Reporting on Project Online (PWA) Timesheets

[Andy Dennis]

Hi all,

What is the simplest way to pull Timesheets reporting out of Project Online (PWA)?

My organisation is using the Timesheets functionality in Project Online to record the time resources spend against projects to enable project profitability reporting.

I want to be able to build a set of reports in Excel that can be automatically refreshed and combined with other data sets. My level of Excel knowledge is pretty good, and I can see an oData connection to PWA, but the mass of tables that exist in PWA are pretty daunting.

Any help or advice appreciated.

Thanks,

Andy

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Andy,

The easiest way is to import only the tables that you need and create a PowerPivot model in Excel.

Best practices for querying the OData feeds an be found here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/project-odata/dn776317(v%3doffice.15)

Relevant tables could be:

• Resources - resource metadata
• Projects - project metadata
• Assignments - link between project and assignment
• TimesheetLineActualDataSet - Actual Data from timesheets
• Timesheets - Link to resource and timesheet status
• TimesheetLines - Link to resource and project and timesheet line status

The complete reference can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/project-odata/jj163529(v%3doffice.15)

[#3]

That really depends on what you're looking to see... Status of timesheet submission, actual hours, both?

For starters, you'll likely use oData connections and Power Query in Excel or PowerBI to make the reports.

Here's the formatting information for the odata version used by Project online: http://www.odata.org/documentation/odata-version-2-0/uri-conventions/

Here's the function reference for working with Power Query:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/query-bi/m/power-query-m-function-reference

Here's where you find the tables your data are stored in

https://sitenamehere.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa/_api/ProjectData/

Add $metadata to the end of that string to see all the attributes and data types

https://sitenamehere.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa/_api/ProjectData/$metadata

Use the odata reference above to tack on to those URLs to filter some information and select certain things. For example:

https://sitenamehere.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa/_api/ProjectData/TimesheetLines?$filter=ActualWorkBillable gt 0 & $select=ProjectId,ProjectName,TaskName,TimesheetOwnerId,TimesheetOwner,ActualWorkBillable,TimesheetPeriodId,TimesheetStatus

You can plug that straight into IE or your browser of choice to see some data return. Best, though, would be to go to the data tab in Excel, New query, From other sources, From Odata feed. Then build / merge / format other queries to your heart's content.

You can find samples in the TechNet gallery. Here's one I worked up since Project Online doesn't have a "Not yet started" stats for timesheets, but that's one of the most important for us!

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Timesheet-Status-Report-37b95da2

[#4]

Ian and Trutz, many thanks for your speedy replies - much appreciated.

I've not needed to explore PowerQuery so far in my career, but this will be the project that forces me to learn it I think. I'd found most of those tables and had been going through the process of filtering out unwanted columns and filtering the data for my specific projects within the query. My next steps are to complete this process, then start linking these tables together to get the simple data output that I want.

I guess I should look for a simple tutorial in PowerQuery to learn a few basics, but I can't help just getting in there and playing around.

Your responses have definitely confirmed that I am taking the right approach, so thank you for that. I really just need to learn how to use these modern data tools in Excel!

The links provided will I'm sure be helpful too, thank you!

Wish me luck...

Andy

[#5]

@Trutz Stephani @Ian Bruckner 

I am using the out of box Dashboards available in power BI linking to my PWA data but the Timesheet tables are not appearing in the lot. Why would that be and how can I add those tables please?

[#6]

Hi @JitiMinhas2810 

The out-of-the-box reports simply don't include the tables.

You can download the PBIX file here:

https://github.com/OfficeDev/Project-Power-BI-Templates/raw/master/Project%20Online/Microsoft%20Proj... 

and adapt the data model to include the missing data.

[#7]

@Trutz Stephani Thanks for responding! I did look at this but can't figure out how I can bring in the additional tables I need. If I connect to power BI datasets, it only gives me the option to reconnect to the same web App data set. I am not sure what step I am missing but my aim is to be able to access all the tables available in PWA.