Project Server – For Times when
SharePoint’s Project Management
isn’t Enough
Introduction to Project Server and Project Online
Overview
Resource Management Project Plans
Project Server is On-Premises Project Online is in Office 365
I will call them the same thing for years to come
Project Online is similar to Project Server 2016 on-premises
Most of this talk will apply to Project Server 2010 and later and Project Online
Priority Management Portfolio Selection Portfolio Reviews Project Planning Resource Management Project Execution Document Management Project Reporting Timesheet
Priority Managem ent Portfolio Selection Portfolio Reviews
Project Planning Resource Management Project Execution Document Managem ent Project Reporting Timesheet
• Available as an add-on license to SharePoint On-Premises Enterprise Edition
• Requires SharePoint Server and Project Server Licenses
• Requires SharePoint Standard and Enterprise CALs
• Requires Project Server CALs
• Available in SharePoint Online
• Add-on to E3 (and higher) licensed users • Also available with Project Lite licensing
• Creating PWA Site Collections • Navigation
• Administration Screens
• Navigation Updates
• Permissions – SharePoint and Project Style
• Enterprise Objects
Resources
Resources
Resources
Resources
What good are projects without
people to do them?
• In most projects, resources are people who will be performing the work (both employees and external entities)
• Project Server can also track “asset” resources used within projects
• Test equipment
• Labs
• Who has ever been on more than one project at a time? • With separate project managers?
• Resource management in Project Server allows us a view across all projects of who is available to do what work
• As one project’s schedule changes, resource constraints imposed by other projects can be surfaced in advance
• First identify the types of resources you will need in order to track project execution status
• Determine what attributes are important to track along with resources (Names, Departments, Managers, Costs, Over Time Rates, Work Hours?)
• Wherever possible, if the type of resource exists in
Active Directory today, work with a Domain Admin to setup a method to conduct an automatic import of resources into the Gallery
• As a Project Server administrator, navigate to your PWA site collection and go to your PWA Settings
• Click on “Active Directory Resource Pool Synchronization” • Select the AD group that contains all of your synchronized
resources
• Click on “Resource Pool”, and you can manually modify resource attributes, and create additional resources in the pool that are not synchronized
• Most Important Attributes
• Name/Email should be imported (where possible)
• Cost
• Work Hours
• Resource Manager (allows for approval step of resource assignment)
- Resource Utilization Overview from the Resource Center - Resource Overview Dashboard in Excel Services
- New SharePoint Add-In for Project Portfolio Dashboard
Plan on having “generic” resources for your major user types
• Developer
• Infrastructure
• Project Manager
So that when you aren’t sure about who will be doing what on the project, you can track high-level capacity
Making a Project Plan
Making a Project Plan
Making a Project Plan
Making a Project Plan
Because a great plan saves time
and money
• Microsoft Project allows for us to create and select
projects in a “staged” manner that is customized to your organization
Initiate, Plan, Execute, Monitor, Close
• SharePoint Workflows can track projects’ phases, documentation, permissions, etc.
• For the sake of today, we’re going to skip straight into the creation of the project plan outside of a staged
selection
Three main choices when creating a Project Plan
• For simple projects, you can elect to create a project plan using a SharePoint Task List
(See Sheila’s talk just before this on how to get the best power out of SharePoint tasks lists)
• For most projects, you’ll want to create an “Enterprise” project
• Can create in Project Pro or Web Client
• Start with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• Phase
• Deliverable
• Work or Activity to Create Deliverable • Create Predecessors to Tasks
• Assign activities in tasks to resources (or placeholder resources)
• Use inactive tasks to denote optional or dropped items
• Note the differences and relationship between Duration, Work, and Remaining Work
• Use “Deadlines” for dates you must meet within the project plan
• Project Server has a concept of Check-in/Check-out
similar to SharePoint’s concept; but with a bit more rigor and management
• Make sure to save your project plan frequently; and to check it in whenever you are ready for others to view it
Assigning Resources
Assigning Resources
Assigning Resources
Assigning Resources
Work that’s not assigned to
somebody doesn’t get done
• Poll for resources by name, title, department, or other fields.
• Include “Availability” considerations in query if you know the project’s start and end dates
• Add resource to your team
• Assign tasks to resources directly inside the project plan
• Take care when assigning multiple resources to tasks, pay attention to the “!”
• Resource work schedules should be set at the enterprise resource gallery level
• Work weeks can help track known out-of-office scenarios
• Some (most) times, resources on your project are not completely “yours” to manage
• Set “Max Units” on resource in team planner for percentage of their time you can schedule
• New feature added to Project Online in Q1 2016 that has to be enabled from the PWA Settings panel
• Available in SharePoint 2016 with Project Server 2016 • Requests “dibs” on a resource from their resource
manager, even if you don’t have specific tasks assigned to said resource yet
• Leveling will automatically look for over allocations of a resource within the project, and will flag how to clear the overage
• Can “Level All” to have Project automatically scope out the entire project via critical path and dependencies
• Level Resource to go through Resource by Resource
• Leveling Options to level by specific time frames
• Level only within Available Slack means your end date can’t change
• Changing task priorities will change leveling algorithm
• At some point in time, you’re done planning and ready to start project execution
• Click “Set Baseline” for the baseline of the project execution that you intend to manage against
• Now, as the project plan is updated, you can always go back and compare it to baseline to determine where things are going better or worse than planned
Tracking Project Progress and
Tracking Project Progress and
Tracking Project Progress and
Tracking Project Progress and
Documentation
Documentation
Documentation
Documentation
• When a task is assigned to you, you can update the
status of that task through the “Tasks” interface inside of PWA
• This only requires Project “Lite” licensing in Online
• Update work completed, and work remaining, percentages will come along automatically
• The Project Owner(s) will “Check Progress” from Project pane
• All task updates will be provided, and can be
automatically updated within the project plan, or excluded
• Status Report schedules can be created to request daily or weekly updates from resources on the project
• Project can create SharePoint sites (of any template) to go along with project plans
• Can be configured to create at “Project Publish” time
• Can be configured to be created as a part of the Project management workflow process at specific phases
• Can be configured to create different sites for different project times
• Can be configured to use remote SharePoint servers rather than directly underneath the project center
• Chances are you should be tracking projects inside of Project (or a similar product)
• Chances are you are already using SharePoint to track project documentation
• Project Server builds on top of Project and SharePoint to provide an enterprise-class Project Management
solution
