Microsoft Project for the web recent updates
Microsoft has recently released some of the amazing and long-awaited features. These updates aim to enhance day-to-day tasks and project management, particularly in alignment with key business priorities. The key highlights are: Task history: This feature enables Project managers to track the changes on each task, including task properties, attachments, and tasks affecting the project’s schedule. The user can click the history button on the task detail pane to catch up on the task history. The feature also enables users to start an in-context conversation. Chats in this chat pane automatically include a link to the task. This helps everyone quickly get to a shared context. New agile template: A sprint planning template has been introduced to help users create agile projects and become more familiar with the sprinting feature. With this template, the project owner can create a project with some basic tasks and their sprint information. After project creation, the project manager can switch tasks between various sprints. Access to custom environment projects in Microsoft Teams: Previously, team integration was available in the default environment only. So, whenever the organization needs Teams integration, they only have to use the Project Power app in the default environment. Starting from June 2023, users can access custom environment projects directly within Microsoft Teams channels. They can add projects from all environments to Teams channels, making project management more accessible. Goal setting with Microsoft Project: The new features introduced for goal-setting include: Goals in Project: Users can now set and track goals for their projects, aligning their teams and stakeholders with project priorities. This feature helps ensure that project work aligns with defined goals. Integration with Viva Goals: The Project for the web is integrated with Viva Goals, allowing users to track progress on Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and the projects aligned with them. These updates aim to make project and task management more efficient and aligned with organizational objectives, offering users new tools and templates to enhance their workflow in Microsoft Project for the web.
5 ways telecoms benefit from project portfolio management
Project Portfolio Management (PPM) isn’t just an IT method; it’s a valuable management process that allows organizations to achieve their full potential. Project portfolio management in the telecom industry Many different companies are involved in the telecom industry. They all have their own products, goals, and work methods. Telco employees are required to work in constantly changing environments and various organizational structures. Diversification is a challenging task, that’s for sure. While project managers from all industries may have similar backgrounds, telco project team members are comprised of professionals from different departments. The essential skill for a telco project manager is to recognize and utilize all team members’ expertise and skills, trust them all, and delegate appropriately. What are the characteristics of telecommunications projects when it comes down to services? Projects to add capabilities to an already existing public network Establishing a network of businesses specialized in your field Projects for the establishment and dissolution of a temporary network The relative importance of each category’s constraints on quality, time, and cost varies greatly! In reality, quality is the primary condition for public services. For enterprise networks, the cost is the primary concern. Temporary installations are crucially important. Projects in telecom industries have complex interfaces, both internally and externally, international orientation, multidisciplinary activities, no mass production but many user requirements, and a long planning stage (even temporary installations). Project portfolio management solutions can address all these challenges. The proper foundation and maturation in portfolio management strategies and capabilities will allow telecom organizations to manage their IT departments as a business. This means that they can think and act in terms of business outcomes and business values and provide flexibility for workflows. Telecom companies should be able to adapt PPM best practices and develop and implement a well-defined, end-to-end portfolio management process, capabilities, and services. PPM solutions can provide a wide range of capabilities if done correctly. Facilitates leadership-level enterprise goals & objectives planning Coordination with senior leadership in order to identify areas of strategic and operational growth Leadership guidance through strategic discussions Through enterprise/IT exercises, empowers strategic investment planning Develops program and project delivery frameworks Implements governance processes for portfolio and program management. Delivers projects and programs using a comprehensive and efficient PMO catalog of services Why is project portfolio management valuable in the telecom sector? Project portfolio management is valuable and necessary in the telecommunications sector for many reasons. Organizations that adopt PPM solutions achieve their strategic business goals. They also experience greater productivity, cost savings, and less chaos. This allows them to deliver high-quality results that give their team the best chance to serve the clients. Let’s take a closer look at the reasons why PPM is so important in the telecom sector. To clearly define the objective of projects If the scope of a project is unclear, problems can arise because the most important thing, which is the goals, tasks, costs, deadlines, and costs for each project, was not completed. Insufficient resources may also cause a project to lose money rather than make it rich. The initially unattainable budget means that success is not on the horizon. Project justification and governance are critical components of project portfolio management. PPM solutions allow organizations to evaluate ongoing and proposed projects and programs to accurately assess the allocations of resources, time, and budget. PPM can help improve an organization’s return on investment (ROI) and on-time delivery. Looking for a project portfolio management solution implementation partner? Connect with us. To enable automation Automation is a key feature of PPM. The program management module eliminates multiple-point tools and paper manuals. It automates processes to manage scope, risk and quality, budgets, schedules, and other details. Provides scalability Setting unrealistic deadlines is a bad idea. Not even close. No one expects tasks to be completed in perfect condition. PPM can help telecom companies to scale up or down as required based on critical factors such as unplanned spikes or changes in project estimates, shifts in enterprise strategy or priority, resource constraints that cannot be mitigated, inability to secure the right resources or allocate the right skill sets at the right time, and inability to obtain or allocate the right amount of resources. PPM can guide project managers to help them implement the most appropriate levels of project and program management. Reduces time spent on low-value projects Organizations often fail to stop lower-value projects and instead spend more time on work that doesn’t add value. PPM covers the entire project life cycle, from idea generation through to operation. With project portfolio management solutions, telecom teams can collect more information earlier in the project life cycle, allowing them to drive projects and programs faster and execute them more efficiently. Alleviates Resource Planning Challenges Resource planning is an essential aspect of project and portfolio management. It’s crucial to ensure the best resources are available for the right projects at the right time. Enterprise PPM solutions collect vital information from cross-functional teams (IT Finance, HR, etc.). Portfolio management and IT management teams can align resources at an earlier stage in the project management cycle. This allows for proper analysis and resource reservation. Then resources can be allocated to prioritized projects according to organizational needs. Final thoughts: Project management in the telecommunication industry requires a high level of skill and knowledge. Project managers are responsible for managing and controlling work execution and wave rolling plans, analyzing new constraints and requirements, and reducing time and costs. Effective communication between stakeholders across the globe is essential for team management. It is time-consuming and can be frustrating. The telecom industry has been able to meet all of these challenges thanks to digital transformation. Telcos are taking advantage of AI-powered PPM solutions to simplify their work and give employees a chance to live a more humane life, which increases the likelihood of reaching the project’s goals and allows you to respond to the needs and expectations of project stakeholders proactively and healthily. Looking for PPM partners to get a custom PPM solution ready to cater to your telecom business needs? Connect
Office365 Operations with Azure AD Multifactor Authentication
While working with Office 365 custom applications sometimes, certain non-browser applications do not support multifactor authentication. Eg: In Project Online/SharePoint Online for various custom operations we make use of ODATA, RESTand CSOM operations. To carry out these operations we require a service account, and it should have Azure AD multifactor authentication disabled. However, nowadays due to security concerns, organizations prefer to use service accounts also with multifactor authentication enabled which the custom applications do not support. I will be sharing here how we can handle and perform the custom project online operations with an account with multifactor authentication enabled. We can carry out the operations with multifactor authentication-enabled accounts in 2 ways: App Password Azure AD App authentication. Let’s discuss both the above methods: App Password: Using app passwords, the applications work correctly by bypassing multi-factor authentication and thus replacing the user’s regular credentials. Sign-in using app-password does not give any additional verification prompt and authentication is successful. These passwords are automatically generated which makes them secure. To create an app password admin needs to enable the app password feature. To generate the app password below steps can be followed: Sign in to Azure Portal(portal.azure.com) Go to Azure Active Directory Select Security under Manage. Select the Conditional Access option from the left. Select the Named location from the left. Click on Configure Multifactor authentication trusted IPs On the multi-factor authentication page, select Allow users to create app passwords to sign into non-browser apps Now, let’s see how we can generate an app password. Log in using your office 365 account and go to the My account page and select Security info. Under the Security Info page click on Add sign-in method. Choose the App password and add it. It will ask to enter a name for the app password. Copy the password for future use as it will not be shown again and then you will have to generate a new one. Click on done. You are now ready to use this app password in your applications. You can use this in any Office365 operations using CSOM, Odatawith MFA enabled account. You can delete the app password from the list under the security Info page or can create a new one. Creating the Azure AD App for Multifactor Authentication Here, I will be showing the configuration to perform Project Online operations using a multifactor authentication-enabled account using Azure AD App. This option will be helpful in case the app password also does not work due to security configuration. Using an Office 365 account log in to https://portal.azure.com. From the home page select Azure Active Directory. If you already have an Azure Active Directory App you can use the same to set the required permission else can create a new one. Click on All applications to select the existing app. To create a new app, Click on Add and select App registration. Below screen will display. Give a name to the app and register. Keep the default setting for permission. The app will get created. Open the app and click on Authentication->Add a Platform and select Mobile and desktop application. Configure the redirect URL by selecting https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient Enable Allow public client flows by selecting Yes and Save Select API permission from the left section. Then click on Add permission. A list to select the API will appear. Under Microsoft API select SharePoint to set the permission for Project operations. In a similar way whichever API we want to fetch data, we can grant permissions for that. Under this permission selects Delegated permission. Under Project Select Read and Project. Write permissions and add. If you only want read access, then can select only read permission. Permissions get added and now click on Grant Admin Consent to give the admin consent. Click on Overview and copy the Application ID i.e., the client Id that will be used in the application. The configuration is complete. Let’s see how to use it in non-browser applications. Here you can create a console application and put the below code. The things that you need to consider are: Add a reference to the latest MSAL (Microsoft.Identity.Client ) and Microsoft.ProjectServer.Client from Microsoft.SharePoint Online.CSOM. Need to define the scope which is the permission URL like“<SharePoint URL>/Project. Read. Here we will only get the list of projects so have used the read URL and we can use it as per the operations. The redirect URL is fixed and is the one which we have added under the AD app above. Use the Tenanat ID and client ID of the AD app. When we use the user credentials then we use SharePointOnlineCredentialsclass to set the credentials. Here, in this case, we will pass the token in the request header using the Authorization header as authentication will be done using the Azure AD app. private static void GetProjectsUsingCSOM() { string domain = “abc.sharepoint.com”; string PWAUser = “abc@domain.com”; string scope = “<SharePoint URL>/Project.Read”; string redirectUri = “https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient”; string pwaInstanceUrl = “PWA URL”// your pwaurl var AzureTenantId = “Enter the Azure Tenant value”; var ClientID= “ClientID of Azure AD app”; //Retrieved above PublicClientApplicationBuilder pcaConfig = PublicClientApplicationBuilder.Create(ClientID .WithTenantId(TenantId); pcaConfig.WithRedirectUri(redirectUri); // This section uses to get the token Var TokenResult = pcaConfig.Build().AcquireTokenInteractive(new[] { scope }) .WithPrompt(Prompt.NoPrompt) .WithLoginHint(PWAUser).ExecuteAsync().Result; // Load project context and get projects. ProjectContext projectContext = new ProjectContext(pwaInstanceUrl); projectContext.ExecutingWebRequest += (s, e) => { e.WebRequestExecutor.RequestHeaders[“Authorization”] = “Bearer ” + TokenResult.AccessToken; }; projectContext.Load(projectContext.Projects); projectContext.ExecuteQuery(); foreach (PublishedProject Project inprojectContext.Projects) { Console.WriteLine(Project.Name); } Console.ReadLine(); } Here, one thing that happens is, it will ask for a pop-up to enter the credentials if it is not cached. In a similar way, you can perform any Project Online/Office365 OData call also. All other calls can be carried out after adding the appropriate permissions in the AD app. Happy Coding! Supriya Khamesra Supriya is currently working as a Senior Consultant – Business Applications with Advaiya and has more than 10 years of experience in application development. Microsoft Certified Professional in EPM, Supriya has extensive knowledge in technologies including – SharePoint, Enterprise Project
Critical path in Project for the web
When working on a certain project, it is very important to analyze how various tasks would affect your project timeline. Project for the web provides such a method to calculate critical path of a project. Project for the web helps you to calculate the estimated finish date of your project and the delay or timely completion of your project. What is critical path? Critical path of a project is the complete series of all the tasks in your project that needs to be completed on time to complete your project on its due date. Example: In this case, assuming that there is no dependency within your tasks, then the critical path of your project is Task 3 because it ends the latest and thus defines the finish date of your project. What is critical path? Without the ability to calculate obstacles within the time period of a project or analyzing different portions of a project which defines the completion, many projects would never even leave the ground. Critical path is basically a ‘red alert’ for your project. If your project does not follow the timing of the critical path, it will never be able to finish within the timeline. How to calculate critical path? Divide your project into tasks. Identify all the dependencies. Estimate the duration of your tasks. Determine the critical path based on the task finish date. Now moving away from theory, let’s see how we can work on this with Project for the web. Project for the web has three tabs in the top menu bar: Grid: Grid gives you a project online type of view of your project by listing tasks, resources, and other information in a tabular form. Board: Board gives a more concise bucket view of your project wherein when you click on each task, a detailed view is opened. Timeline: Timeline provides a Gantt chart view of your project with all the tasks displayed in a more graphical manner. 1. Select timeline 2. The view after enabling critical path will be something like this. The critical path feature is user specific. If two users A and B have permission on one project and user A enables critical path, the same will not be reflected for user B. Also, every time the user reloads the project, the ‘show critical path’ toggle will turn off. Thus, because of the incredible usability and effectiveness, critical path is a project necessity in organizations everywhere. In modern times, organizations tend to work on a hybrid system, and Project for the web effectively combines Agile methodology with timeline and critical path. Users with Plan 3 and Plan 5 licenses can make use of this functionality. Compare project management solutions and costs | Microsoft Project Hope this article has helped you learn how to find critical path in a much more straightforward way. Happy planning! Zenab Waglawala Zenab is an associate at Advaiya. With over six months of experience in the IT industry, she has a passion for data and project server development. She likes to share her insights on project server customization, data analysis through Power BI, data manipulation, and working with a database such as SQL, etc. She loves working with various project planning applications such as Project Online, Project Planner, and Project for the web. Her passion for technology and commitment towards customer satisfaction are the driving forces behind her career at Advaiya. She attended Geetanjali Institute of Technical Studies, where she completed her B.tech in Computer Science and Engineering.