Announcing Project Roadmaps
Published Oct 08 2018 01:27 PM 125K Views
Microsoft

On September 24th at Microsoft Ignite, we announced a new feature for Microsoft Project called Roadmap. Roadmap is a visually exciting way to combine information from multiple Waterfall and Agile projects and share it with co-workers.

 

Roadmaps are available directly on the new Project Home page that we released into production this Summer.

 

Check it out at project.microsoft.com

 

 

home.PNG

 

They are easily created from the Project Home page and appear nearly instantly. Performance has been an important tenet of the Roadmap feature

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Once the Roadmap is completed, it provides a visual and interactive way to view project status across a program or portfolio.

 

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Building out a Roadmap is a fairly simple process. Merely add rows, connect them to projects and then choose what tasks, milestones, features or initiatives you want to bubble up to the Roadmap. After creating a row, pick a project type first. In our initial release, we will support Project Online projects and Azure Boards projects. Over time we will add different project types as we better understand what customer’s needs. We use the Microsoft Flow connector infrastructure for our project types, so it is a very powerful and flexible connection system.

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After choosing a project type, the user chooses a project and signs into that project. Microsoft Flow manages all the credentials in a compliant way.

 

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Once the tasks are on the Roadmap, they can be assigned a status by the Roadmap manager. This is independent of the backend project and can be managed by the roadmap owner for reporting.

After that, its merely a matter of choosing what tasks to show on the roadmap.

 

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If a task is marked as at risk, a user might need to drill through to the backing task in the original system. The Roadmap maintains a link to the original task so users can always click through to the ‘system of record’.

 

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In addition to including tasks from back end systems, users may also add Key Dates to the Roadmap. These dates show up at the top of the roadmap and provide a visualization of important dates that span across projects – like a launch date or big marketing event.

 

 

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Finally, after the Roadmap has been completed, the author will want to share the roadmap. Roadmaps are shared using Office Modern Groups. Once a roadmap is shared a Modern Group is created to back the Roadmap and provide additional collaborative capabilities. A user can also choose to share the roadmap with an existing Modern Group that they might be working with.

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That is a brief overview of the new Project Roadmap feature. We will be releasing the feature to our early adopter program shortly. When we all agree its ready for all our customers, we will begin rolling it out to the rest of our Project Online customers. Keep an eye out for the new Roadmap!

Cheers,

Howard

 

 

 

 

126 Comments
Microsoft

@Simon Denton viewing is gated by the Project Essentials license.

Steel Contributor

@Howard Crow is there already (or when will there be) a service description that details all these licensing requirements and also highlights the Power platform licensing? Any steps to activate Roadmaps necessary or will it just appear in Project Home? 

Brass Contributor

"viewing is gated by the Project Essentials license" - do you really mean it? Aren't Roadmaps supposed to support also a Planner? If so, then the licensing requiring a Project Essentials license is kind of strange imo.

Microsoft

@Simon Denton Yes. Project Essentials users will have read access

Microsoft

@Trutz Stephani We will publish this soon. There will be an admin toggle to turn on Roadmap until all our compliance Audits are done

Microsoft

@Petr Krenželok I really mean it. Your feedback is noted.

Thanks @Howard Crow . So Premium license to create, Essential to consume. I guess the thinking is that most users will have an existing Office 365 E3 / E5 license and so they will be able to work with the associated Planner but I'm guessing that they might need to be given Member status in the Office 365 Group to do that.

 

Microsoft

@Simon Denton Pro to create, not premium. And you are correct - licensing and security/access are 'additive'. you need the appropriate license and permissions.

Thank you for clarifying @Howard Crow I think I got the premium from a diagram that showed Roadmap at the apex of a ecosystem pyramid alongside Premium for portfolio management. Thanks for correcting me.

 

 

 

 

Copper Contributor

Hello Microsoft Team,

 

I have a new set of questions regarding Project Roadmap in my Office 365 tenant.  As of today I can see in the Office 365 Admin Center / Settings / Services & Add-ins there is now a choice for "Project Online" with a slider to turn on/off Project Roadmap.  But it states it is not yet available for my organization.  However, I click on the link for the support article and found this page:

https://docs.Microsoft.com/en-us/ProjectOnline/remove-roadmap-from-office-365 

My concern is that when I look at my D365 "default instance" it appears to be for the D365 Talent which I think is the CDS 1.0 version.  As I know that CDS 2.0 is based on D365CE and within this article it speaks to a solution file - does this mean my O365 instance will not get Project Roadmap because my default instance of D365 is at a CDS 1.0 level?

thanks!

Matt

 

Microsoft

Hi Matt, you are correct that you will need CDS 2.0 for Roadmap and there will shortly be some documentation to address this.  My understanding is that in some cases this change from CDS 1.0 to 2.0 will be automatic and in other cases there may be manual steps required - the documentation will cover this.

Best regards,

Brian Smith

Microsoft

@Matt Burback Matt, you are correct. CDS is being upgraded across all of our customers as we speak. When Roadmap is ready, and you turn it on, we will trigger the CDS 2.0 upgrade if it has not already happened.

 

Hope that helps,

 

H

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow / @Brian-Smith,

On our tenant I still see the "Roadmap is not yet available for your organization" message. Is there anywhere a service that we can query to verify when our organization is finally entitled to enable this feature?

 

Thanks,

Roy

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow and others,

 

Just turned on the Roadmap, and tried a bit, really like the idea, and just have a quick question:

 

When I connect to the Azure DevOps, if I add a "Feature", it will pull the Start and End date from the "Feature". If I add a User Story, then it doesn't have them - is there any way to fix it or can I add these dates manually?

 

Thanks

Microsoft
Microsoft

@Roy Gilboa please check now - we have enabled 100% of commercial tenants

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow As of today we are still getting
image.png

We are a commercial tenant. In December we had the slider box to enable but it errored. Our project management team asks me every week about this functionality. 


 

Copper Contributor

Same here! We are desperately waiting for this functionality and could even use it at customer sites.  

Steel Contributor

@Howard Crowsame here, we still have a commercial tenant in first release mode that hasn't received the feature. Should we raise a support ticket or just keep our fingers crossed that it will arrive?

Microsoft

Hi @Trutz Stephani, please check https://aka.ms/enableroadmap for an valid reasons that it wouldn't be showing up.  Generally it comes down to upgrading CDS (especially the default environment), have Project Online Premium or Professional licenses (not Project Online through Dynamics) and also being in a region that has CDS support (France and South Korea are examples of regions that do not have this yet).  If you and the customer have checked all this then of course open a support ticket.

 

Hi @Sean Decker - if you saw an error then please open a support case and we can check what the error means.

 

Best regards,

Brian.

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow, thanks for answering.

We still can't enable that feature much like others here. Where can we review the region availability?

 

Regards,

Roy

Microsoft

@Roy Gilboa - see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/projectonline/turn-roadmap-on-or-off#roadmap-is-not-yet-available-i... but unless the error message specifically says Region it may be more likely that CDS has not been upgeaded - which is covered in the same document.

Best regards,

Brian.

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow This is such a frustrating experience. I am on the phone w/ support and they are telling me it is still be rolled out to tenants. This is the same answer I was given in November when I received an email telling me it was available. So which is correct? 1) The statement on Jan 16th saying "we have enabled 100% of commercial tenants" 2) the support rep saying it's still being rolled out and there is not date when we'll see it?

Microsoft

@Sean Decker mmm. well Roadmap itself is rolled out to 100% of commercial tenants (with the exception of France and Korea where CDS is not available).

 

Have you guys gone through this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/projectonline/turn-roadmap-on-or-off#roadmap-is-not-yet-available-i...?

 

do you have a screenshot of your 365 admin console you could share?

 

@Brian-Smith do we have the right support scripts out to the team?  

Microsoft

I've reached out to Sean via Direct Message to get details of the support case so we can identify why this incorrect information was given out.

Thanks,

Brian

Copper Contributor

I've been through that page. My screen is exactly like 

++++++++++++
Roadmap is not yet available to your organization

The Roadmap feature is being gradually rolled out to organizations over a period of time, similar to how other Office 365 features are made available.

 

Roadmap not available

+++++++++++++

and the tech tried to tell me it's still being rolled out but I pointed him to this thread. Our tenant is based in North America. 

Microsoft

@SEAN K have you gone through the CDS deployment steps? we have a bug we are fixing where we give the wrong status message here. we will get this worked out. Feel free to PM your tenant URL and we can take a look.

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow and @Brian-Smith,

As of today I'm seeing a different message which I assume is related to this thread (see below).

I'm going to review the recommended steps regarding CDS and update here.

Thank you both for your time and efforts.

Roy

CDS.PNG 

Microsoft

@Roy Gilboa that is correct - we pushed the fix out yesterday afternoon to clarify the message.  Keep us up to date on how it goes!

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow I've tried going through the CDS steps but we have no existing environments in the link. The support case has been reassigned for the 3rd time to another team. We'll see if they can clarify what on earth needs to be configured with CDS. 

Microsoft

Thanks @Sean Decker and sorry for the run-around.  I have some internal threads going - and it seems the upgrade documentation isn't written for customers in this kind of scenario (which is probably many of our Project Online customers) - we will get this sorted.

Best regards,

Brian.

Copper Contributor

Thanks @Brian-Smith. I suspect that the tech will be walking me through those steps :)

Copper Contributor

Now it's available, great!

 

Will there be a possibility to use Azure Boards from other organisations, and if so, even with different credentials?

 

Best, Daniel

Microsoft

@Sean Decker  We made a video to help with your particular case...I hope this helps!!!

 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Project-Blog/How-to-Upgrade-your-CDS-instance-for-Project-Roa...

Microsoft

@DanielWeise we use Flow under the covers - so if you can connect a Flow to it, the answer is yes. It depends a little bit on the Auth setup of the target - but mostly yes.

Bronze Contributor

One input I can give is that you need the separate power apps license to upgrade your cds environment. I've noticed that M365 E5 is not enough, as the PowerAdmin Center is full of holes without the separate license.

 

Here is my general feedback after first use. We wanted to use the roadmap feature to visualize our big company wide projects for the next 4 years.

Turns out we can't, as we'd first have to create ALL the projects with ALL the tasks we want to "bubble up" in Project Online first, as we got none of those. Adding rows without a connection an actual project is also useless. It's just a row with a name, not tasks in it.

Also of note, as it wasn't immediately clear to me. You can't change the date of those roadmap tasks, they are linked to the actual task dates from the project. You can only change the status. Also make sure to properly publish your project, otherwise you won't be able to link those tasks in the roadmap.

Basically Roadmap requires a bottom up approach where to have to have everything planned before you can create a roadmap. I'm no project/roadmap expert but I would have expected it to be the other way around, say make a rough roadmap and then start planning everything in detail.

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow that's good news. I was just wondering because the Azure Board selector neither lets me change the

Azure DevOps organization nor can I provide a custom URL.
 
Maybe I first have to create a connection to my default Azure DevOps organization and then change it to the customers organization within Flow. 
 
 
Copper Contributor
Hi, THis rolled out too my organisation yesterday and it's great however all the dates are in US format when you drill in to the tasks. Can we set them to UK and if not yet, will we be able to later? Thanks.
Brass Contributor

I can agree with @Ivan Unger here. I don't want to say, I am disappointed, maybe just confused. So here is my take:

 

- Licensing Roadmaps via Project, is a bummer imo. We have expected Roadmaps becoming a separate tile amongst other O365 apps, licensed completly separately.

- From what I remember, Roadmaps were supposed to work also with the Planner. So why is the Project license required? Or did the scope of the project changed and Planner integration is not planned anymore?

- There is recently no ability to have a standalone row, which is not connected to either the Project, or the Azure Boards.

 

Now to Roadmaps itself:

- The work with the app is kind of cumbersome. If you want to add a project with its subtasks, you have to add each subtask manually, one by one.

- If your Project multiple projects carry something like "Phase one - planning", you can't distinguish, whish is which.

- You can't see a list of tasks / subtasks, from the connected Project. You have to guess, what is in there and start to type some letters, in order to see, if any such task/subtask exists.

- You can't recolor tasks. The coloring is based upon the Roadmap status only.

 

You can consider some of above points as a mayor usability issue imo. As for us, that app is so basic, that we are not sure yet, if it is worth the hassle. Looking forward to what the future brings here though ....

 

Cheers,

/Petr

Microsoft

Hi Petr, thanks for the feedback.  To the point on adding multiple items to the row, you can now do this from inside of Project Web App - by selecting multiple tasks and then using the Add to Roadmap option,  This would be for a plan that was already associated with a row.  Still a bottom up approach though and I do understand where you are coming from on that point.

Please also share your views on UserVoice https://microsoftproject.uservoice.com/forums/914203-project-home 

Add to Roadmap screenshot showing adding rowsAdd to Roadmap screenshot showing adding rows

Best regards,

Brian

Copper Contributor

I thought Roadmaps was going to be part of O365 Planner, or has this changed now?

 

We have MS Project Online licenses and I've activated Roadmaps and then tried to use them. Not much success, and not impressive. I tried to link a row to a DevOps project and it couldn't find the line items I'd added. Also, it's just not intuitive and where's the training for it?

 

Sorry to this has been implemented as it has, it seems like WIP still.

 

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow  and @Brian-Smith ,

Thank you both for your time and efforts. We were finally able to turn on Roadmap for our organization. Had to go through the upgrade of the Default environment twice for some reason.

roadmapenabled.PNG

Copper Contributor

Great with the new Roadmap functionality but a few questions:

  • Can I get an overview of all roadmaps created in a tenant? On the Home site I only see the latest/shared by me/created by me or the ones that I have marked as favorites.
  • I have noticed that if  the name of an activity in Project Online is changed the name of the item in the Roadmap does not change. Is this by design or will this be fixed?
  • I have also noticed that if the end date of an activity changes, and the project is published, that change is reflected in the roadmap after a while but not directly. How long should you expect to wait there?

Best regards

Johan

Iron Contributor

@Howard CrowWe are an Education tenant in Europe Production Zone and so far we have no Project settings in our Admin centre.

 

We have 2,000 Project Essentials licenses, 150 Project Online with Project Pro and 25 Project Online with Project Premium licenses.

 

Any ideas why this isn't available to us yet?

 

Thanks

Adrian


 

Microsoft

@Adrian Mannall PM me your tenant URL

Microsoft

@Adrian Mannall Adrian - EDU tenants will be getting Roadmap in Mid-April, thanks for your patience.

Iron Contributor

Thanks @Howard Crow that's good to know.

Adrian.

Copper Contributor

Hi There,

Thanks for your help.

when I add a project start/finish/task the dates show in US date format. If I add a project end date 01/Oct it appears as 10/Jan.

if I change the date to 30/Sep still shows as 10/Jan. Do you know where can I fix this issue? The Project Online date format has been set to AU format but apparently I need to fix this from somewhere else.

 

Thanks

Copper Contributor

@Howard Crow - is there any update on Project Roadmaps for EDU tenants? Our EU hosted EDU tenancy still does not have Project listed in the Services & add-ins section. You suggested Mid-April earlier in the comments.

Brass Contributor
Is there any update when this will be available for Project Online Professional and Premium for faculty licenses?
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