In order to manage business initiatives on the strategic, tactical, and operational levels, you must create and configure the various components that define your system.
PPM provides wizards that guide you through the processes of creating and editing these components in the Setup module:
- Items: An item is a collection of tasks and their required resources. Each item represents a development effort that has a beginning and an end and results in a specific deliverable. Each item is assigned an item manager, who is responsible for its progress.
There are two kinds of items: items and candidates. An item is one entity in the system. It may represent an initiative that your organization refers to as an investment. A candidate is a proposed item that is not yet added to the map scenario displayed in the Investor module. You can change a candidate to an item and an item to a candidate in the Status field on the General tab of the New Item wizard.
- Portfolios: A portfolio is a collection of related items that are grouped in order to manage and view performance of common business activities and goals. You can also group related portfolios into a single portfolio. Portfolios can be grouped according to any parameter you define, such as type of business activity or geographic region.
Related items that represent investments can be collected into portfolios to track particular aspects of performance. For example, an organization may have many similar investments that involve work in various locations. These investments can be collected into a type-specific portfolio. There may also be different types of investments that involve work in one location. These investments can be collected into a location-specific portfolio.
- Folders: A folder is a collection of related objects or other folders. Each object type has its own folder hierarchy. For example, it is not possible to have Scorecards in a Maps hierarchy. Each folder hierarchy has its own "root" folder. Objects and folders may appear in multiple folders, but each object has a single home folder. All other instances of that object are referenced objects.
- Maps: Maps are the strategic center of the application. Investor maps enable senior management to view business activities in terms of risk, investment type, budget, etc. They provide managers with a flexible, visual tool for slicing key performance data according to strategic goals. They also provide What-if capability to plan and align strategic goals.
- Scorecards: Scorecards are tables that enable you to track and manage the performance of items and portfolios according to predefined lists of categories. You can use Scorecards to easily view item and portfolio values in terms of color and shape-coded indicators. Additionally, you can create multiple scorecards, each grouping related performance categories into a single view.
- Forms: Forms enable data reporting and collection. You can use Forms to enter system data or as a reporting tool that enables you to efficiently view, summarize, and categorize data.
- Dashboards: A dashboard is a collection of graphs that provide detailed technical and business information about investments and performance categories. Dashboards enable managers to focus in on key performance indicators and trends that are critical to their specific areas of interest and responsibilities.
- Versions: Versions help you compare data. Configure versions and apply them later to display data as of a particular time period. A version can be defined as an absolute fixed date like September 30, 2012, or it can be defined as a relative range of dates that shift daily based on any past, current, or future time period. For example, the past 6 months, today, or the next 10 days. Relative versions can also be anchored to a specific time within the range, such as the fifth day of the last quarter. When comparing data spanning three years, for example, versions could be defined for the past year, the current year, and the future (planned) year, all anchored to a specific date such as June 15 to yield comparable data for analysis. Set up and store versions with security settings in folders for later use in scorecards, dynamic lists, investor maps, forms, and dashboards.
- Tabs: Tabs are the main building block for both forms and dashboards. A tab is a single display page containing data components arranged in group boxes. The same tab can be used in many different forms or dashboards.
- Tables: Tables enable you to efficiently view data. The arrangement of data in columns and rows allows you to easily scan the data and make comparative evaluations and summaries.
- Graphs: Graphs display historical or current information about an item or a portfolio. There are six types of customizable graphs:
- Distribution graphs: Display information in the form of a bar chart or a pie chart.
- Trend graphs: Display a line graph indicating performance over time.
- Column/Bar graphs: Can transform a table into a clustered or stacked column or bar graph.
- Scatter graphs: Display data in the form of points indicating values on the x-axis and y-axis.
- Radar graphs: Allow you to compare the magnitude of multiple properties on a single chart.
- Pareto distribution graphs: Show incremental quantities of one category in descending order with bars, and the cumulative total percentage of the same category, over the same period, with a line.
- Color Templates: Color templates enable you to define, adjust, and consistently apply color schemes to graphs.
- Categories: Once defined, key performance categories are criteria that grade business or technical performance for items and portfolios. For example, common categories are budget, staffing, start and end dates, number of defects, customer satisfaction, and return on investment (ROI). Categories are the basis for building Scorecards, Forms, Tabs, Graphs, and Dashboards.
- Value Lists: Value lists are defined data types, which include a predefined list of values. Value lists are used as the basis for some categories. An example of a Value list could be "Quality," and the included values could be "High," "Medium," and "Low." The values in the list can be ranked, as in "Low", Medium," and "High," or unranked, as in "Database" and "Commerce.".
- Life Cycles: A life cycle is an organization-wide paradigm that consists of the common phases of a certain activity type. Each phase has defined deliverables. The various phases of a life cycle must each be completed for the item to progress. You can create any number of life cycles, phases, and deliverables, enabling you to specify a predefined progression of phases for various types of items, such as new application development, operations, vendor selection, etc. When an item or portfolio is based on a life cycle, it inherits all the phases and deliverables defined by that life cycle.
- Phases: Each life cycle consists of a sequence of phases. Examples of phases could be requirement analysis, design, coding, etc. Each phase may have one or more deliverables that must be completed before you can progress to the next phase. Phases also include the document links and action items being managed for a technology investment. Once they are defined, phases can be used for many different life cycles.
- Advanced Searches: Create and save your most frequent search strings to use it across the application as needed.
- Users: Users are all the individuals in your organization who have access to the Primavera Portfolio Management application. Use the User Wizard to enter information for each user in the company, such as password, privileges, login name, user preferences, and contact information.
- User Groups: A user group is a group of users who should all be assigned identical rights. Use the User Group Wizard to create new user groups and define security parameters for entire groups, rather than individually defining security for each system user.
- Processes: Processes are sets of favorite URLs and defined practices arranged in a series that provide you with guidance, including direct access to application objects and documents, as well as any local or web URLs. Using processes helps you organize your work and makes it easier to navigate and collaborate with others.
- Workflows: Workflows are automated guidelines that define and step users through established organizational procedures. Workflows include both manual tasks, which end-users perform, and automatic tasks, which the system performs. Workflows can be started manually or triggered by an alert or a host workflow. Workflows provide clear opportunities for people to effectively collaborate on complex organizational processes.
- Alerts: Alerts are automatic messages that are triggered by system events and that notify the user to some change in a monitored item or portfolio. Alerts can be dispatched as an e-mail message or a notification to an Open API.