On October 15th, Bentley announced the integration of their ProjectWise collaboration software with Microsoft 365.
ProjectWise 365 Services lets teams of AEC professionals coordinate their workflows and ensure that they hold on to important documents and information throughout them. Microsoft 365 contains collaborative applications like Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Flow, along with analytic software like Microsoft Power BI.
“The extended integration between ProjectWise and Microsoft Office 365 helps project delivery organizations in going digital, empowering their organizations to improve project productivity and deliver better outcomes,” said Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office 365.
One of the outcomes of the integration is that Microsoft 365's software can be used to improve workflows on ProjectBoard. According to Bentley executives, the integration will allow users to "industrialize" project delivery—essentially, it will let them standardize not just the outcome, but the process it takes to create it.
The integration combines ProjectWise's Project Insights—which helps users identify trends that could cause problems and delays down the line— and Microsoft Power BI—which helps users create reports on finances and scheduling. Together, the two pieces of software mean that users can look at design, financial and scheduling information all together, and see how they might impact each other.
Several of the updates are possible because of Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing service that allows users to host, test, and move applications. Bentley's Connected Data Environment, ambitiously developed to host all data about a building throughout its lifecycle, is based on Azure's connectivity. Alongside Bentley's integrated web-based PDF review and markup, Azure collaboratively forms the backbone of the updates. Theoretically, these two features should let all members of the design team access the newest versions of project deliverables.
AECOM is an early user of the ProjectWise/Microsoft link. Elizabeth Berna, AECOM’s Information Manager, said that they use the new ProjectWise Project Insights “to identify trends in project performance providing the client with new ways of assessing project health.” Colleague Norris Spencer, AECOM’s Highways Information Manager, added that it gives them greater information on “information management practices and Building Information Model health across the CDE.”
The collaboration between the two companies isn't over yet; Microsoft and Bentley are still working on possible ProjectWise and SYNCHRO applications for Microsoft's HoloLens.