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- Hi, good morning.
Good afternoon.
Good evening, everyone.
I'm Sidhant, I'm part of Microsoft Project Product Team.
And let me welcome all of you
to this Microsoft Project Conference.
An event we all had been dearly waiting for, for months.
Today I'm going to talk about all the lovely things
we have been doing with MS Project,
and how we are making it more collaborative
than ever before.
There are tons and tons of things
which we have done in the past,
but my agenda for today will be,
how teams and project combined, make a compelling reason
for any small or big organization out there,
to adopt a platform and have all the conversations
about different issues, different tasks,
on just one single platform.
There's no need for people to go out to multiple platforms
multiple chat messengers, multiple email threads,
to know about what's happening in different projects.
Next we'll look at how MS Project is now becoming
more democratic than ever before,
and it can allow you to collaborate
with Office users and Guest users.
Potentially, you can reach out to anyone
on this planet earth.
The kind of collaboration that we have seen
in the hybrid world,
the biggest problem, which is happening is,
a lot of people want to work from different geographies,
different time zones,
which poses a very big challenge out there.
The reason is that a lot of people
they want to work asynchronously,
so there is an issue when people want
to update a task at their own pace.
I would say,
In the past, I've seen a lot of projects
were, more like, a commanded control center.
Wherein people would want one project manager,
who would go out and reach out to multiple stakeholders
and would update a task.
That time is now becoming a past tense.
Now, a lot of people, they want to be empowered
that they can collaborate with anyone,
even if it is a small temporary task,
or its a big ongoing, active project.
And similarly, the people who are,
who are taking participation in it,
they want that yes, they can update the task on their own,
rather than being reached out by a project manager.
So there's no one specific platform
where any big industry update everything,
and the project manager, and the team lead,
can find the answers to everything out there.
And they have to run pillar to post,
to find the relevant updates.
Be they scrum meetings, be they multiple ship rooms,
which waste a lot of their precious time.
Moving on, Teams is the defacto chat
and collaboration platform for millions of users
across the globe,
and is just becoming more and more central
to Microsoft project fruition.
I would suggest that if possible,
do watch Holly Pollock's video,
on what we can do in Microsoft Teams right now.
It is now very much possible to assign a task,
right from an ongoing chat.
If there are any minutes of meeting being recorded,
you can assign a chat to any stakeholder
as part of the project, right from an ongoing meeting,
that is truly ground shattering.
So we look at how Teams is becoming
more and more conducive and cohesive with Microsoft Project.
Next, I want to talk about
how Microsoft Office users can now participate,
and not just about, we are getting an access,
or read only access to our Microsoft Project,
but now they can actually edit their task.
They can update their task,
they can mark the task as complete,
and gradually they would be able do a lot more.
Currently it is restricted to only E3 and E5 office users,
but right now they don't have
to pay anything extra for this.
It's all a part of the overall office package.
Imagine that there are thousands of office users
in your organization, a lot many of them might not be a part
of Microsoft project, but you are still collaborating
with them on a temporary basis.
They might be an ask where, let's say,
you just have one small thing you have to reach out to them,
and then you'll have to switch to an Outlook thread,
or a different email platform.
But right now, you can just assign a task to them
in Microsoft Project, and they can revert to you,
right then and there only.
Last, I want to talk about how we are truly democratizing
the collaboration platform,
for not just a small enterprise,
but even for large organizations.
Now we don't want any tools to become a hindrance
in connecting with people.
Project managers can now assign a task
to virtually any guest user, who has been invited
to your organization's active directory.
And we can assign them a project license as well
so that they can update their task,
they can mark the task as complete.
They can view all the tasks
which have been assigned to them.
Even if a guest user is not a project license owner,
we can still, at least, assign the task to them.
They can view the task, and then they can move on
and update the task in an asynchronous manner,
on a different chat platform.
This way we can virtually reach out to anyone
with an email ID, and that person would be able
to see the task that has been assigned to them.
Without compromising on the biggest thing
which is our security, which is our forte.
let's take a look at all the amazing features
being rolled out in Microsoft Project.
You'll be looking at Martin, who is a project lead,
for Contoso Electronics.
Contoso Electronics is a giant,
which is also in the domain of mobile manufacturing.
They're rolling out the new mobile phone,
and the product launch is 1.5 months away.
So there are a lot of stakeholders who have to be onboarded,
so that we can really make it a great success.
So let's look at how Microsoft Project
is making the entire thing more collaborative,
and more efficient and easier than ever before.
So we'll start off by starting a new project.
We have a new project, we are calling it as
"New Product Launch, Mobile X1,"
and the moment we do it, we have an amazing, intuitive,
window of Microsoft Project being to us.
We start off with digital marketing
as the first phase of a mobile product launch.
And we are thinking about what could be
our various steps, then next will be a discussion
about marketing brief.
And now I want to assign it to multiple stakeholders.
Smith Parker is our marketing lead,
and I want him to be onboarded as quickly as possible.
Next I'm looking at, what could be the major things,
website update is the one, but I'm thinking,
should I involve tech people into it?
Emily is part of the tech team.
I'm thinking, should I have them as just assigned,
that she can be a part of it,
but she won't have the access to the Microsoft Project.
It's only for the purpose of my understanding and planning.
So we have this entire project in front of us,
It's beautifully laid out with all
the different tasks and sub tasks,
and the different times and duration assigned
to each one of them.
There are multiple stakeholders, almost 20, 25 of them,
who would be participating in making this launch
a great success for us.
We are looking at discussion of the marketing brief
this specific task, and now we look at
that it is pending for a while, it is getting delayed.
So Martin is getting a bit fidgety about it,
that yes, why the delay is happening.
There's a conversation between Smith and marketing,
that is how we can make it expedite the entire thing.
So now we move on to Microsoft Teams,
that's where the entire chat can also happen.
So not just Microsoft Project,
but we can have a very live chat on Microsoft Teams.
So we go on Microsoft Teams and we see that, yes,
there is a quick look in view task conversation.
So we can even have task-specific conversations,
and we can have project-specific conversations as well.
I'm tagging Smith, and I'm asking him that,
what happened about the marketing brief?
And he had reverted with the marketing brief
with a link which he had shared.
And when I look at it, I'm really pleased
by the kind of improvements, and the kind of advancements
he has already made.
And now going forward, I want to involve
more and more stakeholders quickly into the meetings,
so that we don't really jeopardize the launch event.
And as we see that Smith,
who's also a Microsoft Office user,
and also a Project license user,
He has the ability to change any task,
to change the duration of the task, to assign it to anyone,
but currently because he's a member
of the Microsoft Project.
But now we'll look at how office users can participate
in Microsoft Project collaboration.
Lydia, who is with us, a part of video editing team,
but she's not part of the overall Microsoft Project,
she doesn't have the license.
So how do we collaborate with someone?
There must be thousands of office users
in this organization, and in multiple such organizations.
But so far, we can only reach out to them,
and they would only have an access to the project,
but they can't update the task in a specific project.
So how can we solve this problem?
This has been the ask of millions of users
on Microsoft Project, that yes they want office users
to update the task.
Now we have this feature rolling out.
So now Lydia, who is a part of the video editing team,
who is not a part of this Microsoft project,
she doesn't have the license.
You can see it, she's only an office user,
but she would have the access
to mark the task as complete,
and also to change the percentage complete.
So let's look at how we can assign the task first to Lydia.
So we'll start over with, let's say,
finalizing the ad concept.
That's the first task before we get started
with the overall marketing campaign.
So we've just assigned a task to Lydia.
And now when we look at Lydia,
she was not a part of Microsoft Project,
but now when we go to Lydia's view,
we see that yes, she has been assigned a task.
But she doesn't have the right
to do all the different features,
because she doesn't have the project license.
But there is something specific which she can do,
which is marking the task as complete.
She's just completed shooting of ads,
and she's just completed finalizing the ad concept.
But editing of ads, is a big task,
it should take her many days.
And right now, she has only completed some part of it.
So she can go to percentage complete section,
and she can, depending upon how much she has completed,
50%, 70%, 90%, she can just do that.
And the same Project Manager would be able to see
that how much percentage completion has happened.
So currently we see, yes, this task is specifically
almost 35% complete.
In few days it'll be 100% complete.
So now Lydia can go to Microsoft Teams,
and she can have a chat for this specific task,
and she can roll in Smith Parker,
and she can have the conversation going.
She can share the details about the task
that has already happened,
and the review of the edited video.
And take the input from Smith, and she can work on it
again, in case there is any proposition that is needed.
So Martin is contended with the progress Lydia
has made so far, but still there are a lot of tasks
which are still pending.
So Smith was going to reach out to a lot of stakeholders
to expedite the overall process.
I would say the most critical part through the success
of the overall product launch,
would be reaching out to lot of stakeholders,
including social media influencers.
But our access is limited.
So I'm going to reach out to Dave,
who had been with this organization in the past,
but now had moved on.
So Dave is a freelancer now,
and is mostly thick with all the social media influencers.
So Martin suggested that, Smith can reach out to Dave,
and help him get onboarded,
and make this product launch truly a global success.
But the problem is that Dave,
is not a part of this organization anymore.
And Dave is technically a guest user,
and right now we don't have any means
to collaborate with guest users.
In a real life, I would say there would be thousands
of guest users, and thousands of different stakeholders,
to whom we would want to collaborate with,
but there's no means we can do that
on Microsoft project, as of now.
But that feature is being rolled out as we speak.
Now, Microsoft Project allows guest users to collaborate
on an existing, ongoing project.
In this specific example, we look at Dave,
who was with this organization before,
he's in good terms with Martin and with Smith.
And because of that, Martin decided
to give him a project license,
which allows him to, actually, contribute on the project.
So Dave has a Microsoft Office license,
and a Microsoft Project license, so that he can collaborate,
he can have an ongoing chat with all the stakeholders.
And now gradually, Dave gets onboarded
onto the the platform, and a task has been assigned to him.
Now, Dave sees the view in his Microsoft Teams,
that yes, this specific project,
which has been lighted up, in his Microsoft teams,
and there's a task, Reaching Out to Influencers,
has been assigned to him.
He can start the chat for this specific task,
and reach out to all the stakeholders.
So we have just seen that how Dave,
who's not a part of this organization,
is still able to collaborate.
Dave can mark the task as complete,
can change the status of the task
But now what about other users?
I would say, Martin had the confidence
that we can give Dave a project license,
because he has been a part of our organization in the past,
and we really trust his opinion.
But we still want to collaborate with a lot,
of other stakeholders.
What about the logistics management?
We want a stakeholder with whom we can collaborate
with for the audiovisual setup, for our launch event.
But we don't want to give him a project license,
because we might just need his assistance
for a single day, or maybe a week at best.
But we really want Christine to be a part of it,
so that she can understand the urgency
with which we want to move ahead.
So with that, I would say use case in mind,
we are bringing guest users without a project license,
they can view an entire project.
And then they can also collaborate
with the team members asynchronously.
Guest users who don't have a project license
won't be allowed to update their tasks,
won't be allowed to, maybe do anything in the project,
but they can only view the task.
But they can go ahead and collaborate with the stakeholders,
be they marketing person, be they logistics lead,
and they can chat with them on Teams,
or on different platforms.
And they can give an update out there.
So we have both the functionalities
getting rolled out, right, as we speak.
For the guest users who have the project license,
they can update the task,
and guest users who do not have the project license,
they can only view the task.
They will only have read-only-access,
and they can update about their status
in an asynchronous manner.
This is over and above the office users
which we have just seen, that all the office users,
including only E3 and E5 office users,
would have the ability to update the task.
Let's move on to a different use case.
Our mobile product launch has been a truly a global success,
we reached out to lot of social media influencers.
For the last seven days, we had been trending on Twitter.
And there were so many stakeholders, not just office users,
but guest users, who were talking about our launch.
And there really collaborated
on this one specific Microsoft Project,
to ensure that, yes, everything is moving in tandem,
and is happening on time.
But now we are thinking about relocating our office,
and starting a small satellite office.
For our other people who are working remotely,
so that we give them the truly an ability
to work remotely, as well as in a hybrid manner.
So we look at a specific use case wherein,
we started a new Microsoft Project,
which is for office relocation.
There are multiple stakeholders
who had already been added to it,
but there are tons and tons of tasks out there.
We want to look at how can we make the entire thing,
more and more effective for the stakeholders.
So there's something just like in Microsoft Excel,
we are now launching conditional coloring.
Which allows us to specify a specific filter
with which we can color a specific task.
Let's look at all the tasks,
where in the duration of the task, is more than 15 days.
or we can also look at all the tasks
which are assigned to Henry and to Olivia,
and all the tasks where the cost is between 2000 -$3500.
So only the task which, I would say it would subscribe
to any of these four attributes,
any of these four filter criteria, would get highlighted.
And as we can see, the tasks are getting highlighted
in different colors.
So we can share the same snapshot,
the same view with our team members,
so that once they look at it,
instead of looking at multiple hundreds of tasks,
they will look at only these tasks,
which are highlighted in different colors.
So with this, we are adding
more and more visually appealing colors,
to your overall grid view.
There was a lot to digest, but let me summarize.
Microsoft Teams, which is the global collaboration platform,
now blends more cohesively
with Microsoft Project for the web.
And now we can allow Office 365, E3 and E5 license users,
and guest users to collaborate in a more active way.
So we have one single platform,
for all your collaboration needs.
Thank you for watching this video,
and do check out all the other videos,
where we are talking about all the other amazing features
we are rolling out in Microsoft Project for the event.
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