Project Plan 365 Collaboration with Microsoft Project Files (MPP) in OneDrive cloud White Paper Housatonic Software - Project Plan 365 App 2014
Contents 1. Introduction... 3 2. Prerequisites... 4 3. What Is Project Plan 365?... 5 4. Collaboration Scenario... 6 4.1 Team Collaboration Big Picture... 6 4.2 Create New/Edit MPP Project Plan with Project Plan 365... 6 4.3 Publish & Save Plan to OneDrive Cloud Storage... 8 4.4 Assign Users and File Rights in OneDrive... 14 4.5 Share Project Plan with Team Members... 15 4.6 Open Project Plan with Project Viewer 365... 18 4.7 Edit... 19 5. Going Mobile... 25 6. Conclusion... 27 www.projectplan365.com Introduction 2
1. Introduction The purpose of this document is to present how sharing functionality works across a range of products such as Housatonic Project Plan 365 and Housatonic Project Viewers (Housatonic Project Viewer for Web and Housatonic Project Viewer for PC, as well as mobile clients for viewer product), in order to facilitate collaboration between the Project Manager (PM) and Team Members (TM). In this way the whole team will be on the same page when working together on shared Microsoft Project files stored on OneDrive cloud storage. The proposed collaboration scenario is based on the assumption that already a lot of people use a cloud storage service to manage projects and within a team there is already a shared folder on the cloud and they can add there several mpp files. The sharing feature will be described in the context of the current flow and existing user interface in Project Plan 365 and Housatonic Project Viewers (Housatonic Project Viewer for Web and Housatonic Project Viewer for PC products). From our application we will not set anything regarding sharing options in cloud, we will deal only with validations, regarding the rights a user has set on cloud and what rights a user was granted from our application. The sharing concept was inspired from how sharing is done in Microsoft PowerPoint 2013, but adapted to our existing user interface and meant to work with Microsoft Project mpp files, which may reside in various locations: cloud storage services, internal network folder and mpp files received as email attachments. The current document will focus on how sharing is done in case of a free demo application, when no licenses and purchase fees will be involved. Therefore there will be no need of a login phase, where the PM/TMs enter their email address or other login credentials to be validated by our system. Also there will be no PIN generated for the PM or TM when purchasing the license, as part of the authentication step and there will be no restriction regarding the maximum number of concurrent users that can use the application. This whitepaper is organized as follows: in Section 2 (Prerequisites) there will be presented what products and software applications will be necessary to be used by project managers and team members, whereas the Section 3 (What is Project Plan 365?) will give an overview of the features offered by Project Plan 365 product. Section 4 (Collaboration scenario) will be dedicated to present in detail the necessary steps to accomplish an end-to-end collaboration across a team. Section 5 (Going Mobile) will describe how team members can use mobile devices (phones, tablets) for collaboration. In the last section (Conclusion) several conclusions will be offered regarding how collaboration can be achieved by using our products. www.projectplan365.com Introduction 3
2. Prerequisites In order to use the collaboration functionality it is assumed that the whole team uses OneDrive as their chosen cloud storage provider and that both Project Managers and Team Members already have accounts created on OneDrive (https://onedrive.live.com/). Project Managers will use the Project Plan 365 product, whereas Team Members will use Housatonic Project Viewers products (Housatonic Project Viewer for Web and Housatonic Project Viewer for PC, as well as mobile clients for viewer product). If you visit http://projectplan365.com/ website, you can access the free demo versions of both Project Plan 365 product and Housatonic Project Viewer for Web products, which can be used without needing a purchased license. From this webpage if you click on Free Demo link you will see 2 links corresponding to the Project Plan 365 (Create or Edit a Project) and Housatonic Project Viewer (View a Project) product categories. www.projectplan365.com Prerequisites 4
3. What Is Project Plan 365? Project Plan 365 is an intuitive solution for creating, opening and sharing Microsoft Project compatible files (MPP) from any storage, platform or device. The Housatonic Project Plan 365 application supports a wide range of users and is designed to support the Microsoft Project viewing (MPP files) needs of the entire project team or organization: 1. Project Team Members can view project information right from their desktop using any standard browser. 2. Project Managers can easily publish or email project information and make it available in a matter of seconds to the entire project team. 3. Executives can view project plans and get quick access to project reports, status reports and other critical information. Features it offers: Teams: Perfect for teams working in fast-paced collaborative environments which may include across disparate geographic locations Save & Share: Save as MPP or XML & share via live presentation, email, OneDrive, Google Drive, Office 365, Dropbox, SharePoint, etc. View: Team Members can view, sort, filter, print, zoom, read notes, etc. Feedback: Team Members provide updates such as: work completed, notes, etc. Overview: Create a consolidated view across multiple projects with an "executive" dashboard Reports: Generate cost, allocation, schedule, "who does what, when" reports www.projectplan365.com What Is Project Plan 365? 5
4. Collaboration Scenario 4.1 Team Collaboration Big Picture A typical collaboration scenario between the Project Manager and Team Members consists of 3 steps: Step 1: Project Manager creates or edits a Microsoft Project (MPP) file using Project Plan 365 (PP365) and shares it with the team using OneDrive cloud storage Step 2: Team Members access the Microsoft Project (MPP) file from various devices and browsers, look through it and each make some small edits using Housatonic Project Viewers (Housatonic Project Viewer for Web and Housatonic Project Viewer for PC, as well as mobile clients for viewer product) As you can see from the above picture Step 1 (PM creates or edit an Microsoft Project plan with PP365, then publishes and shares the file via OneDrive) corresponds to the Project Managers from the team that will use Project Plan 365 product, whilst Step 2 (TM access the Microsoft Project file and perform small Edits using viewer applications) belongs to the Team Members. 4.2 Create New/Edit MPP Project Plan with Project Plan 365 For demonstration purposes let s take for example the case of a Project Manager that creates from scratch an mpp file with Project Plan 365 describing a building construction process. To create a new project plan he must select from the File menu, New option that will create an empty mpp file. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 6
At the end, the construction project plan will look like below: You can skip this step if you have already a Microsoft Project license and you decide to create an mpp file using Microsoft Project. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 7
4.3 Publish & Save Plan to OneDrive Cloud Storage Next the Project Manager chooses to publish the currently opened project plan. To do this, he selects the Publish option under the File menu, where the user can find in the right side some explanations regarding this option. The same functionality can be accessed from the Team menu. After clicking on the Publish option a Publish window will be displayed, with options for doing the publish: As can be noticed there are two MPP file publishing options: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 8
Read Only: this option will lock the file and mark it as read-only, so no edits can be performed Collaboration (Task Name, Task Notes, % Complete): this option allows selected columns to be updated by all project Team Members. By using this option, the Project Manager will be able to choose what fields can be edited by the Team Member using the Edit feature from Housatonic Project Viewers products. If for instance the Project Manager selects Task Notes field beneath the second option, the project plan will be published only with notes field being editable, so that in Housatonic Project Viewers Team Members could only change the notes field for a task. After the publish is done, a dialog will be shown informing that file was published successfully and from where the user can choose the location for the file to be saved: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 9
When clicking on the save it text, the save dialog will be displayed, where he clicks on the OneDrive option: If this is the first time when the Project Manager accesses the OneDrive cloud within Project Plan 365 application, he will have to insert its login credentials (email address and password) for his OneDrive account: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 10
After this, user must give permission to Project Plan 365 application to access information from his OneDrive account: After this the Save dialog will appear, where the user chooses to save the project plan with the name ProjectWorld under his OneDrive folder called ProjectWorldFolder: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 11
After a waiting message, a confirmation dialog will be shown, informing the user that file was successfully saved in the designated folder from his OneDrive account: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 12
The Options button from the Save As to OneDrive dialog allows you to specify a way of saving the file. You can either save it in read-only mode (the plan will be viewable only) or in Collaboration mode (Task Name, Task Notes, % Complete can be made editable, in any combination). Saving in collaboration mode will enable the Edit feature in Housatonic Project Viewers, meaning that the team members will be able to update the selected fields. The chosen options are maintained throughout subsequent saves, so you don t need to set them every time, unless you want to change anything. If you click on the Options button, a similar dialog with the one for doing the Publish will be displayed: As a matter of fact, this Options dialog offers the same functionality as in case of Publish dialog, so there is no difference between of them. This allows the user to set publish options, also when doing a save for a file. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 13
4.4 Assign Users and File Rights in OneDrive Add team members as project plan collaborators from your OneDrive account. In this way, ProjectWordFolder becomes shared with the team members and the entire team can collaborate on the files within it. Let s suppose that the team consists of 3 team members having the following email addresses: projectwolrd.user1@myteam.com, projectwolrd.user2@myteam.com, projectwolrd.user3@myteam.com, that will be used by Project Manager to send them invitations for collaboration from OneDrive user interface: Then on the ProjectWordFolder, Project Manager will be able to set access level permissions for each team member. For demonstration purposes, we will refer to Edit and View permissions, available in OneDrive. So that Team Member 1 and Team Member 2 will have Edit permissions, whilst Team Member 3 will have View only permission. From the Invite people option Project Manager can add team members as collaborators on the shared ProjectWordFolder. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 14
Team Members added as collaborators on the shared ProjectWorldFolder: 4.5 Share Project Plan with Team Members Now that the folder is shared on OneDrive with the rest of team members, Project Manager can use Project Plan 365 to generate a share link for the file(s) he will collaborate from now on with his team. Under File Share menu there are 2 options for sharing the plan with Team Members: Share Link: a permanent link to the file will be generated, than can be easily inserted in an email message or chat window Email Link: an email with the share link will be send to the recipients indicated by Project Manager Share Link and Email Link options are also available under Team menu. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 15
Project Manager decides to use Email Link option to send to Team Member 1 and Team Member 3 the share link for ProjectWorld.mpp file from the shared ProjectWorldFolder. After clicking on Email Link option the following dialog will be displayed, where he inserts the email addresses of the 2 recipients: As a result of pressing the Send button, an email will be send to the 2 team members containing the share link for ProjectWorld.mpp file. Then by using the Share Link option, the Project Manager will send a share link to the same file to Team Member 2. When selecting this option, a dialog like below will be shown: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 16
After this, Project Manager copies the first link, paste it in a chat window and send it to Team Member 2. As can be noticed 2 type of links will be generated: one to be used for devices with regular size screen (PC, laptop, tablet) and the second one is meant to be used for viewing a project plan on devices with smaller screens (usually this is the case of phones). Both links points to the viewer application and can be used by a team member to view the shared mpp file using Housatonic Project Viewer. The 2 generated share links represents a combined URL, where the part after?mppfile argument will identify uniquely the file from the OneDrive cloud. https://www.projectplan365.com/projectviewernow/tviews.aspx?mppfile=onedrive://file.6 cf3b6e35a53f774.6cf3b6e35a53f774!118 This generated link will be permanent and not a temporary one, than can be easily inserted in an email message or chat window and send it to anyone interested. According to the selected options when the publish was done (see Step 3 Publish & Save Plan to OneDrive Cloud Storage), the generated links to the project plan will be for edit, allowing a Edit to be performed or a view only one. Therefore there will be 2 levels of protection: one is given by the checked option from the publish window that marks the mpp file as editable or view-only and another one is given by the rights set up in the cloud for the user, since the Project Manager or the network administrator may interdict edit rights for a Team Member on the shared folder in cloud. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 17
4.6 Open Project Plan with Project Viewer 365 The share link that Team Member receives in his email or chat window can be accessed from any device (PC, laptop, tablet, phone, etc.) using Housatonic Project Viewer applications (web version, for PC and mobile devices). Team Member 1 and Team Member 3 will receive in their email inbox a message having the following body: As in case of Share Link option, this email will contain 2 types of links: one to be used in case of regular screen sizes and the second one to be used on devices with smaller screens. The link behind the ProjectWorld and here texts will direct the user to the shared ProjectWorld.mpp file opened with Housatonic Project Viewer. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 18
By using the received share link, Team Members are able to open and view the Microsoft Project mpp file. All standard and custom Microsoft Project views, reports and functionalities like print, sort, filters, time scale, reports are available. 4.7 Edit If the file was published as editable (see Step 3 Publish & Save Plan to OneDrive Cloud Storage) and the project has editable fields, a notification window appears and the Team Member can update the fields via Edit option: In case the file is published as read-only, a corresponding notification will be displayed: To enter the Edit view and perform small changes, the team member must click on the correspondent menu option, available under 2 places: File Edit menu and Task menu: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 19
In case the file is not editable, Edit option will be disabled and Team Members cannot perform changes: Unfortunately, OneDrive only allow updates on a shared with me folder through the OneDrive UI, not through their API: Their official note states that: Creating, updating, or deleting files in a folder that is shared with the signed-in user is not supported by the OneDrive API. Apps can manipulate only files that are owned www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 20
by the signed-in user. Important We don't support third-party apps that upload files to shared folders. More details can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj680723.aspx. As a consequence, it is not possible for a Team Member to perform a Edit on a shared folder, which he doesn t own. An informative message will be shown to the Team Member trying to access the Edit option: On the Housatonic Viewers side, there are also available options for sharing such as Share Link and Email Link, having the same functionality as in Project Plan 365. These 2 options can be accessed either from File Share menu or from Team menu: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 21
In case if one Team Member receives a link to a file on cloud published with edit rights, it is fine for Team Member to propagate this link to other Team Members by sending it via Share Link or Email Link options, since the Project Manager can control the access on files in shared folders from cloud and to allow only certain people to perform edits via Edits. In this way, if a Team Member receives from other Team Member a link to an editable file, even if this wasn t the intention of the Project Manager, by having read-only access in the cloud, eventually the Team Member cannot make changes to the file. Let s suppose that Team Member 2 uses Email Link option and enters the email address of a person that is not added by Project Manager as collaborator on the shared ProjectWorldFolder. After clicking on the share link received in his email from Team Member 2 and entering his credentials for OneDrive login (if he is not already logged in to OneDrive), he will be showed with the following message: www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 22
Since the user is not allowed to view the contents of the shared file, he will neither be able generate a share link using Share Link or Email Link options. The below warning message will be displayed: In case of a project plan published by Project Manager with read-only rights, when Team Member is added as collaborator on the shared file and has enough rights to view the file, he can still can use share link and email link options, despite the fact that he cannot perform a Edit. Aside from clicking on a share link received in an email or chat window, a Team Member can copy and paste it in the text field corresponding to Open from URL method, available under File menu. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 23
The same behavior is expect to be obtained in case Team Member clicks on the received share link, which would be opened in the browser with Housatonic Project Viewer. www.projectplan365.com Collaboration Scenario 24
5. Going Mobile The second link generated for sharing a file within a team is meant to be used on devices with smaller screens, such as mobile phones: When Team Member clicks on this link, the shared project plan will be opened in a lightweight version of Housatonic Project Viewer: www.projectplan365.com Going Mobile 25
As in the case of viewer version for regular size screens, due to a limitation in OneDrive API there is no possibility for a Team Member to perform Edits on files from a shared folder owned by Project Manager. A corresponding warning will be shown when a Team Members clicks on the Update option: www.projectplan365.com Going Mobile 26
6. Conclusion Project Plan 365 facilitates collaboration between Project Managers and Team Members, where Team Members can view read only or perform small Edits like % Complete, Notes or Task Name. Team Members can perform Edits from any operating system (Windows, Android, ios) and any device (PC, iphone/ipad, tablets, etc.). Project Plan 365 products are compatible with all platforms and mobile devices so that Team Members are able to provide their current status from mobile phones or tablets by using the Edit Feature. The Team Collaboration feature ensures synchronization between the actual state of the project and the data displayed to the user, so that no progress committed by another Team Member is lost. Therefore any Team Member can stay up-to-date with the current progress of the project in a convenient way by simply accessing the Housatonic Project Viewers on his phone. For more information please visit our web site: www.projectplan365.com www.projectplan365.com Conclusion 27