How to create a resource usage calendar across multiple Project Online projects

Question

The division I work in has 3 PMs that share resources. We have a three fold need we're trying to engineer a solution for within the Microsoft Office ecosystem.

1. We need to create a resource allocation calendar for the entire division for the division manager. He wants to see the hours allocated per day per project for each of the 20 team members. Right now, the PMs handle this via ad-hoc chats to balance resourcing, but this isn't working with our offices closed for the foreseeable future.
2. We need to keep our team members updated to their tasks and have a return flow on task updates from the team members to the PM/project plan. We cannot provide Project licenses to the entire team.
3. We need this to be as easy as possible since we will be adding PMs as we grow and we want as much as possible for this to be automated.

Each of the PMs manages their projects via separate project plans and we are migrating to Project Online. We don't have access to PowerBI, which would allow aggregation across multiple Project Online projects.

I believe I can solve requirement 2 via a Flow path from Outlook to Project Online.

For items 1 and 3 however, I'm stuck and would love some insight or ideas.

I've investigated using Planner, but without the 2-way integration that isn't going to work. We looked at trying to use Flow to link Project Online -> CDM -> Planner, but that doesn't surface data properly that I can see.

I've considered going from Project Online -> Sharepoint -> Planner, but I can't get the start/end dates or resources into Planner properly via Flow.

I've looked at Project Online -> Sharepoint. This seems to work, but it is a flat task list instead of an Agile-esce bucket view like Planner and will require multiple Flow plans to manage everything Planner does on its own. This also doesn't handle task completion very well.

I've looked at Power Apps, but it appears to have limitations that prevents accessing data across multiple projects.

With all that being said. I'm really looking for any insights on how we can accomplish our needs within the Office ecosystem.

Answer 1

I've said it before and I'll say it again. MS Project is just a pile of hot garbage. You can't do stuff like this in MS Project. A friend of mine tried to do something similiar and it didn't work. He tried to synchronize some calendars and ressources but MS Project does not support it in the way he wanted to.

MS Project is like a very uncomfortable train on bumpy, old rails. It gets you where, and only where the developers intended you to go and this in the most uncomfortable way possible. If you want to do anything that is not planned by the developers you're just plain out of your luck. Try to migrate to a real PM system. I've heard good things about Trello.