Describe Dynamics 365 Project Operations capabilities

  • 8 minutes

Project Operations is designed to manage your professional service business, end to end. Using this application, you can digitize your projects from the quoting stage to financials.

Project Operations is built upon three already established products coming together as one solution. Together they help you manage the financial aspects of your project-based business, from deal management and pricing to invoicing and revenue recognition. This combination is detailed in the following diagram.

‎Diagram depicting the three products, Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation, Dynamics 365 Finance, and Dynamics Project that Project Operations is built upon.

Use cases

The Project Operations application provides a wide range of functionalities suitable for various job roles, such as the following:

  • Resource Manager

  • Sales manager

  • Accounts manager

  • Project manager

The three products on which Project Operations are built are well established in specific areas. For example, using Microsoft Project, a Resource Manager can plan and schedule resources, which Project Service Automation doesn't provide. With Project Service Automation, a sales manager can set up the advanced sales and delivery functionality. However, Project Service Operations doesn't provide any visibility into the financial results of the execution of a project. Dynamics 365 Finance enables account managers to execute project accounting along with time and expense management features. Project Operations provides a comprehensive business and project management solution, connecting the three products by using a seamless integration technique that enables the roles mentioned to execute individual jobs in a single product. It provides end-to-end project visibility to project managers.

Capabilities

Project Operations is built on the Dynamics 365 applications platform and Microsoft Power Platform. Project Operations offers the business intelligence capabilities of Microsoft Azure powered by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). The following diagram depicts the capabilities of Project Operations.

Diagram of Dynamics 365 Project Operation: Sales capabilities, Project management, Resource management, Project accounting, Time & expense, and Project budgeting.

Deployments

Project Operations offers the following three deployment options to meet customers’ requirements.

  1. Lite deployment

    The lite deployment includes the following capabilities:

    • Sales process for projects that extends Dynamics 365 Sales application experiences

    • Project planning using Microsoft Project for the Web

    • Multi-dimensional pricing

    • Unified resource management

    • Time tracking

    • Basic expense

    • Proforma invoicing for Project manager's review and edits

  2. Project Operations for resource/non-stocked scenario

    The Project Operations for resource/non-stocked scenarios includes the following capabilities:

    • Sales process for projects that extends the Sales application

    • Project planning using Microsoft Project for the Web

    • Multi-dimensional pricing

    • Unified resource management

    • Time tracking

    • Basic expense

    • Full expense

    • Receipt OCR

    • Proforma and customer-facing invoicing

    • Revenue recognition for projects

  3. Project Operations for stocked/production order scenario

    The Project Operations for stocked/production order scenarios includes the following capabilities:

    • Project planning using WBS

    • Resource management

    • Time tracking

    • Full expense

    • Receipt OCR

    • Full invoicing

    • Revenue recognition

    • Production orders

    • Stocked materials support with inventory

Next, we explore the Project Operations life cycle and the project types for different deployment types.