[NEW RELEASE] Office365 Project Portfolio Dashboard

Today, Microsoft released a whole new set of industry standard reporting tools for project portfolio management. This update is much more than just a new feature -its a tool in itself, allowing users of Project Online to get standard reports for projects, risks, costs, resources and issues management.

The tool also allows you to create your custom dashboards with user defined “zones”, and filtering on almost all data available in your configured Project Online solution.

I have made a little introduction guide explaining how to get started with building and using these new reporting capabilities:

1. Adding the Portfolio Dashboard App to your Project Online tenant

Simply navigate to the front page of your PWA and in the top-right corner select “Add an App”.

2. Find the App in the “SharePoint Store”

Click on the “SharePoint Store” link in the quick launch which will take you to the public store for all of SharePoint.

3. Add the App to your PWA

You will find the app if searching in the “Project” category of the SharePoint App Store. Alternatively use the search box and look for “portfolio dashboard”.

4. Wait for the App to be fully added to your PWA

This might take a few minutes so be patient!

5. Launch your new Portfolio Dashboard App

Once the App is fully deployed you simply have to click on it, and it will take you straight to the new reporting area.

6. Basic overview

The out-of-the-box dashboards covers the key reporting needs for project portfolio management

Projects overview

Tasks overview

Resources overview

Content overview (SharePoint Site content)

7. Filtering the data

On every dashboard page you are able to filter on a large set of fields. Both Project Online “standard” fields and your organizational “custom fields” can be used. In the example below I am using the “Project Owner” field to quickly show only my projects.

8. Making your own Dashboard

Although the reports are based on industry best practices, most users would need to make their own dashboards as well. Luckily this is also available from the ribbon in the “New Dashboards” section.

9. Defining the layout (zones)

First you should define how you would like the dashboard to look like. This is similar to the web part zones in SharePoint and allows users to quickly set up a design/layout that fits the need.

10. Select your charts

Once you have defined the zones, a number of charts are then available to be shown. In the ribbon you simply choose which chart you want for each zone.

11. Filter your dashboard

As with the default dashboards, you can also filter your custom dashboard based on location, owner, EPT or any other field needed

12. Drill down capabilities /Project Status Reporting

Although a Portfolio Dashboard is extremely useful to gain an overview, most would like the ability to also drill down into the actual projects and learn about the detailed status. Luckily this is also possible.

Select a project

View the details of the project using the

 

On a final note, with these new reporting capabilities and “out-of-the-box” reports, Project Online for Office365 became even easier to implement for new customers. I hope the guide will help you get started and as always feel free to send me questions directly.

Enjoy!