?". Don't worry, Project is clever enough to just check-out the project without reloading it. Any modification made in read-only mode are kept while checking out the project file


What if a co-worker changed the project in the meantime? Project will ask you to save you changes.

if you choose yes, it will ask you to find a place to save it before checking-out the file

You will have to pay attention while using the "Recent Projects" opening, by default, it will check-out the file for you!

From PWA the options are still the same : while clicking on the little workplan icon, the project will open in Edit mode to your computer MS Project and clicking the project link will open in Read only in PWA.

If you want to open in another manner, you'll have to select the line (not clicking the project link but next to it, this, I guess you're familiar) and select the proper open option from the rubban

You will never again lock a file without noticing it!

Timeline in Project Web Access 2013 : new nice feature!!

The timeline in MS Project Pro 2010 has been a really great new feature which was strongly appreciated by project managers when they need to quickly extract a graphical overview of their project plans for executive committees presentations.

But what about a portfolio timeline view including multiple projects? That was not possible with Project Server 2010. Hopefully Project Server 2013 brought a bunch of nice new features such as the timeline in PWA, meaning in the proejct center and in the project schedule page.

So in this post, not much writing but just a quick description of this new feature quite easy to use and with a extremely nice render!

Below is the project center (still in french, I promise I'll get an english PWA as soon as possible...), where you can select a project in the grid and click on "add a project" in the "project" tab on the ribbon, under the "timeline" section. Be aware that if you click on the project name hyperlink, you'll go directly to the project details, so just click on another cell next to the project name.

Figure 1 : Project center timeline with the "add to timeline" button

When you click on the timeline itself, a new contextual "timeline" tab appears in the ribbon. It allows you formatting the bars with custom fonts or colors. You can also choose to hide or display some items like dates or lock the timeline width. Finally selecting a specific bar in the timeline, you can remove it or display it as a legend.

Figure 2 : "Timeline" tab with formatting options in the project center ribbon

Going to the project detail in the schedule page, you'll be able (assuming you're in edit mode) to select a task and add it from the "add to timeline" button.

Figure 3 : Project detail timeline with the "add to timeline" button

Note that selecting high level phases of your project will give you a really nice result. Similarly to the project center, you can click on the timeline to display the "timeline" tab of the ribbon in order to do some "sexy" formatting.

Figure 4 : Timeline" tab with formatting options in the project detail ribbon

Note : (read carefully the edit at the end of the post, the first part of the sentence below is erroneous but I keep it as is to keep track of the post history)

As an important comment I'd mention that whereas the project center timeline is user specific (stored in the personal settings), the project details timeline is project specific, meaning that modifying it requires checking out the project in PWA or MS Project Pro. The project details timeline can then be seen from 3 different places :

1. PWA, editable when checking out the schedule (figure 3 and 4),
2. MS Projec Pro, editable when checking out the project (figure 5),
3. The project site welcome page, consultable only (figure 6).

Figure 5: project  details timeline in MS Project Pro

Figure 6: project  details timeline in in the project SharePoint site

Hope you enjoy this nice new feature that brings to the PWA 2013 a brand new view at portfolio and project level. Try it and you'll love it!

EDIT June 10th 2015: Damien brings a useful contribution in his comment below by mentionning that the Project Center timeline is NOT user specific since it is stored in a Sharepoint list.