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Project for the Web -- How to link tasks between different projects ?
Online Beginner's Question here: I'm managing a team of 7 project managers, each of them managing on average 5 simple projects with max 12 tasks each. Some of these projects have tasks interdependencies between them (or common milestones).
Ideally I would like to have an overall project for myself (program/portfolio level) where I can see the timeline, shared resources and dependencies inside each project and between projects, and edit those dependencies and shared resources availabilities.
Also, each project manager would have its own view of its own projects, possibly not overloaded with the project views from the other project managers. So, in a nutshell, I'd like to organise all those projects with two levels of nesting (one for me, overall, and one per project manager for their own projects).
Is this possible with Project for the Web (which seems to be the Microsoft Project edition that Microsoft is most investing in) ? Thanks for your advice and guidance !
Hi Paul, it is something different. Behind the scenes when Microsoft designed Project for the web (now Planner 'premium' functionality) they built the back end on the Microsoft Power Platform and a database called 'Dataverse', which means a couple of things:
- You can build and configure the 'Power App' for Planner to capture data beyond the schedule in Planner, like issues, risks, status, etc.
- You can develop workflows around this data to implement PM processes like gate approvals, change reviews, etc. and
- You can provide an easy web-based User interface in M365 into the data through what's called a 'model driven Power App', which would INCLUDE the schedule you'd typically see in Planner premium. In essence it gives you a platform to build a more complete solution, as many enterprises need more than what's in the core planning tool to meet their needs.
Microsoft released an example of what a solution could look like called 'Project Accelerator', which configures this Power App with representative fields, forms and reports. Companies like ours build solutions on this platform and have our own 'flavor' of an accelerator. It gives you a ton of capabilities and flexibility to do things that aren't native to the core Planner app, without locking you into just what Microsoft builds. As your organization grows, the app can grow and change as well.
Hope this helps. Happy to provide links and examples of what the 'Planner Power App' looks and functions like if needed.
Hi Paul, Project for the web (now called Planner 'premium' functionality) can support most of what you are looking for except for the ability to setup and track cross project dependencies between tasks in two or more schedules. This functionality is not available today.
What some of our clients do is use the Planner 'Power App' which is available to help you view, aggregate and report across multiple projects (versus one at a time), so that each PM can see and update all their plans in one place, and you as a manager could view all plans and report on them. You'd be able to see reports that show things like 'which resources are working on which projects and tasks' to identify bottlenecks, and understand resource and work dependencies, without having to actually create cross project 'links'. You could also use the Power App to create a 'table' that would store a list of high level tasks that would be entered manually, with dates (for instance), so you could at least have a central way to communicate dependencies, even though they wouldn't actually be set between project tasks in schedules. Lots of options!
See below for some screenshots of the app and sample reports that show portfolio and project statuses. Hope this helps!
Hi agan-in robhprojility , I was curious about what you precisely meant with the "Planner Power App" ? I've been using planner only via the browser or integrated in Teams. Is this "power app" different ? Thanks for any clarification.
Hi Paul, it is something different. Behind the scenes when Microsoft designed Project for the web (now Planner 'premium' functionality) they built the back end on the Microsoft Power Platform and a database called 'Dataverse', which means a couple of things:
- You can build and configure the 'Power App' for Planner to capture data beyond the schedule in Planner, like issues, risks, status, etc.
- You can develop workflows around this data to implement PM processes like gate approvals, change reviews, etc. and
- You can provide an easy web-based User interface in M365 into the data through what's called a 'model driven Power App', which would INCLUDE the schedule you'd typically see in Planner premium. In essence it gives you a platform to build a more complete solution, as many enterprises need more than what's in the core planning tool to meet their needs.
Microsoft released an example of what a solution could look like called 'Project Accelerator', which configures this Power App with representative fields, forms and reports. Companies like ours build solutions on this platform and have our own 'flavor' of an accelerator. It gives you a ton of capabilities and flexibility to do things that aren't native to the core Planner app, without locking you into just what Microsoft builds. As your organization grows, the app can grow and change as well.
Hope this helps. Happy to provide links and examples of what the 'Planner Power App' looks and functions like if needed.
Hi Rob, thanks a lot for your response (which I only discover now) !
This seems like a first good step into the direction of an overall view, but indeed doesn't resolve the dependencies (or resources pooling) requirement, but would somehow simplify the manual reporting hereof (still to be separately managed one-on-one).
Is this visual setup a default of the 'Portfolio' type of project or is this your custom creation ?
Hi Paul, me again!
In terms of true task to task dependencies, you are correct. You'd need to revert to traditional Microsoft Project and Online for this functionality. If it's 'good enough' to capture project level dependencies, you could link them via the Planner Power App and report on them there.
On 'resource pooling', the Planner Power App described in another recent post does maintain a set of tables specifically for 'resources'. You could customize these tables to capture and store data about resources such as role, skills, but also set max utilization across projects (total time available in a given week). Then, when you assign resources to tasks, you could visualize in the reports their assigned work on projects, versus their total availability. So it does support an initial level of resource planning and visibility.
For 'Portfolios', you could create a field in the Planner Power App for this, and then on each project, pick from that list. Then you could create either views or a report in Power BI to show all the projects that are tagged within a given portfolio to support planning and enterprise looks into your projects. It would most likely be a configuration and then a report driven off that. Imagine the report image above, but with a 'slicer' at the top for 'Portfolio', or a the 'Projects by Division' instead 'Projects by Portfolio'.
Hope this helps!
Paul --
None of what you want to do is possible using Project for the Web. All of what you want to do is possible using the Microsoft Project desktop application. I would encourage you to ignore what Microsoft is investing in, and look more at our own project management needs, and consider switching to the Microsoft Project desktop application. Hope this helps.
Thank you Dale. Yes I've used this in the past with Project Desktop in the past, associated with Server also for resources pooling. It's somehow sad to see the more Microsoft goes "all online" the weakest their products become.
Paul --
I could not agree with you more, my friend!
