Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Dynamics 365 Project Operations provides all the capabilities you need to run you services business.  Win more contracts, use resources more efficiently, deliver projects successfully, and maximize your profits with Dynamics 365 Project Operations!

Get your services business done in Dynamics 365 Project Operations - from sales to invoicing

Dynamics 365 Project Operations Overview: RV1

Microsoft recently announced a new Dynamics 365 application that unifies operational workflows. Upon doing this, the application provides enhanced visibility, collaboration, and enhanced information businesses and teams need to be successful from the sale all the way to finance. This new application brings it all together. Dynamics 365 Project Operations connects your sales with resourcing and project management to help understand when you can perform the work upon winning. Then the information is integrated with your financials to bring your finance team the information they need. This is all within a single application to help you operation more efficiently from sales through delivery.

Its All About Organizational Success

This new application is powered by the Microsoft Power Platform. It therefore provides a set of capabilities that are unmatched, enabling organizations to completely transform their services business.

• Financials - budgeting, invoicing, costing, and more simplified with project accounting and time and expense tracking, compliance and visibility across the organization to help display important business metrics.
• Resource Management - match the right resources with the correct skill in the right project - getting the project done more efficiently.
• Efficient project management - deliver projects with project management capabilities that are familiar and easy to acclimate to like Microsoft Project.
• Sales Enabled - streamline the sales cycle with quotes, flexible pricing options, seamless transitions from quotes to invoices.
• Teams - collaboration and productivity are improved with Microsoft Teams integration. Submit time and expenses from virtually anywhere!

Although Project Operations is extremely powerful by itself, customers with additional requirements can utilize additional Dynamics 365 capabilities such as Marketing, Customer Service and more! Custom applications may also be developed with Power Apps for the ultimately customer-centric experience.

Project Management Capabilities

Built on Common Data Service, Microsoft Project for Web was released in the third quarter of 2019. This solution introduced the Project Scheduling Service. This is a cloud-based version of Microsoft Project’s robust scheduling engine. A set of core project entities have been designed based on a combination of Microsoft Project and Project Server Automation Capabilities.

Project Operations brings together core capabilities from Project for the Web and Project Server Automation as a new service offering. The offering represents comprehensive project management capabilities including sales, pricing, costing, approvals, project actuals and resource bookings. The intended value of this new offering will provide project managers the ability to plan, manage and execute projects with insight into the financial impact of the changes they make during project execution to their projects.

Project Sales Enhancements

The following are targeted for this release wave:

• Split-billing for contracts - This feature will allow customers using project-quoting and contracting capabilities of Project Operations to set up multiple customers for each contract with a percentage split of the billings for each of those customers. This scenario will help where there is a product vendor of manufacturer involved who will be paying a portion of the cost of a customized implementation or value-add, as required by the customer.
• Ability to set up "not-to-exceed" project contracts and quotes and enforce during invoicing - For time & materials (T & M) contracts, there is sometimes a limit agreed to between the customer and the vendor for the maximum amount billed to the customer. With this Dynamics 365 Project Operations feature, customers may set up a cap or limit on a T&M project contract that will be enforced by the system during invoicing (upon creating an invoice).
• Ability to set up billing and chargeability options for work breakdown structure (WBS) tasks - It is common to have different types of contract agreements for different phases of work in project organizations. A vendor may negotiate a fixed price billing setup for the prototype phase of a project and a T&M phase for the implementation. Tasks on a project may also be setup/categorized as chargeable and others non-chargeable/complimentary. This Dynamics 365 Project Operations feature will allow for a project manager to mark certain tasks as chargeable, non-chargeable, which will be enforced when recording sales values and creating invoices for the costs incurred on those project tasks.
• Support for retainers on project contracts - Contracts such as retainer-type are those that allow the customer to have a predictable cash flow. This will allow the customer to have a predictable monthly payment that the service provider will user to draw down against for the cost of services delivered during a particular period. Services in excess of the retainer will be invoiced at the end of that period, or pushed to the next billing period until the project end. This Dynamics 365 Project Operations feature will allow customers to draw up a contract that will have a retainer schedule and billings by period. The retainers will be used during invoicing to draw down against the cost of services delivered. The feature will also be used to support advances and prepayments that represent one-off requests, however, they can be used/reconciled much like a schedule retainer payment.
• Project Accounting and Financials in Dynamics 365 Project Operations - Time and Material as well as Fixed-price billing arrangements with customers for project-based contracts are often supported by multiple revenue processes and accounting processes. This is done for tracking project work-in-process (WIP) balances. Dynamics 365 Project Operations customers will be able to leverage accounting and revenue recognition capabilities to complete their project management processes from sales through project accounting.

Related Links

Dynamics 365 for Sales – Lead Management Lifecycle
Dynamics 365 for Sales – Lead Qualification
Dynamics 365 – Changes to how you administer your Dynamics 365 instances
Dynamics 365 for Sales – Working With and Creating Leads in Dynamics 365