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Using Microsoft Power BI for Reporting with Project Online

How-To |

More than likely, your organization uses the project-specific reports available out of the box with the Microsoft Project desktop application. But as your portfolio grows, you may need to move to Microsoft 365 Project Online. Project Online offers many advantages over the desktop version, including enterprise resources and codes, permissions management, project templates, and integration with the Microsoft 365 Power Platform. Unfortunately, you will quickly realize that there are no canned reports in Project Online like those you are familiar with in the desktop application. So, what do you do?

Using Microsoft Power BI to create Microsoft Project Online reports

The “official” reporting solution for Microsoft Project Online is Power BI. Power BI is another Microsoft 365 subscription. If you are going to build custom reports, you may want to have at least one Power BI Pro license. Note: Power BI Pro comes with a Microsoft 365 E5 subscription or is available for $9.99/user/month for an individual license.

Next, you will want to install the Microsoft Project add-in for Power BI, which you can download here. The add-in includes some key data fields from Project and some visually appealing pre-defined dashboard report templates.

Project Online Add-In for Power BI

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So, you are all set to create your custom reports across your portfolio! Well, not exactly…

You will find out pretty quickly that if you want to create a “simple” report like a monthly resource cash flow across all your projects in Power BI, it is much more complicated than you would think. The good news is that Lydon Solutions has built several configurable Power BI solutions that can generate monthly expenditures for any resource or activity across your portfolio. The report can be further customized to your organization’s needs and added to Teams or SharePoint.

Project Online Cash Flow Report for Power BI

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Get Help with Microsoft 365, Project Online, and Power BI

As you know, setting up a portfolio cashflow report in Microsoft Project Online is more than just building a report in Power BI. Lydon Solutions can assist you with everything from Microsoft 365 configuration to delivering custom Power BI reports so you can focus on managing your construction projects. You can find out more by requesting a free consultation here.

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.

Need help with Microsoft 365 for Construction Projects?

Consulting News |

More and more organizations are taking the leap to Microsoft 365. They see the benefits of having all of their company data securely stored in one location while accessing Microsoft's multiple services such as Teams, SharePoint, Project, and Office. They are also taking advantage of the Power Platform to create organization-specific customizations that they can readily distribute to users as joined-up solutions.

If your organization is one of those that have taken that first step and signed up for a Microsoft 365 subscription, congrats! Microsoft 365 has all of the tools you need to build an enterprise-scale organization or project solution. Now comes the hard part.

IT initiatives are not unlike any construction project. You need to design, budget, and have experts in the field with a successful track record that can deliver. Check out our series of blogs articles with tips and suggestions on using Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects:

Expert help from Lydon Solutions on managing construction projects with Microsoft 365

Lydon Solutions has been delivering enterprise-scale Microsoft-based solutions for construction since 2009. We offer Microsoft 365 managed services to get you up and running at any point in your journey. We've delivered solutions for small organizations and fortune 500 companies ranging from a Power Automate workflow automating the review of daily reports to custom SharePoint program management solutions supporting multi-billion dollar projects.

While there are many IT companies out there, what makes us different is our consultants have both construction and IT experience. We've been there with you, and our solutions prove it. Check out our Microsoft 365 Managed Services or submit a free one-hour consultation request 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!

How Adaptive Cards Can Turbocharge Your Construction Project Management Processes

How-To |

Wouldn't it be great to get more of your project management workflow done in Microsoft Outlook and Teams without needing to log into other enterprise systems? Adaptive Cards technology enables you to do just that by providing an open, lightweight, and flexible framework to integrate user experiences into other applications, including Outlook, Teams, and more.

Technology is changing at a fever clip, and construction organizations are having to adapt to survive. Owners, contractors, and construction management organizations are all scrambling to implement the latest whiz-bang IT solution for managing their projects. Unfortunately, project managers and users are often left having to learn and navigate many different systems and processes on top of just trying to do their job. So how can you move the technology forward without leaving your team in the technology wake?

Adaptive Cards are a JSON-based and platform-agnostic way to deliver app data into a native UI. We use it to extend the functionality of Construction Viz, our turnkey construction project management solution, into Microsoft Outlook and Teams. With Construction Viz and Adaptive Card technology, organizations can collect data from users via email (e.g., filling out an RFI or managing approvals) without requiring them to log into another system. We also leverage Adaptive Cards to enable Construction Viz users to share dashboards and reports via email or Teams, again without needing the recipient to log into any other system.

Check out our blog describing how Construction Viz takes advantage of Adaptive Cards. You can also learn more about Adaptive Cards here and here.

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Why Adaptive Cards matter for construction projects

The number and complexity of systems in construction will only continue to increase. Adaptive Cards take away the training, double-entry, errors, and inefficiencies that can come with multiple systems and new technologies. It allows your team to focus on what is essential for them to do their job and provide the data you need to manage your project's success.

So, no matter which systems house project-related data at your organization, you can flatten the IT learning curve by using Adaptive Cards to provide your end-users with a streamlined and simplified way to get their job done.

Learn how Adaptive Cards can streamline your projects

Find out more about our Adaptive Card technology by submitting a free consultation request.  If you prefer a turnkey project management solution powered by Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, check out Construction Viz and our extensive lineup of construction apps.

How to Start Managing Construction Projects in Microsoft 365 – Part 3

How-To |

This is part three of three in a series of blogs called How to Manage Your Construction Projects in Microsoft 365.

Welcome to the third part of our blog on how to get started with managing construction projects in Microsoft 365. You can read the first and second parts here. If you have been following along, you should have your new Microsoft 365 tenant set up and the infrastructure in place. Now it is time to configure some Microsoft 365 services for your construction projects.

While there are no construction-specific services in Microsoft 365, you can customize several to meet your needs. But be aware that technology changes pretty fast with Microsoft; they regularly enhance, add, and sometimes remove their Microsoft 365 services. It is always good to keep an eye on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap and their yearly tech conferences like Ignite.

As we mentioned previously, there is no right or wrong answer here. The important thing is to fully understand your users' requirements and assess the options against these to determine what works for your organization.

So, let's get started with some of the Microsoft 365 services you can configure for a construction project.

Microsoft 365 Services for Construction

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Document Storage

Your construction documents include SOWs, drawings, and specs, which can be in multiple formats such as PDF, Word, and Excel. You can upload these documents to several Microsoft 365 services, including OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint. Here are few things to keep in mind when selecting your document repository:

  • While OneDrive and Teams allow document saving, they lack metadata functionality, so you will need to use a file folder structure for organizing files.
  • Consider also that OneDrive is primarily for personal storage.
  • With SharePoint, you can add metadata and folders, which improves your search and reporting capabilities.
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Forms

Forms such as submittals, transmittals, permits, RFIs, invoices, inspection reports, and the like are the primary input for any project management system. Microsoft 365 comes with various services that you can use for forms, including Power Apps, Forms, Lists (SharePoint), To-Do, Planner tasks, and Microsoft Project activities. You could configure any of these tools with form-style capabilities. But if you are looking to build out an enterprise-level solution, you will most likely want to leverage Power Apps. Power Apps allow you to build forms and complete applications from scratch and store information into multiple database back-ends such as SharePoint lists and libraries and the Dataverse.

Check out my previous blog post with tips on building construction forms using Power Apps and request our free example RFI Power App to get you started creating your own.

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Notifications

Alerting and notifying your users of events or action items is a core requirement for any project management system. With Microsoft 365, several apps (Planner, To-Do, etc.) include built-in notification features. You can also configure SharePoint lists and libraries to send alerts, and Power Automate workflows can also do the same. And finally, there is the old-faithful email notification. New technologies, like Adaptive Cards, can be used to meet your users where they work and allow them to interact with your project management system without even leaving an email inbox. You can learn more about Adaptive Cards over on our Construction Viz blog.

Unless your organization is already using some of these services, we recommend building Power Automate workflows that send email notifications to your project team as a good starting point.

Scheduling

Depending on the complexity of your project's schedule, several services are available in Microsoft 365 that may work as a scheduling tool for you:

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  • Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project provides integrated Gantt chart scheduling, cost tracking, and resource management. Project is the go-to solution for most construction companies and has become tightly integrated with SharePoint over the years. Gantt chart scheduling in Project employs critical path analysis that can be manually or auto-updated depending on your need to analyze network logic. Project does require a separate license in Microsoft 365.
  • Microsoft Planner. Microsoft Planner approaches work from a task management perspective. Tasks are assigned to team members and then updated using List, Board, Charts, and Schedule views. There is no Gantt chart or network logic, but you can manage work on a task-by-task basis with the board view. Planner also integrates nicely into Teams and SharePoint.
  • Microsoft Lists. The new Microsoft Lists app is a modern SharePoint list that has become a stand-alone service in Microsoft 365. Lists are a great way to track tasks, events, assets, and more. Like Planner, there are multiple views available for creating and tracking progress, and your lists are available in both Teams and SharePoint.
  • Microsoft Power Platform. With the Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), users can build out robust scheduling solutions that integrate with Teams and SharePoint. You should note that while the Power Platform offers no-code and low-code experiences for building solutions, they are generally more suited to advanced users in your organization. There may also be times, depending on your requirements, where you will need help from IT resources. Be aware that using Power Platform to its fullest may require additional licensing beyond your basic Microsoft 365 license level. See my blog post discussing some best practices with the Power Platform you should implement for your organization if you go this route.
  • Third-party applications. If the standard Microsoft 365 services do not seem to fit the bill, third-party scheduling applications can plug into Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, such as our Construction Viz Scheduler.
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Cost Management

Construction cost management is often unique to each company. You can customize any of several services in Microsoft 365 to meet your needs:

  • Microsoft Project.  If you manage costs using resources, then Project might be a good solution.  You can assign units and costs to resources and then associate them with scheduled activities. It's simple and easy to then run cash flows based on your schedule. Project also integrates into SharePoint and Teams. But as mentioned above, Project requires a separate license in Microsoft 365.
  • Microsoft Lists. If you are looking to build an interactive web-based cost report solution, Lists is pretty flexible. You can create your cost columns in a list and then use views to group, filter, sort, and total each column.  You can then utilize Power Automate to update list columns from multiple data sources and use Power BI for reporting. Lists are available in both Teams and SharePoint.
  • Microsoft Power Platform. With the Power Platform, you can build a complete cost management solution and integrate it with Teams and SharePoint. Depending on the complexity of your cost tracking and the need for stringent corporate controls, the Power Platform might be your best approach.
  • Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft Dynamics is a suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software applications for managing many aspects of a company. Dynamics can be an expensive solution for cost tracking, but it is incredibly flexible and customizable to your needs. Dynamics is an additional license to the standard Microsoft 365 plans.
  • Third-party applications. If the Microsoft 365 services don't fit the bill, third-party cost tracking applications can plug into Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, such as our Construction Viz Cost Report.

As you can see, there are many options for you to consider. We have only touched on some of the possibilities in this post. Hopefully, it will give you a place to start your journey towards construction project management in Microsoft 365.

A final piece of advice: If you find all this somewhat overwhelming, do not worry. There are many SharePoint consultants available to help you. But be sure to choose one that not only understands Microsoft 365 and all its associated technologies but, more importantly, has a deep understanding of construction and can demonstrate a track record of delivering successful IT solutions across the industry.

Get Expert Help with Microsoft 365

If your construction organization needs help setting up your Microsoft 365 environment, you can request a free one-hour consultation by clicking here. If you are looking for a turnkey construction project management solution or a specific construction app for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, check out ConstructionViz.com.

Check out more blogs from How to Manage Your Construction Projects in Microsoft 365