Clarity

Hi all

I’m new to both Clarity and certainly this forum so please excuse both any lack of knowledge or inappropriate use of terminology.

Right now in our organisation we are trying to achieve our BAU reporting using the functionality we immediately used within Clarity.

The problem our PMO have right now is that our project managers are using the Status Report to input weekly project reporting and we’re extracting these inputs and compiling into an overall report for management reporting purposes.

Right now the only way we’ve identified to extract the Status Report content is to go to each project record and export into Excel and then use just the most recent report data.

We are sure there must be some means which enables us to extract the report data in a more efficient manner however our knowledge of the product is very limited so we just don’t know even what is possible.

Even if there was perhaps some means to extract every report ever produced for every project that would be a step forwards in the interim period before we have the expertise available to design a custom dashboard for us.

Hoping someone can assist with either some recommendations for further research or an interim solution as right now we’re quite stumped on how to proceed.

Many thanks in advance.

Henry.
………………………………
Henry Thompson
PMO Analyst
Centrica

Hi Henry

One way would be to build a custom report to get the data from the Status Report(s). The parameters can be -

1. OBS Unit
2. Project Name (browse)
3. Latest Report (Boolean - Checkbox)


The second way would be a clip icon on the project list page, that will open a new browser window with the latest status report filled.


Regards
NJ

I think (someone correct me) that the "Status Report" is an object delivered with an Accelerator pack? As such are there any out-of-th-box portlets as part of the acceraltor that deliver this functionality?

--

But there are a number of relatively minor ways to get the data "out of" Clarity (if its not there already)

1) Simple report (as above)

2) Simple portlet based on the stock object data provider - could give you a flat dump of "every report"

3) Intelligent portlet (like (2) but with a bit more nicer parameters / formatted output / business rules etc

4) Expose you data through Business Objects ( then a simple (or indeed complex!) WEBI extract would give you your data )

5) Expose the data through a web-service ; then you data is "available" to anything that can read the web-service.

etc etc etc

FWIW : (2) would get you the quickest results..... I'd build (3) or (4) as a slicker solution (more code) though.


Edit : in fact if you are on version 12.0.5 or above you van actually do (2) as a USER not even a system ADMIN. You can use the 'Personal Dashboarding' functionality (new in 12.0.5) to build you own dashboard (portlet) from the user side of the application (assuming your user has been enabled for dashboarding)

Hi,

Dave, you are right. Its a project object's sub-object which comes with the Accelerator pack.

There is a OOTB portlet which comes with the accelerator as well. I think its called Project Status Reports Portlet. Not sure if its a project dashboard portlet or a generic portlet.

Regards,
Akhil

What we have done is create a number of duplicate fields (hidden of course) in the project object to those in the status report we want to use in an over arching status report on all projects. We also created a field in the status report object itself called report status that has the values of 'Draft' and 'Final'.

When the PM completes a status report for the project and sets the reprot status to final, a trigger is kicked off on 'Save' or 'Submit' that copies the informtion to the duplicate fields in the project object. If the status report is set to 'Draft' again, the data from the last known 'Final' status report is copied to the duplicate fields.

This method allows us to use the Export to Excel feature to create reports. It also allows us to use Business Objects to create status reports as well. We created the duplicate fields in the Universe.

Works very well.

Hi Henry,
Others have posted good ideas for you on this subject. Let me expand just a bit, as your team does not appear to have deep knowledge of the Clarity data model, what the system can provide you easily, etc.

It appears you have the PMO Accelerator installed. With this in mind, see if my example steps can be followed on your environment.

Using Clarity 12.1.0 I performed the following, and assume my user has access to personal Dashboards, and can create their own portlet.

1. Create a new personal dashboard.

2. Create a new grid portlet, and search for the Data Provider as {*status report}. Select Filter, and you should get the Status Report data provider
which is supplied by Clarity for the Project Status Report Subobject.

3. Name your portlet (I called mine PMO Project Status reports)

4. Make sure the Instance Type is General as you want this to be used for a dashboard, or possibly on the overview page, on a new tab from the General section, etc. This is ultimately your team's choice.

5. Select Finish and Open the portlet to continue the configuration.

6. Add the columns you want to the list view, set up the filters, etc as you need and save.

7. Add the portlet to your dashboard, test out, tune the configuration, etc.

This list can then be filtered, etc and exported to Excel if needed. Alternatively you can use this system provided Data Provider and try creating a Pie Chart, or Bar Chart, etc to better visualize project status reports. Note: This last option has yet to be tried.

Regards,
Allen Bollinger

Hi to all that have responded to date.

Thanks for your well meant information however as a complete novice I must admit that most of this went over my head!

The only response which makes some sense to me is that from Allen Bollinger and from that I realise that what we’re missing here in our implementation and permissions is an ability to create a Portal.

It would seem to me that only with that capability do we have a hope to extract any of the data from the Status Reports in bulk or to start being a little smarter and extracting for a specific week or interval.

I’d welcome any contradictions to the above however I fear for me it’s back to exporting each of some 45 Status Reports individually into Excel and compiling an output from these.

Thanks again.

Henry
........................................
Henry Thompson
PMO Analyst

What Allen has described is a "user-side" action rather than an "administrator action" (of course admins can do this as well); but your system administrators have to allow you the ability to do this! You should get onto them to either give you the relevant permissions or for them to build you a portlet (as described above) and share it with you.

I've discovered while trying to get some licenses back that dashboard uses a Creator License so that may affect whether you can use that method. I'm out of Creator licenses myself.

Access Right Description License Type
Dashboard - Create Allows user to create new dashboards in the application. Creator
Dashboard - Navigate Allows user to navigate to Dashboard pages. Creator


While we're on this, I don't mean to step on Henry, but I'm trying to do the exact same thing todayand he may come across this same problem.

Our managers are just starting to use status reports and I built a porltet but can't populate it. I know at least one project has status reports but my portlet keeps coming up empty. I tried adding the Project Status Report portlet and tried creating a porlet using the Project Status Report query. Same thing.

Anybody have any ideas? Should I open a different thread for this?

thanks,

Karen