Table of Contents

Sensei PPM Essentials

Welcome

Thank you for purchasing Sensei PPM Essentials, we hope that it will prove valuable in enhancing the productivity and user experience within Project Online. If at any time you have a problem that is not covered by this guide, please log a support ticket via our support portal:

https://ipmo.zendesk.com

What is it?

Sensei PPM Essentials is a collection of tools that enhances your Project Online experience:

  • Advanced View Filter

    • The Advanced View Filter is a webpart that provides an enhanced way to quickly filter both the Project Center and Resoruce Center views dramatically enhancing ease of use.

  • Project Site List on PDP

    • This webpart is useful for embedding a list from the Project Site into a PDP. This allows the user to interact with Project Site Lists without leaving the PDP page for the project.

  • PowerApp on PDP

    • This webpart is useful for embedding a PowerApp on a PDP page and making it contextually aware of the project that is being displayed.

  • Tabulator

    • When there are many webparts on a PDP page is presented as a long scrollable list. The Tabulator is useful to organise these pages into horizontal tab groups to allow the user to navigate quickly to the content they are interested in.

  • User Picker on PDP

    • Project Online Projects can have custom fields to capture many type of data, however one data type is conspicuously absent -- the Person. It is very useful to be able to define a field on a PDP as being able to accept a person, either for workflow or other reporting purposes. The User Picker On PDP transforms a plain single line of text Project Custom Field into a field that accepts a Person in the same way that users experience with SharePoint people pickers.

Deployment

Pre-flight Checks

When planning the deployment for reWrap there are several requirements that need to be met to ensure a smooth user experience:

  1. Deployment user must have Site Collection Administrator rights to the site collection hosting PWA and any satellite site collections that host project sites for this PWA.

  2. Ensure a Global or Site Collection level App Catalog is available.

    a. For further details about creating a Global App Catalog see here

    b. For further details about creating a Site Collection App Catalog see here

Automated Procedure

Work on the automated deployment of this component is underway and this document will be updated when complete

Manual Procedure

  1. Use a browser to navigate to: https://ppm-essentials.sensei.cloud

  2. You will be prompted to download a file called sensei-ppm-essentials.sppkg. Save this file temporarily on your computer.

  3. Navigate to your App Catalog of choice, (either Global or Site Collection level) and select the Apps for SharePoint option, then press the upload button.

  4. Browse to the sensei-ppm-essentials.sppkg file downloaded earlier.

  5. You will be prompted to trust PPM Essentials as delivered from https://ppm-sessentials.sensei.cloud. Click deploy to continue.

  6. Verify that the package deployed with no errors:

  7. Navigate to the PWA where you would like to utilise the product, navigate to Site Contents, and press Add App

  8. Select "From Your Organisation" and then select the PPM Essentials App

  9. Within a few moments the App will install and deploy the components to the PWA Site

  10. The new webparts can be found in the Sensei group when importing a new webpart

Project Site List on PDP

Known issues

  • The Share and Shared With dialog doesn't work when the list is displayed in a Project Site List on PDP web part.

PowerApp on PDP

Setup

  1. Create Power App
  2. Get Power App Id from the Details page of the Power App.

Details menu of Power App

Details page of Power App 3. Add Webpart to PDP page

  1. Edit Webpart
  2. Click Configure
  3. Provide Power App Id

Usage

Within the Power App the values are available using the function Param.

For recommendation how to use parmeters see Tips for making your apps more maintainable section '9. Passing Context Variable'.

List of avilable parameters:

  • Project Id
    • GUID of the current project.
    • Only on PDP pages or else not present
    • Example: 9186c1ad-2e73-4d78-8176-cc527a9ac447
    • Parameter name: projectUid
  • Current User Email
    • SharePoint Mail of the user rendering the report.
    • Example: fabian.schmidt@sensei.cloud
    • Parameter name: currentuser_email
  • Current User Id
    • SharePoint User id of the user rendering the report
    • Example: 30
    • Parameter name: currentuser_id
  • Current User Login name
    • SharePoint Login name of the user rendering the report.
    • Example: fschmidt@sensei.cloud
    • Parameter name: currentuser_login
  • Current User Title
    • SharePoint Title of the user rendering the report.
    • Example: Fabian Schmidt
    • Parameter name: currentuser_name

Remove Borders / Perfect sizing of Power Apps

Option A

  1. Deactivate 'Lock aspect ratio'

Option B - Set Web Part size to match Power App size

  1. Find Screen size of Power App

Example: - width 1366 - height 768 - aspect ratio 16:9 2. Edit webpart under Appearance enter the size.

Either use the exact width and height or values with the same aspect ratio

Troubleshooting

Maintaining custom scripts in PWA

There are scenarios where features in legacy products run into issues caused by a new security setting introduced by Microsoft that prevents javascript from running in a SharePoint site.

You can manually change this setting from your SharePoint Administrative Portal -> Sites -> Active Sites -> Site -> Settings:

Image shows UI for CustomScriptsSetting

Changing this setting can alleviate problems with javascript based solutions such as PGI or Script Pack webparts, however Microsoft has announced they will be automatically changing the value of this setting back to disable scripts every 24 hours.

From Microsoft:

"Please be aware that the new PowerShell command will only be accessible until mid-November 2024 (previously May). Post that period, on SharePoint sites if administrators wish to continue using features that are only available when unmanaged custom scripts are permitted to run, they will need to re-enable the running of custom scripts every 24 hours."

As this functionality is required for the continued operation of production software, we have provided a Power Automate Flow that is capable returning this setting back to enabled state.

Please find the flow downloadable here.

This PowerAutomate flow requires a connection to be created prior to import:

Image shows UI for Flow connection

This connection must

  • Be using credentials that have access to the SharePoint Administrative portal
  • Be set to target the SharePoint administrative portal which has a URL usually in the format https://tenantName-admin.sharepoint.com

After importing the Flow:

  1. Set the variable for the PWA URL target
  2. Test the Flow
  3. Replace the trigger with a schedule trigger to ensure this setting is correct as required.
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