How to Use MS Project to Manage Schedule (WBS)? (Episode 13)

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

Prerequisites

To be able to use MS Project to manage Schedule (WBS), there are certain prerequisites:

Process

  • Open MS Project.
  • If you have installed the Add-in, you will see a tab Project Service. Open the tab.
  • Click Connect to connect to your D365 environment. If you are connecting for the first time it will ask for your credentials.

  • Once you provide the credentials and have successfully connected, you will notice that the Connect button is greyed out and other buttons (Publish, Read, etc.) are activated.
  • Click Read, PSA Project.

  • From the list of available project, select the project to read. Click Link project plan to Project Service Automation, if you want to manage schedule from MS Project.

  • No , you can manage the schedule in MS Project and use its various functions. Once you have made the changes you can click Publish, you sync the changes in D365 Project.

  • Note that the Schedule in D365 will be read-only in that case. This is because the link that has been established between D365 project and MS Project.

  • You cans use Unlink option in MS Project to remove the link and then you will be able to edit in D365.

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How to Create Project With Schedule (WBS)? (Episode 12)

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

If you have been following the blog post, by now you would be familiar with creating an opportunity and quotation.

Now let’s see how you can create project and define schedule or work break down structure.

Whenever you are creating a quotation and you have different quote lines, for example, one line is for project implementation, second is for expenses, third could be for support services and fourth could be for training.

In Dynamics 365 for PSA you have an option to define project for each line. This means, if you have four project base quote lines then you can define four different projects Or you can choose to define only one project based on the requirements.

You can also use predefined Project Templates, based on which you can create Projects. You have an option to reuse the templates, so that you don’t have to recreate the schedule (WBS) and have resources defined again.

NOTE: In previous versions of Dynamics 365, Schedule was known as Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Project Template

In Dynamics 365, on the navigation menu, click Project Templates.

Click New Template and specify the following fields:

  • Name
  • Description
  • Contracting Unit.

Click Save.

Go to the Schedule tab and perform the following actions:

  • Click Add, to add a new task.
  • You can use Indent or Outdent actions to create a hierarchy.
  • You can use Delete to delete an existing task.
  • You can also Move Up or Move Down tasks.
  • Specify the Predecessor, to define the prerequisite of each task.
  • You can specify Effort by specifying or editing the following columns. Change in any of these columns will result a change in other two columns:
    • Specify Effort in hours.
    • Specify Start Date and End Date
    • Specify Duration in days
  • In the Resource column click add to either select an existing resource of click Create to create a new resource (generic). You will have to assign a role to the resource. You can assign more than one resource for each task, i.e. the resources you would need in order to complete the task.

In the Summary tab, you will notice that the Estimated Labor Cost is generated based on resource assignment and effort.

Create Project (using Project Template) For Quote Line

Open the quote, “business Central Implementation for Adventure Works” in this example (see Episode 11).

On the Quote Lines, edit the Project Based Line, “Business Central Implementation Services” in this example.

In the Project field, click New Project.

In the quick create form, specify the following fields and click Save and Close:

  • Name Description
  • Is Template = No
  • Project Manager (automatically selected)
  • Project Template
  • Contracting Unit
  • Estimated Start Date

This will create the Project. Now click on the Project to open it.

In the Schedule tab, you will notice that the project is created and Schedule is generated based on the template. The dates are populated based on the actual start date we provided and the resourcing is available as well.

In the Team tab, you can see the resource part of the team, however, right now a Generic Resource is selected as this is still in planning stage. When the Project is commenced, actual Bookable Resource will be selected.

 

In the Estimates tab, you can see the estimates:

  • You can group the data by Category, Role, Resource.
  • You can see the Time-Phase by Cost (i.e. the cost you r company will incur) or Sale (i.e. what you will be charging customer).
  • You can see the Time-Scale by Day, Week, Month, Year.
  • You can make price changes and use Update Prices to refresh the data.

    In the Summary tab, you will see that the Estimates are populated automatically.

    Watch the video:

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How to Create Project Opportunities? (Episode 10)

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

Project Opportunities are warm leads from customers who are interested in contracting your services.

Scenario:

  • Adventure Works would like to implement Business Central.
  • Adventure Works contacts Tech Quantum – AU and share their requirements.
  • Add Product based and Project based lines.

Let us create a Project Opportunity for the same.

Create Account

  • In the change area click Sales > Customers.
  • Click New to create a new Account or use an existing one.
  • Specify the required fields on the Summary tab.

     

    • Relationship Type = Customer.
    • Select the relevant Product Price List.
    • Additionally, add Primary Contact (or other contacts as well).

  • On the Project Price List tab, add the project price list containing the role prices, price list items, etc.

  • On the Details tab specify additional details, such as Company Profile, Description, Contact Preferences, Billing information, etc.

  • Save the record.

Create Opportunity

  • In the change area click Sales > Opportunities.
  • Click New to create a new opportunity. You will notice that the Opportunity Sales Process is also activated showing the different stages, which can help users to navigate through various stages of the opportunity and capture relevant details.
  • Specify the Topic and make sure to capture details.

  • Capture other details such as Stakeholders, Sales Team and Competitors.

  • On the Opportunity Lines tab, capture:

     

    • Product -based Lines
      Here you can add the products that you are selling to the customer. Please note that the product should be available in the product price list that that you have attached to the Opportunity.
    • Project-base Lines
      Here you can capture the breakdown of other services related to the project, such as project expenses, implementation services, maintenance, etc. These can be either Time and Material or Fixed Price.

  • You can add more lines or make changes to the existing lines. The Total Amount will be updated accordingly.
  • You can keep updating the Opportunity and the Notes in Timeline as and when you get more details.
  • Also, you can progress through the business process to keep track of the stage you are in the Opportunity.


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How to Setup Cost Price and Sales Price? (Episode 09)

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

Cost Price

  • Cost Price is the cost incurred by your organization.
  • For your Organization Unit, you can define Cost Price per Resource.
  • It determines what resource cost is going into a project which will ultimately be used for determining profitability of a project.

Scenario:

  • Organization Unit: Tech Quantum – AU
  • Resource Role and Cost (example) 

Resource Role

AU Resource Cost (Per Hour)

Technical Consultant

$90/Hour

Functional Consultant

$100/Hour

Business Analyst

$125/Hour

Process:

  • On your Project Service Automation App, click the change area and click Sales.
  • Click Price Lists > New to create a new price list.
  • Specify fields on General tab and make sure to select Context = Cost.

  • Click Save.
  • On the Role Prices tab, click New Role Price. You can specify Role, Resourcing Unit and Price.

  • Under Category Prices tab, click New Transaction Category to add various expenses:

  • The Cost Price is ready, now you can attach this Cost Price to the Organization Unit:

Sales Price

  • Sales Price is what you charge to your customer.
  • It determines what price you are going to charge for a project.

Scenario:

  • Organization Unit: Tech Quantum – AU
  • Resource Role and Price (example)

Resource Role

AU Resource Cost (Per Hour)

Technical Consultant

$190/Hour

Functional Consultant

$200/Hour

Business Analyst

$250/Hour

Process:

  • On your Project Service Automation App, click the change area and click Sales.
  • Click Price Lists > New to create a new price list.
  • Specify fields on General tab and make sure to select Context = Sales.

  • Click Save.
  • On the Role Prices tab, click New Role Price. You can specify Role, Resourcing Unit and Price.

  • Under Category Prices tab, click New Transaction Category to add various expenses that you sell:

  • Under Price List Items tab, add the products that you are selling:

  • The Sales Price is ready. You can attach this sales price to a Customer account, under Project Price Lists tab:

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How to Configure Resource? (Episode 08)

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

When you install Dynamics 365 for Project Service, Resource Scheduling is also enabled that allows you to manage resources.

Resource Management Includes:

  • Working Hours
  • Resource Skills
  • Resource Roles
  • Target Utilization
  • Characteristics

Scenario:

  • For Tech Quantum – AU we are implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central.
  • We need 3 Resource Roles: Functional Consultant, Technical Consultant & Business Analyst.

Create Skills:

  • In your Project Services App. Click the change area to go to Resources.

  • Click Skills. This will list all the skill set available in the system.
  • Click New to create the following skills:
    • Business Central (Functional Skill)
    • C# (Technical Skill)
    • Business Analyst (Analysis Skill)

    There may be instances that the customer requires certifications. In that case you can create skills where the Characteristics is Certification.

    Create Roles:

    • Click Roles. This will list all the roles available in the system.
    • Click New to create the following Roles:
      • Functional Consultant
      • Technical Consultant and
      • Business Consultant
    • While creating the Roles specify the:
      • Target Utilization for the role. This is a percentage value.
      • Click New Role Competency to add Skill set required for the Role. While specifying the role competency, you can specify the Proficiency (rating value), i.e. the level of skill/ knowledge required for the role.

    NOTE: After adding the Skills in the role, if the Name field is blank, edit the record to specify the name.

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How to Configure Work Hour? (Episode 07)

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

Every resource has work hours defined in Dynamics 365, i.e. how many hours a resource will be working for an organization.

You can set the working hours in a Work Hour Template which will be used in Projects.

It defines how many hours resource will be available to work on a project.

Work Hour Template is also used for scheduling resource for a project.

Scenario:

– For Tech Quantum – AU, the resources are available from 09:00 AM till 05:00 PM AEST.

– There is a lunch break of 30 minutes.

– Working days are from Monday to Friday.

– Not observing holidays.

– Set Work Hours for a user – Spencer Low.

Personalized Settings

  • Click on Personalized Settings.

 

  • Change the Time Zone that suits you. In this example it is set to AEST.

Set Work Hour

  • Click on Advanced Settings.

  • Click Settings > Security > Users.
  • Select a user, in this example “Spencer Low”.
  • Select Work Hours.

  • Click Set Up > New Weekly Schedule.
  • Click Setup Work Hours. Set the work hours as required and provide the split / break as well.
  • Setup Recurring Weekly Schedule.

  • Click Ok. Check result.

 

NOTE: If you see “Cross Day” on the calendar, you might need to change the Time Zone in your personalized settings.

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PSA Process Flow (Episode 04)

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

Following is the process flow that you can follow in Project Service Automation:

ProJe Opportunity Pro] Quotes p rOJ Proje Planning Contracts Alloca e Resources

Project Opportunity

  • Here you register warm leads that are interested in your project services.
  • Here you define product and project related information.
  • For example if you are implementing Business Central, you would specify the licenses and implementation fees related information or maybe the expenses that you want to quote.

Project Quotes

  • You can create quotation from the opportunity and send it to the customer.
  • It will copy all the information, that you have captured in opportunity, and put it in the quotes.

Project Planning

  • In project planning you go into details of planning, for example the number of activities involved, number of resources  and man days required, scheduling and project planning.

Project Contracts

  • When you mark the project quote as “Won”, it automatically creates a project contract.
  • It is also considered as statement of work , like what kind of things will you deliver to the customer and also define the invoice frequency for each of the component.

Allocate Resources

  • Once your project contract is defined, you are going to allocate resources to the project.
  • The resource allocation is done based on the requirements.
  • The resources then start working on the project.

Time and Expense Booking

  • When resources are working on a project they start booking their time against the project.
  • The resources start entering their time daily/weekly and also start registering the expenses that are incurred in the process. These expenses are monitored by the project manager and once approved can be billed to the customer.

Project Monitoring

  • Project monitoring is not a single step, but a continuous process.
  • So the moment you do planning you start performing project monitoring as well.

Project Invoicing

  • Once you have reached the project contract milestone, you create an invoice and send it to the customer for billing.

Project Analytics

  • Finally you perform project analysis where you can make use of the graphs, charts to identify how you are doing in the project.
  • Based on the information, you can make necessary adjustments.

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How to Configure Organization Units? (Episode 06)

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

Let us first understand what are Organization Units:

  • Organization Units represent different offices your company may have.
    For example, you may have offices in US, UK and India. In that case you will be creating three organization units as each unit may be executing their projects.
  • You can create any number of Organization Unit as required.
    Depending on your location.
  • If you have just one office, you can use a single Organization Unit.
    It is not mandatory to have multiple Organization Unit.
  • For each Organization Unit, you define Currency.
    For example if your company is in Australia then you will be dealing in AUD and if you are in US you will be dealing in USD, etc.
  • Also, you can define cost prices for an Organization Unit.
    For example if you use resources in US, what cost will you incur when you execute a project as compare to if you do the same in India. So you define cost prices for your Organization and in that you define the cost of each resource such as for Technical Consultant, Functional Consultant, Business Analyst, System testers, etc.
  • When you create a project, you need to define the Organization Unit that project belongs to.
    You can use resources from same Organization or from Different Organizations.

NOTE: By default, when you install or register for a trial of Project Service Automation, you will have an Active Organization Unit (with Name containing alphanumeric characters). You can rename it as well.

You can create a New Organization Unit and specify the following information and Save:

  • Name : Unique name of the Organization Unit
  • Description: A short description of the Organization Unit
  • Currency: The currency that will be used by this Organization Unit

Based on your requirement, you can create as many Organization Unit as you want.

We will discuss the setup of cost price and sales price in upcoming episodes.

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How to Install Project Service Automation (PSA) and Sample Data? (Episode 05)

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Paresh Sharma

Download Sample Data

Use the following link to download Dynamics 365 for Field Service and Project Service Automation Sample Data: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56050.

  • Run the Executable file to extract the package
  • Extract the Package to for its contents

NOTE: Read the System Requirements and Install Instructions carefully.

  • Within the package:
    • You will use Dynamics 365 for Field and Project Service Demo Data October 2017.pdf file for detail installation instructions.
    • If FPSDemoData.dll file is blocked, you need to unblock it.
    • You will use ImportUserMapFile.xml file to update data mapping.
    • You will use PackageDeployer.exe file to run the package deployer wizard.

Install Project Service Automation and Field Service

Since the sample data is for Field and Project Service, so you need to install both the solutions in Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Go to Dynamics 365 Admin Centre:

  • Select the instance
  • Edit the Solution
  • Find “Field Service” and “Project Service Automation” and install

NOTE: This can take several minutes.

Create and Configure Users

As per instructions in Dynamics 365 for Field and Project Service Demo Data October 2017.pdf file create and configure users.

  • The following users are created:
    • David So
    • Jamie Reding
    • Molly Clark
    • Spencer Low
    • Veronica Quek
    • William Contoso
  • Provide the System Administrator Role.
  • You will also need to update the ImportUserMapFile.xml data mapping file with email addresses of these users in your system.

  • Finally, in the Enabled Users view, select and open the System Administrator whose credentials you will use for the sample data installation (“Spencer Low” suggested).
    • Go to the navigation bar at the top of the page and open the “Work Hours” option.
    • Edit the existing Work Hours, schedule, selecting the “Entire recurring weekly schedule from start to end” option, and make sure that the work hours are set to “9:00 AM – 5:00 PM (8 Hours)” with Monday through Friday and the Time Zone set to “Pacific Time (US & Canada). This is required to ensure that Schedule Board settings and already schedule Work Order and Project work appear correctly post installation.

Run the Package Deployer Installation

Please note that since you install the sample data, this step cannot be undone, so do not perform this on Production Environment. This sample data is meant more for testing or demo purposes.

  • Find and run the PackageDeployer.exe.
  • Agree to terms.
  • On the next window:
    • Select deployment type Office 365.
    • Use the user and password of the system administrator configured above.
    • Make sure Display list of available organizations is checked.

  • Select the appropriate Dynamics 365 organization.
  • Click Next twice. You should see something like the following:

  • Click Next to start the sample data installation process. Load of sample data can take up to 4 hours to complete. Ensure your client computer remains on and connected to the Internet during the process and that your session remains active.
  • After loading completes, click Finish to exit the package deployer.

Verify the Install

After the demo data completely loads, log in as the “Spencer Low” and confirm the following:

  • Go to Project Service > Settings > Price Lists and confirm that Bill Rates and Costs Rates exist, with the appropriate Currency, for each country/region in the data set.
  • Go to Project Service > Settings > Organizational Units and for each Org Unit (excluding city entries), confirm that a Cost Price List with the appropriate Currency has been associated. If any are missing, find and associate the correct Cost Price List.

Watch the video:

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