Microsoft Project Online is Microsoft’s end-to-end Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solution for organizations from Office 365.
With the introduction of Roadmap in Project Online, Project Home is now a central location for visibility into portfolio-level initiatives as well as tracking projects.
Now Roadmap allows organizations create visual timelines of strategic initiatives across the entire enterprise. Users may define stages, phases, as well as tasks from specific project as well as key dates for overall initiatives.
Currently only projects from Azure (VSTS) and Microsoft PPM may be utilized in Roadmap, however, future releases will provide support for Planner and other, third-party services like Jira.
Using Roadmap with Microsoft Project Online & Server
Creating a Roadmap
1. In office.com, select the App launcher > All apps > Project to open Project home.
2. Select Create new > Roadmap.
3. Click Untitled roadmap, to bring up the roadmap details dialog.
4. In the roadmap details dialog, enter a name for the new roadmap. Click the “X” in the top right of the to close the dialog when finished.
Add a row and connect it to Microsoft Project Online
Note: Rows represent the projects in our roadmap
- Click Add row to add a new row.
2. Enter a title for the row as well as choose an owner.
3. Select the Connect to a project button, then select Project.
4. Select the Project Web App URL check mark to verify the URL
Note: if a URL does not appear, in a different browser tab or window navigate to your Project Web App home page and copy it’s URL. Come back to this page and paste the URL in the Project Web App URL box.
5. Start typing your project name in the Choose a project text box, then select it from the list.
6. Click the Connect button.
Note: Once Roadmap has connected to your project, the Add items dialog will appear.
7. On the Add Items dialog, type in the name if the item(s) you would like to add in the Search for items to add text box.
- In our example we first type in the name of the project again, as we want to add the project summary record to our roadmap
Note: Typically, we would add stages, phases or other items and key dates that are within the project. Consider adding the Project itself as an item to have the entire project duration represented on the roadmap as well.
The Start and End dates will stay in sync with Microsoft Project Online. The names and status are changed manually.
8. The completed Add Items dialog is shown below. Click the Add button when finished.
9. After clicking the Add button you will see a confirmation of the number of rows added to the roadmap.
10. The roadmap will also have Gantt bars representing the items just added.
Share a Roadmap with a Group
Note: You may either create a new group and add users to it, or select an existing group, in order to provide access to a roadmap. Once you have selected a group, however, it cannot be removed.
Create a new group
1. Click the Group Members link.
2. With the Create Group link selected, start entering the name of a user to add in the Enter a name to add a member text box.
3. Select the user displayed in the list and click the create button.
Add an existing group
1. Click the Group Members link.
2. Select the Add to a group link, then click the Select group list arrow and locate, then select the group to add.
3. With the selected group in place, click the Add button.
4. Click on the Group member link, and now confirm the selected group is displayed.
Note: to add members to this group, simple type their name in the Enter names to add members text box and press enter.
Add Key Dates to your roadmap.
Note: Key dates are not applicable to any singular project, but rather to your overall roadmap.
1. Click the Add key date link.
2. Specify a Name, select a Due date, and set the Status. Then click the Add key date button.
3. The Key date is now present in the Roadmap.
Change Status in a Roadmap
Note: Changing the Status in your row items allows users to quickly determine what items are finished, on track, at risk, etc. based on bar color.
1. Click on a row item for which you want to change status.
Note: A pop-up details dialog is displayed.
2. Select the desired Status from the Status drop down list box.
Note: the item bar changes color to reflect that of the selected status.
3. Continue changing row item status’
Remove a Row Item
1. Select a row item to display it’s pop up dialog, then select the Open Details button.
2. Click the Remove phase link to remove the row item from the roadmap.
3. Click the Remove button to confirm removal of the row item.
4. Note that the Final Acceptance stage is no longer present in the Roadmap.
Delete a Roadmap
1. Click the title of the Roadmap in the top-left of the roadmap view to bring up the Roadmap details dialog.
2. Click the Delete Roadmap link
3. Click the Delete button to confirm deletion of the roadmap.
Note: the roadmap has been deleted and since there are no roadmaps remaining in this instance, none are shown on the Project Home screen.
Contact Integent
Please visit www.integent-com-staging.xbjfxmg0-liquidwebsites.com to learn about our Microsoft Project Training, Microsoft Project Online Training, and Microsoft Project Online Consulting services.
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