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Keep Your Team in the Loop with the Microsoft Teams Bulletins App

How-To |

It can be challenging notifying team members of upcoming events or keep them in the loop on project communication. Organizations using Microsoft 365 have many communication options, including email, Microsoft Teams chats, and even SharePoint pages. But which one is the easiest to use and most efficient communication tool?

The Bulletins app for Microsoft Teams is a relatively new app that can centralize this type of communication while keeping you in the Teams ecosystem. Read on to find out if the new Bulletins app for Microsoft Teams might be a good notification solution for your construction organization.

What is a Bulletins app for Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft has been releasing a bunch of free sample apps to inspire developers to adopt and extend the Power Platform ecosystem. These apps are usable out of the box or customizable to solve your unique needs.

Bulletin app in a Microsoft Teams channel

The Bulletin app is a notification-focused app that you can add to Teams chats or channels. Each bulletin can have a title, description, image, category, URL, and delivery date.

Notifications could occur from all project areas. The Bulletins app can be an excellent fit for construction teams since you can easily organize items by category, date, and featured status to make them easy to find. What's great about the Bulletin app is that it keeps these notifications centralized and easily manageable by Team. It's a one-stop shop for managing notifications.

How do I add the Bulletins app to Microsoft Teams?

If you frequently use Microsoft Teams as a communication and file storage platform, you have probably seen the option to add apps by clicking the three dots for "More added apps."

Clicking "more apps" from Microsoft Teams navigation
Installing the Bulletin app into a Microsoft Teams channel

To find out how to add the Bulletin app to your tenant, refer to this link: Bulletins sample app - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn.

Microsoft Teams adds two tabs when you install the Bulletin app: "Manage Bulletins" and "Bulletins." Here is a quick breakdown of how they work:

  • Manage Bulletins - The Manage Bulletins tab is where a designated communication lead would create bulletins. Once published, the bulletins can be seen in the Bulletin app by everyone that has access to it.

Adding a Bulletin via the Manage Bulletins tab

 

  • Bulletins - The Bulletins tab is where your team goes to see the latest bulletin. Bulletins can be bookmarked, sorted by category, and searched.
Bulletin home screen

How could I use Bulletins on my project?

A bulletin could have a variety of uses for a construction project. A few good examples of construction-specific bulletins with categories could be:

  • General -"Client will be onsite every Friday."
  • Systems - "System downtime from 1-2 PM."
  • H&S - "H&S training required for access to the exclusion zone."

You can also include bulletin details with a nice banner image and links to related information, such as a SharePoint site where you can provide more details.

The Bulletins app is cool, but…

Having a notification app is a great idea, and Microsoft has done all of the heavy lifting to make this app available for developers to extend it further. If you are not a developer or have a developer in-house that knows the Power Platform, there are a few limitations in the out-of-the-box app:

  • Cannot attach images. You can add URLs that can link to images but cannot embed images into the text field.
  • Isolated to a single team. You can install the Bulletins app for a team, and it will show on every channel for that team. However, you cannot install the Bulletins app across multiple teams.
  • Needs additional options. While Microsoft created this app to pique the developer community's interest, it would have been great if there were a few additional features. For example, configurable fields such as status, the ability to use the activity feed when a new notification gets added, and distribution groups.

In summary, the Bulletin app is an interesting approach to notifying team members. I recommend trying it, but I would caution implementing it if you do not have the IT support to modify the app for your specific use cases.

If you want to implement this Microsoft Teams app or any others from Microsoft and need IT support with the power platform or anything in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, Lydon Solutions is here to help. You can schedule a free one-hour consultation here.

What Value Does Microsoft 365 Bring to an Organization? (According to ChatGPT)

Reviews |

Microsoft 365 has a lot of value to offer both individuals and businesses. Some of the key benefits of using the suite include:

  • Increased Productivity: The tools within Microsoft 365, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, are designed to help users be more efficient and productive in their daily tasks. The ability to collaborate and share files in real-time with OneDrive and SharePoint make teamwork and document management effortless.
  • Flexibility and Accessibility: Microsoft 365 allows you to access your documents and files from anywhere, at any time, using any device. This makes it an ideal solution for remote work, as well as for businesses with employees in different locations.
  • Security and Compliance: Microsoft 365 includes built-in security features to protect your data, as well as compliance with industry standards. You can trust that your data is protected and can be compliant with regulations and standards.
  • Cost-effective: Subscribing to Microsoft 365 can be more cost-effective than purchasing individual licenses for each of the applications in the suite. Microsoft 365 subscription also include updates and upgrades to the software automatically, you will always have access to the latest features and tools
  • Better Communication and Collaboration: The communication and collaboration features of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint make it easier for teams to stay connected, share information, and work together on projects. This improves productivity and can help teams to work more efficiently.
  • Improved Data Management: With the use of SharePoint and OneDrive, it is easy to organize and manage files, shared content, and team sites. It also makes it easy to find and share files, track changes and maintain version history.

Overall, Microsoft 365 is an essential tool for anyone looking to increase productivity, stay organized, and improve collaboration. It offers a comprehensive set of features that can help businesses and individuals to be more efficient, effective, and secure. It's subscription-based pricing makes it accessible to small and large businesses alike.

— Post was written by ChatGPT

Microsoft 365 OneDrive and Teams for Your Construction PMIS

How-To |

A recent Microsoft 365 roadmap feature (ID #88912) could allow you to manage construction projects using only two Microsoft 365 applications. Check out this article to find out more.

Microsoft Teams is the company’s communication platform and information hub, and Microsoft is integrating all of its applications into it to make the application a one-stop shop. OneDrive is Microsoft’s “file share” solution. OneDrive is more of a windows explorer in the cloud where you can save files into folders and even take files offline without an internet connection.

Microsoft’s 365 roadmap feature 88912- OneDrive: Easily navigate to all your Teams files from OneDrive provides a huge benefit to file storage, essentially connecting OneDrive to your Teams files which are in turn connected to SharePoint document libraries.

In OneDrive mobile, you can see Teams that you have access to under Libraries
In OneDrive mobile, you can see Teams that you have access to under Libraries
In OneDrive Online, you can see Teams you have access to under Quick access/Recent and More places.

This recent feature is special because Microsoft has seamlessly integrated OneDrive with SharePoint behind the scenes. Creating a new team in the Teams application adds an associated SharePoint site to store your Teams files by default. Think of SharePoint as your database for Teams. Before Microsoft implemented this new feature, you had to connect OneDrive to the Teams-specific document library in SharePoint manually.

With this new integration between Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, you can forgo having to link OneDrive to a SharePoint document library manually; Microsoft does this automatically for you. This makes file storage locations consistent between Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

Integration between Teams and OneDrive is excellent for construction projects

If you use Microsoft Office documents and PDFs as your primary data, you could deliver a project management information system (PMIS) by solely using only Teams and OneDrive:

  • You can use Teams to manage project team communication for office and field workers since Teams is available for desktop, online, and mobile.
  • Field workers could use the mobile OneDrive app if they need to go offline without an internet connection to view and add documents to the same Team locations that the rest of the teams use.
  • All your project files will reside in the same place in Teams and OneDrive (and SharePoint).

The above is a simple two-system solution that could get you up and running for your project in no time. Ultimately, you have one location for files which is a huge benefit for project teams.

From here, you could expand Teams to introduce forms, workflows, and reports using the Power Platform. You could also introduce SharePoint for more of an intranet-like experience and more document control.

While Microsoft 365 is an amazing platform for managing information for your projects, it can be a little overwhelming. Lydon Solutions is here to help. You can request a free one-hour consultation to get you on the right track.

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.

Tips from the Field: Adding Images to a Power BI Report

Tips from the Field |

Microsoft 365 Power BI is an incredibly powerful reporting tool and is fast becoming the go-to reporting solution in construction. While creating connections to different data sources and building cool reports is relatively straightforward, adding dynamic images is not as simple.

Read on to learn how to add images to your Power BI report.

Two options when adding images to Power BI reports

There are two paths to adding images to a report.

Option 1

Your first option is to insert images directly into the report. This approach is useful if you want to embed a static image into your report, like adding a logo to a project-specific report.

Unfortunately, you need to open Power BI, update the report, and re-publish it to add or edit images.

Note: These embedded images will display when you print a report.

Option 2

Your second option is to link images dynamically from another file location. This approach allows you to connect to images from another file location and display them dynamically in your report.

A good example of this would be a set of project progress photos that are dropped off in a SharePoint image library every month. You could then connect these photos to your report and use a project and time period slicer to display only the images you would like to see in the report.

While this approach provides the most flexibility, since images are read from the image library, the setup in Power BI of the connection is more difficult.

Also, there are a few considerations to be aware of:

  • Viewers must have permission for both the image library and the Power BI report to view the images.
  • Images will not display in Power BI Desktop until you publish the report to Power BI Online.
  • The connected images will not display when you print a report.
Power BI Desktop with both options
  • When images initially display in Power BI, they will appear as small thumbnails, and you will not have many options to format them. You will most likely need to “Get more visuals” and find a third-party image display visual. See the screenshots below for how to do this.

Step 1: Click the three dots and select “Get more visuals” 

Step 2: And then search on images and click on one to add 

So, you might wonder how actually to create a dynamic image connection in your report from SharePoint? There are a bunch of steps to doing this, but I found a great video to get you most of the way there: A little trick for SharePoint Online Images in Power BI.

We hope this blog helps you build out your project status report. If you need a complete reporting solution from building a Power App to collect period data or structuring a Power BI Report that can filter by project and period, you can submit a consultation request here.

Microsoft 365 for Construction Management Case Study Part 2: Project Online

Case Study |

This article is part two of our case study examining how we helped one of our clients manage their construction projects better with Microsoft 365. If you have not read the first installment, you might want to check out part one of the case study before proceeding.

The client in this case study contracted Lydon Solutions to develop a Microsoft 365 project management solution for a multi-billion-dollar program with over eighty active projects. In our first post, we outlined the client’s project needs, including how they currently handled these tasks and how we planned to help them improve their workflows with Microsoft 365 and its related applications.

One primary requirement of our client was integrating Microsoft Project into their overall project management solution. This article will detail our approach to creating a solution centered on Project.

A quick primer on Microsoft Project

Before we get into our client’s challenge, it might be helpful to review the evolution and status of  Microsoft Project since the nuances affect the solution you can implement.

Microsoft Project is several different applications rolled into one:

Microsoft Project desktop application

The desktop version of Project is the application we all have used for years. Most construction companies have Project Standard or Project Professional installed locally on their computers.

The desktop version of Project is the most feature-rich version of the application but is not connected to the internet unless you pay for a Project Online subscription (see below). You need the more robust Project Professional to create complex schedules (beyond predecessor logic) and assign organizational resources and custom fields. You can do project-specific reporting in either desktop version of Microsoft Project.

Microsoft Project Online (Project Web App or PWA)

ProjectCaseStudy_1

Microsoft Project Online is the web-enabled version of the application. With this version, you can manage a portfolio of projects, create Microsoft Project and SharePoint templates and sites, create and share company resources and custom fields, implement timesheets, and connect to the desktop Project application.

ProjectCaseStudy_2

You can update schedules in PWA, but the functionality is limited to predecessor logic. You need Project Standard or Professional for more complex scheduling, organizational resource management, custom fields, and project-specific reporting. Note: PWA schedules do not integrate with Project for the Web (described below) since the app stores schedule data in SharePoint sites. You need Power BI to do multi-project reporting.

Microsoft Project for the Web (PFTW)

ProjectCaseStudy_3

Microsoft Project for the Web is a more flexible, dynamic, and modern scheduling version of Microsoft Project. PFTW appears to be the future of Microsoft Project, but the development roadmap has been moving at a glacial pace.

Organizations trying to use both PWA and PFTW can confuse users since PFTW is a lightweight scheduling tool that looks and behaves differently than PWA, but both are considered Project Online. PFTW has similar functionality as PWA, but it does not integrate with PWA schedules or schedules made in the desktop version. PFTW is a stand-alone modern application that stores data in the dataverse, not SharePoint. You need Power BI to do multi-project reporting.

Now that we got that out of the way, you can see why the complexity of the Project ecosystem and how the various features and differences between the versions can create additional challenges when trying to develop a solution.

How our client used Microsoft Project

Our client was using Microsoft Project Online (PWA) to manage their portfolio of projects. The other factors we had to consider included the following:

  • The client’s project managers (PMs) did not want to use Project to update their schedules and instead leveraged construction coordinators to provide schedule updates on their behalf. Management wanted to change this behavior so that PMs were responsible for their updates but the solution needed to be as easy as possible.
  • The PMs did not have the desktop version of Microsoft Project to update schedules.
  • The PMs wanted to use Project for cash flow forecasting across projects.
  • The PMs wanted weekly reporting on all scheduled milestones and late tasks by Project but had not set up zero-duration milestones in their schedules.
  • There were over 80 active projects in their Project Online project center

Our approach to making Microsoft Project the core of the client’s solution

From experience and discussions with the client, we knew that email was the easiest way for PMs to update schedules.

We designed a solution to aggregate project schedule and task data across all projects from PWA into a centralized SharePoint list daily. We developed a Power Automate workflow to send emails with adaptive cards to the PMs when their tasks were due so that they could update them in Outlook without having to go into Project. The SharePoint list received the task updates, and another Power Automate workflow processed the updates back into PWA. Other parts of the solution leverage this same SharePoint list, providing a single source of truth for projects without users needing to interact with the Project application. We will explain further in a future post.

Next, we needed to use Project schedules for cash flows. For this, we had to be able to assign a cash flow resource to the schedules. Doing so would allow the schedules to drive the cash flow amounts. So, we created new cash flow enterprise resources for the organization in the PWA resource center. We created both budget and generic resource types. We established cost budget resources as the overall project budget at the project summary level (task 0) in Project. We used cost generic resources to assign the cash flow amounts for cash flow milestone activities at the task level.

We then created new cash flow milestones in Project with the schedule logic of how pay apps would be submitted and approved. Since cost generic resources represented our budget at the task level, the actual cost would update automatically when a user marked a cash flow milestone task as 100% complete.

For reporting, we leveraged Power BI to provide cross-project cash flow reports. There is a Power BI web app connection that you can leverage to access PWA data. This connection includes the Microsoft Project data lists so you can generate reports in Power BI. We’ll get into the details of how we developed the reports in a future post.

Do more with Microsoft 365 and Project

Find out how to take Microsoft 365 and Project to the next level 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.