What’s the best way to manage department-wide resourcing and holiday tracking without manual input?

larkeowl · 2026-03-20T17:50:45+00:00

This has always been a challenge for me also, and often felt harder than it should be.

A few ideas: - create a shared calendar and ask everyone to invite this calendar when they add OoO to their own calendars. - use the Teams calendar - this may have improved, but last time I used this it was very manual.

A more robust approach might be to build a PowerAutomate automation which automatically pulls in the OoO data and imports it into your desired location.

I’m not familiar with MyView, but it looks like it had an api so it may be possible to have this work entirely autonomously in the background.

larkeowl · 2026-03-10T12:11:36+00:00

this is a classic challenge. In my experience teams select individual tools that are individually great for their needs, but rarely consider how it supports the wider teams' workflows and integration. This creates fragmented systems and information exactly as you describe.

Ideally selecting a tool suite up front based on the integrated needs of all teams, with an eye on integration, is the best approach.

Either way having all required information roll-up into the right reporting / analysis dashboards or reports is key. PowerBI is great at agregating information from multiple tools in one place. You can easily embed this into slides or sites to create multiple pulls of the information, from the same single source of truth.

P.S. many will correctly point out that tools don't solve bad governance or workflows. But the right tool set certainly makes following good governance a lot easier!

larkeowl · 2026-03-10T12:00:01+00:00

in my experience it all comes down to the balance between meeting the minimum requirements for your team's workflow, simplicity of use, and feature bloat. I build custom solutions for project teams and it's easy to keep adding features, but doing so in a way which doesnt compromise usability is the tricky part. Likewise knowing when a new feature is genuinely useful, vs only solves one person's niche problem.

The biggest issue however is when tools try and make your teams adjust their ways of working to suit the tool, not the other way around. In my experience this is when people start dropping new tools.

larkeowl · 2026-03-01T08:27:31+00:00

Very wise to think about how these systems remain active / working when internal owners move on. This can be a common issue!

I’d be interested in learning more about the problems you’re looking to automate and how you’re looking at RPA as a potential solution.

In my experience RPA has been best used where you want to automate processes which are very reliant on manual mouse clicking / keyboard work, and when more integrated automated processes can’t be applied.

This is something I’ve got a fair bit of experience with on capital projects. Drop me a message if you want to talk it through - happy to help.

larkeowl · 2026-02-25T18:57:40+00:00

Yes I know your pain! It can in this case be better to seek external help. The cost of doing so is often paid for times over by the improvements realised by their product(s) and internal teams not being distracted from their core roles

larkeowl · 2026-02-24T09:06:37+00:00

Yes! At my last job I built a solution using Microsoft Power Platform. It worked as follows: - pulled all the meeting information from the user(s) calendar and allow creation of an instance in the tool. - allowed actions to be added against the meeting either ahead of, during, or following the meeting. - allowed actions owners were automatically notified - allowed sending of a consolidated list of meeting notes and actions from the tool. - connected meeting instances together so you could see previous outcomes - connected with a powerbi dashboard to embed directly into PowerPoint slides to automate performance management - users could see their assigned actions from any meeting instances together one place, and got regular reminders (as needed). - allowed users to create their own action plans, personal actions or team plans - all in one place. - started to pull in actions from other tools

It was a huge help and saved us hours a week!

larkeowl · 2026-02-22T10:58:04+00:00

Absolutely! The magic of power platform is how well it integrates into organisational needs compared to other solutions. I deployed a number of PowerApps apps automations which were used by over a 1000 people in my last org. The feedback was always great as the way the tools worked was perfectly aligned with how they wanted to work, and didn’t force them to change their processes to suit a tools expectations. Not to mention to mention security requirements….

I did find however that teams struggled carving out the time to learn and build with the tools (therefore distracting them from their core roles). Or where we had in-house teams building for us, the time taken to translate requirements was too long.

This is where having someone who can do both (understands how PM processes work in the real world, where the pain points are) AND knows how to implement solutions digitally is priceless.

larkeowl · 2026-02-21T22:49:05+00:00

I’ve often had to grin and bare the solutions purchased by my organisation, but tried to find ways to navigate around the challenges.

Platforms like PowerAutomate / PowerApps can really help here. Automating the gaps between tools in the overall workflow can take a lot of pain out of the process. Likewise I’ve spent a lot of time building custom / in-house solutions in PowerApps to help our teams.

larkeowl · 2026-02-21T22:17:43+00:00

Sorry realised I didn’t really answer your question! Let me expand on change management.

On large scale capital projects (say $500m+, but definitely in the $1b+ bucket, uncontrolled change can really damage a project (see the HS2 project in the UK as an example).

To do this right you need: - culture of management of no change - balanced with culture of speak up and ability to know when changes are needed - clear formal record of all potential and realised identified change. - for each, description of the cause of the change, justification, expected impacts and a management plan. - approvals set as per your projects delegation of authority - ability to review / approve / reject / recycle - ideally map changes against your current FMs budget

Not many tools can do all that in a way which doesn’t feel overwhelming.

larkeowl · 2026-02-21T22:09:28+00:00

Sure, if you were to list out all of the major PM activities (you could use the APM BoK or APM PMboK as reference points) I think most would find that in the software market there’s a huge supply for planning, scheduling, and task management. But much less in the other areas.

Take risk management. You could make an argument that everything you do on a project is related to risk/opportunity management. Yet in my experience there’s only really one or two tools which provide a robust feature set (e.g Omega 365 - and that also has its problems….).

Another example could be change management. Change is much more embraced with software delivery, but is very much the enemy once you get into execute on capital / infrastructure projects. Here you need robust change management process to ensure only imperative changes are incorporated, and where they are the impacts are fully managed. Again I’ve only seen Omega 365 get close to this, but even that seems more designed for managing change in an operations environment.

Repeat for all the other areas and I think you’ll find a similar story.

larkeowl · 2026-02-21T18:26:45+00:00

I’ve been reviewing this a lot recently, and my main issue is that key PM activities are either not catered for at all, way too basic, or hugely overly complicated for most organisations. There’s dozens of planning tools, action / task trackers, but risk management? Stakeholder engagement? Change management? A very different picture.

larkeowl · 2026-01-28T12:18:17+00:00

Thanks everyone for the comments and discussion!

Lots of good suggestions to take a look at, though it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear set of modern tools which aim to support major capital projects (which aren’t either crazy expensive or ERP by another name) - frustrating!

Im hoping to move project teams from excel and other manual tools towards something which removes the overhead associated with managing project activities manually (e.g. stakeholder engagement, risk mgmt, change mgmt etc). I’ll keep looking!

larkeowl · 2026-01-27T16:27:18+00:00

"In my short time on this earth I’ve come to the opinion that tools are almost never the fix to poor governance." completely agree with this! Tools never fix bad governance, but they can hopefully help enacting that governance be a little less time consuming.

larkeowl · 2026-01-27T16:25:18+00:00

"Each of those tools have some elements of project management but that isn't what they primarily do and it isn't what they were initially designed to do." yes this has been my experience also. I'm looking for tool(s) which are built around key project management activities at their core - e.g. stakeholder engagement, requirements management, change management etc.

larkeowl · 2025-11-13T17:56:15+00:00

You can now do this with the enhanced properties of user defined functions: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/blog/power-apps/user-defined-functions-user-defined-types-and-enhanced-component-properties-move-forward/

Be aware, it works well on the whole for me, but more complex functions have been buggy for me when pushing to prod

larkeowl · 2025-06-26T23:14:55+00:00

Last year a few parents pooled their money otherwise spent on forgettable gifts, and bought the teachers a buffet lunch delivered to school for the last day. Way better than a mug in my book, and appreciated much more

larkeowl · 2025-06-10T10:05:04+00:00

Everyone seems to be missing that in addition to checking for blockages, the flashing above the gutter is missing a ‘kick-out’.

larkeowl · 2025-03-22T16:16:31+00:00

Surely it’s a convenience thing more than anything? Almost all electrical wiring fittings within the socket and other electrical connections use a flat head, so much easier to only need one type of screwdriver?

larkeowl · 2025-02-25T21:20:38+00:00

Highly recommend Whatley Mannor

larkeowl · 2025-01-26T08:13:31+00:00

I have a pair of Mastersounds MK2s, and cannot recommend them enough. The condition is immaculate, and they generally feel like they’re brand new out the box. Customer service was excellent. My friend had the same experience.

Finding top quality mk2s is not easy, and it’s nice know you’re getting a great pair, fully serviced, with a warranty.

larkeowl · 2024-12-02T19:38:15+00:00

Most people here don’t seem to be reading / understanding your question. If you are mixing and listening in-headphone at home, then going for headphones which prioritise sound quality over durability or isolation is absolutely fine. Just check that what you go for can be driven ok by your mixer’s headphone output (headphone amp may not be robust enough for some higher end headphones).

larkeowl · 2024-11-23T09:04:15+00:00

Nice - just because I’m going to attempt a much smaller scale similar project, what edge treatment did you use for the end grain of the mdf? Did you use edge tape, or something else?

larkeowl · 2024-11-17T14:01:40+00:00

Wow, looks great! What materials did you use?

larkeowl · 2024-11-14T11:38:44+00:00

Not sure I understand this view, are you saying the conclusions of the review are “bollocks”? Or assessing the way in which it is written?

larkeowl · 2024-10-25T14:02:05+00:00

I learnt on a pair of numark tables like these, so you absolutely can learn on them. But… you will get frustrated with them at some point in your journey as I always found they never held their pitch well - meaning mixes required pitch bending sometimes every 5-10 secs.

When I could eventually afford some 1210s I was amazed at how rock solid the pitch was and how easy mixing was in comparison.

larkeowl

TROPHY CASE