Project Online - Auto Publish Schedules Overrides Schedule Changes from other Users

[dprjustin]

I've started testing the template for 'Checkin and publish all projects in Project Online on recurring basis'.
https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/galleries/public/templates/4b412dc8f07d4d40b5204600c2a08d91/chec...

The problem we are running into internally is that our users routinely forget to Publish their updated schedules, or Check-in their projects after they have changed details. The Power Automate template that MS provides has 2 problems that I'm encountering

1. I cannot Force a check-in of projects that are checked out by a different user via the Flow, even if I have administrative rights to use the Force check-in process via the UI. It simply fails, and says the project is checked out by a different user.
2. If a user has modified a project schedule, but failed to publish it, but has checked the project back in, when the Flow runs, it will check-out the project, but then publish MY last version of the schedule, which in turn will override the changes that the user made, but had failed to publish themselves.

So 2 questions

1. Is there a way to trigger the Force Check-in process via the API?
2. Is there a way to Publish on the user's behalf, rather than Publishing from my account, so that I don't override the changes that a user made, but had failed to publish

EDIT: A more manual option, but still an improvement, would be to find a way for me to identify if a draft Project Schedule has been created by a user, but the user has NOT yet published that draft. I could then use that data to send the user a notification that they have unpublished changes that they need to publish.

I understand why PWA has the Publish functionality, but it's doing my org more harm than benefit. Wish I could just turn it off completely, or force Publishing to happen as a part of check-in automatically.

[BillPricePMP]

So Paul Mathers has an article on your EDIT section:  https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/projectonline-how-to-check-if-a-project-is-checked-out-usi...

Otherwise, I have not found a way to publish on a users behalf or publish without possibly losing their changes so I defer to others.  I imagine if you looked for projects which were checked out using PA, pulled the Owner, and then used a notification method of your choice (say an email daily to them and the boss) you would get compliance eventually.  So your flow might go "If checked out, find ownerID, send email.  If not checked out, check it out, do what you want to PWA data, then check it back in."  I can help with some of this if needed.  You can search under my handle and should be able to find a couple of examples as well.