Clarity

How to Make Cost Rates Visible to PMs | Learn with Rego

Recommend

Nov 16, 2016 02:46 AM

navzjoshi00

Dear Community Members,

In today's Q&A, we have some exciting topics, including a detailed look at the logic behind the project status field.

We're also looking forward to an upcoming webinar: Resource Management BrightTALK with LabCorp. They'll share the IT approach we helped them develop in CA PPM that powerfully improved Resource Management and their ability to respond to business needs. The event is live on December 1st @ 1:00PM EST.

And if you've found early success with Agile, you may be interested in a bimodal webinar available December 6th @ 12:00PM EST discussing bet practices for managing, scaling, and running Agile alongside Waterfall. You'll hear about how a major grocery store chain successfully made the bimodal transition.

Q&A Summary

1. How can we make the cost plan and actuals from timesheets pull in the bill rate, so cost rates are visible to the PMs, and they can look at profitability?

2. What is the logic governing available Status fields on our projects?

3. Can you solve this portlet graphics issue?

4. Where does the virtual actuals field on Project get its data?

5. How do Project Hierarchy Rights work? I don't see some projects.

Please feel free to comment on any alternative answers you've found.

We love your input (always).

1.

We'd like the cost plan and actuals from timesheets to pull in the bill rate, so cost rates are visible to the PMs, and they can look at profitability. Each project will have its own rate matrix, as the bill rates change based on the agreed SOW rates. However, cost rates are standard.

Can this be achieved?

Answer

I looked at a number of options to do this, including updating the project rate matrices with the cost rates within the “standard rate” column. However, there is an OOTB solution for this. Many of you may have already known this, but I thought I would share.

Within every investment, there are two labor rate matrices that can be associated. One is call the “Labor Transaction Cost Source” and the other is the “Labor Transaction Rate Source.” I always set both to the same rate matrix.

The “Labor Transaction Cost Source” is what drives the cost plan, budget plan, and actuals from time entry. However, the “Labor Transaction Rate Source” populates a set of fields within the cost plan, with the labels of “Revenue.” Therefore, you can see the actual costs and actual revenues – coming from two separate rate matrices.

2.

Anyone know why the “Status” field on project would be restricted to “Unapproved,” “Approved,” and "Cancelled”? I want the “On Hold” value to show, but it’s not, and I know that it’s not specific to Ideas. Thoughts??

Answer

The Project Status field uses the system-restricted lookup Investment Object State. The Investment Object State lookup has six values defined: Approved, Cancelled, On Hold, Rejected, Resumed, and Unapproved.

The Investment Object State lookup has 3 additional lookup values defined: Converted, Incomplete, and Submitted for Approval. These lookup values are used for the Idea Object and only appear on Idea instance records.

There is logic built into the application that controls which values are available. This logic is based on the values in the Status field, the Progress Field, and the date fields in the Investment.

1.   When the project is created, it is given a default status of 'Unapproved'.
2.   If a project is Unapproved, the end-user can change it to 'Approved' or 'Rejected'.
3.   If a project is 'Approved' and has a Progress of 'Not Started', then the status can only be changed back to 'Unapproved' or 'Rejected'.
4.   If a project, without a simple budget, is 'Approved' and has a Progress of 'Started', then the status can only be changed back to 'Unapproved' or to 'Canceled'.
5.   If a project is 'Cancelled' and has a Progress of 'Started', then the status can only be changed back to 'Approved' or to 'Resumed'.
6.   A project, with a simple budget, can only be changed to 'On Hold' if it has a Progress of 'Started' and the current date falls between the Budgeted Cost Start date and the Budgeted Cost Finish date. Status of "On Hold" is not available unless the project status is approved. You will need to change the status to "Approved" prior to selecting "On Hold".

NOTE: In Studio, the administrator has the ability to define an 'Override Default' value for this attribute. Although this is possible, the 'Override Default' value will not be used for this attribute because this attribute employs the use of application rules to display selected lookup values based on other project conditions. Also, be mindful of these rules when developing BPM Process definitions that attempt to update the Project Status or Idea Status attribute. If you attempt to set the Project Status attribute that violates the built-in logic your process step will generate an error.
Setting the Default for this field does not work due to the built-in logic and therefore if an Idea is converted to a Project, the Status field will not use the value set for the Default field, but will be automatically set based on the built-in logic described above when the project is created.

Also see the attachment below: "CA_Tech_Doc_Rules_for_Changing_Project_Status.pdf."

3.

We have a circumstance where the Capacity Planning portlet is not spacing the ROWS evenly, causing the information to display in an unreadable manner. (See screen shot below). That example is for only half a row. This is V13.3, Oracle backend, On Prem.

Answer

Here is what I have learned:

1. Changing configuration options in the Portlet did not help

2. SOLUTION (?): When we deactivated the legacy roles and manually created fresh roles (which was the next step anyway) – the “fat” rows disappeared for all users. Something in the setup of the Roles in this environment (which is generated from a PeopleSoft interface) must have disturbed the histogram.

4.

Where does the virtual actuals field on project get its data? It is 0 for a quarter of our projects, even though there are hundreds of actuals on the project. We are on 14.3 and only 1 year on CA PPM. These aren't ancient projects. Slices go all the way back to then. All jobs like datamart and stuff are run.
We don't use financials and don't run the post to wip job. Most projects still have that field with more than 0, just 1/4 are 0 when they have actuals.

Any idea what that field uses?

Answer

The field gets its value from the Labor Act Sum / Labor Act Curve on the inv_investments table. These fields are populated by the investment allocation job. The investment allocation job will only run against active projects. If you need to update these fields for inactive projects, you will have to activate the project, run the investment allocation job, and then deactivate the project.

5.

Does anyone know what the “Project-Hierarchy…” rights actually control on the Hierarchy tab? I have looked in the documentation, and the information is vague.

I gave myself all the hierarchy rights and see most of the projects in the system, but not all (even though the ones I don’t see are setup the same as the ones I do see as far as active, unapproved, and financial status is concerned. I can’t figure out why I don’t see some projects.

I removed all the hierarchy rights, and I still see a handful of projects, just a small subset of the above projects where I had all the rights.

Any insight would be much appreciated. I feel I am missing something super obvious here.

Side note – the Hierarchy rights do not affect the Project > Properties > subprojects page.

Answer 1

The projects you see on the Hierarchy tab are controlled by the Department OBS.

If your project has no Department OBS on your project’s Hierarchy tab, you can only see projects that have no Department OBS.

When your project has a Department OBS, you can see all projects in the system. You cannot see your current project (obviously). Plus, if your project is a sub of another project, you cannot see that master project either (which makes sense).