 Thanks a lot for joining us. This is the Microsoft YouTube group Utah, our guest webinar series. Of course, we're not having many live meetings, in-person meetings right now. The benefit, of course, we've done webinars, we've had guest speakers, but there's a lot that's happening in the monthly activities. So we've got a speaker. I don't have it open in front of me here, but I'm looking to see. No, it's not scrolling fast enough, but yeah, we do have an event happening, I believe next week. But at the end of the recording, I'll have it up in front of me of our speaker of the next event. But please, if you're not yet following us out in Facebook, if you go and do a search on Mugget to the Microsoft User Group, Utah, then please go and follow the page like that and participate, get involved. Especially if you're here in the greater Utah area. Of course, the benefit of doing these is we get to have great speakers from around the world participate. Prasad, why don't you introduce yourself to your topic on Microsoft Project and kick things off. Let's just get going. Alright, thank you for the introduction, Chris. So welcome everyone. We were just joking. I'm very happy to be live streaming from all the way from Hawaii, from a live beach. I'm just kidding, obviously. It's so realistic, I know. Yeah, there is no, if you see some fuzzy screen, that's just the matrix glitching. Alright, so share my screen. Let's bring this up. I guess I should also say that so I'm recording this. We'll have this available tonight. It'll be out on YouTube and Prasad, you're going to make your slides available afterwards as well. So it'll all be on the blog post. We'll share it out on Facebook so you'll be able to get access to everything. Excellent. Awesome. Alright, so I mean everybody can see my screen. So again, welcome everyone for this afternoon's session. So first of all, let's start with the topic I'm going to cover. This is going to be primarily a project management related topic and work management. Okay, and I'll explain what I mean by using those two terms and how I'm connecting those both. Okay, so before I say anything, I have to say this. All the opinions in this webinar are purely my own. This is all my self research because I do work for a major global plumbing company and this does not reflect their opinions. Okay, so I had to put that disclaimer there. Alright, obviously I'm on Microsoft. Okay, so my name, so I'm Prasanna Adavi. As you can see from the video, I don't look anything like that picture because that picture is pretty old, but it's my webinar. So I get to put whatever picture I want. So I am a project MVP. So have been since 2014. Work with a lot of SharePoint peers, other peers from Microsoft. And I've been a consultant for Microsoft Project Management in general for a long, long time. So right now I'm in a different role, but that still keeps me going. I like to keep up to date with the trends, new tools, new software, new services coming from Microsoft. So there is a website, I have run a blog, which I have the address here. And then I also run a podcast with less frequently, less diligently than I used to, but feel free to follow me there. Okay, so what's my agenda today? Okay, so what am I going to be talking about? First of all, the reason for this webinar is Microsoft introduced a brand new Microsoft project. Now, I'm not sure how many of you are users of Microsoft Project. Every single time I ask that question, there's always a look warm response in terms of, okay, I've dabbled with Microsoft Project. I have used it. I hate it. Or I'm the complete Microsoft Project nerd. So it could be anywhere between those responses. So if you are in any of those response categories, this webinar is for you because, and which I'll explain in detail. So let's talk to the agenda. Okay, so the good news is there is going to be a start and there's going to be an end. Okay, so I'm not going to talk forever, which is a relief for many, many people if you don't, if you don't know what else but now. All right, so we'll talk about the work management. What is work management? Why do I call it work management versus project management? Okay. And why do we need a new version of project? I mean, and why do we need a webinar about it? Microsoft Project version been released since several, several years. And then why do we need a new webinar webinar for this new version? You'll understand why as we go through the next section, which is a huge chunk of my presentation, which is demos and examples. And finally, we'll take some Q&A. But if you do have any questions in between, feel free to stop me. And I'll try to check the chat logs in between. And Chris, if you could help me with that, any questions that would be awesome. Okay. All right. So let's talk about what is work management. Okay, so this is the Gardner definition of what work management is. It's a set of software product services that apply work for structure, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this is a ghost way above my head for me to understand. So I made up my own definition. I'm not saying this is the perfect one, but this helps me simplify the concept. At its core, to me, work management involves there are processes that generate information or tasks, right? And then there is products and services that organize the movement of that information. If you take an example of moving a completing, creating materials in your enterprise resource planning system, then there's a movement of information there. So there could be a project plan that tells you when to do complete which task by, but at its core level, the work, somebody has to still do the work. The management of that work is what I think of as work management. Now the, what are the challenges with work management? Okay. And why, how does it differ from project management? First thing is many today PMI has come up with a new coin phrase over the last year called the project economy. And to an extent, I do agree with them. So everything over the last few years, every single thing has been is being called a project. By its pure definition project is something that has a defined output, which has a start and an end date. Right. So to every single thing that falls under that category is a project, lots of tools, lots of people managing projects. But there is no consistent methodology. If you think, take a step back and think of your own organization. Think of how many tools your organization uses to manage projects that primary one being Excel. We cannot, we can never escape from Excel. Right. So some people use Excel. Some people use, use gera. Some people use Asana. Some people use lots of other tools. And if you are a Microsoft enthusiast, obviously are using Microsoft project, project online, project server, etc. But it's, there is no consistent way of using these tools. Right. That's our first problem. The second problem is the work is managed differently at different levels. What do I mean by that? When you're looking, talking about a PMO or an enterprise level PMO, project management organization, what the information, the way they look at work is different from an engineer who is just trying to get the work done. And in the sandwich in between the project managers are sandwiched in between those two levels where they are trying to plan the work but also get the work done. And when it comes to an engineer who is trying to get his work done, that's where all these lists, Excel's note, one note, all these come into picture. So they don't, I've never seen an engineer liking to use Microsoft project to manage their work. Right. So by nature of how these work is managed differently at different levels, the tools have accommodated themselves. Okay. It is still, it is the work has become more collaborative as this remote working has shown all of us we have become more collaboratively. There are hundreds and hundreds of tools where you can store your documents if you can collaborate on them, send it for approvals, you can work on timelines. But it is still all messy. It's not, there is one, there's no coherent story of, okay, how does information flow from one place to the other? How does a file flow from one place to the other? Obviously some organizations do a great job in stitching that story together, regardless of the tools they're using. But when you talk about an average organization, it is almost each department is choosing their own way to manage this work. Right. So that's where it is. And then the macro picture versus micro picture. This ties back into point number two where work is being managed differently at different levels. An enterprise, an executive team is looking for a macro picture of, okay, just tell me the high level list of all the projects that are going. It has the information that a person who is actually assigned the task needs is completely different. They are looking for, tell me all the tasks I need to work across multiple systems, across multiple departments. Now how do we stitch it together? So one of the things that should come to your mind is Microsoft Teams, which has become even more useful over the last few months. And that's, that's a prime example of where Microsoft is trying to take us. They are trying to provide a collaborative platform, which will stitch all this together. Right. So from a diagram standpoint, here is what it is where I say it. So from project and portfolio management, there are several tools, right. So I'm just talking about Microsoft set of tools here. Obviously, there are a lot many that could fit into this in the marketplace. So we're talking about when we talk about project and portfolio management. We have tools like Microsoft project projects are online in some cases, SharePoint or solutions built upon SharePoint. Right. On the other hand, we have work and task management, which is primarily happening through emails. Or I mean SharePoint comes to rescue again with the list libraries, etc. Excel, we talked about it. One note, I have, I have worked with groups where they run entire projects with one note. A grantor one note is a great tool. I love it. It is collaborative. It is, it is as free form as a document can be. But then it's, it is still not a great project management tool. We can't, you can't report on the tasks across multiple, multiple tabs in one note. Right. So as an example, and then the wonder list, which actually happens to be deprecated late earlier this month. Right. So the, but there is a gap between both project manager, project manager assigns a task. But then the, the person has been the engineer who got assigned task assigned has to finish task in one of these tools. So how do, and today it's all manual collaboration. And I'm hoping you can relate to this scenario. Regardless of the names of the tools, you are able to relate to the scenario where you don't care about the project schedule only because it doesn't help you get your work done. Similarly, a project manager would, would not delve deeper into your wonder list or worry about making sure you have all your tasks because he or she is more concerned about the project schedules. Right. And then they all meet together and try to manually update status for each other, update information for each other, which creates this disconnected scenario. Okay. Now, here is my, my version of where Microsoft vision is. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. So the, the idea is, we still have all these tools, but then we start putting in place certain tools that bridge the gap between both. Okay. One, the first one, I thought Microsoft introduced and to a great success was planner planner came out to two, three years ago. If you are, if you are not use planner already, please, you should take it, take it for a spin. It is a very lightweight task management tool, which beats any similar fellow boards or a sauna or any similar tools. There's a lot of integration points that you can set up. Anyway, but planner was Microsoft's initial, I won't say the first, but it's, it's a first step in many in the journey of adding many other tools. So where it is bringing in this lightweight task management, but it is still, but it's still connected to the enterprise level project and portfolio management while allowing this hands on task level management. Okay. The second obvious platform is teams. I know teams. I think of teams as a platform, not just one tool, which can actually bring all of this together. But that was, that was the next step in the Microsoft journey of making building a unified platform that can connect these this project and portfolio management to the task management. Right. And the third one in that group is what we are going to discuss today, which is project for web. This is the new Microsoft project that I was referring to, and we will delve deeper into it and you will see why I am so excited about it. Okay. And, and then the idea is once you unify everything the project server and project online is at some point will be deprecated. Microsoft has announced that on their own blog there is no timeline for it so don't panic yet. But the eventual goal is to bring project for web on par with all the goodness of Microsoft project that we have been got we have gotten used to and then let Microsoft the project server project online tool set. Go away. Okay. You all know my one of the list became Microsoft to do so you know that right. And then all of this is obviously supported by this automation tools which which is the power automate power apps power bi to bring everything together. So this is my version of how I see Microsoft's journey into building a unified platform that connects all the way from project portfolio management to all the way to the task management level. Okay. With teams being the hub and then everything else enabling to automate it. Okay. Now let's talk about project for web. Okay. So I don't know how many of you are familiar with Microsoft project. So it has a long history Microsoft project. The first version came out in 1984, which is almost 36 years so far. And then there were several versions that came out along the way. And then 2013 was when project online was released and there was project server versions. There were in between which I don't show on this diagram yet. But I from a landmark changes as you can see I'm tracking project online and then followed by project for web. Okay. With this the reason we are having this webinar the reason we are talking about this is with this version Microsoft chose to say. We need to revamp our thinking about Microsoft project. Microsoft project has always been this desktop tool. Yeah. Again talking about the desktop tool. There's a server version. But then it was it was built from a viewpoint of a completely a project manager. If you have used a Microsoft project, you know that it is it is not a task management tool. It is and and the most common complaint I get when I go to help somebody with Microsoft project is the dates all change randomly. Right. So everybody claims complaints that without understanding why it's changing. So it's a heavy tool for a heavy hitter. Then there were the SharePoint kind of carried the load of being this lightweight task management and lightweight product and not even just task management but lightweight work management. Maybe you are working on a mini project that is less than two to three weeks long and but but those tasks still need to be tracked. But you obviously won't spin up Microsoft project to track a two week project. So SharePoint carried that load. So eventually Microsoft realized that they needed there was a tool that there was a need for a tool that we need which kind of bridges that gap. Like SharePoint does not have all the scheduling engine functionality that comes with Microsoft project. So that's what this is. This is about bridging that gap. Okay. All right. So it's it's cloud based. It's part of the Office 365 suite. And as I walk through the demo, you can you can see it. So project for web we are actually it's three different three different features that is collectively called a project for web. One is the project home. Again, I'll walk you through this in just a minute. The second is a roadmap feature functionality where you can plan high level roadmaps. And then third one is a web based project management and project scheduling experience. It's completely web based. No tools to download, etc. And on all the other niceness that comes with that. Okay. Project home is is a listing. So they have revamped how a project home looks like. Again, the goal here is not just a personal level collaboration tool. It is in the goal is here to build a tool that works across enterprise while working for the individual themselves. So project home is a collection of all the projects, quick and easy access. The nice thing about this is you can also see your roadmaps here, which I have on my next slide. So this is what a roadmaps looks like. Since the topic of this webinar is not roadmaps, I'm not going there. But the idea here is you will be long before any projects are created in any system in any organization. There are roadmaps. You're thinking of projects that might happen next year or the year after. And you would like the visual way of representing that information for your stakeholders. So roadmap is a quick and easy way of saying, I would say, if you see on screenshot, I can go click add a row and say, Hey, here is my project. And the nice thing about this is because this is integrated, you can say, I already have a project for this and I want to show it as roadmap. You can use it for portfolio and program planning program. If you are running a huge program with multiple sub projects, you can use the same thing. There are so many, many blogs out there. If you are really interested in learning about this, many of my peers wrote a lot of detailed blogs about this. And in fact, a lot of automation around this or customization information is available around this. I can say that this view is one of the most commonly requested, certainly from leadership teams. They want to have that, as you said, portfolio view of all the projects and be able to see start and stop dates and get, and to have that high level, by the color coding, you know, like the high level visual of whether a project might be running behind schedule or something, but in this quick snapshot. And this is one of those things that I've built out. I don't know how many times in Excel and, you know, and reporting services so that, you know, executive teams can have this level of visibility. Yep. Yeah, every single consulting engagement I had, we have a request for this. We always try to tackle this through reporting. Either that's whether it's Power BI or SSRS prior before that, or any other tools like ClickView or Tableau. But now this is a feature that's built right into the tool. Okay. All right, so let's actually enough of the slides. So let's launch into the demo and look at the tool itself. Before I do that, I want to take a very quick pause. Any questions? Nothing posted so far. But yeah, so everybody who's watching and I'm also, if you're watching the live stream over on Facebook, you know, feel free to ask the question and I'll interrupt you if there are any questions. Okay, cool. All right. So what what you're seeing on the screen is the project home that we talked about. Obviously, this is a brand new tenant. So you only have one project created. But as you keep creating projects, they keep showing up here. How do I do? How did I get the screen? I'm assuming everybody is familiar with the waffle. The opposite is the waffle. So if you click project, and that's where it will take you. Okay. And here you will actually have an option to create a new blank project. So I'm going to go ahead and click on that. Okay. So it's everything starts by by what looks like a blank screen, but you can actually see there are certain columns that have been pretty. Created. It comes up with an entire project as a title. The general workflow for creating a project has always been okay. I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions. And until you answer all of those, I can create a project for you, which is both good and bad. Let's say you are all you're trying to do is just quickly create a project to track your work. Those questions and answering long series of forms is a deterrent. So here the creation of the project experience is very, very simplified. You can obviously change the name of the project just by clicking on the title. So I'm going to call it M U G U T demo two. Okay. And you can change the project manager if you will. And then set it started. So I'm going to leave those things as default. Okay. Now. This is a grid view. So it is your family if you're familiar with many, many tools that do this, the excitement from my side is because now it is part of Microsoft project. Okay. So go ahead and click on a new task. So I'm going to say scope and then hit enter. So start building my project. So if you notice, if you if you have any experience with the Microsoft project framework, this is a completely radical change to how Microsoft project works. Right. So Microsoft project requires, although they have introduced features over the years like manual scheduling and all that, but the fundamental concept of a good project schedule is you need to know who is going to work on the task. You need to specify the duration, effort, dependencies, start, finish, all that before you can go further. Okay. So this kind of takes the feedback over years and puts it in a web format. So it is not mandating you to put in all that other information. It is allowing you to create tasks as we go. So which is the most natural way of creating tasks. I feel like when you're creating a working on a new initiative, you're not thinking through specific details and dates and everything. You want to just dump in all the tasks in your mind. So I'm going to say design, develop and test and go live. Small schedule. Okay. So you you have all the functionalities that are coming from Microsoft probably most of it from coming from Microsoft project. So you can actually insert tasks in between. So and then say, okay, I'm going to call this define scope. And then I'm going to indent this to make it a sub task. So I'm going to make it a sub task so that I start building my work breakdown structure. Right. So which if you are a project manager on this call, you will appreciate. Now what about all these? Okay. Where are my start and finish? So there are some predefined columns that you can add here and start and finish are some of them. So I'm going to go ahead and add start and finish. As you can see, there is a percentage complete. There is a there is a dependency feature in here. There's an effort. So I'm going to do that. I want to add an effort and I want to add the depends depends on. So that's our dependency. So you can build all of this and start assigning people. Okay. So you cannot assign people to summary tasks, which, which has been a pain point for several years. And this has been a training issue for many, many years. If you are a scheduling enthusiast, you know that assigning people to summary tasks does not make sense. Okay. So it is restricted in the new tool. So this will allow you to add people so I can add myself because I created the project. Now the one of the first steps when you initiate a project, even outside the tool is to gather the team that will be part of your project. Right. So how do you actually build a team? So if I'm as I'm going to make an assumption here, um, you are familiar with the office 365 group framework, which, which has become the de facto standard for providing security across multiple apps. So the same group can be a security control for your teams. It can be for your SharePoint site. It can also be your resource team for, for this project for that you are creating here. Okay. So you can, um, you can create a group or, um, and, and then add to groups. So I'm going to, so I'm going to create a group and say, I want to add more people. So I'm going to say Brad. Okay. So Brad Pitt. I'm going to say Russell Crow. All right. So I, so this is, I just built my project team. You could also have just searched for that name without actually having to add them. So if I type for us, obviously we'll come up right now, but if we, if I did not add him to the team, you could have added that in this step as well. Okay. Now this seems like such a no brainer where, okay, what's the big deal? Why is he talking so much about this? This is a completely 180 degree, uh, uh, difference in how we actually work with project online or project server or Microsoft project today. Um, project online project server don't even allow you to type in the name, which, which adds three more steps for the, just the building, the project team part of it and assigning them to the project schedule. Um, and this, and you cannot, I cannot, I cannot tell you how many number of times people have expressed frustration about that feature. So, um, so this to me is a huge, huge improvement on what we have today. Okay. So, and then obviously, um, so I can assign more people. So there is a, um, uh, look ahead, obviously they're just typing one name. So I'm going to, I'm going to leave it at that. Okay. So you're going to ask what kind of project rate does Brad Pitt charge? If I want to, he's free for just for you, uh, Microsoft Utah, Utah members. Hey, I do have a clarification question. I kind of, I think you answered part of it. And Amber had asked of when you're creating here, a new project, does it automatically create a new Office 365 group? Like you just showed, you know, creation or adding to an existing. So if I'm, if I'm coming through as my primary, you know, my front end, I'm creating here a project. It will, it will then generate a new Office 365 group. Yes, that's true. What are the other components that it creates with that? Um, so it right now it's just the Office 365 group. It does not create any channels. It does not create any of the team's functionalities yet, but I know that's, that's all being talked about on it and works. Yeah, they are tied for people that aren't aware. They are talking about, uh, because if you're creating, if you're creating a new Yammer community or a SharePoint site or a new team and Microsoft teams, you, you have different components that are, you know, generate to new Office 365 group and creates those other components across workloads. And they're talking about, uh, I don't know what they've decided, but they're trying to streamline that activity so that it's consistent. Yep. There is a lot of discussion going on the security model of this. Um, again, referring back to my experience with current project online system that the security model is incredibly complicated. Um, so they're putting them in the three office 365 group structure, simplifies it significantly. Yeah. We're all sitting with giant bowl of popcorn and collectively eating and watching waiting for Microsoft to answer some of those things. I know. Um, all right. So, okay. So you can, then you can go out and assign durations. Obviously durations is in days. So when I, that's sooner, as soon as I pop in the duration, that's when they start and finish dates appear. Uh, the start date is obviously something we specified right here. So that's what it is picking from. Okay. You can always change that date. And then there are, there is a work calendar set up in the background, which is eight hours a day, five days a week. So it is picking up the 40 hours from there. Okay. Now one of the, uh, so this is, I would say this is V one of the product. They are working on enhancements. So changing calendars is not as straightforward as it is, but that is on the highly requested of highly needed features. So, um, so there are ways again, I will refer you to some blogs that will allow you to show you how you go behind the scenes and you can set up additional calendars that will, maybe your teams are working only 30 hours a week, even though it's five days. So you can, you can do that. Uh, but you can also adjust that here, I think. So that, so that kind of changes duration. So again, past types, one of the fundamental concepts of Microsoft project where everything is either, uh, you can set it up to a fixed units, fixed duration or fixed work. Right now everything is a fixed duration set up. So there are discussions underway to allow you to change the type of the tasks. So if, if this looks like a simple SharePoint list or a planner sheet or a tasks list in teams, um, that is the goal. Okay. So the goal is to take away the complexity behind a complex scheduling engine like Microsoft project, but then not lose any of that functionality. So whatever you don't see here is being worked upon and will be added onto this. Okay. Um, let's talk about dependencies. So that's another thing that, uh, people mostly request. Okay. So you can have a project schedule with our dependencies. So you can obviously do that. Um, so I'm going to just assign quickly some days here. Okay. And then you can start assigning dependencies. So, so the nice thing about this is it will actually show you the tasks and stuff you having to type a number. Anybody who has worked with Microsoft project know that you have type in a number. Although in the 2016 version, they started doing this on the desktop version as well. Okay. I'm going to just type it to define scope. Okay. And then I can also type in the number. Okay. So it's the best of the both words. Just back in just a second, because it kind of related to what the previous questions. Dave is asking, well, the created group. It's created when you generate a new project. Will it be visible by SharePoint permissions? Or in other words, is it an email enabled group? Yes, it is. Yes. It is an email enabled group. And it will, it will show up in your outlook. And, uh, uh, I don't think a SharePoint site is created like it does for a standard Office 365 group, but I could be wrong on that one. So I can confirm that and let you know. But yeah, it is an email enabled group. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Um, okay. So moving on. All right. So now that's the, that's a good view. Uh, I think I, uh, this is pretty straightforward. So you can actually move tasks around. We can, we can do all those nice things that are, that are expected, right? At this point, it's all basic stakes. Okay. Now the next thing I'm excited to show is the timeline view. So for people who are Gantt chart enthusiasts, uh, this is a timeline view. Uh, I believe a sauna, uh, the comp, competing product has something like this. The nice thing about this is this way that we're kind of, we're fondly referred to this as a visual planner. Right. So I can actually move tasks. So I can, I can work with this board. I can assign and I can link this task directly from here to here. I need to be a little bit precise there. So I can take that and say, okay, I'm going to link it here. Um, again, all this exists in the desktop version of Microsoft project. This does not exist in the, the web version project online or project server. Um, so this to me is a much more dynamic way of assigning tasks or setting up. My personal favorite use case for this is I, uh, and this goes back to one of the organizations I worked as a consultant. They had an entire room filled with this charts, which showed views like this. Um, they used to call it the visual planning board, which showed them this, uh, four to five year roadmap of things they were working on and how they're all interconnected together. Now, obviously we have the roadmap feature to do that. Um, so, but then I'm, you can say, take the same thing and say, I'm going, I can build a portfolio of projects with each line being a project and I can build my own visual planning board within this tool. Okay. And then I can move that around with, with the roadmap feature. I don't think you can move things around unless you change dates. So, so this is a much more interactive way of moving it. Um, so I have, I've seen people use this use case and, and be successful with it. So again, I know it's not, it does not apply to everybody, but I thought that was a fun like, um, experience to share. So this, this Microsoft put a lot of time into this. I know they are working on improving this experience as well. So the idea is you should be able to move tasks around as and when you need it as conveniently as you should be able to. And there are some zoom features here back and forth. Okay. Um, now this, this is my, um, second most favorite from the bottom up. So my top most favorite on all this and which, which is where I bring, uh, I think the, the whole thing comes into, um, you know, picture, big picture is the board view. Okay. Now, if you are a planner user, this seems like, wow, I have seen this before. It is, um, it is, uh, it is already available. What's a big deal about it, right? But it is a big deal because if you remember, if you see planner does today does not have the ability to set up dependencies. You can set up dependencies in this tool. Uh, planner today does not have the ability to, um, add custom fears. There are, so here the custom fields are being worked upon. That's a feature that that's being discussed right now. Okay. Um, in planner, you cannot set durations and efforts where, and, and think like a Microsoft project. Planner is supposed to be a very lightweight task management tool. You can definitely set due dates, start date. Uh, you can move things around. Um, so, so this is attempting to bridge that gap where planner stops this takes over. But what does the board view do for us in this kind of a mentality, right? So just like in planner, I can create buckets. So in this case, I'm going to call it sprint one. Okay. Um, and then call it spring two. And then sprint three. Okay. Now, obviously I can move this task. I'm going to say sprint three is go live, develop, uh, and test. And then maybe design requirement or sprint one. Excellent. Right. So the, and then, uh, and then defense code would be spent one. Okay. So you can mark things complete from here. So I'm going to say I'm, I have done, I'm done with, uh, completed, uh, uh, of the scope, scoping that actually marks the task complete in the grid. Okay. So now this actually is where the entire tool becomes collaborative until today, a project schedule, which is this is the is, is a project manager's ownership. The project manager updates the status. The project manager keeps this task updated. The project manager says when the tasks need to move. Right. But then we have all been, I've been a project manager myself. I'm, I can save this for sure. We all have been guilty of this. We use project, the project schedule as something that is done after the fact we complete all the work is completed. Then we have a status meeting and everybody just raises their hand and say, yeah, yes, I'm done. And then you mark this complete. A little bit more savvy project managers try to use project as a predictor or a model for their, for the project. And that's the, that's the goodness that we are trying to get into it. The board view helps team members submit their updates directly in the tool. So the, so now you are, you have a collaborative project team where the project teams are helping you set up these tasks where they need to be, move them around if they don't need to be. And they take away this schedule management part of the project management for you. And all you have to, you have to make sure, which is, which should be the true job of project manager is to make sure the project and the work is done the way it is defined as part of the scope. Right. So, so to me, this is where the rubber meets the road. And obviously there are enhancements coming to this view, adding more filters, grouping filtering by people, filtering all the, now that this is all in the same ecosystem of planner teams and everywhere. It is not a big jump to assume that all those features will travel back into this tool very soon. Okay. We've got a couple of questions. Maybe this is the right time for this. And I think related to what you just said in the relationship with planner. So over on the live stream, Scott asks, so this says, planner is very well integrated in teams. Almost all other project management tools have apps in teams. What is the best way to integrate Microsoft project within teams? Because it seems to be missing from the list of apps. So I don't know if you can talk about that roadmap. And then I've got another question after this. That's a great segue into what I had next. Okay. So let me bring this window. Maybe this is part of it too. Kind of a part too. As what Richard just asked here in the, in the, in the webinars is, does this integrated at all with team foundation server and visual studio? The answer to that would be no, as it is not that I know of. So that I don't think that, at least I've not seen a roadmap that where it is backwards compatible or integration to the other tools in that aspect. So going back to the first question. So the integration with teams. Okay. So this is my team. I set up a channel for my, the demo project that I've created. And then I'm using the same office 365 group when I set this up, this team and the channel. But now with, in today's scenario, yes, if you're using Microsoft project, there's no way to put that into this. But with this web based version, the schedule or the project schedule can live right within teams. So, and all the things that we just talked about are available right from here. And so I can be, I can show the board view. And then this is where we can talk about my, just mind you, this is a different project than we just set up as but you can do the same thing here. So I can say sprint one. So you can interact with this project schedule. Without ever actually leaving teams, which fits into the Microsoft narrative, right? So, so that's, that's a goal. So you can, you can actually set up set this up so that all the team members can interact with this project schedule and help you manage this project in a collaborative manner. I hope that answers the question. I'm, I'm, I'm trying to, I'll try and answer the follow up question to that. This setup is not automatic as of today. There are flows you could set up to do this. Again, if you just do a quick Google search for anything but project for web, there are some project MVPs, Paul, Nathan, Auntie, Pajnain. So I'm going to throw some names out there. Just look for their blogs where they discuss how, how to use power automate and power apps to build this integration. But there's nothing preventing from me manually adding when I created the channel, I just went out and I decided to add a website and added the link to the, and then boom everybody within that Office 65 group gets access to this. Okay. All right. Moving on. We have 15 minutes left. So let me go back to this again. All right. So I think this, there are several filter options here. So there is, there is a co-authoring capability here. That's another major win for this version. Again, there are, if you have been using project online or project server, there is this check in checkout mechanism that has been built in. So which actually causes a lot of headache than actually it solves. And every single implementation I've been part of an, this, that comes, becomes actually a sore point. And we have to train users again and again and again to make sure they check the projects back in so that the reporting can happen and everything else can happen with this version, that entire infrastructure is gone. There is no check in checkout. It is real time. It is co-authoring capable. So it's more than one person can work the schedule at the same time. Obviously there are conflicts. It handles very similar to how PowerPoint handles it. It throws up and says, here is the conflict. What do you want to pick? Right. So, because I don't have to use this, I can, I can demo that right now, but that, that is major win for the, for this version of Microsoft project. Okay. All in all, it's a huge feature. Yeah. You're talking about chasing people for task updates and not having to think about that. Let, let owners of the tasks be responsible. If you updated it or not, it's your own fault. It's not showing up with the latest numbers because you've not updated it. I don't have to as the PM chase you to do that. That's great. Absolutely. And yeah, you make it a very good point because that has been also there's there's functionality today, but that is, that is so rudimentary that it doesn't really solve the problem. So, but, but this tool kind of helps with that. So they have recently introduced a copy the project functionality. They are talking about working through the base lining functionality, which is fundamental to my project scheduler or scheduling it and comparing your results. That is one of the things I sorely miss from planner. It, it's there is no easy way to say this is what we promised this would be complete by and now we have changed it unless you actually drill down deeper into the task and do all that magic. Right. So there's several features are coming. So even though this seems like a basic version today, I think it is a very, very suitable for smaller organizations to just jump in and start using it. I want to go back to my presentation just for a minute and walk through the remaining things. So let's see. Okay. All right. So let's talk about some reporting. Okay. One of the, I mean, reporting is a cornerstone for, for many of these implementations. One of the reasons you want to track your projects is to be able to provide insight to your team, your organization, your leadership, everybody in insight into your, what your projects are doing. Again, with, with, if you just start using Microsoft project desktop, then you are reporting at a project level and that is limited to you or your project team. If you're working with project online, there are several things that are out there that show you how to do reporting. Microsoft already released a Power BI pack to help with reporting on project for web. So this, what I'm showing on the screen are some snapshots from that reporting pack. Okay. So we got a portfolio dashboard view. This would be a good one for a PMO level kind of people. And so, okay, here are all the projects that are happening within our particular team, our department and the status, et cetera, et cetera. There are portfolio timelines. This is another, we used to build this in SSRS. I did that myself many times and several other reporting tools. So Power BI does a great job of visualization. So you have that if you need that. Portfolio milestones. You can list all the milestones, key milestones. I'm going to breeze through this quickly so that what the take away should be from this should be, there are many, many out of the box reports already available. At the same, in the same token, I will also say not every, these reports may not be a direct fit for the work you're doing, but you already have a good starting point. So maybe you don't call them KPIs. You call them status indicators. You call them health or you don't call them milestones. You call them reporting tags, whatever. So it's a good starting point to start with and then modify these reports to fit your needs. Okay. So we got the resource dashboard. So all the resources you assign, you can take them and analyze. So the resource management capabilities are still there. They're not as advanced as we would like them to be. This entire infrastructure is actually connected to Microsoft Dynamics. And so there is, so the project service that enables, that is enabled Microsoft Dynamics kind of supports a lot of this stuff. So I did not touch upon any of the automation part of it or customization part of it. That would be a good topic for a different webinar, but power apps would be your go to source. If you want to delve deeper and start tinkering with how you want the tasks to look, how you want the screens to look, if you have a stage gate methodology, how do you incorporate this into that kind of method? So power apps is your answer. Okay. So moving on resource dashboard resource assignments, tasks overviews, project timeline, which is interesting. So you got a timeline within project. Well, one of the most popular views within Microsoft project was this project timeline. So since you don't have that on the project for web, you can get that directly from this power BI back. Okay. All right. Before I go, I have to only two more slides left. Any other questions I did not answer? Nope, nothing, nothing yet. Okay. So a quick feature comparison I got directly this from literally from Microsoft website. So as you can see planner has the task management board view and team and assignments. We talked about that project for web takes it a little bit further with road map scheduling dependencies, Gantt chart and all that. And then if you are heavily into portfolio management, portfolio analysis, a much more deeper dive into resource management, base lining, your answers still for a few for a short while, it's still going to be project online. So the goal for Microsoft is to bring these two on par. At some point, I don't have any timelines or commitments, but that's what I understand. But that's where the road map is going. So one of the things that came up when I did this webinar last time and I wrote a couple of blog posts around it is if I'm, if I'm in a position where I am looking to upgrade from an on-prem version to office 365 project solutions, which versions should we go right now? Project for web and project online are sitting side by side. They both are available or from based on your subscription. So my suggestion would be to look at this feature comparison. If the things that are missing from project web are absolutely critical for you, that's a no brainer. I think you should go with project online at the loss of this cool slick functionality. But the nice thing about that is moving from project online to project for web. It looks like Microsoft is thinking of some kind of a migration path, migration tool. So hopefully you can get started with project online and then move on to project for web. I would not delay the move to office 365 because there is so much you can achieve through the integration with teams, the web apps, the words, the word PowerPoint and all that. All the other things are the yammer, all the other things, nice things that go about with that office 365 suite. So I thought I would answer that since that came up in the last webinar. Some resources. So everything I covered is in that link, intro for project for web and the comparison, customizing. This link actually provides you all the tools you need to customize. This is heavily customizable. This is all connecting to a common data service in the behind the scenes. So you can build the database, work through it and build your own apps to interact with the data in the database and make project for web as part of your process and then add on and build add ons to it. Many people are already doing it. So take a look at that link. And then the power BI pack I walk through is at that link. I think with that I am done Chris. I will see if anybody has any more feedback, comments, thoughts, questions. Anything is welcome. Yeah, I know there are other questions. Really appreciate your time. And I know we're the last couple of minutes. And one thing I do want to say, again, we're recording. Oh, we do have a couple of questions that popped in, but I'll just say really quickly. So we will have the recording out. I'll have it out this afternoon, make it available out in Facebook of course and through the social channels and post make the recording available in the next newsletter for the Microsoft user group, Utah. A couple of questions that came in. Let's see. So Scott asked if you could share the names of the blogs that cover the team schedule integration again. So Paul Mater is one of very close friends and he does a lot of this customization kind of blogs. So why don't I do this Chris? When I send you this PowerPoint deck, I'll also list out the names and their blogs so that you can include them in your blog post. That'd be great. And for everybody too. And I'll post this out tonight to my blog up on buckleyplanet.com. So I'll have a link to the recording on the YouTube channel as well as the slides as soon as he makes those available to me. A couple of other questions. Let's see. Pablo asks, do you know if they have any plans for adding baselines or critical paths? Yes. Again, I can't comment on any timelines, but we have had discussions where baselines are being looked into. I don't know about the critical path though. I don't have any information on that one, but baselines for sure. Any final questions from the audience? Let's see if there's anything out on the live stream. Nothing else on the live stream? Well, Prasada, well thank you so much for taking the time and sharing with the group. And there's been a, as we were talking before, a couple of weeks back, there's been a lot of questions, a lot of the interest in this content. And I'm sure we'll have a lot of views and downloads from the web as well. So really appreciate your time today and for everybody for participating. So thank you very much. No problem. Thank you for having me. Bye everyone. See you later.