Resource engagement: utilization calcuation setting

Hi,

If you are using Project Online or Project Server 2016, you might have activated the resource engagement new feature. In case you are not familiar with this functionality, you can read this post I wrote when the feature was released. It comes in replacment of the resource plans. An interesting capability of the resource plan was to set wheither the capacity/resource utilization was calculated from the project, the resource plan or both (specifying a transition date). 

Now where is this parameter? Navigating in the PWA capacity plans from the resource center, I couldn't find it. Got this answer thanks to the MVP distribution list, you have to set it using MS Project Pro, going to the project information. Note that the setting is available only for the published projects.

The "project plan until" still has the same behavior. This will trigger the utilization calculation from the project plan on a short term horizon until the specified date and then from the resource engagements.

Got it?

Embed your Power BI dashboard in Project Online

A while ago, I've been asking to our french Microsoft BI guru Frank Mercier if it was possible to integrate a PowerBI report into a Project Online page. The answer was "unfortunately, no (t yet)..". I was quite frustrated because we all know that our customers do love the "all in one place" principle. Saying them that they must navigate to another ecosystem in order to view their favorite reports was not a good promotion for our PPM solution.

If you are a regular reader of my post, you know that I do love PowerBI, have often blogged about it due to the regular updates the product team brings to the solution. So you might guess what is coming below, don't you..?

You can now integrate your PowerBI dashboards in Project Online. And guess what, it take 2 steps!

Go to the file menu:

Retrieve the embeded code choosing the frame size:

Then go to your Project Online home page, insert a new content editor webpart:

Paste the embeded code in the HTML source code dialog box:

That's it!!

The dashboard contains all the tabs and is dynamic.

After a few layout improvments on your homepage, it could looks like the following capture. You could integrate your PowerBI dashboard in a new PDP following the procedure above (I suggest to follow Jerome's advice and use a script editor webpart) and create a carousel on the homepage with a promoted link app, and also add the PDP in the quick launch menu.

Warning: When you use Publish to web, the report or visual you publish can be viewed by anyone on the Internet. There is no authentication used when viewing these reports. Only use Publish to web with reports and data that the anyone on the Internet (unauthenticated members of the public) should be able to see. Do not use Publish to web with sensitive data, data that has financial implications, data that must remain confidential, or data that you do not have the license rights to publish.

My updates on the Power BI March release

Hello everyone Please see below a big list of things which happened on Power BI this month! My highlights are:

Power BI -          Preview of the external dashboard sharing. This has been a top voted feature in the PowerBI user voice. If Project team is using it well, we may have great outcome of the Project uservoice. The access can then be managed on a person bases and the overall functionality can be disabled in the O365 admin centre -          You can now add widget in any dashboard, this will allow to embed any code in your dashboard like a YouTube video (why not) -          Allowing touch zoom for touch screens on dashboards And more here https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-february-service-update/

Power BI Desktop Again, a new version of PowerBI Desktop has been released including; -          Ability to see data behind a visual and export it to CSV -          Support navigation hierarchy, KPI and display folder from SSAS -          New exciting visual allowing to see a KPI with its trend, I see a great value! -          Ability to define your own hierarchies to allow drill-down in the reports like (Portfolio, Project, Program or Year, Quarter, Month) -          DirectQuery Mode – Support for creating Calculated Columns And more here  https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-update-lots-of-new-authoring-features-and-a-new-power-bi-desktop-update/

Power BI Mobile -          New Landscape mode for android    -          Ability to interact with reports directly from the phone -          Ability now to consume reports on phones starting with IPhone and Android! More here https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-mobile-apps-update-february-2016/

Power BI Gateway Power BI gateways are here to help connect on-prem data to the online world the enterprise gateway has been updated this month with: -          live connection to Oracle ad Teradata -          scheduled refresh for most of data sources (SQL Server, Teradata, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Sybase, SAP HANA, OData, Web, Files and Folders on-premises, and SharePoint list on-premises) More on the gateway here https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-gateway-february-2016-update/

My 2 cents I have made some tests of some cool visuals this month including Waffle chart and Sankey report. Here is the result on resource assignments

Tell me what you want to do....

Since a little while, Microsoft and other tech companies are trying to make people ask instead of clicking. This is the case for Siri, Cortana, Google! But now, it comes to our tools. Office 2016 suite is now having this great functionality that you can get out of you ribbon : "Tell me what you want to do"

As I am a big fan of using the search button in Windows 10 and typing, I am no more using the old list of programs we used to have since Microsoft UI was born!

In this blog, I just wanted to highlight cool things that you can do without touching your mouse in Project Professional 2016 or Project Pro for Office 365.

Before starting, you have to know that you can activate the search box in typing Alt-Q

as an example, inserting a new task. it is not the best example because you would just have to press the insert button on your keyboard. But anyway, just type Alt-Q , task, ↓, à, Enter. and your task is created. You can also do some other actions on the tasks as proposed. If you choice is not here, refine your request.

Same to set a baseline or act on a baseline : Alt-Q , baseline, ↓,↓,à, Enter. The set baseline menu is showing up

You can also generate reports directly from the Q&A field:

Note that the answers are based on the context you are in. a gantt chart view will not give you the same answers as a Team Planner view

Now, Microsoft just need to integrate it to Cortana and I will more than happy.

Enjoy that feature

Microsoft Project 2016 book available in french!

It is with a great honor that I contributed on the latest edition of the Project 2016 book for the Editions ENI, now available!

This book has multiple authors since it has been started for an earlier version and updated for each new version. I'm proud that the Editions ENI asked for my contribution for the french 2016 edition.