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Portfolio Designer Settings

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Meisterplan
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This article describes the settings for Portfolio Designer view in Meisterplan.

Opening the Settings

Click the Settings button in the toolbar of the Portfolio Designer view to open the settings for the view.

Portfolio_Designer_Toolbar_en.png

Selecting Settings for a View Section

Use the navigation links on the top left of the settings to switch between settings for the three sections of the Portfolio Designer view:

Settings for Projects

For the Projects section, you may configure the following settings:

Portfolio Designer View Settings for Projects

Project Allocation Unit

Via the Project Allocation Unit menu, you can select the unit used for displaying and entering allocations, FTE, Days or Hours.

Alternatively, you can change the unit without opening the Settings dialog by clicking in a project's allocation grid and typing a number followed by the first letter of the desired unit (e.g., enter "40d" to allocate a role or resource for 40 person days). This will change the display unit for all projects and therefore has exactly the same effect as selecting a different unit in the Settings dialog.

Moving Projects and Programs

When you move a project or program, allocation values entered for that project or for the projects in that program will always be retained with respect to the selected project allocation unit.

See the Moving a Project or a Program article for details about how moving projects and programs affects allocations depending on the selected project allocation unit.

Second Unit in Hints and Default Unit in Pivot Reports

Please note that this setting also affects the second allocation unit in the following hints as well as the default allocation unit for integrated Pivot reports:

  • Second allocation unit in project and program hints
  • Second allocation unit in hints for extending or shortening projects in the Gantt chart
  • Default allocation unit when creating one of the integrated Pivot & Charts: Allocations, Pivot & Charts: Capacities and Pivot & Charts: Projects reports 

In the listed hints, the main unit for displaying allocations is always FTE. The second unit in hints is the project allocation unit selected here, or Days if the selected project allocation unit is FTE.

The default allocation unit when creating one of the listed integrated pivot reports is also the selected project allocation unit. Please note that the Pivot & Charts: Projects report doesn't support displaying allocations in FTE and will therefore default to Days if the selected project allocation unit is FTE.

Project Allocation Unit Main Unit in Hints Second Unit in Hints Default Unit in Pivot Reports
FTE FTE Days FTE (Days in Project report)
Days FTE Days Days
Hours FTE Hours Hours

Editing of Allocations

Under Editing of Allocations, select how to edit allocations.

Flexible

With the default setting Flexible, newly added allocations initially consist of one continuous segment spanning the full project duration.

  • Control Keys (keys are wraparound, e.g., hitting the tab key in the last allocation segment of a row will select the first allocation segment of the following row).
    • [↹] tab key selects the next allocation segment.
    • [⇧]+[↹] shift + tab key selects the previous allocation segment.
  • Change Segmentation
    • In this mode, you can further segment the allocation as required by clicking on the desired splitting point.

Time Grid

With the Time Grid setting, allocations will automatically be segmented or grouped by period as selected via your current zoom level.

  • Control Keys (keys are wraparound, e.g., hitting the tab key in the last allocation segment of a row will select the first allocation segment of the following row).
    • [↹] tab key selects the next allocation segment.
    • [⇧]+[↹] shift + tab key selects the previous allocation segment.
    • [↑] up arrow key selects the previous row.
    • [↓] down arrow key selects the next row.
  • Change Segmentation
    • Switching to a more detailed zoom level will further segment the allocations.
    • Switching to a less detailed zoom level will merge the segments and aggregate the associated allocation values.
    • If you don't change the grid values for an allocation, switching to the Flexible mode will also merge the segments and aggregate the allocation values.

Gantt Color Scheme

The Gantt view colors can be switched to display any of the following distinctions:

  • Default Color Schemes
    • Saturation by Workload (default): darker bar means higher workload.
    • Business Goal: entered in the Strategy view. This is only available if you have defined at least one business goal.
    • Project Phases: defined under Manage > General Settings. This is only available if you have defined at least one project phase with a color assigned to it.
    • Staffing: individual colors for no allocations, only role allocations, role and resource allocations or only resource allocations.
  • Color Schemes by Project Fields
    • Status
    • Any custom project field of the Lookup type for that you have field rights (colors must have been assigned to lookup values.)

Default Color

When displaying business goals, status or a custom field, projects without a value or with a value without a color assignment will be displayed in the default gray color.

Saturation by Workload

This color scheme is always available and displays the workload of projects in relation to each other. Light blue projects have less workload than dark blue projects. Projects without any allocations will be displayed in the default gray color.

Business Goal

The color scheme for business goals will be displayed after at least one business goal has been configured in the Strategy view:

Project Phases

When there is at least one project phase configured with a color assigned to it, this color scheme will be selectable in the settings.

Staffing

Use the Staffing scheme to identify four kinds of projects:

  • Gray projects (default color) don't have any allocations
  • Yellow projects have only role allocations (unstaffed)
  • Blue projects have role and resource allocations (partly staffed)
  • Green projects have only resource allocations (fully staffed)

Please note that actual allocation values must be entered for at least one role or resource in order for a project to have role or resource allocations. Roles and resources that have been added to a project without any allocation values do not count as allocated.

Programs will display the color of the lowest allocation level among projects they contain that have any allocations. For example, if a program contains one gray project, one yellow project, one blue project and one green project, it will be colored yellow, because that is the lowest allocation level among its projects that have any allocations.

Color Schemes by Project Fields

To see Status or any custom project field scheme, at least one item with a color assigned to it must exist, e.g., a status value with a color code or a custom field value with a color code.

For each custom field color scheme, the default gray color will be used for all projects without any entry for the custom field (e.g., no status is selected) or any lookup value without an assigned color code (e.g., status "open" is selected, but no color was assigned). The default gray color will be displayed on top of the legend as No lookup value.

Settings for Resources and Roles

For the Resources and Roles section, you may configure the following settings:

Portfolio Designer View Settings for Resources and Roles

Show Top Level "All"

Select this to display an All mode summarizing the capacity and allocation of all roles and resources in Meisterplan.

Aggregation and Structure

Aggregate roles and resources by role or OBS unit.

  • Role: This lists all resources under their respective primary roles. Resource allocations in a project role other than that resource's primary role will be included in the aggregated role row of that resource's primary role. Such allocations will not be included in the aggregated role row of the resource's project role. This ensures that an aggregated role row always displays the sum of allocations and capacity of all resources with that primary role, regardless of that resources' project roles.
  • OBS: This lists all roles and resources under the OBS unit they belong to. Select the desired OBS structure in the Structure menu (top level OBS, e.g., sales regions, departments, etc.)

Custom Time Period

Here, you can select a custom time period for which the capacity and allocations of roles and resources should be displayed in histogram hints in addition to the figures for the hovered period.

See the Histogram Segment section of the Role, Resource and Histogram Hint article for details about histogram hints.

Show Resource Score

Select this to display the resource utilization score.

See the Resource Score article for details about the score.

Filter Allocations in Histograms by Selected Projects

By default, histograms display the global utilization of roles and resources (allocations to any projects above the cut-off line).

Select this to filter all histograms by your current project selection, such that they only display allocations to selected projects.

Settings for Financials

For the Financials section, you may configure the following settings:

Portfolio Designer View Settings for Financials

Show Operational Expenditure, Capital Expenditure, Total Cost and Benefit

Select the values to display in the Financials section:

  • Operational Expenditure (OpEx)
  • Capital Expenditure (CapEx)
  • Total Cost
  • Benefit

Uniform or Individual Scaling for Cost and Benefit

Costs and benefits can be displayed with different scales in order to decrease the total height of the Financials view in cases where the total numbers differ strongly.

Select Individual Scaling for Cost and Benefit to display both the Total Cost and the Benefit with individual scales, such that the highest total cost column has the same height as the highest benefit column, even if totals differ.

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