by Contributed | Jun 1, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Welcome to the next edition in our series highlighting Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors who achieved the Gold milestone and have recently graduated from their university. Each blog will feature a different student and highlight their accomplishments, their experience with the Student Ambassadors community, and what they’re up to now.
Today we’d like to introduce Yash Yadav who is from India and graduated a few months ago from Bhagwan Mahaveer College of Engineering and Management in Jadgishpur, India.
Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
When you became a Student Ambassador in 2017, did you have any specific goals you wanted to reach? What were they? Did you achieve them?
In the beginning, I focused on getting into my hands into IoT. That was my major goal, and I was more than able to accomplish it. I also got to know more about Azure and its service–I just love all the cognitive services. I used a lot of them in the hackathons.
Apart from the tech skills, another major part was the public speaking. In the beginning, I didn’t expect that I would become a major speaker with 200 attendees.
What was the one accomplishment that you’re the proudest of and why?
Before I was a Student Ambassador, I was a participant in an event, First Tech Challenge, organized every year by the organization US FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology). With the help of our coach and mentors, I led the team in designing a robot, and we received the Inspire Award and qualified internationally. After becoming a Student Ambassador, I started coaching the teams so that high school children can learn robotics and how they can use Microsoft tools and technologies in CAD designing & programming to improve and bring productivity to their team.
How has being a part of the Student Ambassador community impacted you in general? How has it helped you prepare for the next chapter of your life?
In the beginning I only worked as a participant of a team, and later on as time progressed, I then realized how a participant in a team may become the leader. I didn’t even realize how I managed to become the leader for 150 associates. Then later on, I looked back, and I know the reason–it was the program that impacted me.
If you could go back to 2017 and redo things, is there anything you would have done differently as a Student Ambassador?
There are some ups and downs in the process when you do something new. There were a few things, like how I approached organizations in the beginning for event sponsorships. In the beginning, it was a very light approach, but later on we tried more because we needed sponsorships. That was OK because that was a part of learning. We can’t change how we learn because you have to fail first, and then you have to learn from it and then go ahead. So there’s not much to change.
So you graduated a few months ago. What’s the next chapter in the book?
I’m currently working as an assistant system engineer trainee in Tata Consultancy Services. I lead the teams. Their major role is to design systems for asset management, the complete life cycle for industrial solutions. There are many assets so we have to completely program or create systems that can be managed easily because there’s no place for downtime when fixing.
The weekends are for my personal projects, as I’m planning for my own startup. The aim is to establish a robust community creating model rockets. Due to the expenses involved in this domain, not everyone can afford it. In this community, people can explore this domain, and in turn we’ll bring awareness it as a niche. Later on, we’ll switch to a proper scale rocket, but that is really, really far off from now.
If you were to describe the Student Ambassadors community to a student who is considering joining but hasn’t decided yet, what would you say to convince them to join?
I would definitely tell them that there’s a program over here you really want to get your hands on because you first get to learn so many things. You might be thinking OK, I will learn these things without the program, but that’s not going to happen because people procrastinate a lot. By being part of the community, you get a community that keeps you motivated. Self-motivation is a huge thing to accomplish anything because we need passion to drive something, a driver to drive ourselves.
Then, you can stand alone and make things better because you actually get a different kind of skill set after a few years, and you can become a problem solver.
Let’s say the student then becomes a Student Ambassador. What advice would you give to them?
In the beginning, volunteer a lot with the Student Ambassadors who are already doing something. By doing that, you get the essence of taking responsibilities. Volunteer first, then do some combined events. Later on, the important thing is don’t just do it because the Student Ambassador program is saying that you have to do it. Do it for yourself and for the others because if you don’t educate the crowd around you, then that community is not going up, and that’s a major thing. Don’t just do it for the sake of rules.
What is your guiding principle in your life? Your motto? What drives you day-to-day through the days, weeks, months?
The core principle of my life is a simple concept of putting in 100% of myself in every activity I’m doing. That too gets synergized when it’s my subject of interest. Keep on doing stuff, and then improvise from the failures.
Good luck to you in all your endeavors, Yash!
by Contributed | Jun 1, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
May 2021 brought some great new offerings: Yammer conversation highlights, Immersive Reader for SharePoint documents, content migration from Dropbox and Google Workspace into Microsoft 635, Microsoft Lists: Export to CSV, Microsoft Lists: Updated sharing experience, Microsoft Lists: Turn comments on/off, and more. Details and screenshots below, including our audible, “migratory” companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: May 2021 podcast episode – all to help answer, “What’s rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?”
In the podcast episode, I chat with Yogesh Ratnaparkhi (LinkedIn | Twitter), principal program manager on the SharePoint team at Microsoft focused on the migration of content into Microsoft 365. This month, Yogesh and team release updates to Migration Manager in the SharePoint admin center, further integrating Mover technology to move content from third-party cloud providers like Box, Dropbox and Google Workspace into Microsoft 365. We talk about this within the broader view of how Microsoft supports migration of content from multiple sources – cloud-to-cloud and from on-premises SharePoint Servers and file shares.
Yogesh Ratnaparkhi, principal program manager at Microsoft [Intrazone guest].
All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of May 2021 (possibly early June 2021).
Inform and engage with dynamic employee experiences
Build your intelligent intranet on SharePoint in Microsoft 365 and get the benefits of investing in business outcomes – reducing IT and development costs, increasing business speed and agility, and up-leveling the dynamic, personalized, and welcoming nature of your intranet.
Yammer conversation insights
Analytics and data are key to understand engagement impact. Over the last few months, we’ve shipped new ways to measure activity happening in Yammer across Communities, Knowledge, and Live Events. These insights empower authors and community managers to measure the reach of their conversations and announcements – to understand what content resonates best, and what doesn’t.
As you analyze these insights, you’ll see discussion impressions and engagement more clearly, you’ll recognize trends, and see how people react specifically and over time.
For important internal conversations in Yammer, get better insights into impressions, engagement, trends, reactions and more.
Conversation Insights is available on Yammer.com on the web, and through the Yammer Communities app in Microsoft Teams.
Immersive Reader is now available in OneDrive and SharePoint for documents
The Microsoft Immersive Reader technology, currently built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft apps, will soon be available for documents stored in SharePoint. The Immersive Reader uses proven techniques to improve reading and writing for people regardless of their age or ability.
Open Word documents and text files directly into Immersive Reader from OneDrive and SharePoint libraries.
Migrate content from Dropbox & Google Workspace into Microsoft 365
Follow up the release for migrating Box content into Microsoft 365, now you can migrate your Dropbox and Google Workspace folders and files into OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams in Microsoft 365. Collaborate all in one place with feature gains, productivity enhancements and a more centralized governance and compliance approach. The outcome puts you one step closer to a modern workplace that works for you, your peers and the collective content that is core to your business.
Connect your Box, Dropbox, or Google Workspace account to Microsoft 365 to move files and folder into OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams.
After clicking “Get Started” from the main Migration Manager page, Dropbox files and folders are scanned automatically. You can also review reports and logs pre-migration to investigate any possible issues that might block your migration.
After clicking “Get Started” from the main Migration Manager page, Google Workspace files and folders are scanned automatically. You can also review reports and logs pre-migration to investigate any possible issues that might block your migration.
As an admin, you connect to a Dropbox or Google Workplace account, the service begins discovering users and their files. The service will automatically map to an individual’s OneDrive accounts, and you can manually map to specific OneDrive accounts, SharePoint site, or a Teams channel as you design and configure your preferred end state; aka, decide where and how you want content to land – especially if you are also working to establish an updated information architecture plan – no better time to do this than during migration.
Note: To use these migration capabilities, you must be a global admin or OneDrive/SharePoint admin to the Microsoft 365 tenant where you want to migrate your content.
- Learn more:
- Roadmap IDs: 82015 (migrate from Dropbox) and 82014 (migrate from Google Workspace)
Teamwork updates across SharePoint team sites, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams
Microsoft 365 is designed to be a universal toolkit for teamwork – to give you the right tools for the right task, along with common services to help you seamlessly work across applications. SharePoint is the intelligent content service that powers teamwork – to better collaborate on proposals, projects, and campaigns throughout your organization – with integration across Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Yammer, Stream, Planner and much more.
Microsoft Lists: Export lists to CSV
This is one of those features you might think has always been there – and you’d be half right in thinking that. Lists has always had, and maintained, integration with Excel – to either bring table data in, or to export to analyze your list data back in Excel. The limiting factor was the different experience for Mac – which, for some time, was not an option.
The Export to Excel button has been changed to say Export, with two options: 1) Excel Workbooks, and 2) CSV.
On Windows machines, the Export to Excel button has been changed to say Export, with two options underneath:
- Excel Workbooks, which is the export feature that’s always been there.
- CSV, which is new and brings the export closer to a native format in Excel – moving beyond the temporary .iqy file format.
On Macs, you can only Export to CSV – meaning that people accessing Lists on Mac can now complete the flow of being able to bring list data into Excel for analysis.
Note: even though lists power the rows and columns of SharePoint document libraries, this new export to CSV is currently only supported inside Lists; the team is aware of this design issue and working on it.
Updated sharing experience for Microsoft Lists
Since Microsoft Lists launch, you’ve been able to share both lists and list items – the latter being a powerful feature to share discreet portions of a list in a targeted fashion for your recipient. And we started with the basics of sharing – granting access.
With this update, users can now share entire lists using sharing links with more granular control options, leveraging the same sharing capabilities you might be familiar with when sharing files and folders, which brings to Lists the ability to share with everyone, only certain people, view/edit and the ability to set sharing expiration.
Updated sharing options when sharing lists or list items.
Note: The same admin controls that manage sharing for files and folders will also apply to lists and list items.
New management settings for Microsoft Lists (turn off/on comments)
This new feature will allow you to turn off/on comments for individual lists. Any user with manage list permission on the list will be able to access this setting in Advanced settings. Admins can already turn off or turn on comments for their entire organization in the admin center.
Admins can turn comments on or off for Microsoft Lists.
This new setting allows a finer-grained control for organizations that want to disallow commenting on specific lists. If an admin had previously turned off commenting for the entire organization, they can now turn on commenting for the organization and then turn off commenting for specific lists.
Recommended Files in Office on Windows: Excel, Word, and PowerPoint in Microsoft 365
Microsoft Office displays a list of recommended files on the File tab, or start page, of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on Windows. This list allows you to keep track of work around you and quickly access files with activity you value most such as edits, mentions, comments by people you interact with.
View Recommended for you file in the backstage of Word on Windows.
Behind the scenes, machine learning predicts which files you’re most likely to want to work on next and presents those as a set of cards you can choose from. Recommended files in Office has been available on Office.com and Office for Mac and is now coming to Office on Windows.
Note: This feature is currently available on Windows to Office Insiders on business or enterprise subscriptions, and then will release more broadly in the coming months.
OneDrive sync admin reports (Public Preview)
These reports provide visibility into who in your organization is running OneDrive sync and any errors they might be experiencing. OneDrive sync is a lot like electricity – people tend to take it for granted until they have a problem and they’re in the middle of an important project. Lights out is bad for business. This is even more the case now with so many people working from home and relying on cloud capabilities like OneDrive and SharePoint Online.
OneDrive sync admins reports let you see who in your organization is running OneDrive sync and any errors they might be experiencing.
Having insights into what’s happening with OneDrive sync across your organization gives you to the tools to educate people, to resolve common issues, and improve user experience to help increase and maintain OneDrive adoption.
And here’s a 7-min ‘how to’ video from Office Insider, Amesh Mansukhani:
Related technology
Build 2021 announcements
The Build conference opened the flood gates on what’s to come for developers. There’s a lot more than what I’ve highlighted – mainly spotlighting important ones below as they relate to Microsoft 365 (links go to related depth blogs or Build session videos):
Apps with Microsoft Edge: most notably: WebView2. PWAs FTW!
Highlights of Build 2021 on-demand sessions.
Check out all the goodness in the broader blog post, “What’s New for the Microsoft 365 Developer | Build 2021.” Plus, review all Build 2021 sessions now on-demand.
June 2021 teasers
Psst, still here? Still scrolling the page looking for more roadmap goodness? If so, here is a few teasers of what’s to come to production next month…
- Teaser #1: Power Apps can now display images from Microsoft Lists [Roadmap ID: 70606]
- Teaser #2: SharePoint admin center: homepage insights dashboard [Roadmap ID: 82014]
… shhh, tell everyone.
Helpful, ongoing change management resources
- ESPC21 (June.1-2, 2021) – Virtual | Jeff Teper keynote, numerous Microsoft and MVP sessions + workshops
- Microsoft 365 Collaboration Summit (June.8-10, 2021) – Hybrid | Dan Holme, Karuana Gatimu, and Charles Lamanna keynotes, plus numerous Microsoft and MVP sessions + workshops
- Follow me to catch news and interesting SharePoint things: @mkashman; warning, occasional bad puns may fly in a tweet or two here and there, plus my new blog on Substack: The Kashbox.
Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – May 2021 (blog/podcast). We are open to your feedback in comments below to hear how both the Roadmap Pitstop podcast episodes and blogs can be improved over time.
Engage with us. Ask those questions that haunt you. Push us where you want and need to get the best information and insights. We are here to put both our and your best change management foot forward.
Stay safe out there on the road’map, and thanks for listening and reading.
Thanks for your time,
Mark Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/Lists) | Microsoft)
The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – May 2021 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.
by Contributed | Jun 1, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Labeled data is critical to training supervised learning models. Higher volumes and more accurate labeled data contribute to more accurate models but labeling data has traditionally been time-intensive and error-prone.
With Data Labeling in Azure Machine Learning, you now have a central place to create, manage, and monitor labeling projects. You can now manage data labeling projects seamlessly from within the studio web experience to generate and manage tasks reducing the back-and-forth of labelling data offline. With AML Data Labeling, you can load and label data and be ready to train in minutes.
To increase productivity and decrease costs for a given task, the Assisted Machine Learning labeling feature allows you to leverage automatic machine learning models to accelerate labeling by clustering like objectives and automatically prelabeling data when the underlying model has reached high confidence. This feature is available for image classification (multi-class or multi-label) and Object detection tasks, in Enterprise edition workspaces.
Data Labeling in Azure Machine learning now includes below capabilities:
Image Classification Multi-Class
This project type helps you to categorize an image when you want to apply only a single class from a set of classes to an image.
Image Classification Multi-label
This project type allows you to categorize an image when you want to apply one or more labels from a set of classes to an image. For instance, a photo of a dog might be labeled with both dog and land.
Object Identification (Bounding Box)
Use this project type when you want to assign a class and a bounding box to each object within an image. If your project is of type “Object Identification (Bounding Boxes),” you’ll specify one or more bounding boxes in the image and apply a tag to each box. Images can have multiple bounding boxes, each with a single tag.
Instance Segmentation (Polygon)
Use this project type when you want to assign a class and a polygon to each object within an image. If your project is of type “Instance Segmentation (Polygons),” you’ll specify one or more polygons in the image and apply a tag to each object . Images can have multiple polygons, each with a single tag.
Assisted machine learning
The machine assisted labeling lets you trigger automatic machine learning models to accelerate the labeling task. At the beginning of your labeling project, the images are shuffled into a random order to reduce potential bias. However, any biases that are present in the dataset will be reflected in the trained model. For example, if 80% of your images are of a single class, then approximately 80% of the data used to train the model will be of that class. This training does not include active learning.
Enabling ML assisted labeling consists of two phases:
The exact number of labeled images necessary to start assisted labeling is not a fixed number. This can vary significantly from one labeling project to another. ML Assisted Labeling uses a technique called Transfer Learning, and the pre-labeling will be triggered when sufficient confidence is achieved which varies based on the dataset.
Since the final labels still rely on input from the labeler, this technology is sometimes called human in the loop labeling.
Clustering
After a certain number of labels are submitted manually, the machine learning model for image classification starts to group together similar images. These similar images are presented to the labelers on the same screen to speed up manual tagging. Clustering is especially useful when the labeler is viewing a grid of 4, 6, or 9 images.
The clustering phase does not appear for object detection models.
Prelabeling
After enough image labels are submitted, a classification model is used to predict image tags. Or an object detection model is used to predict bounding boxes. The labeler now sees pages that contain predicted labels already present on each image. For object detection, predicted boxes are also shown. Accuracy will vary depending images, labels, the domain, and other factors. With Pre-Labeling, you can review the predictions before committing the labels.
Once a machine learning model has been trained on your manually labeled data, the model is evaluated on a test set of manually labeled images to determine its accuracy at a variety of different confidence thresholds. This evaluation process is used to determine a confidence threshold above which the model is accurate enough to show pre-labels. The model is then evaluated against unlabeled data. Images with predictions more confident than this threshold are used for pre-labeling.
Resources
Learn more about the Azure Machine Learning service.
Get started with a free trial of the Azure Machine Learning service.
by Contributed | Jun 1, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
New Features:
- Import Project desktop to Project for the web: This feature is rolling out now! Import your .mpp files to Project for the web through Project home.
- Collaboration Corner Presence: See who else is viewing your project in real time when you’re editing a project on Project for the web.
- Filtering on the Board & Timeline views: Find your tasks quickly in Board and Timeline by filtering by keyword or assignee. This is rolling out now and should be available to all users by the middle of June.
- Scheduling modes: Project Admins can now change the default scheduling mode of your projects. Users in Named environments can change the scheduling mode of specific projects to match their scheduling needs.
- Project Language Settings: Set your Project language directly by opening Settings and clicking on Change your language.
Upcoming Features:
- Dropdown types in Custom Fields: Add custom fields with drop down options so you can control the information added to those custom fields on your tasks.
- Rollup Custom Fields: Add summary, average, max, or minimum calculations to your numeric custom fields. See the rollup value of all your subtasks in your summary task field.
Licensing Updates
In Project Plan 1, Project for the web has had some recent updates to its licensing. You can learn more about the licensing updates in our blog post here.
Microsoft Project Trivia!
Last Month:
- Question: Users with Project Plan 3 or 5 can create roadmaps including all their project information. What year did Roadmap in Microsoft Project first become available to users?
- Answer: Microsoft Project released Roadmap in 2018. It has been almost three years since this product has been available to users; what is your favorite part of Roadmap?
This Month:
- Question: In project management, milestones often represent significant events that happen during the project process. How can you create milestones in Project for the web?
by Contributed | Jun 1, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Take a look at new project management options from Microsoft, and how they meet your project needs. From integrated experiences with Microsoft Teams using Project for the web, all the way to Project Operations in Dynamics 365 to support the delivery of project-based services with seamless integration into your ERP system, and manage all phases of your projects.
We’ve set out to take our mature project management engine with Microsoft Project, and make project management more accessible to everyone in your organization. George Bullock, joins host Jeremy Chapman, to share project management options for sophisticated projects.
Project for the web
Now use it within the context of Microsoft Teams. Easy to create and manage projects — see completed tasks, track progress, and modify details. Contacts are in Teams, natively, right in your directory service.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations
Project for the web capabilities are embedded within, so core project planning and resource management is the same. Expanded set of capabilities across sales management and project accounting. Easily manage your entire project life cycle, from planning to billing and finance.
QUICK LINKS:
02:32 — Project for the web in Teams
04:30 — How to manage a more sophisticated project
06:06 — Project Operations in Dynamics 365
08:46 — Billing capabilities
09:33 — Finance capabilities
09:59 — Set up: Project for the web
10:47 — Set up: Project Operations
11:27 — Wrap up
Link References:
For more on how to set up Project for the web, go to https://aka.ms/ProjectMechanics
Request a trial for Dynamics 365 Project Operations at https://aka.ms/ProjectOperationsTrial
Get a Project trial at aka.ms/TryProjectNow
Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics?
We are Microsoft’s official video series for IT. You can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft.
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Video Transcript:
– Up next, we look at project management options from Microsoft and how they meet your project needs, from integrated experiences with Microsoft Teams using Project for the web all the way to Dynamics 365’s Project Operations to support the delivery of project-based services with seamless integration into your ERP system to manage all phases of your projects from bidding to billing. So, George, it’s great to have you on.
– Well, thanks for having me.
– And thanks so much for joining us from home today. So one of the most popular topics for Microsoft Mechanics has always been around project management. So Microsoft has this really long history of building tools that span from task management and planning, formal project management, and even business operations. And today though, we wanted to focus more on that sophisticated end of the spectrum. So what’s new there?
– Well, we’ve really focused on making it easier for everyone to manage their work. And if you think about it, most of us are involved in projects every day. They can range from single initiatives that you may be collaborating on with your team, such as this video, actually. Or they can span an entire portfolio of interrelated initiatives and business processes across your organization. And also, there are project-based services that might be a primary driver for your business, especially if you’re in a business like consulting, where you’re managing everything from sales to running the project, as well as post-project billing and analytics.
– Right, and really the more accountability and dependencies involved, the more rigor that you need to be able to follow those projects through.
– Yeah, that’s exactly right. And we’ve set out to take our mature project management engine with Microsoft Project, and make the whole discipline of project management way more accessible to everyone in your organization. For example, Project for the web has been around for a couple of years now and can be used as your go-to tool if project management is your whole job focus. The good news is as an everyday user, you can also now use it within the context of Microsoft Teams. Project for the web and its rich scheduling and task management capabilities are also embedded in Dynamics 365 Project Operations. And by the way, this is the evolution of Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation. It gives you an expanded set of capabilities across sales management and project accounting for Project Operations and starts with sales and quotes, and goes through to planning and running the project and all the way to things like expenses, invoices, and analytics.
– Right, and there’s also good news for IT that it’s built on top of the Power Platform. So you’ve had to deploy things like project servers in the past, all that pain’s going to go away and we’re covering both ends of the spectrum there then for work management. But can you give us a look of all the new tools?
– Sure. I’ll start with Project for the web in Microsoft Teams to show you how easy it is to create and manage projects. The first thing I’m going to do here is hit the plus sign to add a tab and I’ll add project. And you see now when I click into project I can either add an existing project to my team, or I can create a new one. I’ll go ahead and create a new one and give it a name, Marketing Plan, and click Save. And now this project is being attached to our channel and everyone on the team will be able to see it with access to the project. From here, we can start adding tasks. So I’ll add a few for email campaign, audience profile and storyboard. And from here I can also create a work breakdown structure. And in this case tasks 2 and 3, we’ll make those subtasks to our email campaign. And now I can begin assigning people; I’ll assign Adele for now.
– Right, and this is really a big deal because in the past, you’d have to manage another contact list of people that were defined as project resources, and now they’re just there natively in your directory service.
– That’s right, it’s a huge time saver for sure. Also the cool thing is if there’s someone that needs to be on this project that’s in our tenant, but not yet a member of this actual team, I can search for them. So here I’ll search for Brian Johnson and add him to the project. And I can also choose to add him to the team in Microsoft Teams, so he has the full experience including associated chat and files. And so now I have everyone in and I can lay out the project schedule. And you’ll notice there’s a Duration column here by default. So I’ll assign each task the number of days required. I’ll add start and finish date columns, and you can see the project uses today’s date as the default start date. Then behind the scenes, the scheduling engine will automatically calculate the finish date for each task. And now from here, I can add additional fields, including custom fields. And as I add a column, I can choose the data type. In this case I’ll choose Yes/No, and I’ll give this field the name Legal Review and hit Create. And now I can assign yes or no to each of my tasks. And that’s how easy it is to set up your project.
– Okay, but I have to say that was a pretty simple project, but can you show us what a more sophisticated project then might look like?
– Yeah, absolutely. Here I have a project for Cafe Grande 2000, and this one’s further along. So you can easily see completed tasks with green check marks and strikethrough texts. The tasks that are behind schedule are highlighted in red and tasks due tomorrow are highlighted in beige. So I’ll mark a few of these tasks complete. Now, if you look at this one here for Identify online opportunities, you can see that it has a dependency on defined launch goals, and I can easily modify all the details of this task from here. So now I’ll close this out. And of course, one of the most visual ways to track progress and view dependencies is through the timeline. And this is a great view that shows all the project tasks, how they’re related to each other, and when they’ll be completed. If I want, I can modify each task on the timeline by sliding them to the left or right, and I can shorten or extend their duration as well. Now, if I click into any of these tasks on the left, it gives me the details behind them, as you can see with this one. So let’s close this out and go to another useful view that we have here, which is the Board view. And this lets you categorize tasks by buckets. And it’s really easy to drag tasks between buckets. So I’ll drag a few of these tasks over into their corresponding buckets. Now we get a better idea in this case of the phases each task belongs to.
– So this is going to look pretty familiar, I think, to a lot of people in project management. Even you have no prior experience, it’s going to be easy to onboard, and the different views are going to give you options then for tracking their progress. This is great for managing everyday products, but you also mentioned before how we go beyond this with Project Operations in Dynamics 365, especially if you’re selling and running project-based services, but what does that experience then look like?
– Yeah, let me show you that. And the first thing you’ll notice is that because Project for the web capabilities are embedded within Dynamics 365 Project Operations, the core project planning and resource management is the same as Project for the web. But Project Operations goes far beyond this. It comes with a suite of capabilities that can help project leads, account managers, and project accountants more easily manage the project life cycle. So starting with deal management, Project Operations has robust estimation capabilities. As you can see here, the team for this project uses generic resources, so project managers can create accurate estimates. Account managers can then take these estimates and link them directly to project quotes, helping them create far more accurate quotes for their customers. Clicking on the Sales tab now, we can easily find the link quote. Now in the Profitability Analysis tab, account managers can even use these estimates to identify the potential gross margin for the project.
– Okay, so then once you’re ready to move forward with the project, how does Project Operations help you then assign the resources to carry out all of your planning?
– Well, project leads can now use the Schedule Board to easily see who is active on other projects, and if people with the needed skillsets have available time to staff the new project. So in this view, project leads can search by role, skillset, location, and a number of other valuable filters. And for this new project, they’ll need a site foreman who has a lot of project management experience. So after searching, we can see that Peter has plenty of free time to devote to this new project in the upcoming months. Then once you’ve selected your team and the project is kicked off, you have workflows in place to simplify time and expense management. In Time Entries, project team members can quickly add their time sheets by importing their hours from their current project or by simply manually adding them in. And for Expenses, we have two options. First, team members can submit their expenses using this simple experience here. If you want more advanced capabilities like OCR for receipt capture, we have an option for that as well to save time when submitting these expenses. Project Operations also integrates ERP capabilities for things like material sourcing. So here, for example, this project team is working to refurbish and rebrand a number of cafes. They’ve identified that they need to equip these cafes with all new equipment, like new coffee machines with material usage. So I’ll go ahead and add our A100 model in this case. And they can easily make sure the expense is accounted for and eventually invoiced to the customer.
– Okay, and I know that it can also be a challenge once you move into the billing aspects of a project, so what billing capabilities then come with Project Operations?
– Yeah, so we’ve just introduced a new feature, actually, that lets project leads define whether certain tasks of a project should be complimentary or not chargeable to the customer, like a proof of concept or pre-sales activities, while the remaining tasks may require a fixed fee or time and materials billing. So for this project, we can change just the planning activities to be complimentary. And project leads can even bill multiple organizations for different sets of tasks under the same project. Now switching to the Tracking tab, project leads can use this table you see to easily track the project from both an effort and a cost standpoint, and this helps make sure the project remains under budget.
– From a project accounting perspective, are there some additional finance capabilities here as well?
– Yeah, there are. Project Operations helps accounting teams manage all the financial aspects of a project, from project costing, to invoicing and revenue recognition. With Project Statements, for example, project accountants can monitor the latest project financials and make sure the project’s on the right track. As you can see here with profit and loss and also in this tab looking at consumption.
– Okay, so this is a really great set of integrated project management capabilities across Project for the web and Project Operations, but what do they take then to get set up?
– Let’s start with Project for the web and what I showed in Teams. So once your users are licensed, it’s really easy to set up. Because first, under the covers, we’re using Microsoft Dataverse, which provides a scalable and secure managed data layer as part of the Power Platform. And we provisioned this with a default environment as part of your enterprise Microsoft 365 subscription, so no architecture or servers to manage. Now, optionally, if you want additional compliance and control, or you want to scope usage across different departments, you can set up named environments and deploy Project for the web into those. For more on how to do that setup, you can go to aka.ms/ProjectMechanics.
– Okay, so what about Project Operations, what deployment options then do you have there?
– Well, depending on what you have now, there are a few paths you can take. First, we have a simple Lite deployment option. And then we have Project Operations for resource and non-stocked materials scenarios for when you don’t carry an inventory of materials or resources. And finally, we have Project Operations for stocked and production order scenarios. To help you determine which deployment is best in your case, we’ve created a deployment questionnaire with five questions. Once you’ve answered the questions, it’ll recommend a deployment option for you. And from there, the Begin Setup button will direct you right to the Lifecycle Services to enable it.
– Thanks so much, George, for walking us through all the options for detailed project management, whether you’re working in Teams or across multiple divisions inside your organization, but how can people then learn more?
– The great news is you can try both solutions for yourself. I recommend requesting a trial for Dynamics 365 Project Operations. You can do that at aka.ms/ProjectOperationsTrial. And for Project for the web, you can visit aka.ms/TryProjectNow.
– Awesome stuff, and of course, keep watching Microsoft Mechanics for the latest tech updates. Subscribe if you haven’t already, and we’ll see you next time.
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