Availability All Editions
This article gives a general overview about the Portfolio Designer view in Meisterplan.
Video: Schedule Projects & Plan Capacity
Learn how to schedule and prioritize projects, staff resources and monitor capacity in Meisterplan's powerful Portfolio Designer View:
View Layout
The Portfolio Designer view is divided into three sections displaying projects, resources and roles as well as financials:
The resource and financial sections may be collapsed or expanded by by clicking the arrow icons. When you change the column width of the left-hand list to display long project names, the changed width will remain after reloading or logging in again.
Projects Section
This is where you create, edit, prioritize, schedule and staff projects.
For details about the project section, see the Project Section Basics article and the other articles in the Portfolio Designer: Projects section.
Resource Section
This is where the utilization and availability of resources and roles are displayed. You can group resources by role or OBS in this view and analyze the utilization stack to see where the workload occurs.
For details about the resource section, see the Resource Section Basics article and the other articles in the Portfolio Designer: Resources section.
Financials Section
Availability Pro Premium
In the General section of your user group, you need to have the Access Financial Data right to access this function.
The financial section will only be displayed when working with financials, i.e., when one of the following applies:
- Cost per Hour entered for any role or resource in the resource pool
- Financial Event entered for any project
- Portfolio Budget or Target Benefit defined
This is where project costs and benefits are displayed and compared to the portfolio's budget and target benefit, if these have been entered for the current portfolio.
Please note that, if your fiscal year doesn't match the calendar year, the timescale of the financial view will not match the timescale of the Gantt chart in the project section.
For details about the financial section, see the Financial Section Basics article and the other articles in the Portfolio Designer: Financials section.
Toolbar Actions
The toolbar for the Portfolio Designer view offers the following actions:
- Add a project or a program: see the Adding, Editing or Viewing a Project and Working with Programs articles for details.
- Search Project: The list will be filtered to display only projects and programs matching your search term.
- Allocation Mode: Choose if you want to view and edit allocations in Flexible or Time Grid mode. See the Adding and Editing Allocations article for more details.
- Allocation Unit: Select the unit used for displaying and entering allocations between FTE, Days or Hours. Alternatively, you can change the unit by clicking in an allocation and typing a number followed by the first letter of the desired unit (e.g., "40d" for 40 person days).
- Zoom Level: Choose between Year, Quarter, Month and Week.
- The selected Zoom Level affects the precision of moving, extending and shortening projects in the Gantt chart as well as for the Auto-Schedule feature (see the Moving a Project or a Program, Shortening and Stopping Projects, Extending Projects with or without Allocations and Auto-Schedule articles).
- The selected Zoom Level affects the precision of displaying allocations and overallocation in the allocation histograms (see the Resource Section Basics article).
- The selected Zoom Level affects the precision of displaying financial figures, cost budgets and benefit targets in the financial section (see the Financial Section Basics article).
- Settings: see the Portfolio Designer Settings article for details.
- More Actions:
- Auto-Schedule: see the Auto-Schedule article for details. You need to have the Auto Schedule Multiple Projects right as described in the Manage User Groups article.
- Sort by Project ScorePro Premium: sorts the list of projects by project score. If one or more projects are selected, you may also choose to sort only the lower part of the list starting with the first selected project. Please note that this operation cannot be automatically undone. This feature must be activated per user group by selecting the Change Project Rank and Sort Projects by Project Score option in the Detailed Projects and Program Rights section. See the Rank and Project Score article for details about the project score feature.
- Import from JiraPro Premium: see the Importing Jira Data as Meisterplan Projects article for details.
- Undo: undo the very last action you made to the selected project; choose from the following Gantt chart actions:
- Reschedule project
- Extend with allocation
- Extend without allocation
- Stretch project
- Shrink project
- Change milestone date
- Auto-Schedule
When stretching or shrinking a project, there may be rare cases where the original state cannot be exactly restored due to rounding.
Reloading the Portfolio Designer (e.g., switching views or logging in again) will reset the Undo button and the last Gantt chart action can no longer be undone.