Creation and management of reports

by | Mar 6, 2018

Creation and management of reports

ITM Platform allows you to create customized reports that will be very useful when tracking and controlling the data that is required in real time. All ITM Platform reports are exportable to Excel. In addition, you will be able to create reports and charts with the ITM Platform data in Excel through an integration of both systems using Power Query, as you can see in this article.

Three types of reports can be generated: Three types of reports can be generated:

Lists reports

Lists reports can be created from several ITM Platform sections depending on which information you want to analyze. In a large number of sections of ITM Platform you can define and view a list of elements that can be exported to Excel.

For example, in the project area we can generate a table where we can see the most important parameters and characteristics of each project. These lists can be customized (selecting the fields we want to see), filtered (selecting only a group of projects), or configured to have a specific number of rows in the report, and finally exported to Excel (to work with the information in a spreadsheet).

 

Customized reports

Customized reports are the most recommended in terms of flexibility and ability to analyze any ITM Platform data.

These reports can be managed from the Reports area of the Management menu of your ITM Platform environment. You can create your own reports by clicking Add new report.

Afterwards, the main element of the report must be selected, which will determine the information shown in the report. The main options are:

  • Projects
  • Services
  • Tasks
  • Purchases
  • Incomes
  • Hours report

Once you have selected the main element of your reports, click on the “Create new report” button.

On the next screen, you can create your report and preview it.

In order to create your report, select:

  • The fields you wish to include in the report: in order to do this, you have to drag the right column fields to the left.
  • The filters that you want to apply in the report, so that you can only see some specific elements.
  • The groups that you want to be applied: in order to do this, you have to drag the fields that the report includes to the first line where you can read the text “Drag the title of a column and drop it here to group it”.
  •  The order of the items shown can be modified for each report field.

Note:  Keep in mind that while you are creating the report, you cannot see all the data of it: It is only a preview. So even if you do not preview any data, the final report will present the final data.

Once configured, you can save the report in two different modes:

  • Private: it will be visible only to the creator of the report
  • Public: It will be visible to all users who can access the reporting area.

Later you can check your saved report as many times as you wish and the updated information will always be displayed in real time. The created reports can be edited by its creator or copied by any user who has access to it.

 

Predefined reports

Predefined reports were present in previous ITM Platform versions. The functionalities of these reports can be covered by the other types of reports. If you have any questions on how to do it, please contact support@itmplatform.com

Project workflow

by | Jan 22, 2018

Project Workflow

Tutorial: Workflow configuration of project status.

In this tutorial, we will see how authorizations flows of status changes, or workflow, work.

What is the purpose of the project status workflow?

The workflow allows defining the flow of project status.

For example, we can define that projects whose status is “in draft” can only be changed to a “initiated” or “discarded” status with the approval of a member of the Technical Project Office of our organization.

Navigation: how to gain access to the configuration of status changes?

To navigate to the configuration of status changes, follow this route:

  • “Configuration” area (1)
  • “Parameters” drop-down (2)
  • “Project parameters” section (3)
  • “Project status” menu (4)

Note: To be able to edit the configuration of status changes, it is necessary to have the access permissions of a Full Access account.

Configuration method

There are four steps to define the flow from a given status:

1. Definition of status

The first step is that the organization to define what all the possible status of its projects are. ITM Platform customers carry out this step during the initial configuration of the environment.

Note: It is possible to select only one of those status as a predefined status, so that any new project starts with it.

Note: “Draft” and “closed” status are system status and cannot be deleted but their name can be edited to suit the peculiarities of each organization.

2. Enabling authorizations

In order to be able to customize the status flows, you must first enable the authorizations by clicking on the corresponding option.

3. Application of restrictions

To apply restrictions, it is necessary to select the origin status that you want to edit.

Next, the restrictions area applied in two steps:

c1) Selection of destination status

When working from a origin status, within each status tab you choose which are the possible destinations to which the project can be moved from that stating point. By default, all project status that have been created before will appear as possible destinations.

c2) Application of conditional rules

Then, it is possible (although not mandatory) to create rules that establish an authorization process for the project change.

This means that each time the project status changes from the origin status in which we are located and under the selected conditions, the new status will have to be authorized by the person or persons indicated.

To create and configure a new rule, three steps are followed:

  1. Create a new rule (1)
  2. Edit the rule to define additional conditions
    1. Filters (2)
    2. Authorizers (3)
    3. Logical model (4)

The conditions view allows you to set several filters:

4. Application for status change

Once the rules have been defined, project managers who wish to make a status change for which authorization is required, must submit an application.

The authorization request is processed directly from the general menu of the project, when editing the status fields.

On this screen, you can select the destination status, and add comments.

When saving the status, if the status change requires an authorization, the authorization status field will appear as “pending”.

5. Issuance of authorizations

To authorize the change of status from the account of an authorizer, you have to go to “My authorizations” section in “My desktop” area.

From this list, it is enough to choose the project whose status change needs to be approved and click on the approval button.

Creating reports and graphics with ITM Platform data in Excel: Basic access using Power Query

by | Jan 5, 2018

Creating reports and graphics with ITM Platform data in Excel: Basic access using Power Query

ITM Platform can be easily connected with external data analysis tools to produce project reports and graphs, as well as to automate the creation of custom dashboards.

This guide will demonstrate the use of Microsoft Excel 2016, which includes Power Query, to generate such outputs.

Necessary requirements to complete this tutorial:

  • Microsoft Excel,
  • An ITM Platform active environment
  • ITM Platform user with access to the information to be analyzed.

In addition, because the connection to Excel uses the ITM Platform API, it is convenient to have some familiarity with its methods and functions. All documentation is available at http://developers.itmplatform.com/.

Note: The steps described in this guide should only be performed once to configure the connection. From that point Excel will automatically update the data from ITM Platform.

 Example

  • Projects to be analyzed: All active projects on May 7, 2017
  • Objective: To compare the percentage completed versus the updated percentage completed to date reported.

Note: ITM Platform does not automatically calculate the percentage of progress in the calendar (ie, the percentage of time elapsed from the start of the project on the total estimated time for the project). However, this value can be easily calculated with the following formula:

% Calendar = (today – start date) * 100 / (end date – start date)

 

Step 1 – Identify the methods of ITM Platform’s API

Before you can start, you must identify the methods to be used at http://developers.itmplatform.com/. In this example, the following are used:

First method: Authentication: (get authentication)

http://developers.itmplatform.com/documentation/#authentication-1

 

In this example, the following access data is used for authentication:

  • User: musk@itmplatform.com
  • Password: 12345
  • Account: itmrozas

The URL is constructed with the following format:

https://api.itmplatform.com/ORGANIZATION/login/USER/PASSWORD

Therefore, in this case it will be:

https://api.itmplatform.com/itmrozas/login/elon.musk@itmplatform.com/12345

Second method: Projects (get projects) http://developers.itmplatform.com/documentation/#projects

 

This is the method for obtaining the projects data for the complete list of projects.

Step 2 – Create the basic query from Excel

To access Power Query from Excel, simply indicate a data source. In this case, ITM Platform should be selected from the path From Other Sources> From Web.

 

In the box, you must enter the authentication URL, which has the same format as seen above:

https://api.itmplatform.com/ORGANIZACION/login/USER/PASSWORD

 

When accepting the source, Excel will provide the authentication data, which includes the authorization token.

Then, from the Power Query Advanced Editor, in the Start menu, you can add the URL of the projects.

The advanced editor loads the Power Query interface and allows you to add code in the “M” or “Get & Transform” language. Although it is not necessary to know it, the basic keys will be given to be able to handle it successfully.

If all went well, the editor should display the following information:

Let

    Source =

Json.Document(Web.Contents(“https://api.itmplatform.com/itmrozas/login/elon.musk@itmplatform.com/12345”))

in

    Source

This indicates that the call to the authentication URL is stored in the Source variable. This is the essential element for Excel to be able to synchronize with ITM Platform and extract the data.

Next, you must indicate what data should be extracted. In this case, the project URL is added. In order to only see the projects that are open on May 7, the following search filter is added at the end of the URL:

?ProjectStartDate = lt: 2017-05-08T00: 00: 00Z & ProjectEndDate = gt: 2017-05-06T00: 00: 00Z

With the entire URL resulting in this:

https://api.itmplatform.com/itmrozas/projects/?ProjectStartDate=lt:2017-05-08T00:00:00Z&ProjectEndDate=gt:2017-05-06T00:00:00Z

For Power Query to be able to use authentication and query projects, you must replace the previous code with this:

Let

MyToken = Json.Document (Web.Contents (“https://api.itmplatform.com/itmrozas/login/elon.musk@itmplatform.com/12345”))

    Source = Json.Document (Web.Contents (“https://api.itmplatform.com/itmrozas/projects/?ProjectStartDate=lt:2017-05-08T00:00:00Z&ProjectEndDate=gt:2017-05-06T00:00: 00Z”, [Headers = [token = myToken [Token]])))

in

    Source

The result of the query shows data that must be transformed into a table. You can activate this option by right clicking.

The appropriate columns are then selected.

As calculations are to be performed with the date formula, it is convenient to specify date field format. To do this, select each date field and the date / time / zone option.

Finally, a list of projects that meet our conditions is produced:

 

Step 3 – Add the calculated data

It now becomes possible to calculate what we were looking for: the percentage of progress in the calendar. Recall that it is based on the formula:

(Today – date start) * 100 / (end date – start date)

The dialog box already provides everything you need. Just add the current date, which you get with the Power Query function:

DateTimeZone.FixedLocalNow ().

The result is a column in which the data we needed was calculated.

 

Step 4 – Save and View

Once the query outputs the calculated data, you can save and close the Power Query file.

To visualize the result, Excel allows access to both the complete table of query data and graphics.

The example creates a PivotChart from the query, from the following menu options: Insert / Pivot Chart / Use an external data source. From there, the existing connections are loaded, which should show the previous query.

The result is a chart that compares actual progress with progress in the calendar.

 

Step 5 – Retrieval

To access updated and real-time data, just click on Refresh from the Data menu.