A new Project Online Content Pack for Power BI
Published Oct 26 2017 02:08 PM 38.1K Views
Microsoft

We are pleased to announce the release of a new Project Online Content Pack for Power BI. Starting October 26 2017, Project Online users will be able to download the new content pack directly from AppSource:

https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/getdata/services/project-online

 

Comprising of 13 visually rich report pages, the new content pack is designed to support the management needs of project managers, portfolio managers and resource managers, by retrieving planning and execution data from Project Online and arranging the data to support timely decision making.

The new content pack report includes reports in three key perspectives: Individual Projects, Portfolio of projects and the organization’s resources. Each perspective encompasses the following detailed report pages.

 

Individual ProjectsThis perspective includes 2 report pages presenting information of a single project at a time:

  • Project Status – A summary of a selected project including work and cost, over time, upcoming milestones and overall status.

Report Screenshot 3.png

  • Project Risks and Issues – Issues and risks for a selected project.

Report Screenshot.png

Portfolio of ProjectsThis perspective includes 6 report pages offering multiple analysis angles on portfolio of projects:

  • Portfolio Dashboard At a glance summary of all your projects, including completion status and performance KPIs.

Report Screenshot 1.png

  • Portfolio Timeline – An interactive timeline of projects in the portfolio, their planned start and finish dates as well as completion data.
  • Portfolio Costs – A detailed report of the portfolio costs, with details on cost status for specific projects.

Report Screenshot 4.png

  • Portfolio Milestones – Key milestones in the portfolio and their statuses.
  • Portfolio Risks – Aggregated risks across the portfolio and their impact on the portfolio.
  • Portfolio Issues – Aggregated issues across the portfolio and the causes for those issues.

 

 

ResourceThis perspective includes 5 report pages:

  • Resource Availability - Availability and demand for resources over time, presented through interactive heatmap and charts.

Report Screenshot 2.png

  • Resource Overview – A view of all the resources in the portfolio and their detailed information.
  • Resource Assignments – Deeper view into how resources are invested across the different projects in the portfolio, with information on their progress in current assignments.
  • Resource Details – A summary of a selected resource including availability, assignments and work over time.
  • Resource Demand Forecast – Forecast of demand for resource in upcoming time periods, based on current plans and predictive analytics.

 

How to set up the Content Pack

Go to this Power BI site to learn how to set up the Content Pack.

 

FAQs

Where can I find the new Content Pack?

The new Content Pack is available for download, directly from Power BI through ‘Get Data’.

The Content Pack is also available on AppSource and a PBIT file is shared through GitHub.

 

Will the new content pack replace the previous Project Online Content Pack?

Yes, the new content pack replaces the previous Project Online Content Pack. The new Content Pack offers a larger number of reports and leverages latest Power BI capabilities, for a richer analysis experience. 

21 Comments
Hi Brian, great Pack ! Many thanks for sharing !
Brass Contributor

Is this replacing the Office 365 Project Portfolio Dashboard app?

https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2016/04/19/new-office-365-project-portfolio-dashboard-apps-are-live/

The Dashboard was just released last year, but now it has disappeared and I cannot find the app available anywhere.

This was something we really wanted to take advantage of but cannot find it.

Is the intent to move away from the app to BI? Trying to find some direction.

Thanks!

 

Microsoft

Yes, Kathleen - going forward we will be concentrating on the Power BI approach and the Dashboard was removed from the store.

Best regards,

Brian.

Copper Contributor

Hi Brian, thank for this one, visually this is very nice and I would like to update our current PMO dashboards with this one. Will you also make a .pbix file available which will make it easy to customize?

Microsoft

Hi Mangaiah, the Github repository mentioned in the article has a PBIT file which should help with your customization plans.

 

Where can I find the new Content Pack?

The new Content Pack is available for download, directly from Power BI through ‘Get Data’.

The Content Pack is also available on AppSource and a PBIT file is shared through GitHub.

 

Best regards,

 

Brian.

Copper Contributor

Oh, I am so sorry Brian, my bad. Thank you for that.

Microsoft

No apology necessary Mangaiah - you are very welcome.

Deleted
Not applicable

Hi!  I'm excited to get something like this up and running.  I was able to install and connect, but all the tiles say "This report doesn't exists of your do not have permission to view it."  I'm a PWA Administrator, as well as a SP Site administrator.  I have a Power BI Pro license, and am able to connect to the PWA Data using Power BI Desktop.  What permissions could I be missing to view the reports?  Is there a walkthrough on how to set this up from start to finish?

EDIT:  Nevermind.  I just needed to log out and log back in after a refresh.  Great looking product!

Microsoft

Glad you resolved it Andrew.

Copper Contributor

I am new to Project Online and Power BI Online and am wondering how to create my own reports/dashboards outside of what is in the Project Content Pack App.  When loading the content app, I don't have access to the data source and the ability to add reports/dashboards.

 

BTW, I am working from a Mac and therefore cannot load Power BI Desktop.

 

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

 

GL

 

Copper Contributor

Great dashboard and is already proving useful within our organisation, focusing .Portfolio Lead and Project Manager attention on their plans and the data within them.

 

That said, however, I am experiencing one problem when trying to convert the Availability (Capacity) and Demand reports to pick up data from our Project Online, in that

  • the Capacity figures are coming out as a flat value in the thousands for each person (e.g. 3,172.5) and at a constant, rather than dipping for the weekends
  • the Demand figures are varying but are also in the thousands for each person, e.g. 1,044.02

What am I doing wrong please ?

Copper Contributor

Hi Brian,

 

Thank you for this detailed information.

I apologies to ask any question now since this is older post.

I am having an issue, I see "Generic Local Resource" in resource name whenever Assignment Owner is blank in PWA site for any Project.

I am wondering why Resource Name field in Resource Table is getting Assignment Owner information from PWA instead of Resource Name information from PWA.

For example, below is the PWA snapshot for Project A: the snapshot has Assignment Summary view and there are multiple resource names are present but assignment owner is blank when i drag Project Name from Project table and Resource Name from Resource Table then i get Generic Local Resource instead of getting actual resource Name.

PWA.JPG

ResourceName.JPG

 

Resource table and Project Table has no transformation in Power BI, only two steps are there in power bi for Resource and Project Table:

Source

Navigation

 

project table.JPGresource table.JPG

 

No other transformation are there so there is no where any condition is specified for the scenario that wherever Assignment Owner is blank then assign Resource Name as Generic Local Resource.

 

If you could please explain the reason for the same or you can please help me to understand the logic behind this Generic Local Resource concept.

 

I might not be able to understand the data set.

 

I hope the details provided is making sense and i am able to explain the problem statement.

Please let me know if you need any further information to understand the problem statement.

 

Thank  you for your time and support.

 

Regards,

Chayan Upadhyay

Microsoft

It isn't something I've tried Chayan, but I'm guessing you need to be using enterprise resources - which would always have an assignment owner - and then things would work ok.  The server may not have the information in the resources tables for local resources known only within that plan - so is replacing with the 'Generic' name.

Best regards,

Brian.

Copper Contributor

Thank you @Brian-Smith  for your reply and time.

The issue is whenever user select Project Name from the slicer the resource names for that project is showing as Generic Local User and user can see the resource name for that project in PWA and i verified that Assignment Owner is blank for all the resources in that project.

Now user is saying that it should show the Resource Names and i tried to explain the same thing about the Enterprises user and local user but they still want user names to be shown.

 

Is there any way i can show Resource Names for any project whose Assignment Owner is blank, is there any other table in Power BI where actual Resource name are captured (Instead of Generic Local Resources).

 

Thank you again for your help.

 

Regards,

Chayan Upadhyay

Hi Chayan,

If you are using local resources this is not possible as they are just aggregated / consolidated up to the "Generic local resource" in the Reporting schema that you are using for reports. From memory (not looked for a while) but you might find the named local resources in a different API (_api/ProjectServer), the REST interface for the CSOM API. Easiest approach is to use enterprise resources which should be the case in an enterprise environment to enable correct consistent reporting. if they are using enterprise resources already then there might be something else to look into.

Paul

Copper Contributor

i am very new to power BI so the question will probably be very basic. How can i edit health indicators? at the moment they are gray, not showing any difference in color, where can i set them up so they change color?

 

thank you,

 

Pam

Microsoft

This should help Pam - https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Creating-Colored-Indicators/td-p/176161 also I wanted to make sure you had the latest PWA Content pack - which is now a template based one - see https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/power-bi/pbi_msprojectonline.pbi-microsoftprojectwebap...

 

Best regards,

Brian

Copper Contributor

@Brian-Smith , thank you very much. I have just noticed that my Power BI version is a free trial version so that is for sure not helping. I will get it upgraded asap but unfortunately i need to wait for my IT team to do it. i wonder if there is another way since i don't have admin right to office 365, i actually noticed that when trying to download the new template you sent.

 

thank you!! this gets me a bit further in my quest to figure out the health indicators.

 

Pam

Hi @PamelaZenteno this reply on another thread might help you with updating / understanding the Health indications: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Project-Support-Blog/A-new-Project-Online-Content-Pack-for-Po...

Paul

Copper Contributor

Thank you @Paul Mather 

Copper Contributor

Hello all,

 

This Power BI report does not take into account that tasks can be inactive. The incorrect formula for Demand in ResourceDemandTimephasedDataSet is

 

Demand = SUMX(FILTER(ResourceDemandTimephasedDataSet;ISBLANK(RELATED(Resources[Resource Id]))=FALSE());ResourceDemandTimephasedDataSet[Resource Demand])

 

In the ResourceDemandTimephasedDataSet no column is available to determine if a task is active so this DataSet is not is suitable to determine the Demand. I have modified the formula to:

Demand = SUMX(FILTER(AssignmentTimephasedDataSet;ISBLANK(RELATED(Resources[Resource Id]))=FALSE());AssignmentTimephasedDataSet[Assignment Work])

and filter the AssignmentTimePhasedDataSet on Active Tasks. 

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