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How to use Microsoft Teams Updates for Construction

Microsoft News |

Microsoft has released a new Teams app called Updates. The Updates app allows you to create update requests for your teams or individuals and allow recipients to submit their response for review.

The Updates app is an interesting approach to issuing and receiving status requests for your team members from within Teams. If you want quick status updates in a questionnaire-type format, the Updates app might be a great tool to consider. Read on to find out more.

Setting up the Updates app for Microsoft Teams

Here is a quick walkthrough on setting up the Updates app.

Requirements to get started
Before you begin, you will need to have the following in place:

  • A Microsoft Dataverse If you don't have permission to create one yourself, you will need to request this from your IT team or tenant admin.
  • A Power Automate, Microsoft 365 E/M, or Dynamics license.
  • A license for Microsoft Forms.
  • An administration role in the environment.

Adding the Updates app
To add the Updates app, click on the three dots in the lefthand navigation area of Teams (it says "More added apps" when you hover) and search for Updates. You can then pin the app so you can quickly get to it in the future.

You can also create or assign an Update from within a chat by clicking the three dots (Messaging Extensions) and then searching for and selecting the Updates app.

Configuring the app
When creating an Update, you have several options. You can use an existing template, such as a weekly update or a facility inspection, or select "Start from Blank" to create a template.

If you "Start from Blank," there are three settings you can adjust:

  • Basic settings – This is where you can name the template and enable it.
  • Form design – This is where you create the questionnaire. If you are familiar with Microsoft Forms, you will see that it's pretty much the same interface with the same options.
  • Workflow settings – This is where you create the workflow of who will respond to the Update (submitters), who will be able to review responses (viewers), and what frequency the flow will run.

Submitting an update
Once an Updates template is created and saved, based on the due date of your flow, team members will receive a notification under their activity feed in Teams. Submitters can then respond in mobile and desktop versions of Teams which is handy for front-line workers.

Reviewing responses
If someone assigns you as a viewer in the update, you will have access to an Updates dashboard that provides the status of any updates you have scheduled, issued, or received. You can review all of the responses from the viewers as they arrive and view the entire series of responses in one view.

Where is this data being saved?
The Updates app stores all its data in Microsoft's Dataverse in Microsoft 365. The Dataverse has many benefits, such as deep integration with Microsoft's cloud services (Azure, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365) and access to many connectors in Power Automate and Azure Logic Apps. Also, since Updates uses Forms to build questionnaires, all your Updates forms will show in Microsoft Forms in a read-only view.

Our overall takeaway on using the Updates app for construction

The Updates app has potential as a one-off status update solution for Microsoft Teams.

The questionnaire or survey will need to be simple and only require a one-step workflow for it to be viable for something like a construction daily progress report. If you are not collecting a lot of data from your submitters and are heavily ingrained in using Teams to manage projects, I recommend checking it out.

For more complex scenarios, you may be better off looking at a combination of Power Apps and Power Automate to give you flexibility for your form and workflow logic.

The Good

  • Prebuilt templates are available, and you can create your own.
  • You can add the Updates app to Teams chats.
  • The Updates app has a simple but effective workflow to collect responses and even schedule reoccurring requests.
  • The app's dashboard provides an easy way to manage responses.

The Bad

  • It's an app specifically for status updates which makes it a one-off tool in Teams.
  • It uses Microsoft Forms which is somewhat limited in functionality; if it were possible to connect to Power Apps, you would have much more options to build out forms.
  • The Updates app offers limited configuration options, such as creating custom views, exporting to Excel, and printing to Power BI.
  • Users cannot edit their responses after submission.
  • No customization capability.

Learn how to use Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects

If you need help setting up Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects, you can check out this three-part blog article series or contact us directly for a free consultation.

What does Windows 365 Cloud PC mean for construction? – Part 2

Microsoft News |

Our previous blog article looked at Microsoft's recent Windows 365 Cloud PC offering. I even suggested your current physical PC might be the last you will need to buy. Now it is time to consider what Windows 365 Cloud PC might specifically mean for the construction industry.

In our last article, we talked about the features of Windows 365 Cloud PC. In short, Windows 365 Cloud PC lets you securely stream your Windows experience—including your personalized apps, content, and settings—from the Microsoft cloud to any device. Like every other business, how construction companies respond to Windows 365 Cloud PC comes down to time and money. Below are the pros and cons to consider.

Windows 365 Cloud PC advantages for construction companies

The Windows 365 Cloud PC could save construction organizations considerable costs and dramatically improve efficiency in many ways.

Bring your own device (BYOD). Adopting Cloud PC will lower costs as organizations no longer need to buy hardware for their employees, reducing capital expenditure programs and refresh schemes as the service becomes an operational cost. The new model could be organizations providing employees with a set IT allowance which will help improve company cash flow.

IT support reductions. Organizations would not need as much technical support, significantly reducing IT headcount and the headaches of troubleshooting one-off PC issues.

Remote access. Employees can access their PC and applications from any device, anywhere. This level of flexibility is critical for construction team members who need access both in the office and field using various form factor devices.

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Always secure. The Cloud PC is always secure with the latest updates removing the risks inherent in having physical PCs "out in the wild." Always-up-to-date Cloud PCs take the burden off team members having to make sure their device is up to date on patches and updates.

Standard PC builds. Cloud PCs with standardized builds can be released quickly, ensuring no software issues between team members. Organizations can push a common set of always-up-to-date applications to users, removing any issues with versions and compatibility. A Cloud PC can also help prevent users from installing unapproved software

Real-time onboarding and offboarding – Organizations could onboard a person in minutes without having to ship a new PC with a custom build. If the person leaves the organization, the Windows 365 Cloud PC can be disabled in seconds, and the license reclaimed or eliminated. Since construction teams are dynamic and can include third-party contractors, team members can hit the ground running on day one.

Disadvantages of Windows 365 Cloud PC construction companies should consider

Windows 365 Cloud PC probably sounds excellent so far. What's the catch? There are a few potential downsides that construction organizations should consider before deploying Cloud PC technology.

It's a subscription service. While the starting costs are relatively low, they will grow just like your cable bill. And there are different subscription levels based on the PC RAM and storage, potentially making it less attractive to those using high processing applications like BIM, CAD, and other graphics demanding applications.

Offline access. Offline access is not currently available, and at a minimum, you must have an internet connection capable of at least streaming a video to use Windows 365. Future iterations of the Cloud PC will likely look to include this capability. However, the performance of a Cloud PC probably is not going to be to the level you would expect of a version of Windows installed on your local computer.

The mercy of Microsoft. Updates, fixes, and patches are now in the hands of Microsoft, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your experience with their support.

Ownership. You no longer own the assets. If you don't pay your Microsoft bill, you lose your access.

The Windows 365 Cloud PC will be a game-changer across every industry. The Cloud PC could revolutionize data accessibility for construction both in the office and the field. As subscription services have become the standard business model for all services these days, the Cloud PC seems like the next inevitable step.

Do more with Microsoft 365 and Windows 365

Microsoft provides a robust lineup of powerful productivity tools that go way beyond Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Lydon Solutions can help your organization get the most out of Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 by optimizing them for construction teams. Contact us for a free consultation to learn how Lydon Solutions can help your organization better use Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 for construction project management.

What does Windows 365 Cloud PC mean for construction? – Part 1

Microsoft News |

Windows 365 Cloud PC is a new Windows-as-a-service subscription model from Microsoft. Your current PC could be the last one you need to buy based on our initial assessment.

The days of IT installing and managing software on local servers in your own data center are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Cloud computing is now the de facto standard for hosting servers and applications because it offers many more benefits, such as always up-to-date security, flexible storage, and worldwide 24x7 availability, all without needing your own IT support team to keep the servers running and patched.

Across every industry, Microsoft and Azure are changing how businesses access their information. Microsoft has been leading cloud computing for the enterprise with Microsoft 365 and their Azure cloud platform. With the availability of high-speed internet and the promise of wireless 5G networks, the time is perfect for delivering an all-in-one solution across the enterprise.

So what is the Windows 365 Cloud PC?

You may remember the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) trend from a few years back. And I am sure that you are familiar with accessing your organization's internal systems from a remote PC via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), where you can access a virtual Windows PC or apps via your company's VPN. Well, VDI never really got any traction, mainly because it was a bear to set up, configure and support. And virtual PCs also require a lot of hardware, time, and effort to maintain.

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Windows 365 aims to simplify all of this. Your Microsoft 365 admin allocates you a license and provisions a Cloud PC. You can then log in at Windows365.com and enter your Microsoft 365 login credentials (the same you use to access SharePoint, Teams, etc.), and, presto, you are accessing the latest version of Windows. You now have access to all your applications and virtual storage that is your C: drive in the cloud.

What makes Windows 365 Cloud PC so unique?

If you think about your current PC, it's a physical plastic box with a graphics card, processor, hard drive, etc., designed to run applications, store data, and connect to the internet. You need to have that PC to access those applications and your data. With a Windows Cloud PC, you need an internet connection and input devices like a mouse and keyboard. You no longer require that plastic box. The cloud version of Windows does all of the heavy lifting.

Suppose your IT wants a little more control and integration with local resources. In that case, you can set up an RDP connection using the URL provided in Windows365.com to your personal Cloud PC, again allowing access from almost any device.

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What does this mean to PC makers and business IT organizations?

If this service takes off, it will change the definition of what a PC needs to be. This shift could have a massive impact on traditional PC manufacturers since the plastic box could be as simple as a cell phone or internet TV.

On the other hand, it will mean more flexibility, efficiency, and possibly cost-saving for organizations and their IT departments across every business.

  • Hardware savings: Organizations would no longer need to provide devices to their employees. If you have your own internet-connected devices, you can access your Cloud PC anywhere. This flexibility makes bring your own device (BYOD) programs more viable.
  • IT support savings: For IT departments, all of the hassle of dealing with PC-specific configuration issues, software conflicts, patches, and updates go away. Depending on end-user needs, IT teams can centrally manage one or more instances of Windows for the entire company. As long as employees can access the internet, they are all set.

Sounds great, but how much does Windows 365 Cloud PC cost?

As always, it all comes down to cost. There are two areas of costs to consider:

  1. The Windows Cloud PC subscription model – The current pricing has three tiers, with the most common level being $41/user/month for 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage. Suppose you consider the average lifespan of a PC to be around three years and the initial capital cost of a PC to be approximately $1,500. In that case, the breakeven is about three years, which is in line with a typical hardware refresh.
  2. IT department/support savings – This is where the actual savings come into play. Larger organizations would see the most significant benefit by reducing their IT department. Users would also spend much less time troubleshooting IT issues.

Next time, we'll look at what Windows 365 Cloud PC will mean for construction organizations.

Need help adopting Microsoft technologies for your company?

Microsoft provides a robust lineup of powerful productivity tools that go way beyond Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Lydon Solutions can help your organization get the most out of Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 by optimizing them for construction teams. Contact us for a free consultation to learn how Lydon Solutions can help your organization better use Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 for construction project management.

Microsoft 365 Stream for your Construction Videos

Microsoft News |

On most construction projects, there are a ton of videos from safety training to daily construction progress. Unfortunately, these videos typically reside on local computers or shared drives, making sharing extremely cumbersome via email due to the files' size. Microsoft Stream to the rescue!

Microsoft Stream is a video-sharing service for Microsoft 365 that was released in 2017. Stream allows you to save video files, add metadata, assign permissions, and share the videos with team members.

Videos uploaded from different Microsoft 365 services like Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint are all available in Stream based on permissions. So, you no longer have to hunt for a video's save location to access it, and you only need to have one version of it in your Microsoft 365 tenant because you can manage all of your videos from within Stream.

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Stream also lets you share videos across other Microsoft 365 services such as Teams, Yammer, SharePoint Online, OneNote, PowerPoint, Sway, and Outlook. There is even a Stream web part available for SharePoint Online that you can easily add to any page to display your videos. Lastly, Stream allows you to embed Microsoft Forms into your videos for conducting attendee surveys and questionnaires, which is helpful for online training videos.

If you are interested in Stream, it comes with most Microsoft 365 subscriptions. While there are many great features and services in Microsoft 365 for your construction projects, the challenge is always delivering turnkey solutions specific to your organization. Lydon Solutions can help. You can request a free consultation here.

Use AI to Help Manage Your Construction Projects with Microsoft SharePoint Syntex

Microsoft News |

Microsoft SharePoint Syntex is an AI tool available as an add-on for Microsoft 365 that construction organizations can use to manage project data more efficiently.

Information management is one of the biggest challenges for any organization. But in construction, it is not just about internal project information management. Compounding the problem's complexity for construction managers and owners is the additional burden of managing the flood of data that their vendors and contractors submit daily (e.g., submittals, RFIs, change orders, and invoices).

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Shortcomings of typical project data management methods

Construction organizations have typically processed and managed external project information in one of two ways:

Option 1 – Ask contractors to use the construction manager or owner's project management information system (PMIS)

This approach centralizes data, ensuring that project information resides in a single system of record for processing.

However, using this method adds significant costs and raises the risk of errors.  For example, it entails considerable effort in training and hand-holding for every contractor using the PMIS. It also often requires additional document control staff to review and correct technical and data input issues. Finally, contractors typically increase their bids to account for the redundant data entry required to support two systems.

Option 2 – Have contractors email project correspondence (usually as PDFs) to the construction manager or owner for manual entry into their PMIS

This second approach has document control specialists entering data into the system-of-record PMIS, providing a clean and centralized repository for project information.

Unfortunately, this method only shifts the burden of processing project records from the contractors to the owner or construction manager. Thus, while it improves data accuracy, there are still issues of increased cost and significant manual effort.

Using Microsoft SharePoint Syntex to automate project data management

If your organization is on Microsoft 365 and uses SharePoint for construction project management, the good news is that there is a better way to manage your data. Microsoft has recently released SharePoint Syntex, an AI tool for automating content processing.

With SharePoint Syntex, once you train your AI model to classify and extract data from PDFs, the tool will be able to take over and run on a specific document library in SharePoint. The AI model will extract metadata from a PDF document and add it to SharePoint columns once you upload new files.

What does Microsoft SharePoint Syntex mean for construction?

With SharePoint Syntex, there is now a third way to manage and process your construction project information. Using SharePoint Syntex, contractors do not have to learn a new system, nor would the owner or construction managers have to process project correspondence from the contractor manually.  Instead, contractors could email project correspondence to the owner or construction manager. A trained Syntex AI model could then review the documents and automatically classify them based on a predefined set of rules. While this may sound like science fiction, it's not, and it's available right now for SharePoint in Microsoft 365.

What does Microsoft SharePoint Syntex cost?

Syntex for SharePoint is available as a cost-per-user add-on in Microsoft 365. The pricing posted on the SharePoint Syntex pricing page at the time of this article is $5/user per month or $60/year.

How to get started using Microsoft SharePoint Syntex?

Once you pay for a SharePoint Syntex user license and create a content center in SharePoint, you can start building AI models.

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We'll get into the details in future posts on this subject and possibly some online training sessions.

Get Help Using Microsoft SharePoint Syntex to Manage Your Construction Projects

Lydon Solutions always embraces leading-edge Microsoft technology to improve construction projects' efficiency.  We have already built AI models that extract invoice data from PDF invoices emailed into a Microsoft 365 group mailbox. As soon as the file is uploaded, the AI tool automatically extracts data for reporting and analysis. It's exciting stuff!

If you have any questions about setting up SharePoint Syntex for your Microsoft 365 or need a turnkey enterprise PMIS integrated with SharePoint like Construction Viz, don't hesitate to reach out to us for a no-obligation consultation and demo. We're here to help!

What is Microsoft Project for the Web?

Microsoft News |

If you are a longtime Microsoft Project user, you probably notice that some changes are afoot with the application. Specifically, Microsoft recently introduced Microsoft Project for the Web available as a part of a Project subscription. Read on to learn more about PFTW and whether it might make sense for your organization.

Microsoft Project has a long history of providing scheduling and project management tracking to the construction industry. The first commercial version of Project was released for MS-DOS in 1984, and its development has seen it evolve into a SaaS offering through Microsoft 365. Due to Microsoft's reach, like it or not, Project has become the go-to scheduling software in construction.

As Project gets a bit long in the tooth, many competitors look to unseat the champion, and Microsoft has noticed. With Project for the Web (PFTW), Microsoft has essentially rebuilt Project from the ground up. It is a modern web app that is responsive and full of future promise.

But before you transition your organization to this new version of Project, we have compiled a list of hits and misses for the current version of Project for the Web.

Where Project for the Web hits the mark

Project for the Web has several compelling features, including:

Modern UI/UX – PFTW is a modern web app with a great UI/UX and is responsive on mobile devices with a modern browser (accessed through Teams).

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Easy to use – PFTW makes it simple for non-PM users to quickly build a schedule and start tracking tasks with little to no instruction. The program only enforces predecessor logic, so you don't need to be a scheduler to build a schedule.

Integration with other Microsoft tools – PFTW integrates into the Microsoft 365 suite of apps with a particular focus on the Power Platform. Also, PFTW stores data in the Dataverse instead of locally or via SharePoint lists like Project Web App. The Dataverse offers the future promise of having a universal database across all Microsoft 365 apps. Pretty exciting stuff!

You can learn more about using the tool on Microsoft's Project for the Web getting started page.

Areas where Project for the Web misses

In its current form, Project for the Web does miss the mark in a few ways:

Lacks functionality - PFTW lacks most of the features you find in Microsoft Project Web App and Project Professional. The tool strictly focuses on scheduling and managing tasks rather than activities. It excludes resource and cost management and relies on the Power Platform to supplement the application. Think of PFTW as a version of Microsoft Planner with a Gantt Chart.

No backward compatibility and integration with other versions of Project – PFTW is currently separate from the Project we all know. The tool doesn't integrate with Project Web App, so you cannot move between the two. Wherever you start your project, you will be stuck in that application. Also, PFTW doesn't integrate with the desktop version of Project, where you can do robust scheduling and resources and cost management.

Different data store – PFTW data resides in the Dataverse, which long term, aligns with Microsoft's strategy of embedding metadata, tables, and security into the apps. The future benefits will be significant, but right now, it seems odd. Project Web App data, on the other hand, is stored in SharePoint task lists. So we are left with this strange storage issue between PFTW and Project Web App. Also, Project Web App uses classic SharePoint sites to store data which Microsoft seems to be deprecating in favor of modern sites.  Meanwhile, there are no web parts for PFTW and tasks in the modern SharePoint sites, meaning there is no out-of-the-box way of displaying your project schedule on your sites. For your team to see your project schedules, users either go to PFTW directly or access the data through Teams (once they download the PFTW app).

As you can see above, PFTW is a much more modern application and a step in the right direction for Project. But, at this time, there are many challenges for using PFTW as a construction project management solution. Also, note that Microsoft's roadmap for Project is pretty sparse as well.

Given all the above, most teams are probably better sticking with Project Web App for now. But keep an eye on PFTW as the tool continues to mature and gain features.

Want to manage your construction projects in Microsoft 365 and SharePoint?

Lydon Solutions has been developing construction management solutions in Microsoft SharePoint since 2009 and Microsoft 365 since 2013. 

If your company is looking to take full advantage of the Microsoft 365 suite of services for your construction organization, check out our managed services offering. If you need a turnkey enterprise construction management solution in Microsoft 365, check out Construction Viz.