My fellow Americans.
Tonight, we’re going to take a slight detour from our normal State of the Union Address,
and before I begin speaking on a range of important issues currently facing our country,
such as immigration reform, the battle against ISIS, ending the war in Afghanistan, the skyrocketing
price of Ben and Jerry’s and the plummeting price of tofu…
I’d like to offer some thanks to the hard working American men and women who make this
country great.
Those ever-important people in our workforce who strive to deliver projects on time and
on budget… that’s right… our Project Managers.
So this one’s for you, PMs, and particularly those of you using Microsoft Project Online.
You see, ever since my staff began using this Microsoft Enterprise PPM tool, we began to
notice gains in areas such as data visibility and task accountability, and we also experienced
a major increase in overall team collaboration and work efficiency.
It’s been great.
In some cases, we’ve even been able to reach across the aisle and bridge the bi-partisan
divide using this tool.
It’s true.
Kentucky Senator Mitch actually McConnell agreed with me that this increase in party
collaboration broke new ground.
So tonight, let’s focus on this collaborative aspect of the solution.
And because users who are new to Project Online may struggle to get that first Project Site
up and running, or to find the means to customize their Project Site template to better suit
their team’s needs, I’m going to show you how to get started.
All right.
Here we go.
Now, if you don’t have Administrator privileges you’re going to need to work with your admin
to tackle these steps, but for those of you who do have proper system authority, start
at your PWA homepage.
(2 second pause) Click on Gear icon in the upper right, and select Site Settings.
In the Site Collection Administration section, click on Site Collection Features.
Now, you see down there in the list where it says SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure?
That’s right.
Is yours activated?
Well, if it is, you’re going to have to de-activate it.
Yep.
Now, I know what you’re thinking.
It outta be done already for you, but in your case is wasn’t.
So deactivate it.
You’ll get a warning message, and when you do, don’t worry - just click Deactivate
this Feature.
Alright.
Whether your feature was already deactivated, or you just deactivated it, it’s time to
move on.
Go back to PWA, click the Gear icon again, find and click on PWA Settings.
Now, click on Connected SharePoint Sites.
This shows you a list of your projects and their associated collaboration or project
sites.
If you don’t have any projects showing, well, you’re going to have to go create
one.
But, we don’t have time to wait on you to go and do that, so you’ll just have to come
back to this recording later and finish up.
Those of you who do have at last one project showing, please continue with me.
We’re going to need a site to start with.
If none of your projects have a site, create one by clicking in the Site Address box associated
with one of your projects and click the Create Site button.
Excellent.
Now, everyone should have a site to start with.
Find one and click on it.
Let’s put it into edit mode by clicking the Page tab, and then Edit Page.
Now, you SharePoint wizards can make and save any number of adjustments to this page.
Just hit Stop Editing whenever you’re done.
And so all your site customizations you may have just made can be automatically included
with sites created for any new projects, you’re going to want to save this site as a template.
Click the Gear icon again, and in the Site Actions section, click the Save Site as Template
link.
Please take note… you won’t find this option if you failed to make that deactivation
I spoke of earlier.
Anyway.
Enter a readily identifiable name for your template, like ProjectSiteTemplateV1, for
both the File and the Template Name boxes.
If you included any documents or artifacts you want present with every site created,
be sure to check the Include Content checkbox.
Click OK, and when it stops working on it, click the next OK.
Our final step is to tell the system to use this newly created site when creating new
projects.
Now, you can have a project site that’s unique to every Enterprise Project Type you
have configured in your system.
You can do that.
It’s up to you.
But, I’m only going to show you this for one Enterprise Project Type, and when you
get the hang of it, you can perform these steps in repetition for additional ones.
Alright.
Click the Gear icon one last time.
Find and click PWA Settings.
In the Workflow and Project Detail Pages section, click the Enterprise Project Types link.
Find the EPT you want to tag with the Site template we just created, and click on its
link.
Scroll to the bottom where it says Project Site Template, and click the pick list to
locate and select the site you just created.
Click the Save button and you and your team are on your way to experiencing a greater
sense of project collaboration with every new project you create.
Well done, America.
If you have any additional questions, before we start the State of the Union…
please do not try to contact me at the White House.
You likely will not be able to get me on the phone.
My suggestion for you, rather, would be to get in touch with the good people over at
EPMA.
They’re the experts who implemented the system for my staff, and they can surely get
you and your team wherever you need to go.
My fellow Americans…
good evening….
And welcome to the State of the Union Address…