A start-up company has released an online beta version of a program intended to provide “snapshot” reports of Microsoft Project data. Project Intelligence, an online release from ShareAdvance, captures project data on a scheduled basis or on-demand to feed into Power BI, Microsoft’s free data visualization tool.

According to the company, the application was developed to give customers faster and easier access to Project Online and Project Server data, using a database hosted in Microsoft Azure and Power Query for data access. Power Query (now called Get & Transform in Excel 2016) is an add-in that enhances Excel’s business intelligence functionality by simplifying data discovery, access and collaboration.

The software is available in two versions:

• The “basic” edition captures project data and allows access to current state information; and
• The “advanced” version adds the ability to capture any project data field and store it on a regular basis — hourly, daily, weekly or monthly — for trend reporting and predictive analytics.

“We are particularly excited about the ability of Microsoft Power BI to allow for easy visualization of very complex data — though our Power Query model can be used with many visualization solutions,” said Chief Technology Officer, Mike Hardy, in a prepared statement. “We can now have a Project Online customer up and running in about 15 minutes within the Microsoft Azure infrastructure.”