To configure tenant timezone, data synchronization, and summary notifications settings, click on the gear icon in the upper-right part of the screen and choose Tenant Settings.
Organization Authentication
The Organization Authentication section allows defining the access settings for your PPM Express tenant.
Default Authentication option will show you the default authentication method for your PPM Express tenant. This is the authentication method that was selected for tenant creation when the first user from your organization signed up for PPM Express. If there is nothing defined, then the Email option was selected for tenant creation.
Please note: If the tenant was created using the Email option, it is possible to switch to the Office 356 default authentication type. This can be done only once and cannot be changed back later. To switch to the Office 365 default authentication type it is required to link your Office 365 organization to PPM Express. For more details please refer to the 'How to switch from Email to Office 365 default authentication' article.
To allow users from the same Office 365 or GSuite tenant to sign up for the PPM Express tenant, it is required to obtain a license for a required number of user seats via the Billing Settings page.
As the license is purchased, the PPM Express Administrator should open the Settings => Tenant settings page => Organization Authentication and set the 'Auto Registration' setting to 'ON' (it is set to 'ON' by default).
If your organization would like to add users to the PPM Express tenant by invitation only, then the 'Allow Auto Registration' setting should be set to 'OFF'.
All PPM Express users can invite other people using the 'Invite People' button if the 'Open Invites' option is enabled by the PPM Express Administrator on the Tenant Settings page. If this option is off, then only PPM Express Administrators can invite other users.
It is also possible to invite users from the Project/Programs/Portfolio dashboard => Share Project page if the 'Open Invites' option is enabled by the PPM Express Administrator. For this purpose open the Project, Programs, or Portfolio dashboard => Configure menu => Share => type in the email of the user you need to invite.
The Project Manager can grant the required permission that can be changed by the PPM Express Administrator from the People Management page.
For more details, please refer to the 'How to invite users to PPM Express' article.
Global Settings
Global Settings section allows setting up the Tenant timezone.
The following data will be updated automatically daily at midnight according to the selected timezone:
- Statuses of the imported/internal Tasks and Key Dates;
- Project, Programs, and Portfolio statuses (on condition that the auto-calculation option is enabled on the Insights settings page);
- Outdated Projects section on the Insights page (all other Insights sections are updated automatically on any changes performed by users to their projects);
- PPM Express warnings.
For example, if there is a Key Date where the Date value is set for today, the status of this Key Date will be updated automatically at midnight according to the Tenant timezone settings (unless the status is not changed manually).
If the Thresholds are changed for auto-calculation of Project/Program/Portfolio Statuses on the Insights settings page, the statuses will be recalculated automatically at midnight according to the Tenant timezone setting.
Please note: If the auto-calculation option is enabled for Project, Program and Portfolio statuses, the statuses will be updated automatically whenever the project/portfolio information changes plus daily at midnight according to the Tenant timezone settings.
Schedule Project Status and Overall Project Status will be updated automatically as soon as a new Key Date is added or the status of the Key Date is changed (either manually or synchronized from external systems).
Schedule Project Status and Resources Status will be updated automatically at once when a new Task with an assignment is created or an existing task is updated.
Issues and Risks Project Statuses will be updated as soon as new risks and issues are created or existing ones are updated (either manually or synchronized from external systems).
Cost Project Status will be updated as soon as the Budget Project section changes.
Information on the Insights page is also updated automatically at once when users perform any changes to their projects.
Data synchronization settings
Synchronization schedule. This dropdown defines the exact day-to-day time when the synchronization from the external systems will be performed.
Please note: Completed and inactive PPM Express projects are not included in data synchronization by schedule (if Project Progress is set to Completed, On Hold, or Cancelled and/or if Project Stage is set to Closing, Suspended, or Cancelled and/or if the Overall Project Status is set to Done).
Send synchronization alerts. Using this option, you can select the recipients and decide how often the 'data synchronization failed' email is sent.
If the email is not selected, the notification will not be sent.
Notifications settings
PPM Express allows setting up daily and weekly notifications sent to Microsoft Teams or by Email.
To enable these notifications, it is required to open the notification settings section and set the required weekday and time for the Daily notifications and the required weekday and time for Weekly notifications.
The 'Use email notifications' option allows enabling/disabling email user notifications (when the user is assigned to PPM Express items) on the tenant level for all users at once.
Please note: We do not recommend setting the same notification time for daily and weekly notifications.
Please note: We do not recommend setting the time of notifications (daily and weekly) to the same as the Scheduled Synchronization time for projects.
When you select the required day and time the changes are saved automatically.
For more information about PPM Express notifications, please refer to the Teams and Email notifications article.
Azure Active Directory Resource Synchronization
The Azure Active Directory Synchronization option allows setting up field mapping between the PPM Express Resources page and Azure Active Directory.
Please refer to the How to set up fields mapping between PPM Express resources and Azure Active Directory article for detailed instructions.
Azure Active Directory User Synchronization
Please note: The Azure Active Directory Synchronization option is available in the Enterprize subscription plan only.
The Azure Active Directory Synchronization option allows synchronizing users from Azure Active Directory groups to the PPM Express People Management page.
Also, using this option, the license type is applied in bulk, and the default set of PPM Express permissions can be set for all users from the selected Azure AD group according to their license. To create a default set of permissions, open the People Management page -> Default Permissions and set permissions for each license type as required.
When users are synchronized, the permissions can be edited manually for each user separately, if required.
Please note: When Azure Active Directory users synchronization is enabled, all existing users within your tenant on the People Management page will be deactivated unless they are members of the Users or Team Members group from Azure Active Directory. Users with Administrate app permission will not be deleted even if they are not members of any Azure AD group selected for synchronization.
To synchronize users from Azure Active Directory to PPM Express, perform the following:
1. Select your organization. The organizations appear in the list for active directory synchronization as soon as the connection is established between PPM Express and Office 365. This can be done if you add one of the following connections to PPM Express:
- Planner connection (when importing or linking projects/programs/resources)
- Teams connection (Work Together option)
- Office 365 group connection (Work Together option).
2. Select the Azure Active Directory group for User license (User license will be applied to all users from this AD group). Select the Azure Active Directory group for the Team Member license (Team Member license will be applied to all users from this AD group). These groups should be created in Azure AD in advance, or any existing group can be used, if it works.
3. Set up the Daily synchronization schedule.
To launch an on-demand synchronization, use the Synchronize Now option below.
4. Decide if you would like your users to receive invitations on users synchronization. If the Send Invitation toggle is turned on, as the synchronization is completed, all users will receive an email notification with an invitation to join the PPM Expres tenant. When the users follow the link from the initiation email and log in to PPM Express, they become active users on the People Management page. They can perform actions according to their permissions.
However, if you don't want users to receive the notifications at once, switch the Send Invitation toggle to off, and the synchronization with Azure AD will run without sending invites to users.
The user invitations can be turned on separately and sent to all or selected users set in Azure AD groups. Open the People Management page, select the users, and click the 'Resend invitation' button.
Please note: When the Azure AD synchronization is enabled, the 'Invite users', 'Autoregistration', and invitations via Project sharing are disabled in PPM Express. Users can join PPM Express only through Azure AD synchronization.
If there is a need to change the license type for users, it is required to change their group in Azure AD (from Team Member to User or vice versa). After synchronization, the license type will be changed in PPM Express. The display name and users' email should also be changed via Azure AD. If there are Guest users in Azure AD for which there is a need to edit email, the original user email should also be edited similarly. Otherwise, the Guest user will be added as a separate user to PPM Express.
The Last Sync option shows the date and time of the last synchronization.
If the synchronization fails, a corresponding notification will be sent to the emails provided in the Data Synchronization settings Recipients field.
Please note: If there are not enough license user seats to synchronize users to PPM Express, the synchronization will fail, and a corresponding notification will be shown on the tenant settings page.
Please note: When users are synchronized from Azure Active Directory, and the synchronized group includes other groups, users are synchronized from the related groups.
Please note: When users are synchronized from Azure AD, they appear on the People Management page at once with the Inactive status. Ensure that the 'All' option is selected in the filter on the People Management page to see all users that were added by synchronization from Azure AD. Alternatively, you can select the 'Inactive' option to see the list of these users.
Resources will be created for each user as soon as the users log in to PPM Express.