What you need to know: Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation V3

Ever you ever heard of hubs? Wait, why am I talking about hubs? Oh right, because Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation V3 is ONLY AVAILABLE through hubs. You know hubs? That thing you use all the time in your Dynamics 365 App for Outlook but always wondered why it looked different when you logged in online from a browser. As someone who is on the Microsoft forums often, there is rarely a support request that features a picture of hubs when asking how to help them with their CRM.

Note: Hubs are part of the Dynamics 365 Unified Client Interface (UCI). It’s the UI behind Dynamics 365 App for Outlook and for Dynamics 365 for Phones. The unified client interface provides exactly that, unified experience across all platforms, devices, and screen sizes.

As I was saying the latest version of PSA is only available in hubs, and it might just be the nudge you needed to start using hubs across the board. At Vox ISM we are making the transition right now, I myself, am responsible for a large part of the solution architecture. If you want to ask me questions shoot me an email, jsteinfeld@voxism.com. Alright now that that’s out of the way how about I share what I’ve been experiencing with the latest version of PSA, version 3, and we’ll take it from there.

New features and an improved user experience

Resource Scheduling made easy: All training guides aside the previous version of Project Service did not offer the ease of resource scheduling that I was looking for. I’m what some might call an expert and even I had my occasional challenges. The new resource scheduling with the UCI makes adding team members to your projects and assigning them tasks as easy as adding a contact to an account. Now with simple clicks you can add resources directly to the Project Schedule (formerly referred to as Work Breakdown Structures, read more about it in the link below) and the resource will be assigned the hours for that task, and then have access to book their time against it. Now I, wearing my resource hat, have the ability to view all the projects and tasks that I’ve been assigned to from one single screen.

Gantt Charts are gone, for now: Booooooo. They’ll be back in a future update, but for now, my favourite Gantt Charts are gone. For those of you who use MS Projects, you can still view your Gantt chart from there, and remember a copy of MS Projects Essentials is included in your PSA license.

Several user experience upgrades: There is a plethora of minor changes with large impacts that you wouldn’t really think about until you get to that area. For example, the chargeability view for estimating/pricing out projects has been improved; the quick create screens are much easier to work with, making time and expense entry exceptionally easy. The reconciliation page on projects offers improved insights into your projects bookings by resource. Then there are all the additional features that come with using hubs in the first place.

Conclusion

Overall I’m enjoying the experience significantly more and will be upgrading many of my customers to project service V3 in the near future. Also, it’s worth mentioning that if Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation is only available in hubs, how long until the other apps (Sales, Customer Service, Field Service) follow suit. We have already seen notes in the April ’19 release stating that many of the new AI-powered features will only be available in hubs. Time to start planning your transition.

The link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/project-service/whats-new-changed-v3

Cheers,

Jacob Steinfeld