project management

Keep Your Construction Data Safe with Microsoft 365 Permissions – Part 1

Microsoft News | October 20, 2023

The process of granting permissions in Microsoft 365 seems straightforward. Most users are familiar with Microsoft's three default permission groups: owners, members, and visitors. These three permission roles simplify permission management, but do you understand what those access levels mean? And what if you need more control over who can do what on your projects? Read on to learn how Microsoft 365 structures permissions and how to manage permissions for your construction projects effectively.

Microsoft 365 consists of several layers of permission management. In this article, we will discuss the following two:

Microsoft 365 Admin roles
Application specific roles

In our upcoming installments in the series, we will cover SharePoint permission levels, groups, and sharing.

Microsoft Admin roles

Admin roles are assigned from the Microsoft 365 admin center. There are many administrative roles, such as billing, licensing, and Office Apps. Most construction organizations already have a Microsoft 365 tenant administrator overseeing the administration duties. However, suppose you want separate users responsible for SharePoint or Teams administration. In that case, you must assign those admin roles to those users.

Microsoft 365 Admin center permission roles filtered for SharePoint

SharePoint Admin: This permission role would be needed if the user plans on creating/deleting SharePoint site collections and modifying their settings. This role allows the admin ability to:

Create and delete site collections. Note: a non-Admin can still indirectly create SharePoint sites, but they are associated with an application (e.g., Teams, Planner, etc.).
Manage site collections and global SharePoint settings.

Application Permissions

Each application in Microsoft 365 has some level of permissions or sharing that follows a somewhat consistent pattern. The three common roles you will find in most Microsoft 365 applications are:

Owner – Typically allows users to create, edit, and delete artifacts (sites, plans, teams, etc.) and records. This role also can add and assign users/permissions and manage site-scoped features.
Member – Allows users to create, edit, and delete records. A record could be a document or a line item in a SharePoint list.
Visitor/Guest – Allows users to view records. They cannot add or delete records.

An example of these roles in Microsoft Teams is below:

Permission roles in Teams

Owner - Team owners manage specific settings for the team. They add and remove members and guests, change team settings, and handle administrative tasks. There can be multiple owners in a team.
Members - Members are the people in the team. They talk with other team members in conversations. They can view, upload, and change files. They also do the usual collaboration that the team owners have permitted.
Guests - Guests are people from outside your organization that a team owner invites, such as partners or consultants, to join the team. Guests have fewer capabilities than team members or owners, but there's still much they can do.

Next up: SharePoint Permissions

The basics of assigning permissions are simple, but what if you want to change or make permissions more granular?

At the core of most Microsoft 365 applications is SharePoint. Data created in applications like Microsoft Teams is stored in SharePoint-named sites. So, when you create a new team, a SharePoint site is created automatically associated with the team. The same goes for Microsoft Planner when you create a plan. Microsoft Lists saves your lists to SharePoint based on the site you select. So, to modify permissions, you need to understand SharePoint permissions. We will cover SharePoint permissions in our next article.

Meanwhile, contact us for a free one-hour consultation if you need help with Microsoft 365 permissions or setup. If you need a turnkey construction management solution for Microsoft 365, you can request a demo of Construction Viz.

Check out more blogs from Keep Your Construction Data Safe with Microsoft 365 Permissions

Keeping it Simple: Cost Report Using Microsoft 365 Lists

How-To | October 3, 2023

Many construction organizations have transitioned to Microsoft 365 but might not leverage all the applications included in their subscription. Microsoft Lists is an often overlooked application that can provide unique features for tracking project deliverables such as issues, asset management, action items, and even a simple cost report. Read on to learn how to build a simple cost report using Microsoft 365 Lists.

What is Microsoft 365 Lists?

Lists is a Microsoft 365 application that allows you to create a configurable data grid, with multiple views, that can be shareable with your team members. Lists is a modern application that stores its data behind the scenes in good old-fashioned SharePoint lists. Within Lists, you can view all the lists from all the SharePoint sites you can access. The benefit of having the separate Lists application is that users don’t have to go to every SharePoint site to create or find the needed list.

Let’s create a cost report!

Let’s create a simple cost report list to demonstrate how easy Lists is to use.

Navigate to the Lists app in Office.com, click New List, and select a Blank List.

You can name your list “CostReport” and add some basic theming.

Select where to save the list. You can save your list to an existing SharePoint site or My Lists, which is saved to a SharePoint site that is automatically created for you, and you can get to My List directly through OneDrive. For this exercise, select My Lists to save your data. Note: If you intend to extend the functionality of this simple cost report, I recommend choosing a SharePoint site to save your data instead of My Lists.

Create Columns

Once you create the list, you can begin creating columns. Note: The title field is automatically created. Consider using cost code/WBS name as the title.

For your cost report’s actual cost code field, you could create a column and name it CostCode. Select “choice” as the field type and add each corresponding WBS/cost code identifier choice.

For each financial column of your cost report, create currency columns:

To calculate fields such as budget or forecast variance, create calculated columns. Calculated columns are not readily apparent from within the Lists “create a column” menu. You have to select “see all column types” and click next, which then navigates you to a SharePoint list settings create column menu

From the SharePoint list settings “create column” menu, select calculated for the “type of information in this column” and select currency as the “data type returned from this formula.”

Formulas allow you to select columns that you have previously created in your list and add them to a calculated column. Here is a list of common formulas you can use for a calculated column.

You are going to want to create your variance columns using calculated fields.

Once you create all the columns you need to track your project costs, click New to add records for each row of your cost report.

From the SharePoint list settings “create column” menu, select calculated for the “type of information in this column” and select currency as the “data type returned from this formula.”

While every cost report for every project can be different, we created a simple cost report so you understand how it can be built and customized.

Sample of a simple cost report:

Title = WBS/code description text field
CostCode = choice field
Budget, commitment, spends, and forecast are currency fields
ForecastVariance and BudgetVariance are calculated columns
- ForecastVariance = PreviousForecast-Forecast
- BudgetVariance=Budget-Forecast

Going outside the box

If you are looking for something a bit more complex than a simple cost report using Lists, you could extend the functionality further by incorporating other Microsoft 365 applications into your solution. For example:

Integration from your financial systems for commitments and spends using Power Apps and Power Automate workflows.
Standardized WBS/cost codes across cost reports using SharePoint site columns for consistent reporting.
Build Power BI reports for slicing and dicing the cost report data.
Automatically save cost reports by period and compare variances between periods using Power Automate to copy the list and update the PreviousForecast column.

We hope this simple cost report exercise provides an easy way to spin up a straightforward tracking tool for your project. If you need help customizing Lists to your specific project needs or need help with Microsoft 365, you can contact us for a free consultation.

If you need a more robust solution for Microsoft 365, you can request a demo of Construction Viz, our enterprise construction management solution that can be deployed to your Microsoft 365 tenant.

Visualize Your Project Data with Microsoft Lists Calendar View (constructionviz.com)

Microsoft Planner vs. Project: Which Should You Use for Team Tasks?

Microsoft News | September 7, 2023

Microsoft offers two similar products in Microsoft 365 for managing team tasks. Which one will work best for your needs? Read on to discover the pros and cons of Microsoft Planner vs. Microsoft Project.

Microsoft Planner

Microsoft Planner helps teams organize their work visually. Users create a plan that can include grid, board, chart, and schedule views to manage tasks, with file attachments stored in SharePoint Online. Each view provides different insights into managing tasks:

Grid view - displays tasks assignable to team members in a log view.
Board view – provides a Kanban view that organizes tasks into buckets such as status. Users can drag and drop tasks between team members and statuses.
Charts - provides several graphs displaying the progress of your tasks.
Schedule - shows a calendar view of your tasks by due date.

Microsoft Planner Pros

Plans are typically created from Microsoft Teams, which makes setup easy.
There are Planner templates available so you can hit the ground running.
The user interface and process to manage tasks are intuitive.
Microsoft 365 subscriptions include Planner, so there is no additional cost.

Microsoft Planner Cons

Plans in Planner do not relate to “projects.” Instead, you can create plans in the app with a project name or from a team within Microsoft Teams with a project title, but Microsoft Planner is otherwise a stand-alone task-tracking application.
There is no Planner rollup to see tasks across multiple plans.

You can learn more about the app on the Microsoft Planner learning and support page. Or you can access Microsoft Planner on the web here if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project has two versions: Project for the Web (PFTW) and Project Web App (PWA). Check out this article to find out more about these two products. Since PFTW focuses more on task management and is the modern version of Project, we will compare this product to Microsoft Planner.

When you sign into PFTW, you can create a new project or a roadmap. PFTW stores data in the Microsoft Dataverse as opposed to SharePoint (where Planner stores its data).

A project in PFTW includes the following views:

Grid – allows you to create a task, assign team members, add schedule information such as start date and duration, update % complete, calculate effort, define dependencies such as start to finish, and add custom columns.
Board - provides a Kanban view that organizes tasks into buckets such as status. Users can drag and drop tasks between team members and statuses.
Timeline – displays the traditional Gantt chart view where users drag and drop dependencies and update tasks from the bars.
Charts - provides several graphs displaying the progress of your tasks
People – shows a Kanban view by team members for managing the status of their tasks.
Goals – provides a way to organize tasks into specific goals.
Assignments – gives a view of team members’ tasks and their hours of effort planned and expended.
Roadmap – shows one or more project tasks in a Timeline view.

Microsoft Project Pros

Tasks reside in projects, giving you a consolidated view of multiple projects in the roadmap view.
You can create projects or roadmaps from within Teams, making setting up easy.
Custom columns can be added to projects to define and categorize tasks further.
Dependencies are available so that you can add logic between tasks.
Managing team resources and level of effort across tasks is easy and intuitive.

Microsoft Project Cons

Microsoft Project might have too much functionality depending on the level of detail and controls you use to track tasks.
PFTW is an additional cost to your Microsoft 365 subscription.

Final Thoughts on Microsoft Planner vs. Microsoft Project

Cost, quality, and time to market are all factors when evaluating products or services. If we use this criteria to compare and contrast Microsoft Planner vs. Microsoft Project, here’s how they stack up:

Cost – Microsoft Planner is free
Quality – Both products are easy-to-use modern applications. Planner focuses on task management, while PFTW includes scheduling and resource management functionality.
Time to Market – Updates by Microsoft to both products have been slow.

Summary:

Microsoft Planner may be the best option if you are looking for a simple task management solution that solely focuses on when a task is due and who is assigned.

Microsoft Project for the Web (PFTW) might be a better solution if you don’t mind paying more for project-specific task tracking with scheduling and resource capabilities.

The good news is that both products have a similar UI and can be added to Microsoft Teams, so you could start with Microsoft Planner and then move to PFTW later if you need the additional horsepower.

How Microsoft Delve Can Help with Your Construction Projects

Consulting News | May 11, 2021

You've probably seen the Microsoft 365 Delve App in your Microsoft 365 navigation menu and wondered what is it and how you can use it to be more productive within my construction organization?

Microsoft 365 all apps

Webster's Dictionary defines the word delve as "to make a careful or detailed search for information." Microsoft Delve does precisely that. Delve, released in 2015, is included with some Microsoft 365 subscriptions depending on the plan you have. Delve aggregates relevant files from across Microsoft 365 and displays them in an easy-to-understand content card. Delve provides robust search across Office documents, PDFs, OneNote sections, images, and videos from OneDrive and SharePoint.

Delve navigation

Delve uses Microsoft Graph's machine learning capabilities to determine which content to present to you. The more frequently you modify the content, the better odds that it will be displayed higher in the list of available cards. Only content that you have access to will be displayed, and although your personal files might show in Delve, they will not be visible with others in the organization unless you choose to share them. To help with searching and organizing, you can add tags, either as boards or favorites, to your cards.

In addition to presenting Microsoft 365 content, Delve is also an employee directory of your tenant users. By default, Delve displays the Microsoft 365 user profiles of all organization members, including phone numbers, email, and locations. You can add additional metadata to your profile, such as which projects you are currently working on, your skills and expertise, and education. All of the other metadata you add is also automatically searchable across your organization.

Delve profiles

Using Microsoft Delve for Construction Projects

How can you use Microsoft Delve for a construction organization? Here are a few ideas:

Suppose you need to get to a file as fast as possible without going into a specific application such as a Teams site, SharePoint, or OneDrive. In that case, you can use Delve as your Microsoft 365 landing page and see all of your relevant files in one place.
You may need a better way to organize relevant files. Unfortunately, files might have odd file naming conventions, reside in hard-to-find nested folders, or existing in many different file formats. This situation could occur when preparing a proposal or a bid package where you may need to aggregate multiple files into a single presentation. With Delve, you can add tags to organize their associated cards in a more intuitive manner that best suits your work style and the deliverable, so the users don't have to save their files into another separate location.
If you are looking for a specific skill set or experience on your team, Delve can give you a quick and easy way to search the entire organization. With the additional metadata that users can add to their profile, you can turn Delve into a searchable database of employee skills and experience the next time you have to put together a proposal or build project teams.

While Delve seems like one of those apps that you might want to investigate further, unfortunately, some black clouds are on the horizon. Microsoft has removed the Windows 10 Delve app and has announced at Ignite 21 that it will also be removing the Delve iOS and Android mobile apps in June of this year. In its place, Microsoft is directing users to the Outlook mobile, which includes similar features to Delve. This move could signal that the end of days for Delve, which is a shame because it does have some potential for enhancing your productivity. It might also be Microsoft's intention to release an updated app that could consolidate Delve into the new Project Cortex, which utilizes Microsoft Graph as well. We will have to wait and see. Until then, give Delve a try and let us know your thoughts.

Get Expert Help Using Microsoft 365 for Construction Projects

If you need any help with Microsoft 365 for your construction organization, check out our managed services and sign up for a free consultation. If you are interested in our prebuilt and enterprise-ready project management information system (PMIS) for your Microsoft 365, visit our catalog of available Construction Viz apps and submit a demo request.

Microsoft Power Automate Construction Use Cases

Case Study | April 27, 2021

Here are a few examples of how we delivered real-world efficiencies for our construction industry clients using Microsoft Power Automate.

If you have been following our posts, you will know that we are big fans of the Microsoft Power Platform and, in particular, Power Automate, Microsoft's modern take on workflows. Available in Microsoft 365 with E and M licenses or separately if you need to access premium connectors, Power Automate provides a quick way to take advantage of workflows to improve processes predictability and business efficiencies for your organization.

Construction Use Cases for Power Automate

Microsoft provides a gallery of Power Automate workflow templates, which can be used for simple business scenarios or as a starting point for more complex solutions. We have helped numerous construction industry clients achieve their goals by leveraging Power Automate. Below are a few use cases of Power Automate for construction.

Document Review

There are several ways to create document approval workflows in Power Automate. For example, you could leverage the built-in approval actions to send approval requests via email or SMS to a mobile phone where the user clicks on a link to perform the approval.

One of our clients needed their sub-contractors to approve and respond to document changes without having access to the company's project management information system (PMIS). We leveraged Microsoft's Adaptive Cards technology to allow recipients to approve document modifications without leaving the email they received with the notification for action. Handling approvals entirely within emails was more convenient for the approver and helped improve engagement while increasing the turnaround time for feedback since users didn't have to learn a new system. A bonus was that the client didn't have to purchase additional licenses for their sub-contractors.

For another client, we used Power Automate to generate a daily digest of new and updated documents from each program's projects for PMs to review and provide feedback. This workflow also sent a weekly digest of projects that were closing out and attached a PDF document binder (also created by the workflow) of all the project documents as an attachment to the email. In each case, the body of the email contained project-specific information extracted from the project sites.

Project Safety

One of our clients needed to log when personnel entered and left construction sites to allow them to know who was on site quickly should there be an incident. To meet this requirement with Power Automate, our client's users registered their mobile phones with the new workflow we created. Then we leveraged Power Automate's geofencing features to trigger updates to a SharePoint list on the movement of personnel around construction sites.

For another client, we created a workflow to monitor data from weather stations located at the construction site. The workflow recorded the real-time weather at the site and sent alerts in the event of inclement conditions. Another workflow monitored data from a weather service and processed weather forecasts for construction sites to allow project planners to schedule or reschedule work based on forecast local conditions.

Project Automation

We built a workflow for a client to automate the request, approval, and provisioning of Microsoft Teams sites from a predefined set of templated sites. Users would complete a form to request a new team site, specifying the owner, users, the template to use for configuration, and if it needed to be private or public. The workflow would route a request to the project manager for approval. If approved, the team site would be provisioned and configured, and an email sent confirming its approval and creation to the requestor. If the project manager denied the request, the workflow sent a notification to the user with the reason.

For another client, we created a workflow to allow users to work cost reports and budgets in Excel without changing their processes rather than forcing them to log in to the PMIS to update project financial information. The workflow reads data from the Excel workbooks and sheets and updates the corresponding SharePoint lists in the PMIS. Additionally, if someone updates the values in the PMIS, they can optionally be written back to the master Excel file.

Take Advantage of Power Automate for Your Construction Projects

The above are just a few examples of how we have helped our clients use Microsoft's Power Automate to achieve efficiencies with repeatable processes that provide predictability and ensure accuracy. There are so many more. Make sure you explore what Power Automate can do for your construction projects.

And if you would like some help, we have several construction-oriented Power Automate flows and components to jump-start workflows for your projects. You can request a free one-hour consultation here.

Does Your Organization Need a Custom Project Management Information System?

Case Study | March 22, 2021

How you manage your construction projects is unique to your organization, so shouldn't your construction project management software be as well?

Lydon Solutions has been developing custom Project Management Information Systems (PMISs) for the construction industry using Microsoft SharePoint and SQL Server since 2009. Over the years, we have found that every company, every project, and every project manager manages their projects differently. While there are standard practices across the construction industry, there is no one-size-fits-all process used across the scope and breadth of major construction projects.

Given the above, why do so many companies try to make do with an out-of-the-box PMIS when they really need and want a custom solution? The answer is: many management teams incorrectly assume that a custom solution is too expensive and time-consuming to implement. Here is why they are wrong.

The hidden costs of an out-of-the-box PMIS

Custom solutions strike fear in some companies because of their reputation for being expensive and taking too much time to implement. Instead of getting a custom solution that fits their needs and processes, these companies end up doing a combination of the following:

Working around the limitations of an out-of-the-box PMIS
Looking the other way as project teams do most of their work in Excel because the company PMIS is too cumbersome to use
Hiring more people to do the manual administrative tasks required by their inflexible off-the-shelf PMIS

In other words, rather than investing in a solution that works for them, many organizations struggle with tools that ultimately cost them more in the long run.

If companies performed a cost-benefit analysis, they would see that implementing a custom PMIS has the following long-term benefits over their status quo system:

A custom PMIS mirrors your work processes, allowing you to optimize your business processes for efficiency.
A custom PMIS offers greater scalability as your organization changes. You can flexibly adapt to changes in process, scope, resources, and so on.
Since a custom solution includes just what you need, you do not have to pay for unnecessary hardware or functionality. You can also reduce your reliance on offline tools.
Your organization likely uses other enterprise platforms. Your custom solution can integrate with all the other software products in use by your company, adding more efficiency in to your workflows.
Having a solution that lets your teams be more efficient and do their job better can give you a strategic advantage over your competitors using rigid off-the-shelf solutions.
When your PMIS more closely aligns with how you actually do business, the more likely it is that your organization will use the system.

Okay, you might wonder if an off-the-shelf system costs more over time; why don't all organizations go with a custom solution that better fits their needs? Most likely because they are intimidated by the planning required to launch a custom solution successfully.

The cost of a custom PMIS solution lies in the planning

Surprisingly, the cost and challenges of building a custom PMIS have shifted from IT development to upfront planning, requirements, and overall design. Platforms like Microsoft 365 have made it easier than ever to deliver custom solutions. Ultimately, the cost of the custom PMIS and its success is contingent on how well companies can articulate their vision of how the system should function to support their business needs. And how well an IT consulting company, which knows construction, can translate those requirements into a real solution. As with any construction project, you can't build without a solid design. The same goes for IT.

I want a custom PMIS, but where do I start?

In prior posts, we outlined the best practice to follow when rolling out a new PMIS at your organization. We have articles on planning, evaluating technology, implementing, and supporting a PMIS. You can start there to understand the big picture of delivering a PMIS. If you are considering using Microsoft 365 as the foundation of your PMIS, our previous blog post has some tips as well.

If you need additional help with the upfront planning or development for a custom PMIS solution, I invite you to submit a free consultation request with Lydon Solutions. We have an experienced team of construction and IT professionals with a track record of delivering award-winning PMIS solutions. We also have an expanding catalog of integrated Construction Viz apps that you can combine to fast-track your own fully customizable PMIS solution in Microsoft365 and SharePoint.