Managing Projects › How to Create Projects › Create Projects from Project Templates

Create Projects from Project Templates

Use this procedure to create a project from a project template. The default field values in the project template can vary from the ones defined in the following procedure.

When you create a project from a template, the following information is copied from the template to the new project:

• General project attributes and custom fields.
• Staff, participants, and participant groups.
• Work breakdown structure.
• Task assignments.
• OBS unit associations.
• Resource % Allocation and Allocation field values, so that the ETC lines up with these amounts.
• Cost and benefit plans.

Note: Start and finish dates, baseline information, and financial properties are not copied from templates to new projects. If hard-booked resources are defined in the project template, the resources are copied as soft-booked.

Follow these steps:

1. Open Home, and from Portfolio Management, click Projects.

   The projects list page appears.

2. Click New from Template.

   The select project template page appears.

3. Select the template and click Next.

   The create page appears.

4. Complete the following fields in the General section:

   Assignment Pool

   Specifies the pool of resources allowed when assigning resources to tasks.

   Values:

   • Team Only. Allow only staff members.
   • Resource Pool. Allow team staff members and resources for whom you have access rights to book to a proposal. With this option, when you assign a resource to a task, the resource is also added as a team staff member.

   Default: Resource Pool

   Required: Yes

   Project Name

   Defines the name for the project.

   Limits: 80 characters

   Required: Yes

   Project ID

   Defines the unique identifier for the project that is typically auto-numbered.

   Limits: 20 characters

   Required: Yes

   Description

   Defines the description.

   Limits: 240 characters

   Required: No

   Manager

   Specifies the name of the resource responsible for managing the project. The manager of a project automatically receives certain rights for the project.

   The project manager is not the same as the collaboration manager. The person creating the project becomes the collaboration manager for the project by default.

   Default: The resource creating the project. If you are creating a project that someone else can manage, change the default to another resource.

   Required: No

   Page Layout

   Specifies the page layout to view project information. Available layouts are company-specific and dependent on the values set by your CA Clarity PPM administrator. Layouts also depend on whether an add-in is installed. If other layouts are not available, the field is display only.

   Default: Project Default Layout

   Required: Yes

   Start Date

   Defines the start date that you identify for a project initially. As you create tasks and assignments, this date is auto-calculated to match the first date that a task is scheduled to start. At that point, to edit this date, adjust the following dates:

   • Start date of the first task of the project.
   • Start date of the resource assignments and allocations on the project.

   Default: Current date

   Required: Yes

   Finish Date

   Defines the finish date that you identify for a project initially. As you create tasks and assignments, this date is auto-calculated to match the last date that a task is scheduled to finish. At that point, to edit this date, adjust the following dates:

   • End date of the first task of the project.
   • End date of the resource assignments and allocations on the project.

   Default: Current date

   Required: Yes

   Set Planned Cost Dates

   Specifies if the planned cost dates are synchronized with the investment dates. Selecting the option for a detailed financial plan does not affect the planned cost dates.

   Default: Selected

   Required: No

   Stage

   Defines the stage in the investment lifecycle. The list of choices is company-specific and depends on the values that your administrator sets.

   The metric is used in portfolio analysis when you use comparable stage criteria across all portfolio investments.

   Goal

   Specifies the purpose or business case for this project.

   Values: Cost Avoidance, Cost Reduction, Grow the Business, Infrastructure Improvement, and Maintain the Business

   Required: No

   Priority

   Defines the relative importance of this investment in relation to all other investments. The priority controls the order in which tasks are scheduled during autoscheduling. The priority is subject to dependency constraints.

   Values: 0 - 36 (where zero is the highest importance)

   Default: 10

   Required: No

   Progress

   Indicates the level of work completed on the tasks.

   Values:

   • Completed (100 percent)
   • Started (1 - 99 percent)
   • Not Started (0 percent)

   Default: Not Started

   Required: Yes

   Status

   Indicates the status for the project.

   Values: Approved, Unapproved, and Rejected

   Default: Unapproved

   Required: Yes

   Required

   Specifies to pin this investment when added to a portfolio. This field is used during scenario generation.

   Default: Cleared

   Required: No

   See the Portfolio Management User Guide for more information.

   % Complete Calculation Method

   Specifies the method for calculating the percent complete value for the project and tasks.

   Values:

   • Manual. Use this method to enter the percent complete for the project, summary, and detail tasks manually. Also, select this calculation method If you are using CA Clarity PPM with Microsoft Project, or if you are using an external job to calculate % Complete. The % Complete field appears on the task properties page.
   • Duration. Use this method to track percent complete based on duration. The duration is a measure of the total span of active working time for a task: from start to the finish date of a task. In this method, enter the % complete for the detail tasks. The % complete for summary tasks is automatically calculated based on the following formula:

     Summary Task % Complete = Total Detail Task Duration Complete / Total Detail Task Duration
     

   • Effort. Use this method to calculate the % complete for summary and detail tasks, automatically, based on the work units completed by resource assignments. If you assign a non-labor resource to a task, the effort and actuals for that resource are ignored in the calculation. The calculations are based on the following formulas.

     Summary Task % Complete = Sum of Detail Task resource assignment Actuals / Sum of Detail Task resource assignment Effort
     Detail Task % Complete = Sum of resource assignment Actuals / Sum of resource assignment Effort
     

   Default: Manual

5. In the Organizational Breakdown Structures section, define the OBS to associate with this project for security, organizational, or reporting purposes.

   See the Basics User Guide for more information.

   Department

   Defines the financial department associated with the investment.

   Required: No

   See the Financial Management User Guide for more information.

   Location

   Defines the financial location associated with the investment. The location requires belonging to the same entity as the department.

6. Complete the following fields in the Copy Template Project Options section:

   Template Name

   Displays the name of the project template from which data is used to populate the new project. Use a template to create a project with the following types of information predefined:

   • Project roles
   • Work breakdown structure
   • Financial plans
   • Project documents

   A template enables you to implement projects with common elements throughout the organization.

   not sure if we need to describe all this in the field definition. this info is already provided in the conceptual text that precedes the procedure and the field descriptions

   Scale Work By

   Defines the percentage by which the work estimates on each task is required to be increased or decreased for the new project. The scaling is relative to the template.

   Values: 0-100 (where zero means no change)

   Default: Zero

   Required: No

   Scale Budget By

   Defines the percentage (positive or negative) as the scaling factor for the dollar amounts defined in project cost plans and benefit plans.

   Values: 0-100 (where zero means no change)

   Default: Zero

   Required: No

   Example: The template project from 1/1/2009 to 12/31/2009 allocates $10,000 for planned cost and $20,000 for planned benefit for the project duration. If a Scale Budget By value of 20 percent is defined, the plans copy over to the new project as follows. Assumed that the project duration is same as the template project:

   • The planned cost shows $12,000 (scaled up by an additional 20 percent of the original value).
   • The planned benefit shows $24,000 (scaled up by an additional 20 percent of the original value).

   Convert resources to roles

   Specifies to replace the resources in the new project with the primary roles, or team roles of the named resources on the project template. If a named resource has no primary role or team role, the named resource is retained on the new project. This setting overrides the default project management setting on the settings page.

   Suppose, a cost plan uses a resource as a grouping attribute. Selecting the check box, copies the cost plan from the template, but without converting the resource values to roles. The resource value can be the only value that differentiates one line item detail row from another. In the absence of the value, duplicate detail rows can result in the cost plan.

   Default: Cleared

   Required: No

7. Save the changes.

More information:

How to Create Projects

Create New Projects

Rules for Copying Financial Plans from Project Templates

Defines the Default Project Management Settings