[Free PowerApp] Teams to Project connector

Flow, PowerApps, Project Online, Teams, Tricks, Uncategorized One comment

Every day thousands of new users are signing up for Microsoft Teams. They do this to get a modern experience when collaborating with team members and managing their daily work.

Within Microsoft Teams, there is already a variety of Microsoft and 3rd party apps allowing users to do their work. Unfortunately, Project Managers are not finding “Project Online” to be available as a Teams app. For that reason, many have manually tried to add their “Project Detail Pages” using hyperlinks on tabs within Team Channels… and already now you are probably thinking “that’s sounds way to complex”.

Recently, my company and Microsoft Partner, Projectum, created a PowerApp and Flow ensuring a smooth user experience when connecting Microsoft Team Channels (tabs) to Project Online PDPs (Project Detail Pages). And even better, it is now decided that this PowerApp should be available to all at no cost.

The PowerApp will soon be available from the PowerApps Partner Showcase area (LINK), but if you cant wait, here is how to get it today:

Download the PowerApp and Flow files: LINK

Get the installation guide: LINK

Here is how it works and looks

Navigate the Teams desktop client, create a new Team e.g. “Project Portfolio Team” and add the PowerApp following the guide
Add a new channel to your team (each channel will become one project)

Give you channel a meaningful name e.g. “My project 100”
Once your channel has been created, notice that the only tabs available are “conversations”, “files” and “wiki”
Now go back to the “general” channel and use the PowerApp to connect your channel (e.g. My Project 100) with a project in Project Online. You will notice that you can filter on EPTs to minimize the list of available projects. From here, simply select the “tabs” you are looking for, and in other words, your Project Detail Pages and hit “Create Connection”
Now go back to your Channel and notice you have new tabs where each is a “Project Detail Page” from the project you have selected
You can now access the project information, schedule and other customized content directly from Teams

In case you are wondering about security there are several ways to enhance this. However, as a minimum, the security settings in Project Online will still kick in so nothing new there. If you would like the Team Channel to be populated with the “team members” from the project plan, you will have to hold on just a little while, until Microsoft have released their planned “Channel Security” update found on their roadmap.

Before I end this blog post I would like to give a BIG THANK YOU to Lilian Stenholt Thomsen and Nicklas Wessel who are the real brains behind this PowerApp solution.

Now go ahead and try it out yourself.

Enjoy!

One comment

  1. Pingback: Teams 2 Project, App introduction | The Project Corner

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