Why use project planning?
Project planning enables you to quickly set up new projects and inspect the impact of the new projects on your capacity and revenue forecasting at a macro level. In Synergy Enterprise, it is possible to drill down into stage-specific analysis within the improved revenue forecasting and resource planning features.
Introducing the interface
Project rows
When you open project planning (called ‘planning board’ in Synergy Business), you will see project rows in the grid are in a variety of colors and styles.
These are defined as:
Dotted rows— Dots around project rows show that a project has no start date, no end date or neither start nor end date.
Teal rows— Projects in active status - can only be in delivery mode.
Striped rows— Projects in proposal status. The projects can be in planning or delivery modes (but likely in planning mode
Italicised font in a project row— Projects still in planning mode.
Blue rows— Stages at proposal status.
Dark overlay— The end of the dark overlay is today's date.
Donut graph— Shows the capacity of the allocated resource(s) to the project. Hovering over the donut graph will open a tooltip with more detailed information.
Non-billable projects* - Each non billable project, or a single stage project with a 'no billing' fee type assigned to the stage will have an asterisk* next to the fee value in the project row. The asterisk shows that the value is used for automatic capacity estimating, but is not included in the revenue forecast.
Project forecast pop-up details
Click on a project row shown in the forecast grid to view the forecasting details pop-up for that project. The following details are shown:
Project name The name of the project is shown. Click in this field to edit the name of the project if required.
Project status type This shows the status type that the likelihood selected is part of. e.g. The proposal status of 'submitted' is a custom project status option that is part of the proposal type group. This is a read only field and it will automatically update when the project status is changed.
Project type This is the project type to reflect what type of work or team will complete this job. Click into this field to change this from the default project type of 'commercial' to the required project type value.
Start date This is the date that the project work is expected to commence. When on a stage, click in the field to either type a new date or select it from the calendar.
End date This is the date that the project work is expected to end.When on a stage, click in the field to either type a new date or select it from the calendar.
Value This is the forecast value based on the 'fee value' for the project stages. Or when the project stages are hourly rate or no billing fee type this value is the forecast budgeted value for the work required on that stage. For a single stage project you can click on the fee field to edit the value. Type the new required value, or use the slider to set the fee value. For a multi stage project the fee value needs to be edited in the work breakdown structure.
Likelihood percentage with project status The chance of winning the project when at proposal status shown as a percentage. Once the project is active status (or higher) this likelihood value is always 100% as the work has been won. For a single stage project you can click on the likelihood to see a scroll bar to toggle through the proposal status option, or to setup the project to be active status. Once the project is active status you can no longer update the likelihood and linked project status using this feature, it is only available for proposal projects. Multi stage projects cannot be updated using this feature, they must be updated in the work breakdown. Learn more about setting up the project status with the likelihood %.