Welcome to the Project Manager guide

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2 Contents Getting around... 3 Creating a new project... 4 Selecting an existing project... 6 Dashboards... 6 Project planning... 9 Project roles... 9 Gantt view Adding a task in Gantt view Parent and child tasks Editing tasks Deleting tasks Dependency links Commit to project Active and inactive tasks Different views/timescales Exporting to PDF Allocating time Tracking project progress Project task progress Recording time spent Adding an activity Complete an activity from the social pane Monitor allocated vs time spent Timesheets Advanced features Project plans Project templates Where are project templates? Creating a project template Importing a project template In conclusion P a g e

3 Welcome to the Project Manager guide This user guide is written for Project Manager v2.0 on CRM 2015 Online. Project Manager is a central, organised, easy-to-access place to store data about your projects. It covers all the functions needed to maximise resource utilisation, maintain scope control and keep projects on schedule and within budget. The user guide contains the essentials you need to know to navigate the system, enter data and move customers through the project cycle. This user guide covers the following: How to navigate the basics of Project Manager How to add a project or select an existing project How to add and edit tasks How to record time and produce timesheets How to use Project Plans and Templates 2 P a g e

4 Getting around When you choose the Main Menu from the navigation bar, you can access: your work areas records dashboards activities Choose Projects from the work area: You should now see a drop down menu, from here choose the Projects tile. 3 P a g e

5 Creating a new project With the +NEW command, you only need to enter data into a few required fields (required fields are marked with an asterisk). You can enter more information later when you have it, or when you have more time. 1. Choose the +NEW button 2. Fill in the Name field, this is where you can name your project 3. Fill in the Account field, choose an account to connect the project to 4 P a g e

6 Tip If you point your mouse to a field you will see a tip about what to enter 4. Save your project, the save icon is at the bottom of the screen 5 P a g e

7 Selecting an existing project To select an existing project that you want to view or edit, navigate to the projects screen, where all current projects are listed. Dashboards Dashboards in Project Manager provide an overview of project data actionable information that's viewable across the organisation. Use a dashboard to see performance at a glance. The Project Manager has two pre-defined dashboards, one for Projects and one for Utilisation. Navigate to Projects and select the Dashboards Tile: 6 P a g e

8 The system comes with several different dashboard layouts to help you highlight the data and performance metrics you re most interested in. The best way to find one you like is to take a look at a few. The following section concentrates on the Projects Dashboard and Utilisation Dashboard, choose the down arrow next to the name of the dashboard, and then select the layout you want. 7 P a g e

9 The Utilisation Dashboard displays Time Spent, Type by user and Project Tasks Allocated v Time Spent in chart form, below these are All Timesheet Tasks in list form. The Project Dashboard displays Active Projects by type, phase and ownership all in chart form, the charts beneath these are Project Tasks by owner, start date and type. 8 P a g e

10 Project planning The key to a successful project is in the planning. While there are multiple ways to plan a project, the following section concentrates on the minimum configuration required to start planning a project using the built in Gantt chart functionality. More advanced features like Project Plans and Project Templates are covered later in this guide. Project roles You can identify your project team by connecting individuals (users or contacts) and allocating their role in the project. 1. After saving your project, stay on this screen, on the right hand side of the screen under Project Roles, select menu for records associated view 2. Click connect 3. In the connection window, in the name field, you can either search or type in the required information 4. Allocate a role for this connection 9 P a g e

11 5. All the other fields are optional and can be edited at a later date 6. Save and close These above steps need to be repeated for each connection you have to the project. Note Any connections from the project to users or contacts will appear in the Person Responsible list when adding tasks to a Gantt chart. You can use this list to set the responsibility for the tasks to the correct member of the project team. 10 P a g e

12 Gantt view A Gantt chart is the most useful way of showing activities against time scales. They allow you to: 1. See what various tasks there are in your project 2. See when each task begins, how long it is scheduled for and when it will end 3. See where some tasks may overlap 4. See the start and end date of the whole project Below is an example of a Gantt chart To navigate to the Gantt view, at the navigation bar (top of page), next to the project title you can access a drop down box, select the Gantt view tile. 11 P a g e

13 Adding a task in Gantt view 1. To add a root task, click on the "+" icon in the header of the grid 2. In the lightbox add your task description 3. Allocate a person responsible 4. Add a date and time scale for your task 5. Save task 12 P a g e

14 Note Saving here does not save this task in your project, for this you need to Commit to project Parent and child tasks A parent task is usually your root task, the main task that needs to be completed. There may be levels within the task that need to be addressed in order to complete the overall task set out. These levels are usually called child tasks or subtasks, they are a convenient way of organising projects and tasks that have multiple levels or steps. Child tasks are displayed nested under their parent task. 1. To add a child or subtask, click on the "+" icon in the header of the grid or click on the "+" icon associated with your parent task. 2. The same lightbox will appear, the same fields need to be filled in as your initial root task, however under parent task you can choose which task you want to make a parent. 3. Alternatively you can choose the "+" icon on the parent task, this will automatically associate the new child task with the parent task 4. Save task Note Saving here does not save this task in your project, for this you need to 13 P a g e

15 Commit to project Editing tasks To edit a task, double click on the bar in the timeline or on the task record in the grid. Then, make the changes and click: "Save" - to save the changes, "Cancel" - to cancel the changes. To change the start (end) date of a task, drag the task along the timeline area To change the duration of a task, hover the cursor over the task bar and drag the bar by the left or right border. Deleting tasks To delete a task, double click on the bar in the timeline or on the task record in the grid. Then, click "Delete" in the lightbox. Dependency links This function in a Gantt chart lets you link tasks so that they depend on each other. For example, you can link tasks from: 1. Finish to Start tasks cannot start before its predecessor ends, this is the most common relationship 2. Start to Start cannot start until the predecessor starts (can start later than) 3. Finish to Finish tasks cannot end before the predecessor ends 4. Start to Finish tasks cannot end before the predecessor starts (this is the rarest relationship) The below illustration shows examples of all these relationships To delete a link, double click on the link and click "Delete" in the confirm window. 14 P a g e

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17 Commit to project Saving a task in the lightbox does not save your work as a whole, to do this you need to commit to project. Active and inactive tasks You may want to deactivate some tasks because they are not needed at a certain point, to do this, double click on a task bar, then in the lightbox choose delete, when you commit to the project the deleted task will no longer appear in the Gantt chart. However, it is not gone for good, it has been deactivated. To place it back into the chart select Add Inactive Task, in the drop down box, a list of all tasks that have been made inactive will be displayed, choose the one you want to put back in. 16 P a g e

18 Tip If you do not see the inactive task in the drop down list then refresh the browser window to reload the list of tasks Different views/timescales You can view your Gantt chart in different formats, for example, when you initially enter your Gantt view it displays the chart in days, by clicking on the tab VIEW:DAYS above your chart you will get a drop down menu that gives you five options. 1. Hours you can view your chart hourly, to see how the tasks expand over time 2. Hours (4) tasks are viewed over 4 hourly segments 3. Days tasks viewed daily 4. Weeks tasks can be viewed over weeks, so you can see how many weeks a project will take 5. Months same concept as weekly, however, it is displayed over months making it a good view to have a quick look at the project as a whole 17 P a g e

19 Exporting to PDF If you want to share your project with others but do not want them to change the format, you may want to save it as a Portable Document Format (PDF). It is also useful to export to PDF if you intend to print your project. To open a PDF version of the project, in Gantt chart view select the Export to PDF option above the grid, see below. A PDF version will then download in your browser, select this to view, see image below for PDF View. 18 P a g e

20 Allocating time When budgeting and quoting for a project you can allocate a set number of hours on each project task. This can then be used to gauge if you are on, over or under budget for each task in the project. Open a Project Task from CRM and enter the number of hours budgeted for the task, then save the record. This information is used later for tracking the progress of the project, recording time spent and monitoring allocated vs time spent. 19 P a g e

21 Tracking project progress Once a project has been planned, resources lined up and tasks created against a schedule it is time to kick it off and track the progress. This section covers the fundamentals for tracking and reporting on the progress of your projects. Project task progress While working on a task the team can set the Estimated Percent Complete to communicate the status of the task with the rest of the team and stakeholders. This can be updated in the Project Task form in CRM or from the Gantt View. Open a Project Task Form, set the Estimated Percent Complete using the drop down list of values. Or, navigate to the Gantt view for your project and drag the percent complete control on the task before committing to the project. The estimated percent complete is also visible in the Project Tasks view to give a quick indication of the progress of each task. 20 P a g e

22 Recording time spent Throughout the project it is important to track how much time is spent on each task. Activities recorded as complete, i.e. phone calls, appointments and tasks are recorded as time taken. The remaining time will update in accordance with completed activities. Adding an activity When working on a Project Task you can record time taken by creating and completing an activity. When the activity is marked as completed it will update the parent Project Task as described above. On the Project Task Form, expand the Completed Activities tab by clicking on it, then use the [+] to add a new phone call, appointment or task. Tip Only phone calls, appointments and tasks are included in the calculations for time on the Project Tasks. s and Letters etc. will not affect the time used, please record a task to capture any time that is not a phone call or appointment. 21 P a g e

23 Recording time spent on a phone call In the add activity menu select phone call. Complete the form as indicated below, use Mark Complete to record the time or Save and Close if you are still working on the task. Tip A day is recorded as 24 hours, to record 3 working days of 8 hours record as 24 hours (1 day), not 3 days. 22 P a g e

24 Recording time spent on an appointment In the add activity menu select appointment. Tip A day is recorded as 24 hours, to record 3 working days of 8 hours record as 24 hours (1 day), not 3 days. Complete the form as indicated below, use Mark Complete to record the time or Save and Close if you are still working on the task. 23 P a g e

25 Recording time spent on a task In the add activity menu select task. Tip A day is recorded as 24 hours, to record 3 working days of 8 hours record as 24 hours (1 day), not 3 days. Complete the form as indicated below, use Mark Complete to record the time or Save and Close if you are still working on the task. 24 P a g e

26 Complete an activity from the social pane The Project Task form for Project Manager in CRM 2015 uses the Social Pane to give an overview of activity on the Project Task. You can quickly see recent activities and mark them as complete from this view. Monitor allocated vs time spent By capturing the time spent on a project task the Project Tasks Allocated v Time Spent chart will give a clear overview of over spend, under spend and remaining budget for each task type. The chart can be found at the bottom of your Project Information page and in the Projects Dashboard. 25 P a g e

27 Timesheets The information captured by recording phone calls, appointments and tasks against a Project Task can be collated and displayed in the Timesheet Report. Navigate to Sales and select the Reports tile In the list of reports, click on Timesheet Report. The Report Viewer will open and display the report for the previous working day. On Monday the previous working day is calculated as the last Friday. 26 P a g e

28 Advanced features In addition to the standard workflow supported by Project Manager there are advanced features available to make running multiple successful projects easier. Project plans Project Plans are designed as a lightweight way to experiment with multiple variations of a project plan before committing to a final set of tasks and timescales. A Project Plan should be created from an existing project. When creating a Project Plan from an existing project the project lookup is already set, and any tasks already created on the Project will be loaded into the new plan. Select existing Project 1. On the navigation bar select the drop down menu next to your project 2. Select the Project Plans tile in the drop down menu 3. Select +ADD NEW PROJECT PLAN from the command bar 27 P a g e

29 4. Name your new project plan 5. Save the Project Plan Saving a Project Plan will preserve any changes made to tasks using the Gantt chart against the Project Plan. This will not affect the Project until committed by clicking on COMMIT TO PROJECT on the Gantt Views command bar. The Gantt functionality on a Project Plan is otherwise the same as on a Project (Gantt view). Tip Any tasks added to the Project that are not included in the Project plan will be deactivated when the Project Plan is committed. To add tasks from a project to a Project Plan first deactivate them and then use ADD INACTIVE TASK to include them in the Project Plan. 28 P a g e

30 Project templates It can be time consuming and frustrating entering the same set of tasks every time you start a new project, especially when many projects will have similarities or share set phases, this is where project templates are essential. Project templates allow you to create re-usable sets of tasks that can be imported into any project, in any order and any number of times. A Project Template is a Project Plan set to Is Template. Where are project templates? There are two views for Project Plans which show Active and Inactive Project Templates. To find your templates: 1. Navigate to Project Plans 2. Select Active Project Templates 3. Select your Template from the list 29 P a g e

31 Creating a project template Follow the steps to Create a Project Plan which can be created either from a Project, or in the case of a Project Template, it can be created directly with no association to a Project. In the new Project Plan click on Is Template and set it to Yes. This will hide the lookup to the project. Project Templates work the same as Project Plans but items in the command bar are disabled where they rely on a related Project. Tip Although the Gantt view supports setting responsibility for a task, this information will not be imported with the template. This is because the target project may not have the same connections available to it. 30 P a g e

32 Importing a project template Once you have some templates created you can import them to new and existing Projects. Importing a template will copy all tasks and dependencies from the nearest matching day to the start date specified for the import. For example, if the template starts on a Wednesday and the preferred start date is Monday 21 st then the template will be imported from Wednesday 23 rd. This preserves the week-ends and durations for all tasks form the original templated plan. 1. Create and Save or Select an existing project 2. Click on the IMPORT FROM TEMPLATE command bar button 3. A dialog opens with the option to enter a preferred start date and to choose a template. The start date defaults to the project start date if entered 4. Complete the dialog and click Next then Finish 5. Refresh the Project form to view the imported tasks Tip When importing large templates there may be a delay after clicking next button while CRM creates all the links, dependencies and relationships. 31 P a g e

33 In conclusion Okay, now you ve covered the essentials, you re ready to work turning projects into easily accessible, organised and simple to control entities that you can move your customers through with ease. We wish you the best! Talk to us Is this the kind of guide you d like to see more of? We d love to know what helps you, or what doesn t work so well. Please take a minute to send us a quick note. We ll use your feedback to improve our content. 32 P a g e