How to create a milestone in Project Operations
Problem Definition: We always wanted a way in which we could create a milestone in the project WBS. Milestones are the way in which we can mark the task by stating that it’s a deliverable task. How can we achieve this functionality in Project Operations? Solution: Please follow the steps to mark the task as milestone in Project Operations (PO) P4W. Step 1: Open your PO environment and navigate to Projects à Tasks Tab Step 2: Add a task by and name, in this case I have added the task by the name “Milestone task 1”. Step 3: Make following columns visible “Effort”, “Start” and “Finish”. Step 3: Make the effort to 0 and ensure the Start and Finish Dates are same. This will ensure your task is made as a milestone. Step 4: Now navigate to the Timeline view and you can check whether the task is created as a milestone task or not. If the Timeline shows a diamond icon, that means it is a milestone task that is created.
How to enable new URS Board (Schedule Board) in Project Operations
The new schedule board in Project Operations is much more powerful than before. Its performance is far more superior than the previous version of schedule board, in a way that: Loading the schedule board is much faster than before Tab switching is faster Dragging and dropping the work orders is much improved Rescheduling the bookings is much improved Well, before we get into the new features of the URS (Which I will cover in my next blog), I would like to inform you guys about how to enable the new URS board in your Project Operations environment. PN: The new URS at the moment is in preview mode and will be in GA in OCT’ 2021. Please follow the steps to enable the new URS Board: Open the app in the designer mode as shown in the image below: When the App Designer is opened, click on the Site Map as shown below: On the right pane of the Site Map Settings, update the URL to “/main.aspx?pagetype=entitylist&etn=msdyn_scheduleboardsetting” as shown in the image below: Open the Project Service App now and navigate to Schedule Board, you will see a toggle button to open the new URS Board. You are now ready to play around with the new URS Board. PN: The above blog is w.r.t the best of the information tried and tested by myself. In case of any issues or discrepancies, do not hesitate to write back to me on kgupta@d365feeds.com
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.
5 Best Power BI Reports that helps organization take decisions with Dynamics 365 CRM
Reports in any organization are prime to provide valuable information about various things that happen. Be it w.r.t hiring, cash outflow, cash inflow, etc. If we do not take a look at the data timely and do not provide importance to it, our emotions might take us in a random direction. Power BI has a beautiful way of providing insight about the data visually. Its features like drill down help us play with the report unlike the traditional SSRS reports which are usually static. We @CloudFronts use below 5 reports primarily amongst many other Power BI reports that help us taking precise decision all the time and gives direction wile being in the management meeting as well. Let’s take a look at how an where each report help us in the decision making. Allocation Report: This report provides us with the utmost important information from the organization, that is the allocation of resources on the project. It provides a very vital information as to which resource is booked on which project, how many hours and on which days. Depending on the hours of allocation the color coding is decided. Let’s assume if the working hours of the resource is defined as 8 hours in the Work Hour Template (a feature in PSA) and he/she is allocated for more than 80% it is GREEN. If it is below 80% and above 30% is YELLOW else RED. GREEN indicates that the health of the company is good and needs hiring. Subsequently, HR Dept. can be intimated for hiring requisition in the required department. The report has 4 sub reports to it as you can see it in the screenshot below: Billable Allocation Billable & Non-Billable Allocation Report Billable & Proposed Allocation Billable & Non-Billable Client Work Each of them, by their names are self-explanatory. Below is the screenshot of the report and the Drilled Down report of Allocation Report. The Report shows the following information: to which the resource belong. The Resource Weekly Allocation of the entire year (52 weeks) Allocation Report: Drill Down of the same: Project Overview Report: This report gives the over all heath information of all the Active projects running in the company. For a better visibility and bifurcation, we prefer mentioning the priority of the project to be of High, Medium and Low priority. We created views in PSA based on these priorities and hence created Power BI Report filters based on it as well. The report gives the overview for the following crucial information like: Estimated Hours: These are the hours that are derived after the project WBS is ready and are the sum of all the Main tasks. Actual Hours: These are the sum of all the hours that are approved by Project Manager on the time entries done by the team members. Forecasted Hours: These are the hours that are the allocations done by the Resource Manager against the project for future. So the sum of all the future allocations are shown up here. Estimated Revenue: This is calculated on the basis of Estimated hours multiplied by the per hour rate from the pricelist of the project. So it gives the over all estimate revenue for the project. Forecasted Revenue: This is the current forecast of the expected revenue and is calculated on the basis of the no of hours allocated multiplied by the per hour rate from the pricelist of the project. During the weekly meetings with the management, they answer important question as to why is the forecast looking week, in case it is? How much of the estimated hours are balance on the project and in case we need more looking at the current state of the project? When is the project ending? Start Date gives us an understanding of since how long is the project running. Project Overview report screenshot: AR Report: This report by the name itself gives the information about the Accounts Receivable information against the invoice raised in PSA for the customers. The report helps in maintaining the cashflow of the organization and helps in keeping the tab of which customers invoice is overdue since when and needs a follow up. The report is bifurcated into buckets: 90 Days and above overdue 31 to 60 Days overdue 1-30 Days overdue Current invoices. They by there name of the buckets helps you understand, what information might be available in each one of them. There is a link also provided in the report to navigate it directly to the invoice created in PSA to review any additional information in case needed. Screenshot of the AR Report: 4. Support Metrics Report This is one of the beautiful reports that gives an overall view of how many no of cases are open in our support module against each customer, including internal tickets. The bar chart on the report when clicked opens up all the support tickets for that customer, which has the link to open the report in the D365 CRM. It also provides lots of vital information about the cases like: Case Created on Case Name Case No Follow up date Owner Customer This report answers the important questions like, when was the case created and when is the next follow up on the case? Is it been too long that the case is opened by the customer? Support Metrics Screenshot Billing Report: This is an important report for project Manager and Accounting department both in terms of billing standpoint. Project Manager get the information as to, whether the billing report shows the exact figure as the allocation report shows. If yes, then it is good else he/she can get it corrected by the respective project team member of the project, before approving the time entries. Accounting team on the contrary can drill down these reports and extract the hour wise billing report that the client demands and send it with the invoice in case needed. The report can be filtered by, Week, Month, Year. Screenshot of the Billing
PSA Invoice Integration to Quick Books disclosed
Problem Definition: Often Invoicing needs of a company operating with Multiple geographic locations are sophisticated. PSA’s Invoicing module lags a bit in that and hence, people prefer using a third party tool such as QuickBooks (QB) from Intuit to manage their invoices. Solution: That doesn’t mean that we completely ignore the invoicing in PSA. We create the Invoice in PSA and Post the Invoice is created in PSA, we integrate it with QB. Following is the process we follow to Integrate the Invoices between PSA and QB Step 1: Create an Entity in CRM that stores the required information from QB like: Client ID Security Key Refresh Token Access Token URL: This is the URL that provides us with the Refresh Token that is valid for 101 days. For the first time, we need to manually login to https://developer.intuit.com/v2/OAuth2Playground/RedirectUrl and get the Client ID, Security Token and Refresh Token and store it in the Entity (Diagram show below for the entity designed in CRM). When we hit this URL, it provides us with some more information than the above information i.e. Expiry Time of the Token and in some cases the Refresh Token is updated and sent even though the validity is for 101 days. Hence, it is important to store the Refresh Token on all the call backs. Access API URL: This is the URL that is to call the specific Module from QB end (also know as the end point) to do the specific functions from Invoice Entity Design Diagram Step 2: Decide the fields from the Invoice Entity and call the function in the Step 3 to integrate and post the invoice to QB. Below screenshot shows the fields that are to be integrated to QB. There are fields that are apart from the OOB fields and needs for invoicing as per Global Industry standards. Step 3: Call the Invoice End Point from Access Token URL. Below is the Screen Shot of the code that is used to call the Invoice function from QB Basic Architecture of How CRM connects to QB Conclusion: The above process can do the integration for as many legal entities in QB. This will ensure all the invoice information from PSA to QB and vice versa as we may need some information to flow back from QB to PSA like QB invoice ID, Part Payment Information, etc. PN: The entire integration code is not mentioned in the above blog. In case there is any help needed, you may contact me.