Focusing on process and template-driven work flows, BrightWork 365 leverages the best of Microsoft 365 to achieve project and portfolio management success. BrightWork 365 integrates with the Microsoft 365 apps for different needs at different stages of a project. Here’s a look at a few examples.
See how you can leverage Microsoft 365 Apps for Project Management with BrightWork 365
Project Request Management with Power Automate
Creating a new project within a program that falls under one of the many simultaneously running portfolios can be quite challenging.
- Where and how to initiate the project?
- How to approve or reject a new project request?
- How to notify all team members about the new project requests and what happens to them?
These questions need to be answered systematically so that new projects can be initiated and approved smoothly. The BrightWork 365 ‘Request’ dashboard makes this challenging process easier. With a simple 4-stage process – Draft, Accept, Approve, and Create Project – the Request dashboard gives ample visibility and a unique control for managing new project requests.
This workflow is driven by Microsoft Power Automate, which is one of the three parts of the Microsoft Power Platform inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
What’s more? You can also jump start a new project without the request process if that’s what you wanted.
Project Management with Power Apps
In the BrightWork 365 PPM set up, we can review each project through the elements: Charter, Team, Stages, Gantt, My Work, Status, Documents, Issues, Risks, and Project Settings. Each of these processes are displayed through easily comprehensible user-friendly visuals with a few clicks.
These processes are interpreted, created, and presented with the help of Microsoft Power Apps. Power Apps filter information in and out of the system and display them in the dashboards, so you can assess each element of your project in real-time.
Program and Portfolio Visibility with Power BI
Project managers have to often juggle between getting an in-depth view of each project and maintaining an overview of their entire project portfolio. Senior executives also expect their managers to have a good hold on both so that each project runs smoothly and efficiently.
To go in and out of several projects and check their status as well as health, PMOs need an easy system with high visibility. Microsoft Power BI makes that possible with the help of separate dashboards that make high values of data available for review with unique filters.
Project Documents and Sharing with SharePoint Online
Each project involves sharing of huge amounts of data across team members and supervisors. With most companies going hybrid, if not completely remote, project documentation and reporting has to be even more precise and seamless. Imagine circulating an Excel with tonnes of raw data collected over several stages of a project. Sharing outdated project reports with large data can invite erroneous calculations and even loss of data.
With the help of Microsoft apps, you can create project documents and files and share them with your team as and when needed. Clicking on the Documents tab within a project will allow you to create new MS Word, MS PowerPoint, or MS Excel documents, or even upload an existing file.
The Document feature uses SharePoint Online, which lets you go a level deeper and review, edit, or delete a document. Once you have all your documents in place, you can also download them by clicking ‘Export’ and share ahead when required.
Start Managing Projects using Microsoft Apps with BrightWork 365.
Collaborate with Microsoft Teams
Now say you wanted to communicate with your team in real-time and discuss project updates. You can do so by jumping onto Microsoft Teams. You can chat, schedule calls and meetings, share content files, create work groups, with MS Teams.
Some team members will encounter their project management by going straight to the BrightWork 365 project management system through a browser. Others can also go to Microsoft Teams and encounter the same project there contained within its own Teams channel, and be able to interact with it from that vantage point.
Get Notifications Through Microsoft Outlook
Since BrightWork 365 is built on your Microsoft 365 environment, you also have tight integration to all the apps such as Outlook email. You are instantly notified if there’s any action at any stage of the project such as a new project request, project request approval, a project status report sent, and more. You can easily track the progress of your project as you can see each stage of approval that the project has been through, including comments and details included by your team members.
Data Security with Microsoft 365
While it is crucial to seamlessly share project reports within your team spread across several locations, it is also imperative that your data remains secure. BrightWork 365 integrated with Microsoft 365 allows you to assimilate, assess, and share data in a secure way.
Your Microsoft account is supremely secured by Microsoft Azure Active Directory, and associated security groups. This gives you the assurance to record and share data with your remotely working teams.
What database is underpinning the BrightWork 365 project and portfolio management?
The database or system used for such management is Dataverse, earlier known as Common Data Service or CDS. It also comes with your Microsoft 365 subscription.
Microsoft 365 also gives you the freedom to access your projects from a range of devices such as your iPhone and iPad. A mobile responsive interface provides you the much-needed mobility and flexibility while working remotely.
Essentially, BrightWork 365 PPM solution is packaged together with Microsoft 365 apps in clever ways. This integration aims to deliver a very usable project and portfolio management system. It’s not restricted to just SharePoint or Power Apps and rather uses the right bits of Microsoft 365 at the right stages of a project. Last but not the least, MS 365 is highly configurable. You can set it up as per your portfolio management needs and change and evolve as you achieve your project goals.
