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Project Section Basics

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Meisterplan
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This article gives an overview about the basics of the project section in Meisterplan.

Overview of the Project Section

Portfolio Designer: Projects

The projects section is divided into the left hand side project list and the right hand side Gantt chart:

  • Via the Project List, you prioritize projects, group them with programs and add or remove allocations.
  • The Gantt Chart is where you schedule projects, edit allocations and add milestones and dependencies.

Project List Features

The following features are available in the project list:

  • Use the Project Filter to filter the list and Gantt chart. See the Project Filter article for details. Please note that you may also filter displayed projects by selecting one or more resources and/or roles in the resource and role list in the resource section.
  • A Program is a collection of projects. See the Working with Programs article for details.
  • Projects may be added via the toolbar of the Portfolio Designer view. You may view and edit project details via the project list. See the Adding, Editing or Viewing a Project article for details.
  • Allocations may be added or removed via the project list and edited in the Gantt chart. See the Adding and Editing Allocations article for details.
  • The Must-Have Line and Cut-Off Line allow you to specify which projects absolutely must be implemented now and which can be considered next.
    • At any time, you can reprioritize projects by dragging & dropping project row headers up or down.
    • Projects with a higher rank schedule resources first as shown in the individual utilization histograms.
    • Projects with a lower rank tend to hit the resource capacity limit.
    • Projects below the Cut-Off Line are not considered in workload calculations (resource section) and budget utilization (financials section). 
    • Moving projects above the Must-Have Line has no other effect on allocations besides a higher priority and has no effect on budget utilization.
  • Project and Program Hints will display information about a project or program when hovering its project list item. See the Project and Program Hints article for details.
  • Via the Project Context Menu, you may reprioritize or reschedule projects, filter the project list such that it displays only dependent projects, show milestone names, apply data from a scenario or the plan of record, open projects in the source system, delete or duplicate them. See the Project Context Menu article for details.

Gantt Chart Features

The following features are available in the Gantt chart:

  • A red line marks the current date (Today). You can choose the time frame in the Gantt Chart via the Date Range.
  • A Program, when expanded, is represented as a box around the projects it contains.
  • Projects are displayed as colored bars. Colors may display the allocated workload, business goals, project phases, staffing, status or field values of any custom field. Select the desired color scheme in the Settings of the Portfolio Designer view. See the Gantt Color Scheme section of the Portfolio Designer Settings article for details.
  • Allocations may be edited in the Gantt chart in the Flexible or Time Grid mode. Select the desired mode in the Settings of the Portfolio Designer view. See the Editing of Allocations section of the Portfolio Designer Settings article for details.
  • You may move projects and programs via the Gantt chart as described in the Moving a Project or a Program article.
  • You may extend and shorten projects, define a Project Break by splitting a project or stop a project at a given point. All of these operations are detailed in the Extending, Shortening, Splitting or Stopping a Project article.
  • You may add Milestones to projects, define project phases via milestones and create Dependencies between them. See the Milestones, Project Phases and Dependencies article for details.
  • If Over-Allocation occurs, a red bar will be displayed in periods where at least one role or resource is over-allocated. You may define the proportion of the capacity that must be exceeded for this warning to appear via the Over-allocation threshold setting in your profile. See the Profile article for details.
  • Via the Project Context Menu in the Gantt chart, in addition to most features available in the project list, you can also split and stop projects as well as add milestones. See the Project Context Menu article for details.
  • To work with Fiscal Years instead of calendar years, see the Working with Fiscal Years article for details about this.

Selecting Projects and Programs

  • Click a project or a program in the project list or Gantt chart to select it. You may also select multiple projects and/or programs via [Shift] or [Ctrl]. Please note that only the projects in your current date range will be displayed.
  • Selected projects and programs will be highlighted in the project list and Gantt chart.
  • The Gantt chart will display any milestones and dependencies of selected projects and of projects belonging to selected programs.
  • The resource section will be filtered to display only roles and resources allocated to selected projects or to projects belonging to selected programs.
  • Click Clear Resource Filter on the divider bar to remove the selection

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