Large Enterprises, listen up!
Have you ever felt that 5,000 projects simply aren’t enough? Microsoft have listened and they have announced a significant increase in the number of projects that you can create and manage in the cloud. Today we’d like to go in depth and explore how this update could affect you and your organisation.
Create and manage up to 30,000 projects
Traditionally, Project Online has allowed for management of up to 5,000 projects. However, starting April 2017 this limit is set to be increased by a massive 6 times. Now project managers will be able to create and manage up to 30,000 projects in the cloud using Project Online.
Why is this good?
You will be able to operate on a much larger scale! Being able to manage 30,000 projects allows for considerably more room to manoeuvre, and at the same time offers more flexibility to get things done, meaning you won’t have to resort to employing cumbersome workarounds to achieve your goals.
Pick and choose the site URL for your project site configuration
Another great new improvement in Project Online is how information is organised in SharePoint sites. This means that project managers can create a project site for every project, meaning you can guarantee a 1-1 relationship between each project and its project site.
Why is this good?
Previously, the number of projects were limited to 2,000. Often, more sites were needed as this limit was quickly reached particularly by large enterprises. As a result, an organisation would be forced to split its landscape into several PWA sites, which then extended to another set of 2,000 sites. Thus, you can see how this was by no means a perfect solution as it impacted team productivity by forcing people to work in a fragmented environment. Now, the increased number of available project sites allows for easier site management and increased productivity across teams.
One more thing before you go…
In addition to these great improvements, there was one more fantastic feature implemented in Project Online last month: Now users can set the destination URL of the project sites in the Enterprise Project Type template (or EPT). This not only helps with the meta-hierarchical structure of the organisation but also streamlines the process of project creation, allowing for site allocation based on similarities and functional equivalences.
How does it work?
Let’s say your company has a site collection dedicated to its sales department, for example: https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/sales, now you can configure all of your Sales projects (EPT) to provision sites directly into this site collection.
You do this by going into each EPT, then in the Project Site section, selecting Allow users to choose:
What if you can’t see these things in your environment?
This is a question that I’ve been asked many times by people who see these cool announcements with all the new features and yet they don’t get what they mean or the impact on their organisation straight away. Don’t worry, that’s the nature of Office 365 Releases. Releases are done in certain areas at a time, via multiple channels. Very often these changes are rolled out slowly and based on geographic zones, so if you don’t see them yet, don’t worry. They are coming!
About Edge Pereira , Business Systems Consultant, Sensei Project Solutions
Edge Pereira is an experienced Office 365 DLP, SharePoint Architect and public speaker with more than 10 years’ project experience in several countries. He has extensive knowledge of SharePoint technologies with strong focus on SharePoint Online, Office 365 and on shaping the customer journey to the cloud. More recently he has been focusing on portfolio management and Project Online.
