Teams collaboration with Project Operations
An often ask functionality to collaborate from Dynamics 365 Project Operations with Teams is now functional, thus helping in effective communication and team collaboration by avoiding series of emails. There are many ways in which Teams can be used for this purpose. The following blog with explain you how the collaboration works. 1. Adding a Dynamics 365 App in Teams. By adding Dynamics 365 App to Teams you can use the entire app inside teams. There is no need to step out of Teams for anything related to Dynamics work. How do we add the Dynamics 365 App to Teams? Step 1: Click on the elipses as shown in the screen shot below and select the Dynamics 365 App. Step 2: Select the App and Click on Add button as shown below. Step 3: Navigate to Setting Tab and Select, Environment and Dynamics 365 App that you wish to load inside and Save the settings as shown below: Step 4: Once you are done, click on the My Dashboard button and your app is loaded in Teams. Now you can run the entire App inside your Teams environment. 2. By Adding a Teams and loading a specific project for that team, so that the entire team can collaborate on that Team. Step1: Click on the Teams Tab and Click on Join or Create a team as shown below and then Create a team: Step 2: Select any option that suits you best from the below. I would recommend selecting “Manage a Project” since it has all the Wiki and Files options enabled by default. Step 3: Click on Start Step 4: Click on Public or Private Group as per your choice. I would recommend keeping it Private, since it is your project group. Step 5: Name the project team and click on Create button. It takes a while post that to create a team. Once the team is created you will be notified by Teams about the successful creation of your project team. Once your Project Team is created you will see it in the left navigation bar of Teams as shown below. Once you click that you will see a couple of options in the project team. Step 6: Once you Click on the + Icon, you can add the Dynamics 365 Project you wish to add to the project team you created to collaborate on the same. Step 7: Next you click on Add Step 8: Select the Entity Selection Tab and Select from the Right Drop Down Menu as Shown, select the appropriate project and click on Save. Your project is added as the tab on the tab as shown and you can then collaborate also with the team from Posts. Collaborate from Posts 3. You can also add the entre website by adding the URL on the Teams site of your application. Step1: To add via URL, click the + Icon on any chat or Team that you have created and select Website Step 2: Name the tab and add the URL of your Dynamics 365 Environment. Then you are set to your application inside Teams. Your Project Tab comes on the top as shown and you can use your D365 App from within Teams seamlessly. There is a Collaborate Button provided in the Dynamics 365 app to collaborate with Teams, I shall discuss more about that option in my upcoming blog. THE END
Teams collaboration with Project Operations
An often ask functionality to collaborate from Dynamics 365 Project Operations with Teams is now functional, thus helping in effective communication and team collaboration by avoiding series of emails. There are many ways in which Teams can be used for this purpose. The following blog with explain you how the collaboration works. 1. Adding a Dynamics 365 App in Teams. By adding Dynamics 365 App to Teams you can use the entire app inside teams. There is no need to step out of Teams for anything related to Dynamics work. How do we add the Dynamics 365 App to Teams? Step 1: Click on the elipses as shown in the screen shot below and select the Dynamics 365 App. Step 2: Select the App and Click on Add button as shown below. Step 3: Navigate to Setting Tab and Select, Environment and Dynamics 365 App that you wish to load inside and Save the settings as shown below: Step 4: Once you are done, click on the My Dashboard button and your app is loaded in Teams. Now you can run the entire App inside your Teams environment. 2. By Adding a Teams and loading a specific project for that team, so that the entire team can collaborate on that Team. Step1: Click on the Teams Tab and Click on Join or Create a team as shown below and then Create a team: Step 2: Select any option that suits you best from the below. I would recommend selecting “Manage a Project” since it has all the Wiki and Files options enabled by default. Step 3: Click on Start Step 4: Click on Public or Private Group as per your choice. I would recommend keeping it Private, since it is your project group. Step 5: Name the project team and click on Create button. It takes a while post that to create a team. Once the team is created you will be notified by Teams about the successful creation of your project team. Once your Project Team is created you will see it in the left navigation bar of Teams as shown below. Once you click that you will see a couple of options in the project team. Step 6: Once you Click on the + Icon, you can add the Dynamics 365 Project you wish to add to the project team you created to collaborate on the same. Step 7: Next you click on Add Step 8: Select the Entity Selection Tab and Select from the Right Drop Down Menu as Shown, select the appropriate project and click on Save. Your project is added as the tab on the tab as shown and you can then collaborate also with the team from Posts. Collaborate from Posts 3. You can also add the entre website by adding the URL on the Teams site of your application. Step1: To add via URL, click the + Icon on any chat or Team that you have created and select Website Step 2: Name the tab and add the URL of your Dynamics 365 Environment. Then you are set to your application inside Teams. Your Project Tab comes on the top as shown and you can use your D365 App from within Teams seamlessly. There is a Collaborate Button provided in the Dynamics 365 app to collaborate with Teams, I shall discuss more about that option in my upcoming blog. THE END
How to do split billing in D365 Project Operations?
Often there is a need to split the bill which can be paid by 2 parties for a project. For e.g. if we are getting a project executed and there are 2 customers involved, for whom the project is getting developed, they can decide on who should pay what percentage bill should be borne by whom. Project Operations comes with this functionality known as Split billing. The following steps illustrates how to achieve that: Step 1: Login to your Project Operations CE environment. Step 2: Create an Opportunity by Navigating to Salesà Opportunities Module and by clicking on +New button from Ribbon control. Step 3: Create a Quote, by clicking on the Quote Tab and then click on +New Quote as shown in the screenshot below: A Quote filled with all the details from the opportunity form is created. Step 4: Navigate to the Customers Tab in the Quote. Here is where you can add another customer who shall split the bill with the other customer. Click on +New Quote Customer as shown below, add the details and decide the percentage of billing as per need basis between each customer. Step 5: Add Quote Lines to the Quote as per shown in the screen shot below: Step 6: Add Quote Line Details as per shown in the below screenshot: Step 7: Once the Quote is Ready Mark the Quote as Won as shown in the screenshot below: Step 8: Once the Quote is marked as won a Contract is created with all the detail pre-filled (picked up form Quote). Then mark the Contract as confirm as shown in the screen shot below: Step 9: Navigate to the Billing Milestones and Open a milestone for Invoicing: If you observe, after opening the billing milestone, it has 2 lines in each for different Quote Line customers that we added. The amounts are also calculated based on the percentage of the split billing decided for both. Step 10: Change the status of both the lines to Ready for Invoicing as shown below: Step 11: Navigate to the Contract and click on the Create Invoice button from the ribbon as shown: Step 12: Navigate to the Invoice Entity from Sales Module as shown below. You will observe there are 2 different invoices created for both the customers: That ends the process. Here on the Accounts Manager can send out the invoice individually to each of the customer. The entire process briefed above is how the split billing works.
How to Post the Fixed Bid and Time and Material based invoice in F&O in Project Operations
In my previous blog referred here https://webcraft-solutions.com/2020/07/08/how-do-contract-milestones-and-projects-flow-between-d365-ce-to-fo-in-project-operations/, we saw how the contract and milestones flow between CE and F&O in the integrated scenario in Project Operations. Next step is to Post the Milestones or the Approved Time entries (in case of T&M based projects) in F&O (Finance and Operations) Let’s looks at first Milestone based Invoice posting in F&O for a Fixed Bid Project: PN: How to log in to the environment is shown in my previous blog in the link above. Step 1: Login to the CE Environment to the Milestone that you need to Invoice and flip the status to “Ready for invoicing”. Step 2: The invoice is created in the CE Environment and you need to confirm the same. Upon confirming the invoice it gets integrated to the F&O Environment. Step 3: Navigate to F&O Environment and go to Project Management and Accounting–> Import from staging table. This will import all the transactions available in the staging area to F&O environment. Step 4: At this juncture the Invoice is now posted to the F&O Environment. To check the same in F&O environment navigate to Project Management and Accounting Module –> Pending project transactions You can see the Invoices milestone below. Step 5: Select the invoice and click on Post. This is when the invoicing of milestone is completed. This step is recommended to be performed by the Accounts Manager. Now we shall see how to Invoice Time and Material projects. Follow the steps to accomplish the same. Step 1: Navigate to CE Environment and get some time entries done on the T&M project as shown below. Step 2: Submit the time entries done by clicking the Submit button as shown below. The status of the time entries changes to Submitted from Draft status. Step 3: The project manager will now have to approve the time entries submitted from the Approvals tab. Step 4: As soon as the time entries are approved they are integrated and reside in the staging area of F&O. You then need to Import all the time entries from the staging area. Navigate to F&O Environment and go to Project Management and Accounting –> Import from staging table. This will import all the transactions available in the staging area to F&O environment. Step 5: Post that navigate to Project Management and Accounting –> Project Operation integration journal where all the approved time entries in CE environment get collected. Please understand that if there is an active Journal existing in F&O environment, then all the approved time entries for all the projects will be integrated to the same Journal, unless all the entries in that integration journal is approved. Step 6: Select the Journal from the below and click on the Post button from Ribbon. This will post all the transactions from the Journal, which also the final step that the Accounts manager will perform to do the invoicing. Above methods when performed can ensure that the milestones and the time entries for FP and T&M projects respectively are done. The above operations are prescribed to be done by the Accounts Manager in the company. This ends the process of Posting the Invoice in F&O Environment. The above blog is written with the best possible knowledge of Project Operations and practical experience.
Quick Tip: How to tie same project on both Fixed Bid and Time Project in a Contract
Problem Definition: Many a times we have 2 different type of contract lines that we need to create for a customer, one may be of Time and Material (T&M) Type and another may be of Fixed Bid (FB) Type. The problem used to be that for each type of contract line, we needed to create separate projects that needed to be tagged with each contract line as other wise we get an error as shown below: Solution: While creating the Contract line of Type T&M we need to carefully select the parameters (Time, Expense and Fees) as shown in the below screen shot. Following is what needs to be done: While creating a T&M project, check the project which type of project is it, whether the Time Entry and Expenses will be Chargeable on the basis of Project Managers approval. If so, please select the Expenses as “Yes” and select “No” to the other types Time and Fee. When you create a quote for FB type, select Time and Fee as “Yes” and Expense as “No” as shown below. Now when you tag the same project on both the type of contracts, you will not see error. Benefit of having same project is that for your FB and T&M type contacts you can have Milestones that can be billed as well as Time Entry and Expense can be charged to the customer simultaneously, which reduces the work or maintaining multiple projects for each type of contract. Conclusion: These minor tips can save a lot of maintenance burden and time of project manager and the Resource Manager both as the allocation needs to be then done on one project and also helps the team to do the Time and Expense entry on the same project.
Scheduling Resources for Project Tasks
The most complicated part post planning the WBS for a PM is allocation. Typically project managers allocate team members on the tasks they are supposed to perform. These tasks are from WBS that is prepared while planning the project. With D365 PSA it is slight different. We do not allocate resource on to a project tasks, but, book them for a certain duration on to the project under certain role. Though this normal behaviour can be tweaked to suit the normal needs of a PM. We need to take in slight efforts to do the following to attain allocation of resources at task level. Below are the things that we need to Configuration changes to be done Enable the Project Task entity for scheduling To enable the Project Task Entity for scheduling we need to enable is from the Resource Scheduling Entity –>Administration. Creation of views on below entities Bookable Resource Booking For creating this view we will navigate to Settings–>CustomizationsàCustomize the Solution–> Expand Entities Tab and search for “Bookable Resource Booking Entity”–> Click on Views –> Click on New and Create a new view with the following fields as shown in the screenshot below: Resource Requirement For creating this view we will navigate to Settings –> Customizations –> Customize the Solution –> Expand Entities Tab and search for “Resource Requirement Entity”–> Click on Views –> Click on New and Create a new view with the following fields as shown in the screenshot below: Schedule board changes: Following are the changes that needs to be done on the schedule board: I prefer making the changes in the Initial Public View. But, you can create a special view for yourself if needed. Click on the “Initial Public View” that opens a Pop-Up as shown below: We shall make the changes in Schedule Types and Requirement Panels Tab: Schedule Types Changes Requirement Panels Changes What does the Plugin do? Only the configuration changes mentioned above won’t help and complete the Project Task Scheduling needs. We will need to write a Plugin on the create of task in WBS. The Plugin will trigger 2 time, on Create of the Task and once on the Update of the task in WBS. The Plugin Creates and Updates the following fields: Name (Project Task Name) Role Start Date End Date Duration Project This Plugin creates a Resource Requirement with the task details provided in WBS. You can also download the Plugin script from the below URL: https://cloudfronts1-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/swath_cloudfronts_com/EdvcbnWzBU5Ouz3sYUxlhqsBRupolAt_nbXntK2IStp-yA?e=QacpwH This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. According to my opinion, implementation of Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation is one of the best things that we did in CloudFronts Technologies. We have gained a lot with this implementation because we save time and money due to easy access resources and ability to manage them.