Projects

Projects are setup in Unanet for the purpose of tracking time and/or expense data.  Setting up a project may require several steps.  The Adding Project section below addresses the first step.  Once the fields on this screen have been entered and saved, you may want to setup addition project attributes, such as assigning specific people to a project, or overriding billing rate information for a user for this project or defining budget information for the project.  

You may also want to set up various Tasks for this project.  Each task carries its own associated attributes.

This help page addresses:

• Adding Projects (covers basic project setup steps)

• Setting up User Defined Fields for Projects (an advanced feature for System Administrators)

You may also be interested in:

• Listing and Editing Projects (to manage existing projects)
• More Functions (for assigning people to projects, overriding project rates, project budgets, adding project notes, importing task info, etc.)
• Managing Task Data (for maintaining additional task level details)

Note: You can also import project and task data into the Unanet application.  Click Project Import or Task Import to learn more about these import features.

When setting up projects, you may want to consider the following items:

• Define projects for internal activities, training, R&D, software dev, leave, customer work, etc.
• Decide on a scheme for identifying projects (project codes, names, account numbers, etc.)
• Keep in mind -- the project codes appear on the timesheet -- this is what the user will select from.
• Do you want to restrict edit access to Unanet projects?  (view or list access)
• Do you want to track and export revenue by task to a specific revenue account in the GL? (use task account #)
• Do you want to track and export revenue by project to the GL?  (use the project account #)
• Will you track time to the task level within a project?
• Are there standard or template task plans for your organizations projects? 
• Do you want to track budgets and/or organization budgets?
• What are the budget hours, billable $ and billable expenses for customer projects?  (define budgets)
• What are the budget hours, cost $ and allowable expenses for internal projects?  (define budgets)
• Do you want to explicitly assign users to projects directly or to tasks?
• Do you want to override a users default rates for a given project?
• Will your projects require PM approval?  Customer approval?

Adding Projects

Privilege Needed: Project Manager

The Project Manager has the ability to add a new project. Displayed below is an example of  the Add Project screen.

	Saves the current data entered (including defaults values).
	Resets all the values to it's default view.

Project Code - Identifier for this Project in Unanet.  This field is required and can not contain any spaces.

Organization - Select the Organization that this project belongs to.  The value in this field is what we typically refer to as the Project Organization (vs Person Organization).  All projects must belong to an Organization thus, this field is mandatory.

Account Number - This is an optional field, that is typically used to store a financial system accounting number of some sort.   This may be useful for feeding a downstream system.  This field is optional.

Project Title - The title of the project.  The value in this field is used for display purposes on several reports.  This field is mandatory.

Purpose - The reason to create this project.  This field is optional.

Project Manager - Typically, this is the person in charge of this project.  If this project is set to require approval for time and or expenses, this is the individual that will be involved with the approval process.  Also, depending on the Restrict Access setting (see below), this may be on the only person that can view report details for this project.

Project Type - Describe what type of project this is.  These are defined in the Project Types Section.

Project Status - Describe the status of the project.  These are defined in the Project Status Section.

Restrict Access - This setting is used to determine the degree to which other Project Managers have access to the information about this project.  The security gets progressively tighter as you move down the list.  The available values include:

• Open -- All other Project Managers can access any details regarding this project.  Further, they have the authority to edit any of the attributes of the project.

• View -- All other Project Managers can view the details regarding this project, but can not modify them.

• List -- All other Project Managers will see this projects name in a listings of projects (e.g. on report selection criteria screens, etc.), but will be unable to view any of the detail regarding the project attributes.  Basically, they can know the project exists, but have no idea for what or who's assigned to it ,etc.

• Restrict -- This is the most secure setting.  Only the Project Manager that established this project (and his/her alternates) will be able to access the detailed information about this project.  Otherwise, this project is essentially invisible to other Project Managers.

When considering restricting access to project data, you may also be interested in the unanet.properties setting that further restricts which Manager's can view data for a given project.  The unanet.report.criteria.all_people setting can be use to allow Managers to view only detailed time and expense data for users in their own approval groups.   This property setting, along with the Restrict Access project setting are commonly used in conjunction to control access to project information.  For more information on this topic, check out Restricted View.

Task-Level Assignment - Describes whether assignments will be made at the project level or at the task level.  If this value is set to "No", then the project manager will only be allowed to make assignments at the project level -- otherwise, all assignments must be made at the task level.

User "Self Sign-Up" - Describes whether any user can assign them self to this project (and thus, have access to apply time and or expenses to this project).  If this value is set to "No", then the project manager will need to explicitly Assign People or Assign  Organizations to this project -- otherwise the project will not show up in their dropdown lists of available projects.  User's manage which project will show up in their own timesheet / expense drop down lists via the My Assignment screen under the user menu.

This section will only appear if your Unanet system is configured with a UnaTime license.

Allow Future Charges - Describe whether or not to allow the users  to charge time to the project ahead in the future.

Project Approval - Describe whether or not time charged to this project will require a Project Managers approval.  If set to Yes, this Project Manager will need to Approval all time (by all users) that is charged to this project -- before their timesheet status can become COMPLETED.

Charges To Tasks - Describe whether or not to force the timesheet user to select a task for this project -- when entering time on their timesheet.   If the project is set up with the Task-Level Assignment flag set to "Yes", this value must also be "Yes".

Default Pay Code - Define a Pay Code, that by default, will be selected for this Project when the new timesheet entry is created.  This value may be overridden.  This setting simply assists the user by highlighting this particular pay code when they attempt to charge time to this project.

User "Self Plan" - This field will only appear on the Project screen if the UnaSource license is present.  Describes whether any user can plan them self to this project on the User - Plan Work menu item.  If this value is set to "Closed", then no user can plan their own time on this project.  If it is set to "Open", then all UnaSource Users can plan their own time on this project.  If it is set to "Assign", then only users who are currently assigned can plan their own time on this project.

Expense

This section will only appear if your Unanet system is configured with a Una$ense license.

Assign Expenses - Describe whether or not people can assign expenses to this project.

Project Approval - Describe whether or not expenses charged to this project will require a Project Managers approval.  If set to Yes, this Project Manager will need to Approval all expense reports (by all users) that is charged to this project -- before their expense report status can become COMPLETED.

Charges To Tasks - Describe whether or not to force the expense user to select a task for this project -- when entering an expense report.    If the project is set up with the Task-Level Assignment flag set to "Yes", this value must also be "Yes".

Once a project has been added and saved, you can access/manage additional information.   See adding additional information to the project (e.g. people, tasks, rate overrides, etc.) for managing additional project attributes.  

Also, checkout interfacing with MSProject MPX files for more info on importing and exporting data to an from MS Project using the MPX formats.

User Defined Fields for Projects

The Project Page comes with an option to add up to 10 user defined fields. In order to display these fields on the data entry screen, it is necessary to edit the text.properties file (a System Administrator duty).   Check out  text.properties for more information about this advanced configuration feature. If this file does not exist in the properties directory on the web server, then it must be created.  The only requirement is that the file must start with one blank line and the parameters below start on the second line. It is important to add a label to each field. If the project.user01 to project.user10 fields are left blank (as they are now), they will not be displayed in the system. It is also possible to add a header for the user defined fields. This is done by using the property project.userdefined.header.  

Remember, any changes to this file, require that you stop and restart your servlet engine before they take effect. 

Note: The user defined fields are all strings, limited to 128 characters in length.

project.userdefined.header=
project.user01=
project.user02=
project.user03=
project.user04=
project.user05=
project.user06=
project.user07=
project.user08=
project.user09=
project.user10=

For example if the text.properties file looks like the following:

project.userdefined.header=Additional information
project.user01=Project Assistant
project.user02=
project.user03=
project.user04=
project.user05=
project.user06=
project.user07=
project.user08=
project.user09=
project.user10=

The bottom of the add screen will look like this:

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Last revised: September 13, 2002 .