Collaboration and Project Online/SharePoint Online

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    • #414578

      Good afternoon! I’m new to this group so I’m going to do a quick background before I get going with my question. I started with my organization about 8 months ago. The firm doesn’t have any other internal project managers and gave me the option of choosing a PM tool. Smartsheet is widely used at the firm but I decided on Project Online (and desktop for the heavy lifting). I had light experience with Project and have picked up quite a bit either through online trainings or digging through websites. So glad to have found this group!

      I feel like I’m doing pretty well with Project Online (2016) except in the area of collaboration. I mainly use Enterprise project and can create a SharePoint site to go along with them. What I’d love to be able to do is let people view the entire project schedule in the entry screen of the corresponding SharePoint site even if I’m tracking completion myself. To date, I haven’t found this to be possible. Am I missing something basic?

      Regarding collaboration, I’d prefer to use Teams and capture that project schedule through a link to the URL of the schedule. Using SharePoint would be my 2nd choice. Both are fine, as far as I’m concerned, as long as I could easily display the schedule.

      Ideally I’d like a SharePoint-like task list with the project schedule even if people can’t modify it. Maybe it’s best to start with this first question and go from there.

      How do others handle collaboration?

    • #414580
      Jigs Gaton
      Member

      Hi Christine, welcome to MPUG! What I like to do (and I’ve done all that you describe above, and then some), is to use Project Plan 365 (http://www.projectplan365.com) to add collaborators to my project plans. They can either use the free or paid version to view or edit the schedule that you produce, by just examining your plan as presented. Collaborators can see most all the views that you can, and all you have to do is share the .MPP file online. Depending on what collaborators need to do (and how much each collaborator pays the app developer), they can sort, filter, add and update the project data contained in the .MPP file. The tool is simple to use, and is basically a lightweight version of MSP – plus does stuff that MS Project can’t do, like open up a .MPP on an iPhone (without a web browser). With a business plan from Project Plan 365 website, the PM can even define what collaborators can change or not, and all collaborators can work on the same plan in real time (i.e. you are all in the schedule together, in real time). See next week’s MPUG newsletter for my article on “Real-time Collaboration” for more info. Best, Jigs

    • #414582
      Larry Christofaro
      Participant

      Hi Christine…and Jigs. I finally took a look at Project Plan 365 and it seems to be a nice, simple tool. It’s an alternative but doesn’t answer your question with Project Online.

      To answer your task list question, you should be able to just add the Task app to the home page (assuming that’s what you mean by the entry screen). Just go to the Home page, select Edit Page, add Web Part, and select the Task app. The home page can be configured to display any of the site content.

      Your question on using Team sites is more difficult. I’m loosely familiar with team sites so my answer here may need additional verification. Team sites by default are setup as site collections and doesn’t work with Project Online, at this time anyway. Teams is Microsoft’s future collaboration solution, and will have to work with Project Online eventually (my opinion only). If I’m correct and seeing Microsoft’s progression with Teams I would assume sooner than later. Anyway, future direction at best. In the meantime if you are ready for teams, you might want to try a team site per project and configure quick launch links to go seamlessly back and forth for the project schedule. I haven’t done this but could work if that’s what you need.

      Hope that helps…

    • #414591

      Thanks to you both.

      Jigs – I’m going to be looking into Project Plan 365 and am looking forward to your article – perfect timing!

      Larry – I have been trying to add tasks via “Team Tasks” in the Project Web App category of apps. I had not recently tried the Task app from the Apps category of apps. In fact, I do think I had located this before but had forgotten about it as I was looking around at other options. Thank you! This gets me over a hurdle and now I can see if I want to continue with a SharePoint site or Teams.

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