ProjectLoad Blog

New projects may now be created by copying existing projects. Any manager with the authority to create new projects and edit an existing project can choose to generate a new project based on the project, phases, and activities of an existing project. During the copy process the manager can decide which phases to include and whether or not to include underlying activities for each phase. The estimated hours can be copied as is, removed, increased or decreased by a specified percentage. The estimated dates can be adjusted forward or backward by a specified number of days or to hit a particular start or end date.

The system automatically filters out assignments to personnel that are no longer with the company. This can leave some gaps if the copy process includes activities, but it makes little sense to include activities for personnel who are inactive.

When project managers need to modify a project, they normally choose to use the project editor. The editor allows them to edit any component of the project, add new phases and activities, and align the dates using the “push down” and “pull up” options on each phase and the project. However, sometimes a person just wants to take a look at the project components and edit a few of them as needed. In that case, the project detail report can be a better choice than the full editor.

The project detail report can be accessed from the Home page or the Projects page by choosing the “report” option for a project. This report displays the project, all phases, and all activities under each phase. The information is organized based on target dates and highlighted based on the status of each component and any alerts. Hover help provides a quick way to see the worst alert for each component. Each component can be edited simply by clicking on the component title. As you finish editing an underlying component, the system returns to the project detail report.

The detail report thus serves as an overview of the entire project, and a quick loading menu letting you jump directly to any component you need to change. It is available even if you don’t have the authority to edit the entire project and can give you a convenient way to see the pieces you do have authority to access as they relate to the project and make it easier for you to edit them.

You may now choose to display rows in the work hour reports that have no actual or forecasted hours included in the time period reported. For example, the Work Hours by Project report can now include rows for all projects that match the search criteria, even if the projects had no time charged to them in the report period. This change makes it easier to get a complete picture of the workload of any person, team, manager, or group by including work assignments they may not have charged time against during the period being reported.

Note that the search conditions will still filter the projects based on activities. For example, suppose you ran a report for all projects that a particular individual is assigned to. By default you would see a list of all projects that person charged time to during the report period. With the new option, you can also include rows with zero hours to see those projects the person is assigned to, but did not charge time to. However since the search criteria are restricted to one person, you would not see projects the person was not assigned to at all.