LAUNCHED - OData Improvements to Include Timestamps for Project Entities

Last year, I was excited about a roadmap feature that had been updated on the Office 365 Roadmap. I talked about it here.

Well, here is an even more exciting update as it has been released the 4th of January. I haven't seen any official blogs yet so I had a bit of an investigation to understand what changed.

Overall, Microsoft has kindly provided the modified information to the following tables;

DataSet	Added Field	Comment
Assignment Baseline Timephased	AssignmentBaselineModifiedDate	Date of the modified baseline (date it has been published)
Assignment Timephased	AssignmentModifiedDate	Date the Assignment has been last modified
Engagement Timephased	EngagementModifiedDate	Date the Engagement has been last modified
Engagements	EngagementModifiedDate	Date the Engagement has been last modified
Project Baselines	ProjectBaselineModifiedDate	Publish date of the last modified baselines
Resource Demand Timephased	ResourceDemandModifiedDate	Date of the Resource Demande last modified
Resource Timephased	ResourceModifiedDate	Date of the Resource last modified
Task Baselines	TaskBaselineModifiedDate	Date of the modified baseline (date it has been published)
Task Baselines Timephased	TaskBaselineModifiedDate	Date of the modified baseline (date it has been published)
Task Timephased	TaskModifiedDate	Date of the task last modified
TimesheetLine Actual	TimesheetLineModifiedDate	Date of the timesheet line last modified

That is really great addition. For example, as Guillaume was stating in his comment from the previous blog, we can now track changes in the baselines and validate when a baseline has been defined.
Therefore, we can easily add a bit of smart in the queries to download only if a data has been modified.

Here is a quick example of a Power Bi report using the Baseline Modification Data to highlight tasks baselined after the project has been baselined.

One thing I am not so happy about is that I was expecting to have a trending capability with some historical data stored somewhere. I guess I was too demanding. The new fields are providing with a last modified date at a lower level than the Project level but are not recording the historical values of the fields before they changed. Something that Microsoft is hopefully considering soon. you can vote here: https://microsoftproject.uservoice.com/forums/218133-microsoft-project/suggestions/15300603-implement-versioning-in-project-online.

Tell me what you think about that added information and what usage you may do of it!

Office Roadmap for Project: New features rolling out or in development

Hi Folks,

I've been a couple of weeks ago to the European PPM Partner Forum in Amsterdam. First of all, it was a great opportunity to network with the partner community. I had for example a great chat with Allan Rocha, a fellow MVP. I also had the opportunity to talk with Jean Donati who is leading for Microsoft the engineering product team. But as you might know, what happens in Veg... sorry Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam so I can't really blog about what we heard. I can just tell you how excited I am about the new features which are coming soon...

But... I can talk about what Microsoft already communicates about. The best channel is to refer to the Office Roadmap. If you filter on Project, you'll see some interesting things.

In development:

• External user support for Project Online: often required, you'll be able to add users to Project Online who are not part of your organization, meaning subcontractors will be able to collaborate with the project teams through the SharePoint sites and do timesheets.
• Label and progress in timeline view: the timeline view has already been improved in 2016 desktop version with the multiple timeline. Now you'll be able to define custom labels for your timeline's bars and show the progress (I guess in a similar way than the team planner).
• OData improvements to include timestamps for project entities: OData is being improved every week (performance). But a common request was to report on the projects last published dates or some similar timestamped data. It will now be possible.

Rolling out :

Among the various features currently being rolled out, the following one is particularly interesting.

• Team tasks enhancements: the team task assignment was already a pretty nice feature. You could create teams and add users to teams. Then in your project, you could assign tasks to teams. Finally, any user from the team could take the task in his timesheet. The limitation was that it was a 1:1 workflow: as soon as a member of the team takes the task in his timesheet to self-assign himself on it, then the task was no longer available for other team members. I usually deployed this feature in an Agile context: you have a team of developers and you assign workpackage to the team, no matter who does it since all the developers have more or less the competencies to do the task. But quite often, the reality is different: a first member will start the task and a colleague will finish it for any reasons. Now the team assignment will be a 1:n workflow: once taken a first time, the task remains available for other team members.

Looking forward to see more? Me too! Don't hesitate to comment this article with some feedbacks!

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.

Project roadmap

Hi Folks!

EDIT (2015 October 9th) : we have been asked by Microsoft not to share this roadmap on social media. Consequently I removed the screenshots and just let my introduction. Do not hesitate to contact me for a 1-1 presentation.

I'm excited to share with you the Project and Portfolio Management roadmap which has been presented last week. This was an excellent session done by Yuval Stern, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft for Office 365.

This roadmap was really dense and we had insights of the Microsoft strategy for Project. We also has some nice imageries so we can provide to our customers and partners a vision of what is ahead and get prepared. It is indeed a key factor of success for addressing our customers' needs and expectations to well understand Microsoft strategy and be proactive in terms of service offer.

So for those who missed the session, here is a quick catch-up session. I share with you below a few screenshots in order to make the roadmap more concrete. Note that it is only a long term vision for the PPM Microsoft solution. There are not committed features for future updates/versions and no release dates can be announced yet.

We can summarize the roadmap within 7 keys points:

1. Redesigned user experience
2. Agile
3. Program management
4. Financial management
5. Out-of-the-box reports
6. Native apps across devices
7. Planner and wunderlist

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.