Problem Definition: Post upgrading to V3 I faced issues while importing the time entries from my Resource bookings. This was not the case with V2. In V2 when I went to Import Time Entries from Resource Bookings, it used to pick up all the time entries that were in Active State. Resolution: The resolution to this was simple, but, little tricky. Below are the steps to be followed to get the issue resolved. Step 1: Go to the D365 – Custom App as shown in the below image. This will take you to the classic interface of D365 CRM as shown below. Step 2: Navigate to Settings à Customizations Step 3: Click on Customize the System This will open a screen as shown below. Step 4: Navigate to Entities- Bookable Resource Bookings – Views and open the view named Resource Bookings for Time Entries Import Step 5: Click on Edit Filter Criteria and add a condition Status  – Equals  –  Active These conditions ensure that only Active bookings are to be selected. Then click on OK and Save and Close. Finally, click on Publish All Customizations. Now when you try to import the time entries from Resource booking it will import only the Active time entries and leave behind the canceled time entries. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for the last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project management, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

There is good news for people who were using Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA) with the latest update. Microsoft allows it’s users to make adjustments to time entry using the plain journal entry in the past. For example, if a user wants to adjust the time entry from one to three hours, they have to make a new journal entry for the three hours. But, the only problem is that you cannot track it against a particular time entry. Now, if you are using PSA V3.7, you can make the correction or adjustments on the existing time entries with ease. Here are the steps you need to follow: Problem definition: With the previous releases, PSA could allow adjustment of Time Entry hours via mere plain Journal entries. That means, if we need to adjust a couple of hours or adjust a time entry worth 4 hours, we needed to make a 4 hours journal entry, which could not be tracked against a Time entry. Problem Solution: With PSA V3.7 there is a Journal correction for Time Entries which can be done against a Time Entry done. How do we do it is shown in the below steps: Suppose we a do a Time entry of 1 hours for a Project and Submit it for approval as shown in the below screen shot. 2. Approve the same via Time Entries for approvals. 3. As soon as the time entries are approved, they get converted to Actuals. This can be validated by going to Project Contract – Select the appropriate Contract – Actuals. You will see there are 2 records that get created: 1.Cost 2.Unbilled Sales. 4. In order to get the same adjusted via Journals, go to Journal Entries, SalesàJournals and click on +New 5. Write the Description and select the Journal Type Equals “Time Correction” and Save the record. 6. Click on Browsers back button, Open the Record from Active Journal view and click on Time Entry Corrections Tab. 7.Fill in the fields: Project Project Task Time Entry Date Bookable Resource Resource Role 8. From the below grid select the Time Entry for which the correction is needed, by clicking on the Add Existing Time Entry and then select the time entry from the quick create form that opens and click on Add. 9. Post Step 7 and Step 8 is done, click on Preview Button from the Ribbon control as highlighted in the screen shot below. 10. It will highlight the Journal Lines Tab and show you the Journal Entries with negative values of the value of the time entry and there will be 4 records that can be seen. 2 with a positive value of the time entry and 2 with negative that is the Adjustment value. This is how we can do the adjustment of the time entry which indirectly creates a Journal entry against the time entry done. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

Problem Definition: I have observed a fact in PSA that when the task in PSA Schedule (WBS) is deleted, the corresponding Resource Requirement doesn’t get deleted. Hence, it keeps on appearing in the Schedule Board to allocate. Resource Managers face difficulties in order to understand whether to allocate them or not. Hence, it is a job of Project Manager to ensure they are not appearing on the Schedule Board to allocate. Solution: Following are the steps with which the Resource Managers can ensure they do their job end-to-end post the task is deleted from the Schedule (WBS). Step 1: Check in the Schedule Board in the Project Tab whether the task appears to schedule. If not, then the job is done. Else, do an advanced find on the Resource Requirement with the below-mentioned criteria shown in the screen shot. See the results of the Advanced Find shown below. Open the task from Advanced Find by Double Clicking on it and check the status of the task. Change the Status of the Task to Canceled and Save the form. The task will now not appear in the Resource Requirement. You are done with the solution. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

There are tons of CPA software solutions that CPAs, accounting firms and other business professionals use to simplify their complex tasks. However, when it comes to mid-sized CPA firms, the only technology that will streamline processes in a good way is Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation (PSA). It is well-known that PSA is one of the most trustworthy and best CPA software solutions designed and developed by Microsoft. More than a utility software, it is more like a CPA Firms practice management software. Let me take you through an example of how U.S. based CPA Firm BPM is leveraging PSA to streamline their sales process and enhance their internal operations. About BPM Certified Public Accounting Firm: BPM is one of the largest California-based public accounting and advisory firms. Ranking amongst the 50 major firms in the US, they have offices across Oregon, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands. They serve a range of sectors from financial services, technology, life science and consumer business to real estate, non-profits, wine, and craft beverages. You can read more about BPM at https://www.bpmcpa.com/. Business Requirement: BPM wanted a solution that would streamline their sales processes and make customization and enhancements in their existing D365 for PSA for greater capability. Solution Delivered: CloudFronts commenced its professional journey with BPMC in December 2017 and continue to work with them. We worked with them every single day to cater to their existing Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation capabilities. The team rectifies and modify their reports, along with adding functionality to their existing PSA deployment. Further, the team had a review of the critical entities within the Sales module of Dynamics 365 and customized them as per the client requirements and specific business needs. Till date, the CloudFronts team is working with them to upgrade their D365 environments from v8.2 to v9. SSRS report was developed for Managers to view the availability of Team and their allocations on different Projects. Key Technologies 1.       Dynamics 365 Sales 2.       Dynamics 365 for PSA (Project Service Automation) 3.       SSRS Reporting Post Go Live: BPM went live with the project on 20 July 2018. With the ongoing support and maintenance of Dynamics 365 for PSA provided by CloudFronts, the BPMC team is now able to deliver projects on time without any obstructions while increasing employee productivity tremendously. By leveraging the enhanced capabilities of D365 Sales module, the BPMC team is now able to provide a robust end-end overview of the streamlined sales process thus increasing productivity and get actionable insights. Professional Services Automation software offers CPA’s digital tools they need to streamline and standardize their project accounting activities, even though each project is distinctly different from all the others. Fundamentally, every CPA firm is a business that sells the services of accounting, so mastering its business practices is key to its success. Several PMI studies reveal that adopting a standardized, structured approach to operations and practices was the strongest indicator of corporate success. Want to know how we can prove beneficial to you? Contact us now for free consultation and demo here. https://www.cloudfronts.com/contact-us/    

Problem Definition: As soon I upgraded my PSA version from V2 to V3, I saw that the role field got deprecated. Not only that, it was removed from Schedule (WBS in V2). We now had the functionality to directly assign resource to the task against having assign role. The projects that got migrated from V2 to V3 were all tagged with the resource named “Auto-Developer” and were with the roles, but, was not advisable to go the deprecated way. We now as an organization, heavily dependent on our day-to-day activities had to change the way we work and had to understand and reframe the working methodology for the following things: How to take care of the tasks that we need to make it Non-Billable Where to assign roles and learn to assign Resources instead. Solution: The above problem was not an easy cake to eat. The impact went all the way to Schedule Board and we need to redesign the way we allocate on tasks, since, I started seeing duplicate tasks on schedule board, one with Role and one without Role. I had to change the view query to reflect the tasks without role and match the remaining hours to the previously assigned hours on the task. Now this became a major challenge. We had to export all the bookings from the system and delete the previous allocations on the task with role to the task without role. This would then match the remaining hours to allocate on the task. The next things I did to make the tasks be treated as Non-Billable was to add the Column in the Schedule named Category, Wherein I added a Category named “Non-Billable”. This category was made Non-Chargeable. This is the Transaction Category which can be added from SettingsàTransaction Categories. I added a Calculated Field on the Project form then to calculate the Billable Hours which excluded this Non-billable Category task to see the correct Billable estimate of the project. BI Team in your organization will now need to change the reports adjusting to the above criteria to reflect the correct data. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

Often, one of the real-life scenarios is making time entries by either remembering what you did the whole week or looking at the Schedule Board and based on what you were booked, making each Time Entry in PSA manually. Tiresome and inefficient, right? Not any more, a cool feature let’s you just create Time Entries in PSA v3 by a single click. Now, let’s say your Bookings look like the below. I’m booked on 2 projects across the week. And now let’s see how we import these. Import Time Entries Let’s see you want to make time entries now based on you Bookings in D365. On the Time Entries scree, drop down to the arrow besides Import. Select Resource Bookings. (Obviously, like this method – you can import from Resource Assignments and Outlook Sync too! But we will keep that for some other day) Then, you can select what all Time Entries should actually make it to the records. So you can select the ones you need and leave the rest. Once you click on Import, it’s done! Time Entries are created. Works like a breeze!

Problem Definition: As soon I upgraded my PSA version from V2 to V3, I saw that the role field got deprecated. Not only that, it was removed from Schedule (WBS in V2). We now had the functionality to directly assign resource to the task against having assign role. The projects that got migrated from V2 to V3 were all tagged with the resource named “Auto-Developer” and were with the roles, but, was not advisable to go the deprecated way. We now as an organization, heavily dependent on our day-to-day activities had to change the way we work and had to understand and reframe the working methodology for the following things: How to take care of the tasks that we need to make it Non-Billable Where to assign roles and learn to assign Resources instead. Solution: The above problem was not an easy cake to eat. The impact went all the way to Schedule Board and we need to redesign the way we allocate on tasks, since, I started seeing duplicate tasks on schedule board, one with Role and one without Role. I had to change the view query to reflect the tasks without role and match the remaining hours to the previously assigned hours on the task. Now this became a major challenge. We had to export all the bookings from the system and delete the previous allocations on the task with role to the task without role. This would then match the remaining hours to allocate on the task. The next things I did to make the tasks be treated as Non-Billable was to add the Column in the Schedule named Category, Wherein I added a Category named “Non-Billable”. This category was made Non-Chargeable. This is the Transaction Category which can be added from SettingsàTransaction Categories. I added a Calculated Field on the Project form then to calculate the Billable Hours which excluded this Non-billable Category task to see the correct Billable estimate of the project. BI Team in your organization will now need to change the reports adjusting to the above criteria to reflect the correct data. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.  

Problem definition Often clients using PSA V2 used to complain of the feature missing was copying the project as the template. A few of the Construction Company clients of mine have huge projects and have almost similar structure for many of their projects. Undoubtedly templates use to serve the purpose, but, only to a certain extent. When you have an option to copy a project exactly, I would always prefer that. Below is how you do. Mitigation: Navigate to Project Services and try creating new project by Clicking on New Project button: Type the project name which you want to copy in the Project Template field. This will start copying the tasks from the project onto Schedule of the new project. You are done. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using Dynamic 365 Project Services Automation for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. According to my opinion, implementation of Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation is one of the best things that we did in CloudFronts Technologies. We have gained a lot with this implementation because we save time and money due to easy access resources and ability to manage them.

Dynamics 365 Project Services Automation demands a perfect configuration and that is the proof of being a sophisticated application. You won’t see any result unless the configurations are all set right. Use Case: I am observing from quite sometime that my Accounting Team complaints that when the Actuals are created on the project they are with 0 value. This was an issue as I went out to check a couple of things: Is the project having a currency tagged to it. Is the project price list existing for the project. Is the resource having a Resourcing Unit tagged to himself. In the approval tab is the time entry submitted by the resource having a Role and is it Chargeable. To my surprise all of the above were looking correct. Out of curiosity I digged in one more step and that’s where I found out the issue: Issue Resolution: Step 1: I navigated to D365 Project ServiceàResources. Search for the resource who is working on that project. Step 2: Open the Resource by clicking on it and then navigate to the Scheduling Tab.   Step 3: Make a note of the Organizational Unit mentioned for him. In this case it is CloudFronts Mumbai (USD). Step 4: Navigate to Projects and Sales Tab and Open the Project Contract Header by clicking the link in the Project Contract grid. Step 5: Navigate to Project Price Lists and Open the Price List in the project price lists. Navigate to Role prices. Check the Role and the Resource Unit mentioned for that Role should be exactly the same as the Resourcing Unit mentioned for the Resource mentioned in Step 3.   Now when you try approving the time entries the Actuals will have correct price. You are done. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. According to my opinion, implementation of Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation is one of the best things that we did in CloudFronts Technologies. We have gained a lot with this implementation because we save time and money due to easy access resources and ability to manage them.

Business Use Case: Often there are team members who share the need of getting allocated on schedule board in Dynamics 365 Project Services Automation directly as soon as they book an appointment or have a meeting invite. One of the reasons for the same is for the team or anyone concerned about allocation to understand that the said team member is either having a meeting with someone or has an appointment. Hence, they do consume some time of the day. This is one of the reasons that I get when I think aloud. Since, there is lot of argument and justification the team needs to provide for these additional non-billable time that they spend. There can be many other reasons as to why this is needed by other organisations. Mitigation: Though there is an (Out of the Box) OOB solution for marking an appointment in Outlook calendar from Schedule Board, but, vice-versa is not provided OOB. MS Flows helped me here. I created a flow between Bookable Resource Booking entity and Outlook entity in Flows. I have explained the steps as to how to do the same. Steps: Step 1: Login to https://portal.office.com with your credentials. Step 2: Click on Flows as shown in below image. Step 3: This will take you to the portal where you can mange and create all your Flows: Step 4: Click on +New. Step 5: Click on Create from Blank. Step 6: Click again on Create from Blank. Step 7: Select the Outlook connector by searching the Outlook 365 Connector from the search box as show in the image below. Also, select the Triggering event on when the flow should be triggered. So we selected, When a new event is created (v2). Step 8: Select Calendar id as Calendar. Step 9: click on next step. Step 10: Select the target connector i.e. Dynamics 365 by searching in the connectors. Step 11: Click on create a new records. Step 12: Select the Organisation and the Entity where you want to create a record. Since the booking that shows up on the schedule board comes from Bookable Resource Booking, we shall select Bookable Resource Booking. Step 13: Add the mappings to the fields as shown below, by searching them from the right pane. Step 14: Once done, click on save and your flow is ready. Step 15: Once created do not forget to Turn it On. Test it by creating an event in calendar and see in the event history of the flow whether it is successful or not. Conclusion: This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. According to my opinion, implementation of Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation is one of the best things that we did in CloudFronts Technologies. We have gained a lot with this implementation because we save time and money due to easy access resources and ability to manage them.