Change Your Default PWA Site for Project Home
Published Feb 19 2019 09:12 AM 37.5K Views
Microsoft

We are pleased to announce that Project Home users can now change the default Project Web App (PWA) site to their preferred PWA site. This allows Project Home users to control the creation location of new Project Online projects, and to navigate more easily to desired PWA sites from Project Home.

To change the default PWA site in Project Home:

 

1.  On the Office 365 navigation bar, select the settings icon, and then choose Default PWA site. In the Change default PWA site dialog box, you’ll see the current PWA site URL.

 

Office 365 navigation bar – Settings icon

 

Change default PWA site dialog box

NewDefault1.png

 

 

NewDefault2.png

2.  In the Change default PWA site dialog box, type your preferred PWA site URL and press the Change site button. It’s important that you type a PWA site URL (not SharePoint site URL) and you have at least Read permission to that PWA site URL.

 

If you don’t know which PWA site URL to use, contact your admin or request permission to the PWA site that you would like to access. If you have at least Read permission to the entered PWA URL, when you select the Change site button, you will see a success message and your default PWA site will be changed to the new URL.

 

Success message for new default PWA site URL

NewDefault3.png

If you don’t have Read permission to the newly entered PWA site, you will see an error and your PWA site will not be changed. If you see this error, you can: 

  • Try again: Retype the URL and choose Change site again.
  • Restore to the last saved default PWA site URL: Choose the X button in the upper right corner of the dialog box.
  • Reset to the original default PWA site URL: Select Reset to default.

Read access error message for default PWA site URL

NewDefault4.png

Project Home also checks for the Create permission when you try to create a new project and Read permission when you navigate to the Home Page using the Go to Project Web App link at the bottom of Project Home.  If you don’t have Create or Read permissions, you will see a red message bar near the top of the browser. In this case, you can choose the Change Default button on the message bar to change your default PWA site.

NewDefault5.png

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share and provide comments.

20 Comments
Brass Contributor

This is a much sought after feature. Great work team Microsoft. I had a look at my tenant today and did not see the new menu item yet Brian. Any update on when customers can expect to see this new feature? 

Steel Contributor

Hi@Brian-Smith,

Great new feature. 

Will it be possible to set this setting via PowerShell for all users as a tenant admin (e.g. set a link by department for an IT and a Finance instance) and set a new default link for new users? Some customers use an ideation/demand process in front of the project creation. It would be good if the Create option could also be redirected or extended by a link to a custom form.

Microsoft

@PietRemen it will roll out over time, but it shouldn't take too long.

@Trutz Stephani - no PowerShell but this is a great suggestion and be sure to add it on UserVoice too. www.microsoftproject.uservoice.com

Best regards,

Brian.

Steel Contributor
Brass Contributor

Great News, I am still waiting for this feature in all of my customer's tenants. Any ETA or news on how the roll out is going ?

Brass Contributor

This feature is not available in my tenant or any of my customers.

Brass Contributor

I found the issue.  The old Office 365 Admin had turned off custom theme settings.

 

Custom_Theme_Settings.png

Copper Contributor

If i try to change the Default PWA Site as described to the site i created, i get the error "You don't have the permission to acces this site".

How is that possible? I created the Site, uploaded it in SitePages and have edit-permissions.

Microsoft

What do you mean by 'uploaded it in SitePages' @Sandra_Steinert - that doesn't mean anything to me related to a true PWA site.  See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/projectonline/set-up-another-project-online-site for details.  I'm guessing it isn't really a permission thing but you may not have a PWA site.

Best regards,

Brian.

Brass Contributor

This is a great feature.  I would like to see the ability to set the PWA site by group on an admin level.

Microsoft

Let User Voice know @Bryan Hughes - this suggestion looks close to yours - https://microsoftproject.uservoice.com/forums/914203-project-online/suggestions/36914614-project-hom... 

Best regards,

Brian

Copper Contributor

Forgive me if this is the wrong place to ask, however I'm new to project online.  I was following this article, trying to set the default PWA site to a SharePoint site created as part of teams however I'm getting an error and from your article above, it says we cannot use a SharePoint URL.  Any suggestions on how to make teams and project online work together?  We're just getting started with Project online and I'm worried we may now have some unexpected SharePoint site creation/management as a result.  It looks like there's a separate PWA template which I'm guessing is why you can't use a SharePoint site created from teams?

 

Thank you in advance,
Geoff

Copper Contributor

Hi experts,

I am looking for a way (PowerShell) to safely renamed a Project Online (PWA) site without breaking anything.

These sites are active, but the request is to rename the site URLs to conform to our new naming standards.

Any help or ideas are much welcome.

Microsoft

Hi @NeeOk940 - as part of the work to support multi-geo the Project product group have recently enabled site rename.  I notice that is it still blocked via the UI but the PowerShell option certainly worked for me and I can navigate and use my renamed PWA site without issue.  See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/sharepoint-online/start-spositerename?view=sharep... 

Best regards,

Brian

Steel Contributor

Hi @Brian-Smith,

We recently had a hick-up with multi-geo and the PWA as during the roll-out as we saw that the default PWA URL is different based on the multi-geo setting for the user, e.g. https://contosonam.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa for North-America, https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa for Europe and https://contosoapc.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa for APAC. We had to ensure that users were aware of this setting and entered the correct URL.

Is there now also a way to programmatically update the default URL somewhere?

Thanks in advance,

Trutz

Copper Contributor

Hi @Brian-Smith 

Thanks for the quick response. I know the Start-SPOSiteRename (SharePointOnlinePowerShell)

works with the SPO sites. I will test and report back.

Thanks

NeeOk940

 

Microsoft

@Trutz Stephani unfortunately there isn't a way to update the default PWA programmatically - but you can set it per user through the Project Home page.

Best regards,

Brian

Copper Contributor

Brian,

Update!

Thank you so much. The PowerShell: Start-SPOSiteRename (SharePointOnlinePowerShell) did work and so well.

Thanks again.

Brass Contributor

Hi team, wondering if there be a simillar option coming soon for Project for the Web (PftW) to cater for production deployment scenarios where PftW is deployed in a non-default Power Environment? It's not a good-practice approach to use PftW as a production tool in the default Power App instance. 

Copper Contributor

Hi,

I am wondering if there is a way to make a copy/clone an existing project online site (PWA) with a new name in the same tenant.

Thanks in advance

neeok640

Version history
Last update:
‎Feb 19 2019 09:11 AM
Updated by: