Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Mar 17, 2020

Microsoft is now introducing a new product Dynamics 365 Project Operations in October 2020 as a replacement for Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA).

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations connects cross-functional teams to win more deals, accelerate delivery, empower employees, and maximize profitability. This application brings capabilities from our existing Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation, Microsoft Project for web, and project management accounting within Dynamics 365 Finance into a single offering. This Announcement provides an overview of the new Dynamics 365 Project Operations application, how we are working with Microsoft Project to address this market opportunity, and the change of service impact to Dynamics 365 customers.

What is changing?

Dynamics 365 Project Operations is the new application coming on October 1, 2020. Going forward, all roadmap investments for the PSA software market will be done through this application.

• Microsoft will discontinue sales of Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation to new customers on October 1, 2020.
• Early adopters can join the Dynamics 365 Project Operations public preview in June 2020, while Dynamics 365 Project Operations will become generally available on October 1, 2020.
• Eligible customers using Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation may continue to use it through October 1, 2022 if on a CSP contract, or October 1, 2024 for EA customers, or until the end of their most recent Dynamics 365 contract or renewal, whichever occurs first. Microsoft will offer a migration path to Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Today’s project-based services businesses operate in a highly competitive market, where winning new contracts, accelerating project delivery, and increasing profit margins are significant challenges. Success in this highly competitive environment requires a solution that truly reimagines business operations across teams.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations will help project-intensive organizations run their entire services business – from prospects to payments, so they can:

• Win more deals and speed the sales cycle with fast, accurate quotes for projects, flexible pricing, and seamless transitions from estimate to execution
• Optimize resource utilization by aligning the right people with the right skills to the right projects—improving quality and helping you retain top performers.
• Speed project delivery with state-of-the-art, built-in project management that uses familiar, easy-to-use Microsoft Project capabilities.
• Simplify time and expense reporting with the ability to submit, approve, process, and reconcile time and expenses from anywhere—for faster reimbursement and client billing.
• Optimize project economics with project costing, budgeting, invoicing, revenue recognition, compliance, and visibility into key business health metrics such as gross margin and project profitability.
• Discover business insights powered by AI and increase agility with visibility across all your teams, data, and processes—for better, faster business decisions.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations is powerful on its own, but also expandable for our customers that require additional capabilities from Dynamics 365; including Sales, Finance, Marketing, Human Resources, Customer Service and more.

Impact to Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA) customer

Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA) currently includes project sales, resourcing and delivery capabilities. By adopting Dynamics 365 Project Operations, current PSA customers will get access to built-in capabilities from Microsoft Project for the web, as well as project financials. Current customers will get access to migration tools and will be grandfathered into Dynamics 365 Project Operations licensing. It’s important to note there will not be any immediate disruption of service, and we plan to work with customers to adopt Dynamics 365 Project Operations at their own pace. Customers evaluating PSA software solutions today should feel comfortable to continue their evaluation, purchase, and installation of our products, with knowledge and confidence of a strong product roadmap for Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

Impact to Dynamics 365 Finance customers using the project management and accounting capabilities

Dynamics 365 Finance currently includes a set of project management & accounting capabilities, such as Project Invoicing, Expense and Project Revenue Recognition, and more. These capabilities will transition from Dynamics 365 Finance and be maintained within Dynamics 365 Project Operations going forward. Current customers will get access to migration tools and will be grandfathered into Project Operations licensing.

Entitlements to project operations capabilities from within our Dynamics 365 Finance and Activity SKUs will no longer be included starting October 1, 2020. New customers purchasing these SKUs will not be entitled to project operations capabilities.

Project Operations application will improve the below unified operations:

• Project Sales with more contacts
• Project Managers accelerate project delivery
• Finance on-time and accurate project-based financials
• Team Members collaboration and simplified time and expenses
• Resourcing optimized resource utilization
• CxOx increased business agility

Team Members License

Mar 3, 2020

There is a new announcement from Microsoft concerning the Team Member Licensing, please feel free to send us your inquiry on the subject in case you need any clarifications.

Starting April 1^st, 2020 team member license will lose access to their apps.

However, Microsoft has now revised its timeline whereby all existing customer instances impacted by this change, including users assigned the new Team Members SKU since 1 October 2018, will be granted an additional grace period until 30 June 2020.

New Change for Team Member Access:

• Dynamics 365 for Sales
• Dynamics 365 for Customer Service
• Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation

What’s new?

The license enforcement will ensure that users with Team Member licenses can access only the designated app modules for Sales, Service, and Project Resource Hub.

License enforcement:

users with new Team Member licenses

Business value:

This licensing enforcement helps customers align with the Team Member license restrictions described in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide.

Feature details:

For Team Member licenses purchased during or after October 2018, license-based access will restrict users to a set of designated app modules.

These users will no longer be able to access Customer Service Hub, Sales Hub, or custom app modules. The designated app modules are as follows:

• Customer Service Team Member
• Sales Team Member
• Project Resource Hub

During the early access phase, users with Team Member licenses will be able to use the designated app modules mentioned above alongside all existing apps. Once license enforcement is turned on (starting April 1, 2020), unentitled apps such as Customer Service Hub, Sales Hub, and custom apps will not be accessible. Customers are advised to test their Team Member scenarios and migrate customizations to the designated app modules as needed.

Before general availability, customers can enable enforcement within specific environments to proactively preview full enforcement (that is, the scenario where non-designated app modules are blocked based on license entitlement).

NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.

The new sales team member app released in the wave 1 is specifically designed for user having team member license.

At a high level, users with the Team Member license can perform the following tasks:

In the Sales Team Member app:

• Customer management: work with contacts or see accounts.
• Lead and opportunity management: see leads or opportunities linked with accounts or contacts or see other sales-related data.
• Add notes and activities, such as tasks.

In the customer service context, this app module enables the following limited set of use cases provided by the Team Member license for employee selfservice:

• Create cases.
• Read and update the cases that they created.
• Search and view knowledge articles.

Access the Team Member App:

Users with the Team Member license can go to home.dynamics.com. They’ll see the designated team member apps.

When users open the Sales Team Member app, in the site map, they’ll see the available entities.

With the Project Resource Hub app, you can enter time and expenses for the projects you’re working on the go. Stay on top of your time and expense entry to make sure:

• Your clients are billed properly
• You get credit for the work you’ve done

Select Project Resource Hub.