Track projects and share news in Teams with two new Power Apps

[Microsoft_Teams_team]

Within the Teams app store, you’ll now find two brand new applications published by Microsoft: Milestones and Bulletins. With the Milestones app, you can seamlessly track projects across your company, and with Bulletins, you can quickly publish news articles to the rest of your company.

Both are deeply integrated within Teams, but what makes them unique is that they are built with Power Apps on top of the recently released Dataverse for Teams. By shipping them on top of Dataverse for Teams, we’re making it possible for you to fully customize these apps from top to bottom and to leverage them as inspiration to build your own apps!

Further customizing the apps to fit your needs
Like the existing Employee ideas, Inspection, and Issue reporting Teams apps, these brand new apps are built on top of Power Apps so that you can easily customize them to address your company’s specific needs.

With Power Apps and Dataverse for Teams, you can change things as simple as the branding of your app, all the way to what type of data you want to collect and the business rules you want to enforce.

Using Milestones and Bulletins as inspiration for your next app
If the new Milestones and Bulletins apps have inspired you to build your own apps on top of Dataverse for Teams, check out our documentation on how to get started.

In particular, these new apps take advantage of the recently released share with colleagues functionality. With the new share with colleagues feature, you can take apps like Bulletins and broadly distribute them to the rest of the company. The same feature can allow you to build organization-wide apps like time reporting, invoicing, expense reporting, and more, all on top of Dataverse for Teams.

Governing apps on top of Dataverse for Teams
Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t call out the powerful tools we ship to allow admins to govern apps like Milestones and Bulletins. In particular, we’ve shipped a powerful template as part of the Center of Excellence Starter Kit to manage Dataverse for Teams environments. With it, users within your company can provide business justifications for Dataverse for Teams so that admins can approve the usage.

Team owners can provide a business justification for their new environment within X days of creating the environment

Admins approve or reject the submitted business justifications, and optionally mark them for a later review.

We can’t wait to see what you’re able to build with Power Apps and Teams
We’re always excited to see what the community is able to build. To learn more about the Milestones and Bulletins, and to get further inspiration for what’s possible, check out the deep dive into these two apps by the Power Apps team.

[Noah Sparks]

The first link to the Power Apps blog appears to have a trailing space at the end. Thanks for sharing! Exciting to give Bulletins a try.

[KPKing]

Sometimes I feel like Microsoft is trolling us. Milestones? Seriously? As if we need yet another project management app? Tasks, Planners, Project for Office 365, Project for the Web, Lists.... now Milestones? Please just focus your efforts in one place! You're starting to look like Google LOL!

[Ulf Lundqvist]

Please focus on Project for the web and/or Planner. This just makes things confusing.

[Sam Gray]

@Microsoft_Teams_team I think there may be something wrong with the Milestones package. Bulletins has installed fine.  But when Milestone gets to the end it says installed successfully and then says failed to install.

[Philipp Hammer]

Bulletins: Would be a great thing if it would post to the linked Teams as a new Bulletin is created. I know this can be done within Power Apps but in current state no one can use it ootb. The users would just not click on the new tab if they did not knew there was something new. So you can just continue adding a SharePoint page on a tab (which means you do not have to copy content to Bulletins and reach the same goal). So "could be a great tool, but not as is".

Milestones: That is a tool lots of our project guys were waiting for and I was excited as I read the news and began to try it. But sadly it turns out it is just a app with no connection to any Planner plan, just an island for data to be kept up to date by hand - that will not work for most people. So "high potential as well, but not as is". 

I know I could put in some hours or days with Power Apps and modify both to be more connected. Sadly that is not what I have lots of time for. 

[dmeffe]

@Philipp Hammer 
Milestones: That is a tool lots of our project guys were waiting for and I was excited as I read the news and began to try it. But sadly it turns out it is just a app with no connection to any Planner plan, just an island for data to be kept up to date by hand - that will not work for most people. So "high potential as well, but not as is". 

I agree... looks powerful and I like the customizability. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to integrate with Teams' default Tasks By Planner. It's just another place to hold data, as it's not pushing to member's tasks list.

@KPKing 
Please just focus your efforts in one place!

Exactly! Love the enthusiasm and trying new things, but there are already several project management tools from various companies... and now there are several within Microsoft.

[Harald Steindl]

Could it be, that MS in fact does not have much of an idea about project management other than MS Project?
So far the copied Trello, tried to build upon the Trello idea, restated that Sharepoint is the mother of old project management and now there is Milestones which looks at first sight like a mixture of all of the above.
Looks like a contest around which of the products is loved the least...
MS you can do better than this, we are firm believers and now ACT! Please.

[bethpurnell]

I'm also receiving the error message on both apps. I've tried to add it to a couple of Teams/Channels, same result. 

[superray72]

Milestones installed fine to a channel tab but getting an error when trying to install Bulletins.  I did see in order to manage bulletins you need to have admin privileges? Does this mean team owner or something else?

[AaronV1775]

Who is the approver in Bulletins? Is it the admin for the channel? 

[Joel Lindstrom]

This is a template app--it's not a replacement for Planner or Microsoft Project. If you want to further integrate it with Planner, that can be easily done via Power Automate in Teams.

[Wim Coorevits]

@Sam Gray Thanks for reporting this. We've looked into this issue and we believe we have addressed it for future installs.

In this particular case a validation failed at the end. This may have resulted in the tabs not being added. If you wish you can add these manually by opening the Power Apps personal app in Teams. From there you can navigate to the build hub where you should find the app under the Installed Apps section. You can edit the app and add a tab to the channel in your team using the Publish to Teams option. 

Alternatively you can simply launch a new install in another team. :)

[gprisk]

@AaronV1775, that is correct. By default, Owners of the Team are shown controls to publish/approve, while Members are only able to draft items.

[Sam Gray]

@Wim Coorevits thanks so much working now on next try. Appreciate you sorting this out so quickly. :thumbs_up:

[Wim Coorevits]

@bethpurnell , @superray72 that's a tough one. We have not been able to find a reliable repro for this error yet. :( 

Here's what we do know: When this error ("The teams applications is not installed in this tab") occurs, all the components of the app are actually successfully installed. As a last step it's trying to add tabs to the channel of your selected team, but that's unfortunately failing.  

As a workaround for now you could: 

• try to install it again (that can in the same team), or
• add the tabs to the apps manually by opening the Power Apps personal app in Teams. From there you can navigate to the build hub where you should find the apps (and the tables it's using) listed under the Installed Apps section. From there, you can edit the app and add a tab to the channel in your team using the Publish to Teams option. 

I will send both of you a private message as we would love to get to the bottom of this and eliminate this error from this world. I am hoping we can gather some details that will help us pinpoint the issue.

Thanks!

[Sam Gray]

@Wim Coorevits @bethpurnell @superray72  for clarification, I just re-added it to the same team.

[bethpurnell]

Both are working now!

[CampbellHEmphn]

Hi @Wim Coorevits 

I've had this issue a number of times with my attempts to deploy it, additionally the deploy from build also gave me a separate error. If I can be of assistance... while getting some assistance... more than happy to hear from you.

[Wim Coorevits]

@CampbellHEmphn That would be great. :)

[benschaefer]

Bulletins looks to be a great feature we can build off of! Thank you

I want everyone in a team to be capable of viewing Bulletins but only a few in the team to Manage bulletins. 

• I don't need everyone in a Team to be able to see draft bulletins
• Everyone on a Team appears to have the ability to delete draft bulletins

Are we able to change the settings to eliminate users, or at least limit user functions, in the Manage bulletins tab?

Will we need to customize the app on our own to adjust these features or will it be in a future update?

[Joel Lindstrom]

@benschaefer 

the app can be shared with your colleagues, allowing them to pin to the menu in teams without accessing the manage bulletins app

also, you can set table permissions on the underlying tables. https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Webinars-and-Video-Gallery/Share-Dataverse-for-Teams-Apps-amp-Ma...
by setting the table permissions for the bulletins tables to read only for non managers they will be unable to modify bulletin dat

[superray72]

It is working as expected! Thank you!

[nowennottmu]

Tried milestones for about 3mins. It pants! The blurb suggested a simple easy to use project management tool.

However, it's nothing more than a list with the ability to categorise work under 'milestones'. Don't bother use labels or buckets in planner to do this instead. Dear Microsoft if you are going to move into project management stuff it needs the capability to record the amount of effort for a task and to link pre-requisite tasks and dependencies.

[Joel Lindstrom]

@nowennottmu I think you are missing the point of Milestones—This is a Power Apps template for teams. This type of app is a very common use case for Power Apps And is fully extendable by you. If you want to add a field to track level of effort, or a relationship between prerequisite tasks, Or integrate it with planner, they can all be easily done. You can open the app inside of the Power Apps studio inside of Microsoft teams and modify it however you would like to. The point of these template apps is to give makers a polished set of apps to start with and encourage them to extend them and create their own apps.

[kgilligan]

I really quite like the look of Bulletins but 9 times out of 10 I get an error message. This is what is currently shows.

 If anyone can help I would really appreciate it!

[Joel Lindstrom]

@kgilligan can you tell me more about what you are doing when you get this error? Are you trying to install the app in a new team, or are you trying to add it to a team in which it has already been installed/update an existing installation?

[Wim Coorevits]

Thaks for bringing this to our attention and sharing the error details @kgilligan. We're investigating what happened and I'll share more details as soon as I have something actionable or insightful. 

[kgilligan]

@Joel Lindstrom I have tried both ways and always get the same result. I have also tried adding in browser and in desktop version of Teams. Just no luck either way.

[Wim Coorevits]

@kgilligan We've identified the issue and we believe we have fixed the issue that you were encountering. Very concretely, we believe it was caused by a conflict between an older version and a newer version of the Bulletins app. 
Can you please try installing it again in your Team? 

If it still does not work and you urgently want it in that team, there's also a workaround by first deleting the older version of the app (you'd need to open the Power Apps personal app delete the older version from the list of Installed apps under the build hub - Look for apps named Comms Center or Comms Center Test). Of course, deleting the app will also delete the data associated with it so if you've already used in in your team, I would not recommend doing that. :)
Installing it in a new team should also work without issues...
BUT, with the fix out we of course hope you won't need any of these workarounds. 

Looking forward to read your response and thank you for your patience!

[kgilligan]

@Wim Coorevits thank you for your email. I can now confirm that it is all good and working as it should be. 

Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions. Very much appreciated.

[alessandr0b]

How can I pin the Bulletin app to the navigation bar? I can see from your screenshot that you were able to do that. In the Teams admin center, I am unable to select the Bulletin app in the policies for pinned apps.

.

[adexis]

Hi there, 

I’ve just installed the Milestones app on my Teams site but strangely it doesn’t seem the have the activity log functionality. There are no screens for it and there are now activity log data tables. Do you have any ideas how I can fix this?

Thanks

[Joel Lindstrom]

Adexis, that functionality has been removed. The video and documentation is being updated

[adexis]

Thanks Joel, that’s a real shame as that looked like great functionality to help track and audit changes. 

Do you know why it was removed?

[Joel Lindstrom]

It was removed to make more visible space for things like the work item title and other columns that were getting truncated.

[adexis]

Ok understood - shame the team couldn’t find a way to change the UI but keep the underlying functionality in place. 

[majicz1]

How can I assign multiple users for a action items, as there are multiple people for a task.

[Joel Lindstrom]

Hello @majicz1 . This app is a Power App, so you can extend it in the Power Apps app in Microsoft Teams.

First thing you would want to do is set up the structure to add a N:N relationship between users and work items. Currently, the Assigned To is a lookup field on the work item.

Next you would want to replace the single lookup field in the Power App with a gallery showing the related assigned to people rather than the single field.

[Arnaud_Forster]

Hello all,

After days and days looking for a solution to store and manage the projects of our school, I was ver happy to discover the milestones application :)

So I installed it with no problem but, for a reason I don't understand (I'm very new in PowerApps) some fields are not displayed in the list of projects. I tried to have a look to the function which define the size of the field but it's too complicated for me (for the while).

I dont know why the width of those fields seem to remain at 0  ; maybe because of the langage of my envirronment (french) ? 

Thanks to all for your help  and sorry for my poor english ;)

[alexdion77]

Hi, I also have the same problem as @Arnaud_Forster , The app is installed and the project is there but in the display, all the fields with the colors are blank!

Update: I just changed my language settings to English US and now the colors (fields) are showing up!!! @Microsoft_Teams_team please check out this bug.

[Arnaud_Forster]

Hi @alexdion77 

By me, after an analyse of the elements, I realized that this part causes the problems :  The function which caculate the size of the field returns always 0 because of that part in 'rose'

As a test, I replaced this function with a value and it worked ...

I still have to analyse that function trying to understand why it fails ...

Best Regards to all

Arnaud

[Liacobellis]

Is it possible to export the data from the Milestones app tables to excel? If yes, how can this be done? I'm able to see the data when I open PowerApps within Microsoft Teams. I can click into the tables & edit the data but there is no export to excel option. 

[Joel Lindstrom]

@Liacobellis  yes. Go to the power apps app in teams, click the build tab. Select the team in which the app is installed. click installed apps tab. On the milestones tab, click the link on the bottom to see all.

On the next screen click tables, select the table you wish to export (three dots) and edit data in Excel.

[Liacobellis]

Great thanks @Joel Lindstrom 

[HollyRae2205]

Do you need a specific licence to use Milestone app in Teams? i.e do you need a separate PowerPlatform licence? 

[takolota1515]

If you want a Project Management set-up that creates one source of truth for a project log, kanbans, GANTT charts, RACI work/role breakdowns, & automatic notifications for any updates, then check out this SharePoint & Teams template free to any team with standard Office365 licenses:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Cookbook/Project-Tracker-SharePoint-and-Teams/td-...

[Hannah_n444]

Have MS removed Bulletins from the Power Apps catalog?  It's no longer available to me.  I've searched through forums and found no help or solutions, other than potentially MS have bungled an update which removed existing instances and it should be fixed in the next update.  However, my existing Bulletin is still available but I cannot add a Bulletin to a new channel - its not in the Apps anymore.

[Joel Lindstrom]

If you do not see it in the teams store, you can download the solution from https://aka.ms/teamsbulletins