Join us on Tuesday, December 16th at 9:30 a.m. PST/12:30 p.m. EST for this exciting and practical webinar that will demonstrate tips and tricks for building and maintaining a proactive project schedule.

This event will provide you with tools and techniques that you can use right away, to ensure that your project schedule is providing accurate progress and forecast details.

Presented by Kenneth Steiness/Terry Kneeburg–Sensei Project Solutions

Attendees who attend and fill out the survey will be eligible to receive a complimentary copy of Project Professional 2013. All attendees will be able to claim a PDU for attending the session. Details on how to claim your PDU will be provided in the “Thank you for attending” email after the webcast.

Register Now!

The post Visio webcast December 16—tips and tricks for Project 2013 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Now we are asking for your feedback so we can deliver on that promise. What do you want to see at Microsoft Ignite? Help us provide you with better content by taking this quick online anonymous survey on the sessions you want to see; Call for Topics.

We’re holding a series of TweetJams on Twitter so we can hear more about what you want to see at the event. To participate, log in to Twitter at one of the times below, follow the corresponding product handle and tweet using the hashtag #ignitejam.

Here are general questions we’d like your feedback on during the TweetJam. Have other questions you think we should ask? Tweet them to @office365_tech.

1. What’s one thing you’ve loved in a past event that you’d like to see included in Microsoft Ignite?
2. How can we help showcase your community at Microsoft Ignite?
3. What is your preferred way to engage with our engineering teams at the event?
4. What specific sessions do you want to see?
5. What have you seen done at ANY event you’ve attended, Microsoft or other, that we should consider doing at Microsoft Ignite?
6. How interested are you in learning about other Microsoft products, such as Azure and Windows 10?
7. What’s one “can’t miss” thing to do in Chicago?
8. As you know from past events, we throw a great party for attendees. What do you value in a party? Great band? Cool venue? Loud or quiet? 

If you haven’t already, register now for Microsoft Ignite. Early bird discount expires on December 11^th.

The post Help shape the Microsoft Ignite event appeared first on Office Blogs.

This seminar will address key steps, for building an Agile schedule, addressing pros and cons to Scrum features and approaches, while blending a schedule to address the tactical agile needs, while still providing rollup and time boxed reporting to stakeholders.

This lively and example-driven webinar should help all who attend understand how they too can build agile, iterative schedules and address the need for having a good schedule that also helps to map, track and report activities, features, story points, backlogs all within Project.

Presented by Tim Runcie of Advisicon.

Register now and attend for a chance to receive a fully functioning copy of Microsoft Project 2013!

The post Project webcast November 18—Leveraging Scrum/Agile for Project and Project Online appeared first on Office Blogs.

To provide a delightful user experience and better support the scale at which some of our largest customers operate, we have started to roll out performance enhancements to Project Online tenants worldwide. While some of these changes will be visually evident to the user, others could be more latent.

Here are a few common things that will feel much snappier as a result of these investments:

• Project Center—In particular, navigating to a specific project from Project Center. We invested in optimization that eliminates certain intermediate steps.

• Interacting with projects on the web—Performance optimizations, all the way from SQL tier to the web UI will speed up user experience.

• Creating and publishing a project—We have improved queue jobs required to create and publish projects. This enables users to seamlessly transition out and start working on the next stage of the project much faster.

• Submitting timesheets—Improvements to page performance will allow users to quickly submit their timesheets.

We are also providing new levers to Project Online administrators to further enhance the value for their organizations. These are designed to improve performance when creating projects, working with Project Detail Pages and publishing projects. They are:

• Option to turn off the creation of Enterprise Project sites—A Project Web App (PWA) admin can now configure if and when a Project site gets created for Enterprise Projects. If the organization does not plan to use the Project sites, turning off the creation of the sites can greatly improve the time it takes to create and publish a project. This allows users to move from one Project Detail Page to the other faster. This option can be accessed from the Connected SharePoint sites page.

Settings to enable or disable the Enterprise Project site creation.

• Option to turn off the Task List Sync—By turning off the Task List Sync for enterprise projects, users will find that publishing a project is much faster. It also helps users navigate to the next Project Detail Page faster and generate their latest project status report quicker. This option can be accessed from the Connected SharePoint sites page as well.

In addition, we also successfully addressed a few key customer requirements around improved scale, including:

• Projects limit per PWA instance increased to 5,000—With the option to turn off Enterprise Project site creation for any enterprise project, customers can now manage up to 5,000 projects per any site collection with PWA within Project Online. Today, customers are limited to 2,000 projects per PWA instance which is a direct function of the number of project team sites that can be supported within any SharePoint Online site collection.

• PWA instances per tenant increased to seven—Customers can now benefit from up to seven site collections with PWA within any Project Online tenant. The current limit is three. When combined with 5,000 projects per PWA instance as mentioned above, organizations can theoretically manage up to 35,000 projects in their Project Online tenant. This should give organizations plenty of flexibility to roll out enterprise wide Project and Portfolio management.

PWA instances per Project Online tenant is increased to seven.

We continue working on a number of other improvements and will share more details in weeks to come. Thanks for continuing to support Project Online!

— Chris Boyd and Krishna Mamidipaka

The post Performance and scale improvements to Project Online appeared first on Office Blogs.

Join the YamJam:

We are committed to making Microsoft Ignite an incredible and valuable event for all of us who are passionate about Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project and Visio. We want your feedback to help shape plans for this event. Join us for a YamJam on the Office 365 Technical Network on Tuesday, October 21^st 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. PDT to ask questions about the event and to provide feedback on what you want to see there. For those unfamiliar with a YamJam, it is similar to a “TweetJam” on Twitter or an “Ask Me Anything (AMA)” on Reddit, except it takes place on Yammer.

How to participate:

1. Request access to the Office 365 Technical Network.
2. Join the Ignite Event group. You can find it by using the Browse Groups function or through the search bar.
3. Log in at 9:00 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, October 21^st to ask questions and provide feedback on what you want to see from the Microsoft Office Division at the conference.

The post Introducing Microsoft Ignite appeared first on Office Blogs.

This session will discuss how to create a project lifecycle workflow, with branching logic based on project-level metadata.

In addition, this session will cover how to configure customized email notifications to help facilitate the use of the workflow.

Presented by Gaurav Wason with Project Made Easy

ATTENTION: We are offering 1.0 PDU credits to all attendees who fill out the post webcast survey.

Register now!
You can register for this session, a few sessions, or the entire Project series.

The 4 recipients of a copy of Project Professional 2013 are:

• Bill B. – Jacksonville, FL
• Cindy M. – Devon, PA
• Nadine K. – Saint Paul, MN
• Shane P. – Hopkins, MN

The post September 16 Project webcast now available on-demand appeared first on Office Blogs.

Dubai is a staggering achievement of modern urban development and the region has transformed itself unlike any other in the world over the last two decades. Office 365 has been available in the United Arab Emirates for over a year and also transforming the way productivity services are delivered in this fast-moving economy.

As with our Garage Series Road Trip stops in Hong Kong and Prague, we decided to hitch our trailer to the Office 365 Ignite conference series to meet the partners and organizations moving to Office 365. We caught up with partners Michael Skairjeh from Blueridge IT and Ezzat Sayegh from LiveRoute as well as Eddie Marsden-Jones, VP of Business and Technology at DNATA to see how Office 365 is helping advance productivity and communication.

Of course being at the center of some of the world’s mega projects — like the world’s tallest building along with a collection of man-made islands — we thought we’d demonstrate Project and Project Online in Office 365. Then we headed out to a desert camp where Internet and mobile phone connectivity are non-existent to test Office 365 and Outlook Web App in truly offline scenarios. Finally, we made our way back to the harbor to check out the Dubai skyline and test a Lync video call from an Android smart watch. You’ll have to watch the video to find out how and if everything worked as planned.

Over the next few weeks, the Garage Series for Office 365 will turn its attention to the themes of security and trust as we explore how intrusion detection works and invite back Mark Russinovich to examine the top five cloud security concerns and how Microsoft Azure and Office 365 measure up.

See you then!

Jeremy Chapman

More resources

Garage Series Video Channel

Garage Series Season 1 Blog Archive

Follow @OfficeGarage on Twitter

Office 365 Garage Series Apps for Windows Phone and Windows 8

About the Garage Series hosts

By day, Jeremy Chapman works at Microsoft, responsible for optimizing the future of Office client and service delivery as the senior deployment lead. Jeremy’s background in application compatibility, building deployment automation tools and infrastructure reference architectures has been fundamental to the prioritization of new Office enterprise features such as the latest Click-to-Run install. By night, he is a car modding fanatic and serial linguist. Asad Ahmed is a Senior Product Manager for the Microsoft Gulf region and is a true citizen of the world having lived in three continents.

The post Garage Series Road Trip Dubai: Taking Project and OWA offline to the desert appeared first on Office Blogs.

As we took stock of the past conferences and looked forward to the next year of conferences, we decided we can do better – better for our technical communities, better for our business customers, better for our partners, and better for Microsoft. Part of this is a recognition that as our industry continues to evolve, so must our approach to creating valuable experiences for all of you. Part of this recognition is feedback from attendees across the past conferences asking for more content and product team engagement across Microsoft versus just within one product area. And, part of this is a recognition that Microsoft’s own cloud first, mobile first strategy must carry through to our conferences for all of us to be successful together.

With that backdrop, I am thrilled to announce we will be hosting an inaugural, unified Microsoft commercial technology conference the week of May 4, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. We’re bringing the best of what made our past conferences so valuable, plus adding more of what you’ve asked for including…

• Clearer visibility into Microsoft’s future technology vision and roadmap
• Unparalleled access to Microsoft senior leaders and the developers who write the code – many of whom will present and engage with you and answer your questions
• A broader range of learning opportunities across all of Microsoft’s technologies, including actionable best practices from industry experts
• Deep community interaction with the top technology professionals and industry peers in structured and informal settings
• Epic after-hour festivities for you to unwind and turn up the fun!

If you attended the SharePoint Conference, Exchange Conference, Lync Conference or Project Conference, this is the conference for you. And, if you’re interested in or already using Office 365, this is the conference for you.

As someone who has attended all of these conferences, I know that some of you might be thinking that this new, unified conference can’t possibly be as magical as the past conferences you’ve attended. Or, that you really enjoyed the conference in the past and don’t want it to change. I totally get that and am here to reassure you that this unified conference will be every bit as awesome, every bit as valuable and in fact, it will exceed on both these measures. That is our maniacal focus and commitment to you, so hold us to it!

Save the week of May 4, 2015 and follow us on twitter @Office365 or join the Office 365 Technical Network to stay connected – we’ll be back in September with more details. I can’t wait to see you in Chicago for this unparalleled event.

The post Microsoft’s unified technology event for enterprises appeared first on Office Blogs.

DeSantis Landscapes filmed their own Office 365 story on a Nokia Lumia 1020.

DeSantis Landscapes has come a long way from the company that Tony DeSantis founded in 1974 with a wheelbarrow and a lawnmower. Forty years later, the Oregon business has 92 employees, two offices, and customers spanning the state. On the advice of its longtime IT consultant, Compex Two, DeSantis replaced an aging server with Microsoft Office 365 and 20 new computers running the Windows 8.1 operating system. Using Lync Online, employees can meet virtually from wherever they are, using whatever device they have. They can have quick videoconferences, share screens, or pull documents from SharePoint Online to move business along in minutes—versus driving back to the office to meet or to hunt for, change, and email documents. Whether employees are in the office or the field, they’re more efficient, saving up to 30 to 50 hours a week. They’re also better able to transmit the company culture as the business expands. Best of all, DeSantis can maintain the personal, small-company atmosphere that Tony established while continuing to grow.

For more details, read the case study

The post DeSantis Landscapes: Firm stays nimble, saves 30 to 50 hours a week with Office 365 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Now Project, Project Online and Project Server users can take advantage of this new app model for extended functionality. In addition, cloud apps are available on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, iPad, iPhone and Android, which gives users access to their Project data from just about any device.

In this session you will learn:

• How the new cloud app model works in Office
• How to find and install apps in Project, Project Online and Project Server (SharePoint)
• Which platforms provide apps for Project
• Which apps are available for project managers, team members, executives and administrators

Register now and attend this session for a chance to win one of 20 free copies of Proactive PPM with Microsoft Project 2013 for Project Server and Project Online, a process-focused, PMI-aligned guide to Microsoft Project 2013, printed in high-resolution and full-color so screenshots and illustrations come to life for enhanced learning and comprehension. 20 attendees who complete the survey will be selected to receive a free copy of the book.

Presenter: Kenneth Steiness, Managing Partner and VP of Delivery, Sensei Project Solutions

The post Register now for the June 17 webcast: Microsoft Project from any device with Cloud apps appeared first on Office Blogs.

BSA is a midsized technology firm that provides financial management software mainly for the public sector. They are growing rapidly and were looking for a better way to manage their implementation projects and their business at a portfolio level. As part of their solution, they wanted to ensure that their clients had remote access to view their project status without having to set up individual accounts for each client. Using Project 2013, Project Server, and SharePoint, Pcubed ( a consulting firm uniquely focused on program, portfolio and change management) implemented a solution and then integrated it with social media. Now BSA clients can access their project status by logging into Project Web Access (PWA) using an authentication provider other than Windows Active Directory, such as social sites like Windows Live ID, Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo, and Twitter.

Presenter: Dan Ling, PLM Solution Architect-  Pcubed

The 4 recipients of copies of Microsoft Project Professional 2013 are:

• Chad C – Bloomington, IL
• Tiffany L – Rockville, MD
• Amanda W – Mandeville, LA
• Patrick W – Portland, OR

Register now/sign in to view the session on-demand.

The post May 20 webcast now available on-demand: How a technology firm created remote access using Project 2013 and social media sites appeared first on Office Blogs.

Priced at $7 per user/month, Project Lite lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Project Online. It also simplifies project management by making it easier for team members to be productive on the go. With built-in integration with Project Online and other Office 365 services, Project Lite helps project teams get work done faster.

Task management for team members.

Using Project Lite streamlines project management in two important ways. Project managers can automate routine project management tasks such as time tracking and task updates, which saves them time so they can focus on more strategic areas of managing projects. They can also be notified by team members about imminent risks and issues, almost in real time, which can help prevent delays and extra costs.

Team projects depend on collaboration. Period. Project Lite enhances collaboration by making it easier for team members to work together efficiently. Using co-authoring capabilities offered in Office 365, team members can work on project documents concurrently and save valuable time otherwise lost in reconciling version conflicts, manual merging and coordinating of changes, and other ways. Also, teams can take the project collaboration experience to the next level by adding Yammer*, private enterprise social networking, to their project team sites in a few easy steps.

Timesheet entries for team members.

It’s no secret that all team projects require lots of communication, and Project Online works seamlessly with Lync Online to give you a wide variety of ways for team members to stay connected with one another. When enabled, Lync Online* connects team members anywhere they happen to be working and on whatever device they’re happen to be using, by providing a consistently great communication experience, whether they choose to connect by instant messaging, voice, video, or online meetings.

As more project teams choose to use Project Lite to collaborate and manage tasks, useful trends and insights start to emerge at the organization level. Using reports in Project Online, Project Management Office (PMO) teams can better manage new project demands against available resource capacity and make better resourcing decisions.

These are just a few of the ways adding Project Lite to Project Online can enhance your project management. You can learn more about Project Lite here.

–Krishna Mamidipaka

* Yammer and Lync Online are not included in Project Lite. They each require a separate subscription.

The post Connecting the dots with Project Lite: From time tracking and collaboration to business growth appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this video learn how to get started with Project Online. We’ll take you step by step, from signing up for a new subscription or adding a subscription to your existing applicable SharePoint Online subscription, right through to your first steps working in Project Online with resources and projects.  There will also be a quick overview of features you can expect to find with Project Online and the different subscription offerings available.

Presenters: Aik Chen and Brian Smith are both Escalation Engineers on the Project support team. They have supported Project Server for as long as it has existed and now also support Project Online. Aik and Brian will address some of the most frequent issues they’ve seen in the early stages of adopting Project Online.

Office 365 support webcasts are a critical program for relieving support issues and encouraging foundation technical readiness. Webcasts are free of charge and are a great opportunity to have conversations with Microsoft employees and get your questions answered.

If you have questions regarding this webcast, please contact the Ignite team.

For more information on future Office 365 support webcasts, visit the Ignite website.

The post Webcast: Getting started with Project Online appeared first on Office Blogs.

Join Dux Raymond Sy as he shares how you can best use Project Online to manage enterprise projects. In this 90-minute session, you’ll learn how to:

• Build a Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solution based on Project Online

• Create a portfolio of projects using new and existing project plans

• Manage and optimize project resources across the enterprise

• Collaborate with geographically distributed project team members

• Integrate existing tools like Microsoft Office, Windows, and mobile devices to Project Online

• Develop relevant reports and dashboard to visualize key performance indicators

Register now/sign in to view the session on demand.

The 4 recipients of complimentary copies of Microsoft Professional 2013 are:

• Bernd R.- Georgetown, TX
• Frank S.- Isle of Palms, SC
• Jeffrey L.- Palo Alto CA
• Morten T.- Skive, AK

Presenter: Dux Raymond Sy, PMP, MVP, Managing Partner

To see the complete Project webcast series agenda, go to aka.ms/ProjectWebcastSeries

The post April 22 webcast now available on-demand: Fast Track project management success with Project Online appeared first on Office Blogs.

We are very pleased to announce that registration is open for the Microsoft Project Roadshow with Project Gold Certified PPM Partner Campana & Schott. Join us for these free half-day events to gain insight on current trends and the latest developments on Project Online and earn 3 PDUs.

Select a city to register:

April 22nd: Atlanta, GA

April 23rd: Charlotte, NC

May 28th: Cambridge, MA

The roadshows will be kicked off with a Keynote by a Microsoft speaker describing a new license model for Team Members on Project Online as well as trends for the next product version.

The first session discusses how Project Portfolio Management (PPM) can benefit from using Enterprise Social technologies like SharePoint, Project, Lync and Yammer. You will learn how you can speed up innovation, connect and engage your employees and transcend traditional organizational structures. Productivity is increased through improved team collaboration and communication within and across organizations. We will explain what changes in organizational culture are necessary to ensure a successful business transformation.

Afterwards we will show how to enhance your PPM platform – both online and on premise – and deliver added value to your stakeholders using Apps from the SharePoint Store. We will demonstrate four examples for Task & Risk Management, Trend Analysis and Master Data to increase the productivity of Project Managers, Administrators, and the Project Team.

Finally we will look at Innovation Management, an essential process for most companies dealing with product or organizational development. Innovation management normally starts with capturing project ideas. This process is supported through Ideation – the new approach with Microsoft Project Online and SharePoint Online. We will show how to support the complete project life-cycle from idea creation to evaluation of project proposals and realizing approved projects.

We are very excited to this free event for our customers across the US! Space is limited, so register today and do not miss this opportunity to network with your peers!

The post Highlights of Microsoft Project Roadshow with Campana & Schott appeared first on Office Blogs.

Ready for a test-drive?  Connect with a Project and Portfolio Management partner to schedule a customized trial or proof of concept* of Project Online + Project Lite today!

We’re excited to announce the scheduled availability of Microsoft Project Lite on May 1, 2014. Project Lite is a brand new cloud offering that enables project team members to edit and submit timesheets, collaborate on project related documents, update tasks, log issues and much more – all at a price point of $7 per user/month. Project Lite can help your organization govern and measure progress across many more projects and initiatives effectively. Note that Project Lite can only be used in the context of projects that are managed with Microsoft Project Online.

Now you can bring the whole flock onto Project Online with Project Lite!

Project Lite Features

Be sure to connect with a Project and Portfolio Management partner if you are interested in a test-drive of Project Online with Project Lite!

The post Project Lite available on May 1 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Prerequisite:

• Excel 2013 (standalone or as part of Office 2013 Professional Plus or Office 365 ProPlus)
• Microsoft Power Query for Excel
• Power Pivot and Power View enabled in Excel
• A Project Online tenant environment with project data

Note: In this example we are going to build a burndown using the TaskTimePhaseDataSet table, but it can be done with any other table.

Use Power Query to gather data

In Excel, create a new workbook, and then choose the Power Query tab in the ribbon. In the Get External Data section, choose From Other Sources > From OData Feed.

Enter the address for your OData feed in the URL box, and then click OK.

If the address for your PWA site resembles https://<tenantname>.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa, the address you’ll enter for your OData Feed is https://<tenantname>.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa/_api/Projectdata.

For our example, we’re using https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa/default.aspx

Excel will prompt you to authenticate with your Office 365 account. Select Organizational account and then enter your credentials.

Because we selected the higher level OData stream, Power Query is now showing the list of all the available tables. Select  the one that you want to build your report on. In our example, we use TaskTimePhaseDataSet. Then click Edit.

Select only the required properties

Power Query downloads a sample data set of approximately 100 rows. We are going to build our query based on this. As a best practice, trim your OData request to include only the properties you care about. For our example, we’ll only keep a few properties. We select the columns we do not need, and then remove them.

In our burndown chart, we will only use these properties: ProjectID, TimeByDay, ProjectName,  TaskActualWork, and TaskWork), and remove all other columns

Here is our new data source, with only the fields we care about:

Load to the data model

To avoid saving data twice, make sure to set the data to load in the Data Model only. This can be done under Load Settings, at the bottom of the right column

Get tasks planned in the last 90 days

Next, we want to filter only for the tasks in the timeframe of our burndown. We chose 90 days here, but you can select different values.

We click on the down arrow on the header of TimeByDay, and then select Date/Time Filters > After.

Then, we specify a date in the box. The more recent the date, the faster the next step will be.

Note: Depending on the number of tasks you have, the wait between each step can be a few minutes long. This is how long it takes for Power Query to get your data and analyze it.

Now Power Query shows tasks with a TimeByDay date after 3/2/2014. We want to change this to make it take into account the current date.

In the query table, we change this query:

= Table.SelectRows(RemovedColumns, each [TimeByDay] > #datetime(2014, 3, 2, 0, 0, 0))

To this query:

= Table.SelectRows(RemovedColumns, each [TimeByDay] > (DateTime.FixedLocalNow() – #duration(90, 0, 0, 0)))

This will use today’s date in the OData query to filter on tasks that are less than 91 days old. The actual OData query will include a filter similar to this one:

…ProjectData/Tasks?$filter=( TaskTimePhaseDataSet gt datetime’11/10/2013′)’.​

 Get tasks due today or earlier

This is similar to what we did in the previous section, but this time, we’ll choose Date/Time Filters > Before.

Then, in the query, we’ll edit the query so that it changes from this:

= Table.SelectRows(FilteredRows, each [TimeByDay] < #datetime(2014, 6, 15, 0, 0, 0))

to this:

= Table.SelectRows(FilteredRows, each [TimeByDay] < (DateTime.FixedLocalNow() ))

This will ensure that we only retrieve tasks with a TimeByDay date equal to today or less.

Check your steps

At this point, in the applied steps area, we should see four applied steps: one for the source, one for filtering out unwanted columns, and one for each date filter.

At this point, we are done with Power Query. We click Apply and Close to download the filtered dataset into the Data Model.

Note: You can learn more about Power Query glossary here.

Calculating values with Power Pivot

Our next step is to launch open Power Pivot and create a calculated field for the burndown report.

We start by clicking the Manage button on the PowerPivot tab in the ribbon

When Power Pivot opens, we click the Calculation Area button in the View section

Total planned work for the period

We’ll begin by adding a calculated value of the sum of all planned work for this period. In the top left cell in the calculation area, we enter this formula:

Total Planned:=SUMX(CALCULATETABLE(TaskTimephasedDataSet, ALL(TaskTimephasedDataSet[TimeByDay])),TaskTimephasedDataSet[TaskWork])

Actual work done to date

Next, we need to have the actual sum of work that was done up to this date. In the cell below the Total Planned formula, we enter this formula:

ActualToDate:=SUMX(FILTER(CALCULATETABLE(TaskTimephasedDataSet, ALL(TaskTimephasedDataSet[TimeByDay])), TaskTimephasedDataSet[TimeByDay]<=MAX(TaskTimephasedDataSet[TimeByDay])),TaskTimephasedDataSet[TaskActualWork])

Planned work to date

Next, we need the actual amount of work that was planned to date. In the cell below the ActualToDate formula, we enter this formula:

PlannedToDate:=SUMX(FILTER(CALCULATETABLE(TaskTimephasedDataSet, ALL(TaskTimephasedDataSet[TimeByDay])), TaskTimephasedDataSet[TimeByDay]<=MAX(TaskTimephasedDataSet[TimeByDay])),TaskTimephasedDataSet[TaskWork])

Planned work

Next, we define the value that will be used for Planned Work. In the cell below the ActualToDate formula, we enter this formula:

Planned Work:=[Total Planned]-[PlannedToDate]

Actual remaining work

Next, we define the actual remaining work by using the Total Planned and ActualToDate formulae. In the cell below the Planned Work formula, we enter this formula:

Actual Remaining Work:=[Total Planned]-[ActualToDate]

Now that we are done with defining the calculations, our last step is to create a chart using Power View.

Power View burndown chart

We close the Power Pivot window, and then, on the Insert tab, we click Power View.

In the Power View Fields list, we select Actual Remaining Work, Planned Work and TimeByDay to build a chart table in the Power View sheet.

We select this table, and then click Switch Visualization > Other Chart > Line.

For our last Step, we expand the Filters list, and then drag the ProjectName property to it.

And we now have a burndown chart.

Burndown charts in Project 2013

You can also build a similar chart (and others) for a single project by using the reporting features in Project 2013. This is an easy way to create a burndown chart if you are reporting on only one project.

In Project 2013, click the Report tab.

Click Dashboards > Burndown to see your data in a burndown chart

You can find more about client reports in a previous blog post.

The post Creating burndown charts for Project using Power Pivot and Power Query appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this 90-minute webcast, MVP Ben Howard will demonstrate how Project 2013 allows for different types of collaboration, from the ad-hoc and informal right through to the fully formalized and structured collaboration demanded by tightly controlled project management solutions.  Many of the collaboration options are built into the Project client and Project Online, providing users with a rich, powerful and seamless experience.  Ben will also differentiate between the Project and Project Online solutions available from Microsoft.

Register here to view the session on-demand today!

The recipients of Ben Howard’s book “Microsoft Project 2013 Plain and Simple” are:

• Andy S. – Rochester, NY
• Don P. – Ashburn, VA
• Ed C. – Clearwater, FL
• Georgette T. – NYC, NY
• John B. – Fairfax, VA
• Joyce O. – Centennial, CO
• Kristen G. – Andover, MN
• Michael C. – Columbus, OH
• Ron S. – Poway, CA
• Stephanie C. – Brownsville, PA

Presenter: Ben Howard (MVP), Applepark

To see the complete Project webcast series agenda, go to aka.ms/ProjectWebcastSeries.

The post March 18 Project webcast available on-demand: Sharing and collaborating in Project 2013 appeared first on Office Blogs.

You can add Power BI for Office 365 to your existing Office 365 subscription, or sign up for a standalone subscription to try it out. To get started, go to your Office 365 admin portal, and in the left column, click Purchase Services, then select the Power BI for Office 365 trial. Et voila, the simplicity of adding a feature to Office 365 at work.

With Power BI for Office 365, you get 25 licenses that you can distribute among your users. To assign licenses, go to your Office 365 portal and on the left column, click Users and groups. Select the user to whom you want to grant Power BI access, and then click the Microsoft Power BI checkboxes.  Additionally, select the SharePoint Online Plan 2 license if you did not already grant it to that user via another SKU.

In order to use the full power of Power BI, remember to use Power BI Sites on Power BI for Office 365. (You can find the Power BI app on the Site Contents page.) Fire up Power BI sites, and now you have a great way to find and share workbooks, as well as easy access to all the capabilities in Power BI for Office 365. Learn more details here.

Some new features to interest the data analyst in you

Scheduled data refresh. That’s right, you can have your online workbooks refreshed while you sleep and the reports ready to be consumed by employees as they arrive at the office. No need to wait for the data to refresh anymore. You can configure a data refresh schedule for an Excel 2013 workbook that has a Data Model uploaded to BI Sites. A workbook must have at least one data connection in the Data Model, and not exceed 250MB in size. In addition, a workbook must conform to the list of supported features in the web browser. For more information about the Data Model in Excel, see Create a Data Model in Excel.

Here are things you need to schedule data refresh for a workbook:

• At least Write permissions on the workbook to create a data refresh schedule.
• Access to the external data sources during data refresh.
• Credentials with permission to access those data sources.
• A data source location accessible over a network connection.
• The workbook checked in when the refresh starts. The server places a lock on the workbook at the end of data refresh, when the file is saved, rather than when refresh starts.
• The workbook connects to the external data using Power Pivot– not the Excel client and not Power Query.

Learn more details about scheduled data refresh on Yitzhak Kesselman’s Power BI blog and on the Scheduled Refresh FAQ page.

Larger workbooks. Use Excel Online in Power BI for Office 365 to view, edit and interact with Excel Workbooks up to 250MB in file size. Note that when a workbook exceeds 30 MB in file size, it must be enabled in order to display in a browser window with Excel Online. More information on file size limits in SharePoint Online with Power BI for Office 365 can be found here.

Ask questions of your data in natural language. With the Q&A features, people can type questions they have of the data in natural language and the system will interpret the question and present answers in the form of interactive visualizations.

After enabling your reports for Q&A integration, click the Q&A search link on the top right.

Now you can use natural language to create your own search queries, and the system will always repeat what you wrote in a simple sentence that can help you make sure you are doing the right search and learning the correct syntax. Your best searches can be saved as Featured Questions and available for everyone to use. Create your graphs interactively with a few words.

Stay connected with mobile access to your reports. With the new HTML5 support and the Power BI Windows app, you can stay connected from anywhere with new HTML5 support and the Power BI Windows app.

More about Power BI

There are even more things to discover with the new Power BI offering. To learn more, go to PowerBI.com and try it for free on Office 365.

The post Try Power BI for Office 365 for a better reporting experience appeared first on Office Blogs.

Delivered by Microsoft Gold Partner Projility, this session will provide an overview as to how the Microsoft Project platform can help large enterprises improve work management  and collaboration efforts. This session will include a detailed overview of the Microsoft Project Portfolio Management (PPM) platform and its ability to support multiple groups, business units, and methodologies within the same organization.

CONGRATULATIONS to the 4 attendees of this live session who were selected to receive a fully functional perpetual copy of Project Professional 2013:

• Eric JV. – Netherlands
• James M. – Brunswick, GA
• Ken O. – United Kingdom
• Rebecca Z – Idaho Falls, ID

Register here/sign in to view this session on-demand

Presenter: Rob Hirschmann, Projility

To see the complete Project webcast series agenda, go to aka.ms/ProjectWebcastSeries

The post February 18 Project webcast available on-demand: Manage more work with less effort appeared first on Office Blogs.

This morning, Jared Spataro, General Manager for Microsoft Office, and Ludovic Hauduc, Director of Development, kicked off Microsoft Project Conference 2014 in Anaheim, California with an opening keynote address. At this year’s event, we announced enhancements to Microsoft Project and showcased how it continues to evolve for modern business needs in collaboration, project and portfolio management.

20 million Project users and counting

Microsoft Project has steadily grown to the top of its market, and more than 20 million people are using Project across businesses of all sizes. From large enterprises, including Verizon Communications and the Hilti Corporation, to small and mid-sized businesses, such as Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler, Project is saving businesses time and money.

• Verizon Communications has realized invaluable time savings and leveraged Project to improve its bottom line. “Project Server is a huge work-force multiplier for us,” says Chris Fullam, Program Manager, Project Management Center of Excellence, Verizon. “We’re saving about four hours per project on creating schedules alone; such time savings add up across 150,000 projects a year.”
• The Hilti Corporation, a large global construction manufacturer, has significantly reduced IT complexity with Project Online. “By using a cloud-based solution, we got the agility we were seeking,” says Dr. Christian Buddendick, Head of Workplace Platform Services. “We can scale the use of Project Online from 20 people up to 10,000 users. It is easy to use and satisfies nearly 100 percent of our business needs.”
• With less than 200 employees, German marketing agency, Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler  recently upgraded to Project Online and deployed Microsoft SharePoint Online to better share information, model business processes, and access project tools online. “We estimate that we’ll be able to decrease project management time by at least 10 percent by using Project Online,” says Dr. Anders Lehr, a senior project manager.

With Office 365 and apps from our partner ecosystem, Project delivers an integrated PPM experience across devices and enables customers to stay ahead of the latest industry trends. As businesses move to the cloud and work to manage the proliferation of devices, Project Online, built on Office 365, delivers a strong foundation for businesses to realize the benefits of project management beyond IT, expanding into marketing and financial industries as well.

Introducing Project Lite

We’re pleased to introduce Project Lite, a new cloud offering that will become available on May 1, 2014. Project Lite is designed specifically for project team members, with features to view/update Tasks, enter Issues/Risks and Timesheets. At just $7 per user/month, instead of the original $33 per user/month with an annual subscription, Project Lite will bring powerful cloud service to even more people and significantly lower Total Cost of Ownership for our customers.

New developer opportunities for Project

With the new cloud app model, it’s never been easier to build and deploy apps customers trust and we’re inspired by the new solutions we’re seeing.

Our innovative network of partners has already begun creating apps that enhance the Project experience and further differentiate Microsoft in the project management space, including the Sensei Task Analyzer app, which identifies and helps resolve potential problems before they appear. The new PROJILITY ProjectWare Connect app for Project also empowers workers to streamline collaboration through Office 365. We encourage developers to visit the Office Dev Center to get started and welcome customers to check out the new apps for Project in the Office Store.

Thank you to all of our innovative customers, tremendous partners and everyone who continues to make Project such a rewarding business to be a part of. Follow @Project and #ProjConf for real-time updates throughout the conference, and remember that you can try Project Pro for Office 365 and Office 365 for free at Office.com.

Here’s to thinking big!

– Sajan

The post Project Conference 2014 brings big ideas to the cloud appeared first on Office Blogs.

Yammer, Lync, Skype, SharePoint, PPM, email, meetings, hallway conversations, sponsor briefings,… OH MY! Effective communication is often the key differentiator in project success or failure. This session is focused on using technology to simplify your communications needs by making sure accurate information is available to your team when and where they need it.

CONGRATULATIONS to the 4 attendees of this live session who were selected to receive a fully functional perpetual copy of Project Professional 2013:

• Demetrius R. – Alexandria, VA
• Johnny L. – Cape Coral, FL
• Donna O. – Houston, TX
• Skip W. – Milwaukee, WI

Sign in / register here for our Project webcast series to view this session on-demand.

Presenter: Rose Blackburn, QuantumPM

To see the complete Project webcast series agenda, go to aka.ms/ProjectWebcastSeries.

The post January 21 Project webcast available on-demand: The integration of social networks in PPM appeared first on Office Blogs.

Continental breakfast and lunch and beverages will be served, and there will be a drawing for a free copy of Project Professional 2013.

Microsoft is excited to announce that working through their training partner Advisicon, we will be able to offer PMP’s (PMI Project Management certified), or those needing requirements for getting their PMP, that there will be free 6.5 PDU’s for this event. That information will be made available upon your attendance.

Please select a city, and register using the corresponding link:

January 13, 2014: Boise, ID
Click HERE to register.

January 14, 2014: Portland, OR
Click HERE to register.

January 17, 2014: Bellevue, WA
Click HERE to register.

The post Project tips and techniques sessions next week: Boise, Portland, Bellevue appeared first on Office Blogs.

Valuable sessions for everyone

Sessions are broken into three tracks–Business, Product, and Technical–to ensure that there is plenty of content for Business Decision Makers, Project Practitioners, and Technical Professionals. Read detailed descriptions and speaker bios are available for our Top 10 Sessions, then review the full session list with helpful filters before you register for the event.

Executive keynote

The keynote session will offer insight from both business and technical perspectives, featuring two important Microsoft leaders:

Jared Spataro, General Manager, Office 365. Cloud, social and proliferation of devices have changed the way we work, collaborate and manage our tasks and projects. During this keynote Jared will talk about Microsoft’s vision for business productivity & project management, share industry trends and provide insights into how Microsoft is thinking about future product investments.

Ludovic Hauduc, Director of Development and Engineering, Office Developer Platform, Access and Project. Discover the latest in Microsoft Project family of products & our cloud offerings and showcase plenty of demos that will get you charged for the rest of the conference! Prior to his current leadership role, Ludovic was General Manager for the Microsoft Project Business Unit, where his responsibilities led him to run product development and head the strategic direction for the Project business. Ludovic has been involved with the Microsoft Project team since 1994 in various technical leadership roles for the Project and Project Server line of products.

Register today!

Make plans now to join us February 2-5 in sunny Anaheim, California. Act fast because accommodations are limited and Southern California is a top travel destination.

The post Project Conference 2014: Full session list and keynote announced appeared first on Office Blogs.

Have you registered for Project Conference 2014, yet?

To enhance your conference experience, we are offering three customer chalk talk sessions to answer any of those burning Project questions you might have.  In these interactive sessions, Microsoft Subject Matter Experts will discuss common points of interest, and address questions from the audience.

Want to make sure your question gets answered?  Please send them to us ahead of time to make sure that we cover what you want to hear.   The SMEs will also be fielding questions at the sessions as time allows.

Session 1: Project Online

Use of Project Online is accelerating and we get excited when people ask us tough technical questions about our new service. In this session, we’ll cover questions about Project Online with Project Pro for Office 365, such as:

• Benefits of using an online service and how it’s different from on-premises
• Migration from an on-premises environment
• Licensing and security

Session 2: IT Pro

We can always count on our IT Pro audience to come prepared with a few good head-scratchers. In this session, we will cover questions that the IT Pro audience may have, such as:

• Deployment
• Administration
• Upgrade

Session 3: Project Management Office

Of course, we really want to hear from our users and power users. In this session, we will cover questions about using Project in your organization, such as:

• Demand Management
• Portfolio Management
• Custom Field / Lookup Tables
• Resource Management

We look forward to seeing you at Project Conference!

–Efren Edwards, Senior Content Developer

The post Ask your technical questions at the Project Conference 2014 Customer Chalk Talk Sessions appeared first on Office Blogs.