With the release of Dynamics 365 v9.0 Project Service Automation has become more powerful in terms of project management capabilities, PSA version 3 has a new feature added called “Reconciliation View” which is available on Unified Interface.

In this blog, we will explore the new feature of reconciliation view of PSA and its resource scheduling capabilities in brief. Before moving ahead, let’s understand the use of Reconciliation view.

For any project, it is very important to manage the project team members efficiently, means resource booking and their dedicated task assignments should be perfectly aligned.

Ideally, the project manager should be able to align the resource booking as per the task assignments they have for them, which will help the resource to complete the task in time. But if you see the reality, it is very difficult to do so, as in entire project life cycle resource booking changes many times based on the resource availability and also, project task assignment fluctuates based on the project priority/deadlines.

In PSA, there is a tab on the project entity called Resource Reconciliation view to help project manager to be able to reconcile the team member bookings and their task assignments for their project team.

You can navigate to Reconciliation view for a project by clicking on the Resource Reconciliation tab on the project entity as shown below:

The Resource Reconciliation view shows team member, their bookings and task assignments. Each cell represents the hours which shows time phases for months, weeks or days.

As shown in the above screenshot, there are multiple timescale controls are available. Like Month, Week or Day.

Note: The Resource Reconciliation view uses “Week” timescale control as the default.

You can use the calendar control to move forward and backward to change the view as per need, also at leftmost there is expander control available for each resource which will show the details of booking or assignment per resource. Please find the highlighted part above.

If you look closely, then there are two types of colors/shades which refer two below conditions:

Booking Shortage:

• This condition occurs when there is shortage of booking for particular resource (that means task assignments are more as compared to resource availability)
• Project manager can take corrective action here and can extend the resource booking to aligned booking and assignments properly

Excess Bookings:

• This condition occurs when there is an excess of booking for particular resource (that resource availability are more as compare to task assignments)
• Project manager can take corrective action here and can cancel the resource booking to aligned booking and assignments properly

When you have a situation where you have task assignments in hand without any resource booking (i.e. Booking Shortage) then you can click the Extend Booking button from context menu as shown below:

This will bring up a window where you can see the booking needed for resource’s shortage along with their bookings requirement.

Conclusion:

Resource Reconciliation is a useful feature of PSA, which gives the better insight into how much time a team member has been scheduled for the project. And help project manager to take corrective action by judging the booking and task assignments alignment.

To find out more about how we can help you get the most out of your Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation, write to us on crm@inogic.com today!

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The post Resource Reconciliation in Project Service Automation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Many times it happens that due to some reason i.e. long vacation/absence user unable to create/submit time entry or expense records. So user might want for that particular time slot, let the other authorize user make the time/expense entries on behalf of him. And hence get rid of the headache of missing any of time/expense entries during leave period. In Dynamics 365, you can create “Delegate” record to achieve this.

To let the other user be your delegate follow below simple steps:

1. Navigate to Project Service→Delegations

2. Let say there are two resource managers (Mike and Sam), and in absence of one manager other has liability to create/submit the time or expense entries.

Under this “Delegations” entity create the new Delegation record as shown below, you can create the record with Type=Time Entry or Expense as below:

Note: Before creating Delegate record make sure that “Mike Roy” and “Sam Developer” should be present as bookable resource record with “Resource Type=User” in D365. And user atleast has Resource Manager role.

3. Lets continue creating the Delegation record with “Type=Time Entry” as below, Let say Mike is on leave for the period 25 May to 30 May 2018 and Mike want Sam to be his delegate for the mentioned period.

Upon creation of above record, the record will appear in “Active Delegations” view as below:

4. Now, whenever Sam logged in, and willing to submit the Time entries by navigating to Project Service→Time Entries, Sam could see the delegation options, defaulted to his name i.e. Sam Developer.

5. Sam now willing to make time entries on behalf of Mike then, select the user, so timesheet will be appear as below:

Note: As shown above only those time entries will appear of Mike which falls in between 25 May to 30 May 2018. As we have created the Delegate for this period only.

Please note that while logging the time entries as Mike through, Sam might get below error:

So, make sure that Sam has assigned with the “Delegate” role as well as shown below:

6.Now, Sam can go on creating “Time entries” on behalf of Mike for only assigned period for which above delegate record created for.

7. The above created time entries would be logged actually against the Mike, and Mike can easily have access of this time entries as if he has created this.

You can follow above steps as it is for creating the Delegation records with Type=Expense, and can submit the Expenses by navigating to Project Service→Expenses.

Conclusion:

Simply by using the delegate concept in Dynamics 365 user can submit the time and expense entries in Project Service Automation even in their abscense without delaying the work.

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The post Submitting Time/Expense entries on my behalf through delegate in Dynamics 365 (PSA) appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Recently, we had business requirement where client need to record time against a project. And once the time entries has been recorded against the resources for particular week, those recorded time need to be reviewed by project manager (project manager may or may not ask to correct any of the time entry), further once time entries has been approved by project manager the approved recorded time entries passed to the customer for billing.

In Project service, submitting time entries is an important aspect to be take into consideration particularly when the times are being charged to customer.

In many organizations, weekly working pattern is very similar and hence many times required to copy the same time entries for current week that we did for the last week so as to get rid of tedious job of creating time entries one by one for the current week.

To achieve this “Copy From” option available on time entry comes handy. Using “Copy From” option one can easily copy a previous weeks details of time entries into the current week and then can use this time entries as is for current week or may edit as per the current week and submit this to project manager for approval.

Walkthrough:     

Let us now, have a brief walkthrough of “Copy From” option:

1. In Project Service, user can see “Time Entries” entity as below:

2. Once user click on Time Entries, he can create new “Time Entry” record by clicking on “+” button as shown below:

3. User can the enter the detail for “Time Entry” record, Select the Day, Type = Work, Project and Project Task against which “Time Entry” is need to be added as shown in the below screenshot:

NOTE: While creating the “Time Entry” record  default Type set as Work, and user can change it to Vacation or Absence in case the resource is not at work.

4. Now go on adding “time entries” for particular week let say from 8 April’18 to 14 April’18. Add few “time entries” with Type=Work and few with Type=Vacation/Absence as shown below.

Once all “Time entry” has saved, you can see those records in “Time Entries” grid, notice that the Time entry with Type= Work would apper as violet and with Type=Vacation/Absence appear as grey as seen below:

You can also see the breakdown of time entered for particular week on the right side of  screen under entries tab. So as to quickly confirm the time entered for particular week.

              Note: Once time entry saved the record is in the draft status.

5. Upon completing of “Time Entries” for particular week (As we previously did for the week 8 April’18 to 14 April’18) Let say now user would like to copy previous time entries as it is for the current week, let say for 15 April’18 to 21 April’18. Then simply follow the below steps:

6. Click on NEXT button as shown in the below screenshot.

7. Upon clicking on NEXT button, you will be navigated for the next week and you can see blank screen as below:

8. Click on “Copy From” button as shown below, and select the Timesheet Week that you would like to copy for the current week as shown below:

9. Let say, April 8- April 14, 2018 week has been selected, as shown below:

10. Upon selecting click on Ok, you will see that all the “Time Entries” that logged for the previous week has been amended here as it is, you can cross check with the breakdown of time entered as below:

11. If there were no time entries in the previous week then you could have seen the message as below:

12. Now let say if you want to submit the “Time Entries” logged, you can use the submit button to send all those time entries to project manager. As shown in below sceenshot all draft time entries selected by default, you can untick the checkbox and can exclude that time entry from submitting to the manager.

13. Upon clicking on above Submit button all the selected time entries would be submitted to project manager, as you can see below status has been changed to “Submitted”.

14. If time entry has logged incorrectly or project manager ask to change/correct the time entry then RECALL option is available to change the time entry back to the draft and can be corrected.

Note: You can use RECALL option till the time entries are in submitted state, once approved by project manager it can not be changed.

15. During submitting the time entries, user might face the error message as below:

So before submitting the time entries, please make sure that the logged in user has Manger field pre-populated as below:

Conculsion:

Using the simple steps above user can copy the previous time entries using “Copy From” option in Dynamics 365

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