Define your business, clients and resources

On the SETTINGS tab:

• Virtually all data fields that require you to choose from a list of options can have those values defined and maintained in the powerful Settings tab. The level of detail you go into here is limited only by your needs.
• For example, under Settings > Geographic Settings > Locations, the sample data shows the 50 United States, its Federal District and other territories. California has been further defined with its 58 counties, and Los Angeles County has had its 15 largest cities defined. If all of your business is conducted within a smaller area, you may choose to define transport routes, campus buildings, marina piers, or other discreet locations which you need to track separately.
• Skills are specific capabilities that may optionally be associated with certain Roles and required in order to carry out specific Tasks. You may have several “Website Developer” staff, but perhaps only some have a “Flex developer” skill. Skills can also be assigned to non-human resources; load capacity may be a “skill” that differentiates one truck’s capabilities from another’s.
• Rate Cards specify your cost and charge rates for Resources carrying out their various Roles. You can also specify overrides, such as all work you do for a charity being charged at a reduced rate, or certain kinds of work charged at premium rates if it can only be assigned to staff in great demand.

Set up a project

On the PROJECTS tab:

• At the left of the Mode Bar at the top of the ProjectPartner application window, the  briefcase icon indicates Project Management mode, and the  coins-and-clock icon indicates Work/Expense Approval mode.
• In Project Management mode, you can define Entities (your organization/s), Clients (your customers), Portfolios (logical groupings of Projects), Projects, Tasks (activities that make up a Project) or Sub-Tasks, Suppliers, Contracts and Assets. The options available under the  Add menu depend on the  View Mode of the Navigation Tree on the left of the ProjectPartner application window.
• Other ways to add and work with Clients, Projects, Tasks, etc. are available from the top of the Navigation Tree. Most items can be selected and  Duplicated, or you can add new child items for the selected item using the context-sensitive  Add button. For example, with a  Project selected, you can only add a new Task; adding a new Project requires selecting a  Client or Portfolio.
• Provided they do not have child items—or, in the case of Tasks, any time recorded against them—selected items can be  Deleted if they are no longer required. If the Navigation Tree does not appear to update when you make a change, you can force a  Refresh. The entire Navigation Tree can be expanded (or collapsed to show only the selected item and its parent items) with the  Expand/Collapse button.
• The tabs in the Central Screen give access to a number of powerful settings. Only a very few of these are mandatory; the others can be left blank if you wish. You may choose to complete some of the optional fields, depending on the level of analysis detail you want ProjectPartner to be able to provide.
• By default, child items inherit the settings applied to their parent, e.g. if a Client is defined as trading in Pounds Sterling (GBP), all Projects created under that Client will default to using GBP as their currency, unless you override that setting for each Project.
• To help you organize your Projects better, ProjectPartner includes several  View Modes, as well as  simple text filtering and  advanced filtering options for the Navigation Tree.
• Create the Tasks that comprise your Project. Don’t worry too much about the order in which they’ll be done or which Tasks may be dependent on other Tasks’ completion—we’ll cover that in Scheduling. You will want to enter an estimate of how long Tasks will take to complete, and specify if time recorded against each is chargeable. Hopefully most will be!
• If you create a Budget for a Project or individual Tasks, you can  monitor how your costs and revenues track to that Budget. ProjectPartner lets you define multiple Budgets that apply at different times—for example, a long-term Project may span multiple quarterly budgets.
• Activities not directly related to chargeable Projects can be defined as Tasks belonging to Projects that are  Internal Activities, i.e. not associated with any Client. This can make it easier to level costs across productive and non-productive time, and to track how unchargeable time impacts your profitability. Perhaps regular team meetings could be defined as Tasks to track the time spent and costs incurred in non-chargeable time.

Allocating tasks to resources

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On the RESOURCES tab:

• At the left of the Mode Bar at the top of the ProjectPartner application window, the  briefcase/Gantt icon indicates Project Schedule mode, the  person/Gantt icon indicates Resource Schedule mode, and the  person-on-clipboard icon indicates Resource Management mode.
• You can specify the Roles, Skills and Rate Cards (i.e. cost and charge rates) applied to each of your Resources in Resource Management mode. Just as important, this is also where you specify the Workgroup to which Resources belong—a supervisor can only assign work to those staff under their jurisdiction.
• In Project Schedule mode, define Task dependency through the Predecessors menu, which you’ll find at the top left of the Central Screen. The  Gantt chart shows when tasks are scheduled (based on dates entered in the Project and Task definitions), and  task dependency is also illustrated.
• The  magnifying glass zoom controls enable you to view the appropriate timeframe in the Gantt window. A long-term Project may be better viewed showing quarters or entire years, while management of individual small Tasks can be viewed hour-by-hour for greater accuracy.
• Double-click any Task’s Gantt chart bar to open a new window to enable scheduling Resources against that Task. You can filter the Resouces list to only show those with the required Skill, or to sort them by cost or availability. Double-click in the Gantt area to schedule that Task to that Resource; double-click the resulting chart bar to specify start and end dates and the number of hours expected for this scheduled activity.
• In Resource Schedule mode, Tasks assigned as above are shown against each Resource so you can see who’s available when. Clicking any bar in the Gantt chart displays the Task info in the Status Bar (immediately below the Mode Bar).
• All entries in Gantt charts can be edited. Drag the start, end, or entire bar… dependencies will follow, and the financial effect of these changes will be reflected in your Analytics.

Record some activity

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On the TIMESHEET tab:

• At the left of the Mode Bar at the top of the ProjectPartner application window, the  calendar icon indicates Timesheet’s Calendar mode, the  task funnel icon indicates Timesheet’s Bulk Entry mode and the  stacked coins icon indicates Expense Lodgement/View mode.
• In Timesheet, click the  calendar view options to change how much of the Timesheet is visible in the Central Screen: five working days, a seven-day week, or a calendar month. (Only five- and seven-day views are available in Bulk Entry mode.)
• select a Task from the Task Tree on the left of the ProjectPartner application window, and drag over the time against which you wish to record time for that Task.
• You can change the increments in which time is recorded by choosing a value from the  increments menu at the top left corner of the timesheet. Each resource’s default increment is defined through the Resource Management mode of the Resources tab.
• Dynamic time can be recorded by clicking the  clock icon next to the Help menu on the right of the ProjectPartner application window to activate the Time Recorder. Then ensure a Task is selected in the Task Tree and click  Record and  Stop to start and stop dynamic time recording respectively.
• Each time entry in Calendar mode can be edited: drag its top to change its start time, drag its bottom to change its end time, or drag from the middle to move the entry to another time or date. Alternatively, a selected time entry can be edited in the  Entry Details panel on the right of the ProjectPartner application window.
• Regardless of Tasks being assigned to Resources (see “Allocating tasks to resources” above), any Resource is able to record time in the Timesheet against any Task if they have the appropriate Role(s) and/or Skill(s). The Timesheet’s Navigation Tree allows users to switch between views showing their allocated, recent, favorite or all Tasks.

Check out the results!

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On the ANALYTICS tab:

• At the left of the Mode Bar at the top of the ProjectPartner application window, the  gauge icon indicates Dashboard (visual reports) mode, the  chart document icon indicates Statistical Report mode, and the  bell icon indicates Alert Setup mode.
• In Dashboard mode, select a  report type from the Dashboards Tree on the left of the ProjectPartner application window.
• Specify the date range, granularity and data set (if required) for your graph. Parameters that you define for any dashboard can be  saved—and even  shared with one or more colleagues—so they’re instantly available in future. Saved Dashboards can be duplicated if you need to save variations on the same parameters.
• Click Get Report to view your dashboard graph.
• If necessary, narrow the view of the report by using the  Range sliders in the Mode Bar.
• Click any data point on this graph to see an itemized breakdown of that date’s value in the second graph (top right) area. Select different  Datasets to change the data displayed in the second graph.
• Click any data segment in the second graph, and the third (bottom right) graph will chart that item’s performance over the entire timeframe shown in the main graph area.
• Note that each of the graph areas has several chart types from which to choose, including pie, line and bar graphs or a data table. When you choose to Export Data (to the clipboard or as an email), it is the data table which is exported.

We’ve only covered a small portion of ProjectPartner’s capabilities here. Feel free to explore the other modes within each tab to find more gems that’ll improve your productivity, and try some variations on the settings and activities we’ve suggested. There’s a lot more to be discovered!

We know that you can only realize the true power of ProjectPartner when you’re working with it in a “real world” situation, but we hope that this introduction has at least made you aware of the exciting possibilities which ProjectPartner offers. Let’s take that next step—please contact us with your feedback on your experience so far, and perhaps discuss a short-term initial subscription.

Thank you for your enthusiasm, and we hope to be of further service to you soon.