Improve workplace productivity with Teams document management
Many factors affect workforce productivity. One of these is the ability to find the right documents, resources, and files at the right moment. This affects enterprise productivity, the pace of work, and employee productivity. It also allows employees to concentrate on more valuable activities like innovation, strategy, training, and skill enhancement. Research shows that employees are spending more time searching for critical documents in cluttered online document management systems than they are focusing on providing workplace value. The research found that 54% of US office workers surveyed said they spend more time looking for files and documents than responding to emails and other messages. In their day-to-day business, organizations generate a lot of documentation and data that includes details about business transactions. This includes key information such as the transaction’s details, names of parties, amounts paid, dates, and the nature of the transaction. These documents, also known as source documents, must be stored in a way that is easy to locate. Organizations fail to address this crucial aspect, resulting in inefficiency and inefficient routine operations. This is compounded when you consider the documentation and information created by remote teams or dispersed workers in a hybrid work environment. It is not about just storing and cataloging but also accessing the information quickly for correct decision-making. To make accurate decisions on pricing, delivery, and overall experience, the procurement department needs to have instant access to real-time and historical data from different locations. However, it is not possible to delay the decision-making process while you search for information. Time is an important component of any business outcome. Therefore, procurement must have instant access to both historical and current information. Office 365 document management allows you to build highly scalable workflows. It also lets you say goodbye to clunky papers once and for all. You can create your own Office 365 document management software with minimal effort and all the customization options that you want. Is Microsoft using a document management system? It is. You can bet your bottom dollar! Microsoft 365 document management has become a reality due to the combination of solutions such as SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive. These services allow users to share, store, and collaborate on documents anywhere they are. It’s easy to overlook Microsoft’s document management skills on paper. This is until you discover the many perks that this ecosystem offers: There are countless search and filter options It can be difficult to find what you are looking for when there are many folders and documents. This problem isn’t solved by many document management search systems. However, Microsoft offers a number of search and filter options to find your document easily. Team collaboration It’s not easy to maintain project-specific documents. Document management systems today do a poor job of managing project documents and keeping relevant teams informed. Microsoft’s offerings, like Office 365 and Teams, are certainly different. Permission management and security Most document management systems do not allow users to restrict who has access to certain documents. Only certain users should be allowed to view documents. One department might not want members from another department to have access to their files. A department or group of users may have to add/edit permission, while another group might only have read-only permission. You might also want to share files with people outside of your organization. For instance, a member of the marketing team might wish to show the client advertising receipts or sales reports. Microsoft Team’s private and public files features are here to help. Depending on the type and content of communication, teams can categorize files as private or public documents. Public document sharing Files that are sent to the channels (team) automatically become available in SharePoint. Here, the files are saved in the cloud and available to everyone. SharePoint stores files that are shared with a larger group. This allows everyone to access all files. Private document sharing Contrary to team-focused SharePoint, OneDrive stores the files that are shared in private chats. OneDrive is the best way to save files that are private. Each employee can access his OneDrive account and use it to store his files. Teams then filter files that are exchanged via a group chat or 1:1 chat with OneDrive for Business. Employees have the assurance that their personal files and documents are kept private or only shared with a select group of people. Reliable version control functions Have you ever made changes to a document only to have to restore the previous version? Many users find it frustrating that legacy document management systems do not allow them to save the document history or restore previous versions. Microsoft offerings have saved history to check what changes are made and by whom. Keep the folder structure and naming. Document management systems tend to use the same folder structure and naming conventions throughout the space. Users are unable to name or organize folders in a way that makes the most sense for them. All changes made to the system have automatically reflected all users. Notification and approval Some documents need executive approval before being sent to others (think invoices, performance appraisals, etc.). This is a major problem with most digital document management software. This problem is not an issue with Microsoft Teams. As Microsoft makes use of advanced automation like ChatGPT, Copilot, etc. Automation allows Teams to offer suggestions for various tasks, such as suggesting a file to be included in a conversation or reminding to follow up on an important message. Copilot may suggest files or documents included in a chat about a project. This can streamline communication and ensure all information is included. Document management with Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams is one of the most effective modern workplace solutions to the question of “how to create a document management system.” Microsoft Teams was launched in 2017. It consolidates all aspects of document management so that there are no duplicated files or scattered records. It is important to know that Microsoft Teams document management occurs via SharePoint. A
How to utilize Microsoft Teams to manage projects more efficiently
We’ve received inquiries like the one above, asking if Microsoft Teams can be utilized as a project management tool. Why use Microsoft Teams for project management? Many are familiar with Microsoft Teams as a hub for communication. They understand it allows users to voice and video calls their coworkers, but that is often where their understanding ends; Microsoft Teams offers much more than simply keeping people connected. Microsoft Teams’ top intuitive features: Microsoft Teams is an all-inclusive communication and collaboration platform. It features document collaboration, presentation, whiteboarding, and other renowned communication tools. Stay informed with Teams and channels Microsoft Teams offers a platform for open, transparent communication between project managers across all aspects of the projects they manage. Let’s assume you’re a project manager in an IT company and have three projects for each customer. Create a team for each customer using the Teams tab, then create communication channels within those teams for each project you need to manage. It takes only a click of your mouse to add appropriate people or resources from within your staff members to each of these channels and teams. Make work accessible to everyone. Time tracking is of the essence when managing a project. Are you spending too much time trying to locate and work on essential documents in multiple folders or repositories? Doing so could be costing you valuable hours in the long run. MS Teams can save you time! To access and co-author Word documents and Excel spreadsheets from within Teams, just connect it to SharePoint. Don’t miss another deadline! Project management professionals understand the importance of deadlines. Microsoft Teams provides you with the ability to share an Outlook group calendar from within its platform. You can utilize Planner to assign task lists and stay organized. With Microsoft Planner integrated into your Teams platform, you’ll have another means of keeping tabs on tasks and project timelines. Be brave and customize your teams for maximum efficiency! Teams offer numerous integrations that can be customized. Don’t be intimidated to explore those options to make Team truly yours – there are countless third-party apps and services available in Teams’ Apps tab that you can choose from! Check out our blog Apps for project management in Microsoft Teams to explore some wonderful apps for efficient project management. Microsoft Teams can assist in solving project management issues. Project management challenges present themselves on a regular basis. As a project management professional, your role is to overcome these obstacles and deliver the desired business outcomes. There are various tools and techniques that can be employed for this purpose. Let’s examine some of the most pressing project management challenges Microsoft Teams can assist you with. Lack of communication Project managers face many difficulties, including poor communication. Poor communication can cause major delays to projects and cost overruns. Many times, different stakeholders in a project work in silos. This means they don’t share important updates with the entire team. MS provides numerous features that promote open working. Poor data management Project teams deal with a lot of data. It can be challenging to keep it organized and structured, leading to chaos in storage if not handled properly. Navigating and searching for accurate documentation becomes challenging due to these inefficiencies which cost valuable time essential for project management; ultimately leading to reduced business productivity levels as a result. Microsoft Teams’ seamless integration with SharePoint, OneDrive, and other Microsoft products enables you to efficiently manage your data while ensuring its security. Stakeholder alignment Project management involves many stakeholders. Internal stakeholders such as your project team, managers, and executives are important; but you also have external stakeholders like customers, suppliers and contractors, investors, and vendors – the list is endless! Coordinating all the different project stakeholders can be challenging. Sending different messages to each person involved in a project isn’t effective – make sure everyone is on the same page about project progress without needing mediators between parties. Microsoft Teams makes this possible. Teams allows you to bring together multiple departments and teams in one workspace where they can collaborate and communicate more efficiently. Knowledge management Sometimes, knowledge sharing is insufficient after a project’s completion. All the lessons learned from past and future endeavors can serve as valuable teaching points. Knowledge management is fundamental for successful project management. It allows you to identify best practices and provide reference points for your teams. Microsoft Teams can assist in solving this problem, by creating a knowledge base where all business documents can be stored securely. Project budgets and timing Any project manager should strive to finish within budget and on schedule. Various reasons could go wrong, causing delays or additional costs that should not have occurred in the first place. Microsoft Teams can assist in solving silo work, miscommunications, lack of accountability, and collaboration failures by helping solve these issues head-on. Microsoft Teams offers an easy-to-use integration with both native and third-party project management software, so you can communicate and collaborate with anyone regardless of the platform they use. To guarantee everyone stays aware of their tasks, Teams allows for connecting task management applications. Furthermore, Teams record all conversations for accountability purposes – making it simpler to hold everyone accountable for the project. Adherence to project management guidelines Every team working on a project should have clear project management guidelines with detailed instructions and steps. Collect best practices and create these guidelines; share them with your team members and give them all of the tools they need to automate certain tasks so they can focus on the project at hand. However, it is possible to disobey these guidelines and continue using antiquated techniques which bog down project management. Microsoft Teams can assist in solving this issue. It allows you to transform your project management guidelines into an action plan that your team can follow. Final thoughts on Microsoft Teams for project management Microsoft Teams has revolutionized the way project managers work. Teams require a solution to address all stakeholders involved in the project management
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
Project management tools by Microsoft
Planning is an important part of the project life cycle. Before starting the execution of any project the project manager needs to create a plan of action which includes breaking down the overall project goal into tasks and assigning resources to these tasks and defining the timeline for each task. Project planning plays an important role in project success. It enables the organization to decide the timeline of the project and anytime track project progress against this schedule. For project planning and scheduling Microsoft has some awesome tools and organizations select their tool as per their requirement and available resources. Microsoft provides its project planning and scheduling offerings majorly in three forms – Project Server (On-Premises) Project Online Project for the web. Microsoft Project Server on-premises and online has almost similar features. If an organization has the proper infrastructure, and resources trained on the infrastructure side and potentially need more data security then Project Server On-Premises is best suitable for them. Project Server on-premises requires installation and maintenance of at least Microsoft Project Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server, and Microsoft SQL Server. Eventually, everything is moving to the cloud. It reduces the burden of managing the servers on-premises and installing patches. If an organization has O365 licenses, then it must opt for Project Online. All the features of Project On-Prem and Project Online are similar for project scheduling and managing. Project Online and on-prem are best for managing complex project plans. For Project Online Project P1, P3 and P5 licenses are available which an organization can purchase as per their need. For managing small projects, Project for Web is quite a beautiful tool. Project for Web has several features which are special. Project For Web is built on Microsoft Power Platform whereas Project Server On-Prem and Project Online are built on SharePoint. Data of Project for Web stored in Dataverse, which could be easily accessible via other tools of Power Platform including Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. Project For the web is best suited for users who want to manage a simple project plan with tasks and resource assignments without much complexity. It integrates into the Microsoft 365 suite. Program and portfolio management, financial management, resource management, and other advanced project management functionalities like baselining, critical path, etc. are not available in Project for the web. Along with Project scheduling, there are other project-related entities that are also important like risk, issue, change requests, etc. Project for web accelerator is a Power App that extends Project for the web. It provides several additional features to the Project for the web. Project Request Program Risk Issues Changes Status Project Request – Using Project for the web accelerator, project managers can create project requests with minimal information. By looking at the request information stakeholders can decide and approve it. After the approval, the request was converted into Project. Want information about our project portfolio management solutions? Click here. Program – To see a bigger picture users can create a hierarchy of programs and projects. By this users can group projects by their characteristics. Risks and Issues – A project manager always wants to track and maintain a log of Risks and issues in a project along with their mitigation plan. Changes – As the project proceeds with its deliverable, there are changes coming in terms of scope or design. These can be logged using Project for web accelerator. Status – The project manager can routinely update stakeholders about the health of the project. It also provides flexibility to centralize the status reports. Microsoft has Its project management offering for all types of organizations. Now it’s up to the users which tool they want as per their project requirements and resource availability. Shruti Vyas Shruti is a technical consultant at Advaiya. With over nine years of experience in the IT industry, Shruti has a passion for data and an ability to understand and analyze it effectively. She shares her insight on various topics such as custom application development, project server customization, client-side scripting etc.
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.
4 innovative approaches to improve your BI Reporting
Fewer than a third of all projects were successfully completed on time and on the budget over the past year. Keeping projects on track when handling continuous change requests is a project manager’s greatest challenge. From the beginning, if the objectives are not clear, and right expectations are not set with executives, the client, or the team, deadlines can suffer. Project delays are frustrating and costly but can be easily avoided with a little foresight and planning. If we look into the reasons, missed deadlines, unclear objectives, and lack of communication are some of the common causes that can sabotage successful implementation of a project. Here are a few suggestions to avoid unforeseen project delays and efficiently handle large project portfolio programs. 1. Pay a lot of attention to project planning Planning is an essential component of project management and the biggest defense against cost overruns and delays. A well-developed plan in place lowers the overall uncertainty and risks. It would be a good idea to have customized Project Plan templates like Agile Development, or Software Development, specific to organizational standards, and detail out the complete project scope before starting the actual work. Once the scope is defined, get a sign-off from the client and the stakeholders. 2. Keep all information/ assets organized with a single workspace Ensuring that the team members working on the project are organized from start to finish can help in cutting down unnecessary time spent in finding out project related information. Have a central workspace that acts as a portal to store all your documents, track, share and collaborate. Customized project workspace for better tracking, information sharing, and collaboration. 3. Simplify best practices and automate project processes Setup custom process templates to increase standardization, help project teams and set the stage for the upcoming project. This ensures best practices across all projects and saves time and effort which can be invested in other critical project tasks. 4. Constantly track and measure the progress To govern the level of success achieved, the measure of progress attained is necessary. It is imperative to have quick access to all relevant project information and summarized weekly project status for informed decision making. Easy to create BI dashboards for team members, project managers, and executives, can help the entire team stay on track with their goals. 5. Notify stakeholders about overall project status and change requests Giving stakeholders adequate knowledge on the projects health status, team’s achievements and concerns can save the project from trouble in the long-run. The status reports help to raise important matters, discuss them freely and find a solution to issues before they get out of hand. Also, the stakeholders should be notified of any new change requests, the scope of the change, and information about what it will take to implement it. They can decide and take the required action to accommodate the request, without impeding the overall project schedule. Fast track your project schedule with AdValue. Advaiya has designed AdValue pack for project management to help you and your team use standardized processes, and quickly visualize and analyze project data to make better-informed decisions, faster. Want information about our BI reports and dashboards solutions? Click here AdValue is a package you can install on top of your Project Online tenant that instantly helps you to get the most out of your deployment. Here are some of its many benefits: Insightful Power BI dashboards customized for Executives, Project Managers and Team Members Customized project workspace for better project tracking and collaboration Built-in workflow to standardize project management phases Alignment with PMBoK tools to manage projects betterQuick and easy deployment to make you look like a superstar Extensible solution that can later be customized to specific needs Need more guidance on project and portfolio management? Write to us to discuss how we can help you and your team become more efficient. Romi Mahajan I’m an accidental marketer. My skills are in building deep relationships, seeing markets before they burgeon, and in applying socio-political concepts to business. I have 3 pillars on which I pursue opportunities: People, Impact, and Autonomy.    Â
Microsoft new Project service
The revolutionary changes in Microsoft Project with the release of Microsoft’s new Project service have the vision to enable organizations to perform more productively and efficiently with a simple and intuitive range of tools across Microsoft cloud. These changes have been made in the product to support the wide range of project management terminologies and methods like agile, waterfall, or hybrid. The key attractions in this release are: A fresh new and fluent user experience Improved collaboration with Office 365 groups & Teams Power Platform base for better extensibility To experience the new Project, you may navigate to Project icon from Office Launcher Clicking on New blank project creates a new project where you can perform all basic project planning activities like create and schedule tasks, assign resources, define task dependency, etc. The new experience is very intuitive and simple. Its fluent UI facilitates various options for project scheduling like creating a task as sub-task, promoting subtasks, assigning resources, scheduling the task dates, adding notes and attachments to tasks, etc. The three views on the top, i.e., Grid, Board & Timeline, enrich the user experience by displaying the project plan differently. The Grid view , as shown above, provides an intuitive interface for scheduling resource allocation. The quick task actions like Insert, Delete, Promote subtask, Mark task as a subtask, etc. are readily available in a single click. The Open details allow defining task metadata in the task pane. Each field in the task pane is quite self-explanatory and simple to use. The Board view, on the other hand, is kept similar to Planner, Task board in Microsoft Project Professional, Agile board in DevOps interface for providing a similar user experience to users who have been using these tools for project planning. On the view, tasks are by default grouped by Progress; they can also be grouped by Finish date & Bucket. By default, to each task To-do bucket is assigned. Users can create as many buckets as needed and group tasks accordingly. The timeline view is an improved view of the traditional Gantt chart view available in the project online. This is more intuitive and fluent. To assign the resources to Task, you may click on the task, and you get the option Assign for resource allocation. The new feature in resource allocation is the creation of a collaborative group. While assigning the resource, you may create either a new or use existing group for the project team. Notice at the top right side. Clicking on this allows you to add or edit members in the project team. You may use this group to create Teams for team collaboration and can track the project plan from Microsoft Teams after integrating it. In addition to new project planning experience, the Roadmap service enables us to bring diverse projects together on a single interface. You can connect the project from Project Online, Azure Boards, and track those at a single interface. More Interesting Read Project Service, the next generation of Microsoft Project Hence the new Project is designed for any role, any skill level, or project type. For novice users, the user experience is refreshed to allow them to quickly manage their project planning and tracking with a simple and intuitive user experience. On the other hand, the professional Project Managers can use advanced tools in extension to Project for enriching their Project Management Life cycle. Being built upon the Common Data Service (CDS) platform, the new Project service can easily integrate with other Microsoft Tools like Planner, Teams, Dynamics 365. Now the entire Power Platform can be leveraged primarily for project management solutions. With this release, Microsoft has also revised the subscriptions as detailed here. Where Project Plan 1 is available for purchase in the U.S. and by mid-November in other parts of the world. If you already have a Project subscription plan, you should receive a notification inviting you to try the new Project experience. Another important note is that the existing Project Online subscriptions are not going away. All the new capabilities available through the new Project service will be available through existing Project Online subscriptions. More details can be referred to from The Future Vision of Project. In upcoming months, Microsoft is promising to enrich the new Project bunch with more tools covering budget analysis, resource management, and expense tracking, etc. We will keep you posted, stay tuned!
Project Online home & roadmap – Track your projects
Microsoft has released a new update in Project Online by the name Project Home. To access this feature, the user needs to have a Project Online Premium or Project Online Professional subscription. Project Home has made the experience simpler and easier. In order to navigate to Project Home, click on App Launcher and select Project, in the O365 site. The home page displays all the recent projects which were visited by you within project web tenant. It essentially lists the roadmaps and projects for which you have the access. The Type column helps in the segregation of Roadmap and Project. It is possible to get different views like shared with me, created by me, etc. to filter information to another level. There is a Create New button at the top of the home page to create a project or roadmap. By clicking on Project, you can navigate to the new project creation page of PWA tenant where one can select EPT and create a new project as needed. Below the Create New button, there is a Favorites section. In this section, users can add projects for quick access. To add a project to the favorite list, click on start that appears in the projects lists when you hover on a project. You can also remove a project from the favorites list by clicking Remove from favorites. The Roadmap is a new feature introduced in Project online to view multiple project timelines in a single window. To create Roadmap, under Create New button, select Roadmap. Now you can give a suitable name to the new Roadmap in the blank page which can be editable. To add content to the Roadmap, click +Add row. The right sidebar gets updated with new attributes. Name the row and click Connect on a project under connection. This gives two options Project & Azure Boards. In order to connect to PWA tenant, select Project. Enter PWA tenant URL to which you need to connect. The connect to a project feature of the Roadmap, gives flexibility to a project manager to track the status of different projects regardless of their native tenant. For example, when you add another row in the roadmap you can add a different tenant URL or Azure Board url. This means all your projects can be tracked with regards to timeline in a single view. Once you connect to a tenant, you will have to search for the project in the search bar to add to the  roadmap. Once populated, click on connect. Notice the flow above the Connect button. When you set up a connection in the backend, the Roadmap creates a Flow to get the updates from the connected project. Once you click connect, you can see the project in the Roadmap, and you can also check the flow of the site. When you click on see details below the connect button, it displays the details as below: Once connected, enter the tasks that need to be tracked in the search box, as shown below. You can add as many tasks as you need to track. Once listed click Add button at the bottom of the page to add these to the roadmap. In the owner text box, specify the name of the owner of these tasks. Please note that this owner is different from the resources assigned to these tasks in the project plan. By clicking on Add Items, you will be able to add rows to the roadmap as below: You can also set the status of an individual bar from the available options. As you select the status, the color of bar changes accordingly. You can use this method to create rows for tracking multiple projects in a single view. Additionally, there is an option to add key dates which can be used to plan operational or strategic tasks. To add Key dates, click Add key date. In the pop-up, add the title and the date to complete the task. Key dates are hooked up as callouts at the top of the timeline in the roadmap, as shown below. Like taskbars in the row, you can set the status of key dates, which causes a change in the color of the circle. Once you create the roadmap, you can share this with your group to update the respective users. For this, click on Members at right top. You can add the name of the group or individual you would want to share. The option Choose an existing group will list all existing groups in the tenant. You may select one and share. Once shared, all the users to whom the roadmap is shared are displayed as members. Hence the new Roadmap feature is exciting and offers a intuitive and straightforward way to manage the high-level status tracking of the projects. For now, it connects to Azure Board and Project, but the plan is to connect it to Planner and other apps. We will keep posted about it. Stay tuned!
The 5 pain points of project management
Project management is very much at the heart of every organization. Roughly 1/3rd of organizations never or sometimes deliver projects on time, to budget and defined benefits. The next question is therefore key; what are the largest challenges your organization faces when it comes to project, programme & portfolio management? We have listed down the biggest project management challenges and how a PMO can tackle them. 1.Lack of project prioritization Can you easily prioritize projects? A project manager can use a PPM software to prioritize projects and break down larger projects into tasks for easy delegation, assignment, and organization. These programs can be especially valuable for creating project scorecard, define project scope, manage workload, estimate time, map out costs and create custom reports for various projects. You should also aim to simplify best practices across all your projects with process templates based on your methodologies. Standard and custom process templates can cut the time and effort needed for projects that your team runs. Look for project management packs/solutions that can help you simplify project processes. 2.Project Collaboration & Workflow Management Project documents, communication is shared in order to enable more effective team collaboration. It creates a work space for project teams & other required stakeholders to interact, monitor & manage the different project stages. It typically includes: Document management, work flow management, notifications, e-mails, and meetings. Standard intake and easy sharing of requests can cut time and effort. You can automate project processes with built in workflows with the help of AdValue. 3.Project reporting Is project reporting a pain? Do you ever realize how much time do you spend each month collating project status information? 47% of the people spend 1 day or more collating project reports each month. Project reporting is often the most time-consuming part of a manager’s work life. Collating, making a report and keeping track of numbers are processes essential to getting things done in a progressive manner. Click to publish status reports can sharpen project visibility substantially and cut time and effort to produce reports. Once this is automated, a manager can concentrate on other important responsibilities. Can you quickly find and see the status of all your projects? Data-driven dashboards can give you visibility into all the projects your team runs. Everyone on the project will gain deep project portfolio insights with dashboards for executives, PMO’s and team members