PPM Essentials Accelerator

The CA Clarity PPM Essentials Accelerator (PPM Essentials Accelerator) is an add-in for project management that provides the following:

Speedier and easy implementation of project management capabilities
Quick start to basic project management
Dashboards that guide you through key project management tasks
Project status reporting tools

This section contains the following topics:

How to Use the PPM Essentials Accelerator

Project Templates

Organizational Breakdown Structures

PPM Essentials Accelerator Access Groups

Other Work

Install the Add-in

How to Use the PPM Essentials Accelerator

The PPM Essentials Accelerator provides project management views into the following areas:

Demand management. Demand Managers can use the Demand Center dashboard to review submitted project ideas.
Project management. Project managers can use the Project Center dashboard to get high-level views on the projects they are managing
Resource management. Resource managers or schedulers can use the Resource Center dashboard to get high-level views into the resources they are managing.
Project governance. Executives can use the Governance Center dashboard to get aggregated views of projects and resources and decide about budgets, priorities, and more.

Access the Dashboards and Portlets

The PPM Essentials Accelerator includes dashboards and portlets that display information about your ideas, projects, and resources.

Note: You can view the ideas and projects on the portlets that you manage or have access to.

Follow these steps:

Open the Dashboard menu and click a dashboard link.
The dashboard page appears.
Click a page to view the portlets.

Project Templates

The PPM Essentials Accelerator includes the following project templates you can use to convert an idea to a project or to create a new project:

Development Template (MSP). Use this template if Microsoft Project is your project scheduler.
Development Template (OWB). Use this template if Open Workbench is your project scheduler.

To change the default scheduler for a template, select the other scheduler from the Scheduler Format drop-down menu on the Create Project page.

The templates use the PPM Essentials Dashboard view for displaying all the portlets that provide a quick update on specific project metrics.

All the fields on the templates are standard to CA Clarity PPM project templates.

For more information, see the Project Management User Guide.

These PPM Essentials project templates include the following that can be modified to suit your business needs:

A work breakdown structure for creating project tasks.
The following folders for storing project documents in the Collaboration page:
- Design Deliverables
- Project Management

Organizational Breakdown Structures

The PPM Essentials Accelerator includes organizational breakdown structures (OBS) that can be a starting point and expand them to suit your business needs.

The OBS structures allow you to:

Filter information in the portlets for reporting purposes.
Restrict user access to different areas of the product using access groups with different privileges.

The following organizational breakdown structures are included:

Organization OBS. Allows you to group the business units within your organization and contains the following levels:
- All Lines of Business
- Line of Business (Internal Initiatives and Product Management)
Resource OBS. Allows you to group resources for reporting purposes and contains the following levels:
- All Employees
- Employee Groups (Administration, Engineering, Quality Assurance, Sales and Marketing, Services)

For more information, see the Administration Guide.

PPM Essentials Accelerator Access Groups

The PPM Essentials Accelerator includes access groups that represent specific project roles. The content included with the accelerator is designed for the access groups. Each access group is associated with a set of access rights that allows group members access to secured pages, portlets, and reports.

The access groups with the access rights provide you with a starting point for ensuring that the right users access the right pages. You can add your users to the access groups or modify the access groups and rights.

For more information, see the Administration Guide.

The following access groups are included with the accelerator:

PPM Essentials Demand Manager. This group has access to the Demand Center and the Project Center dashboards. The analysts determine the project pipeline and can create, edit, and approve ideas. They can also create projects from ideas.
PPM Essentials Idea Requestor. This group includes users that can create and submit ideas only. They have access to Submit Ideas.
PPM Essentials Project Manager. The group has access to the Project Center, Governance Center, and the PPM Essentials Project dashboards. They can create and edit projects, resources, and ideas in the OBS to which they are associated.
PPM Essentials Resource Manager. The group has access to the Project Center, Resource Center, and the PPM Essentials Project dashboards. They can edit, schedule, and book resources to projects.
PPM Essentials Team Member. The group has access to the Project Center and the PPM Essentials Project dashboards. As project participants they can submit ideas and timesheets.
PPM Essentials Executive. The group has access to the Governance Center dashboard. The executives can view project information across the organization.

Other Work

The PPM Essentials Accelerator includes the following other work instances for recording resource vacation or sick time:

Holiday
Personal Leave
Vacation Time

Assign all resources in your organization to the other work teams to enter vacation or sick time. Once a resource is assigned to the teams, they can see the Other Time section on their timesheets. Resources can then record any time that they are planning to take off in their timesheets.

Install the Add-in

For complete instructions on how to install an add-in, see the Installation Guide.