Configure rollup of timephased reporting data in Project Online

Recently the product group has made some improvements to optimize Project Online performances. I particularly think about the project center updates and the EPT configuration to store the project sites out of the PWA site collection.

The last feature, currently being rolled up, is the ability to configure the rollup level of timephased reporting data, used through ODATA, with PowerBI or Excel.

Here is the Microsoft article:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Configure-rollup-of-timephased-reporting-data-in-Project-Online-da8487fe-899e-4510-a264-e2ebc948928c?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Basically, you'll find a new entry in your PWA server settings, enterprise data section. You'll be able to choose if you want to rollup timephased data at daily (current), weekly, monthly or at fiscal period level.

A few aspects to have in mind:

Any changes require to republish the projects.

• For new instance (created after the rollup), NEVER will be checked, meaning that this is one of the first parameter to configure for a new instance using odata reporting. You can keep is like this is you don't need timephased reporting data, it will improve your queue performance.
• For existing instances, DAILY will be selected, which means that it will have to impact on existing reports.

We strongly advice to first change the parameter on a test environment to check that the reports still work. For example, Ion the dashboard I usually deploy, the capacity reports use a weekly or monthly timescale, so I'll have to readjust them.

Playing around with the PowerBI mobile app

I've been working with PowerBI since the first weeks it was available and I could follow the ramp-up of the capabilities. You know if you're following me that I love blogging about PowerBI.

Working since a couple of month with a new customer who is deeply involved in the digital transformation, I are willing to give access to the top management to a set of dashboards. I wanted to anticipate their requirements so I downloaded (why didn't I do it before??) the PowerBI app. 

I created 2 simples dashboards in 1 hour just to test the app. Note that they are draft and still require to be improved. After getting authenticated, you land on a home page where you can navigate in your various workspaces. Like in PowerBI app, you'll see reports and dashboards which you can add a favorites.

Then you can access your dashboard, playing around with the data. You can also share dashboards with people in your organization.

Note that in my example, I have a lot of information on the dashboard. On a WP10, it is quite tedious to use the segments. It should be easier on a tablet, but I do advice to create lighter dashboards with less information to make easier the manipulation. I think it is better to have many light dashboards (since it is easy to navigate between dashboards using the favorites) than having a few complex dashboards.

Notice how easy and fast it is to create a WOOW with your customer, simple tool, complete dashboard, user-friendly app, in just 1hr!

My first Power BI report without Excel

Hi Project addicts!

We recently had a lot of new announcements about PowerBI, embedding components such as Power Pivot, Power Query, Power Map, enabling auto refresh, etc... So I decided to roll up my sleeves and get into it with my new Project Online demo tenant. Moreover, since I'm not a developer, I'm always willing to discover reporting tools which don't require any development skills.

Funny thing (or not...), I still do not have Excel 2013, I'm stuck with an old version of Excel 2010, preventing me from installing the latest Power X add-ons to play with...

So that's it ? Obviously not, since Microsoft Power BI preview is now available, allowing you to designer powerful dashboard without even using Excel. See this reference:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2015/03/16/power-bi-preview-now-available-worldwide.aspx

So how does it work? 

First connect to https://app.powerbi.com with your O365 admin account. Once connected, you'll be able to download Power BI Designer. It is a client application which allows you connecting via odata protocol to your Project Online project data.

Figure 1: download Power BI Designer from Power BI Preview

You'll find all relevant information here:

• https://powerbi.microsoft.com/designer
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2015/05/19/power-bi-designer-may-update.aspx for the last update (may 2015)

You'll see that Power BI designer looks like Performance Point, in this old fashion presentation as well in the process of creating dashboards, eventhough it provides much more features and capabilities.

In Power BI Designer Preview

Once downloaded, you first create your odata connection on your Project Online instance. For the example, I retrieved projects data using the following URL:

https://mydemo.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa/_api/ProjectData/Projects

Then I won't go into much details since there are many blogs explaining the process. Here is a very good one, very detailled:

https://support.powerbi.com/knowledgebase/articles/471664-getting-started-with-power-bi-designer

Since I'm not a developer, I did a simple example, not playing too much with the query part but simply doing simple drag and drop operations and some formatting.

Here my first page:

Figure 2: dashboard's first page

And the second one:

Figure 3: dashboard's second page

Note that you have more advanced features such as the maps, or you can also edit the query if you are willing to, create relationships, measures and so one...

Once done, you can save your dashboard as a Power BI file (pbix format).

In Power BI Preview

Back in Power BI Preview, you can upload your dashboard. As you can see, uploading my dashboard from local drive to Power BI preview will create a data set, a report and a dashboard which can be shared will my colleagues.

Finally, I'll like to share 2 interesting features:

1- Q&A: you can type a question using a formal langage in order to find information based on your data set. This will return a graph with eventually a table, together with smart suggestions.

Figure 4: Q&A feature

From July 15th 2015, visualizations, Filter, and Field panes have been added to the Q&A. If I want to change the visual from line to bar chart, I just click on the bar chart icon.  Want to add a field to the visual, just click on the field or drag the field over to the appropriate location. 

Figure 5: vizualisations pane added to the Q&A

2- Schedule auto refresh: you can now schedule an odata auto refresh to keep your report up to date. See the article:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2015/06/22/announcing-refresh-support-for-power-bi-designer-files-in-the-power-bi-service.aspx

And just a last one for fun, where I used a "location" project custom field for a map chart in Power BI Designer to display the total projects costs by country with a slicer and a pie chart associated.

Figure 6: map chart with aa "location" project custom field, a slicer and a pie chart

Nice, isn't it?? That was just a simple example with a simple dataset and light formatting, but imagine what you could do spending a little more time on it!!

EDIT: sorry in advance for the video small size. I just tried a new capture tool and it seems like I can't get a bigger size..