Wednesday September 08 , 2010

Documentation

ProjectGoo is a cloud-based project and portfolio management system that utilizes the Google Cloud and Microsoft Project to provide a ubiquitous, globalized collaboration platform for portfolio administrators, project managers and project team members.

Utilizing the Google Calendar and Documents services, ProjectGoo extends a project manager’s reach to increasingly globalized teams and enables project managers to publish project assignments and distribute these assignments over the Internet to team members along with attendant defect, issue, and risk resolution assignments.

Project plans are constructed in Microsoft Project Standard or Professional 2007 (the de facto industry standard project planning tool) but now these standalone .mpp files from all the project managers in your organization become amalgamated into a true project and portfolio collaboration platform with resource availability, defect, issue, and risk analysis reports across the portfolio available to each project manager and the portfolio administrator.

Project managers can additionally upload project documentation, determine which project team members should have access to these documents and inherit the rich collaboration features (e.g. real-time collaborative editing) that Google Documents provides.

Utilizing the ProjectGoo Team Client, project team members can view all their project task assignments for each project they have been assigned to and update their completion status which in turns updates the project manager and the appropriate Microsoft project plan task. Additionally, they can view each defect, issue, risk and document that has been assigned to them and update the status of these items as well as assign them to other team members or the project manager for review or further action.

Designed from the ground up as a cloud computing collaboration platform that allows anyone in your organization to contribute effectively on each and every project wherever they are in the world, ProjectGoo represents the next generation of project and portfolio management applications. ProjectGoo utilizes the best-of-breed in project planning tools (Microsoft Project 2007) as well as the best-of-breed cloud computing infrastructure (Google). Wherever you can reach Google Calendar and Google Documents, you can utilize ProjectGoo.

ProjectGoo System Requirements

Project Manager Client

  • Google Calendar Account
  • Google Documents Account
  • Microsoft Project 2007 Standard or Professional
  • .NET 3.5 SP1

Team Client

  • Google Calendar Account
  • Google Documents Account
  • .NET 3.5 SP1

Installing ProjectGoo

  • First, download the Project Manager Client installation file (.msi)
  • Second, double-click the installation file to initialize the installation wizard

If you have .NET 3.5 SP1, the installation wizard will prompt you for further information

If you do not have .NET 3.5 SP1, the installation wizard will prompt you to download .NET 3.5 SP1 and point you to the exact location you need to download the framework. Once you have done this, double-click on the installation file for ProjectGoo again and the installation wizard will prompt you for further information.

  • Third, please read the final screen README information … Excerpts that are pertinent at this point are:

IF YOU ARE THE FIRST USER OF PROJECTGOO IN YOUR COMPANY

  • When signing into ProjectGoo Project Manager v1.0 for the first time, there will be a slight pause as the application loads the initial data into your Google Docs Account. This pause can be anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes. Please do not shut ProjectGoo down during this first sign-in or ProjectGoo will not operate appropriately. If an error is generated during this process, just re-run ProjectGoo and ProjectGoo will self-heal and begin this process again.
  • Additionally, you will be prompted to create a new Portfolio Administrator resource. It is extremely important that you create this resource immediately to seed permissions and data appropriately for the application. The Portfolio Administrator is the superuser of ProjectGoo and is the only resource that can access and update both portfolio-level and project-level information. Also the Portfolio Administrator is the only user that can create additional resources and users within ProjectGoo. Project Managers can read portfolio-level information and update project-level information.

CONFIGURING PROJECTGOO

  • It is very important to configure ProjectGoo before creating new users or utilizing the client. Please Select ‘Settings’ from the top-level menu and fill in the appropriate information for your email account. ProjectGoo is pre-populated with select information for Gmail, however, if you utilize a different non-Gmail email address, consult your email administrator for the appropriate settings. Setting up your email account within ProjectGoo allows your team members to receive important system notifications when their user accounts are created.

ADDING USERS

  • Additional users of ProjectGoo within your organization should be added in the Enterprise Resource Pool. Select the Resources Tab on the Project Manager Client and Select ‘New’. Enter in the appropriate information and save this data. An email notification will be sent to the new user with instructions.

YOU’RE  READY TO GO

  • Once you have completed these steps, you have established yourself as the Portfolio Administrator and set up your team. Your team should now either download the Project Manager Client (if you set them up as Project Managers) or the Team Client (if you set them up as Team Members). Please make sure that they follow the instructions in the email that notified them of their account creation. It is important that they login to ProjectGoo with the email account you used for their Resource Entry.

ProjectGoo User Roles

There are 3 types of users in the ProjectGoo system — The Portfolio Administrator, The Project Manager(s) and Team Members. Following are a description of each user type’s role and privileges.

Portfolio Administrator

  • There is only one portfolio administrator per portfolio. The Portfolio Administrator needs to utilize the Project Manager Client unless they have been assigned assignments (tasks, defects, issues, risks) for a project. To view these assignments the portfolio administrator should use the Team Client.
  • While a single company can have more than one portfolio of projects, each portfolio has one administrator. The portfolio administrator has read/write access to the Portfolio Resources and is the only user that can create new users in the Portfolio Resources. Additionally, the portfolio administrator has read/write access to the portfolio defects, issues, risks and read access to the portfolio documents. A portfolio administrator does not have access to all the project tasks through the Project client unless the portfolio administrator has the project plan.
  • Portfolio Administrators can work as Project Managers and publish/update/delete their own project plans.

Project Manager

  • There can be many project managers per portfolio. Project Managers need to utilize the Project Manager Client unless they have been assigned assignments (tasks, defects, issues, risks) for a project. To view these assignments the project manager(s) should use the Team Client.
  • Project Managers have read/write access to their particular project plans. Additionally, they have read/write access to their projects’ defects, issues, risks and documents. They can control access to their documents. They can read the Enterprise Resource Pool and add resources to their project plans. Project Manager do not have write (but they do have read) access to portfolio level information and cannot create new users which are the chief differentiators between Project Managers and the Portfolio Administrator.

Team Members

  • There can be many team members per portfolio. Team members need to utilize the Team Client
  • Team Members have read/write access to their assigned tasks, defects, issues and risks for the projects and items they have been assigned. Team members can be assigned to multiple projects and have multiple assigned tasks, defects, issues, and risks. Additionally, if the Project Manager(s) have granted them access to the project documentation, team members can read any assigned project documentation.

The ProjectGoo Project Manager Client

The Project Manager Client consists of several tabs that contain functionality for different entities within the ProjectGoo system. Following is a description of the different functionality within each tab of the Project Manager client.

Portfolio Tab

Chart

  • Displays for the entire portfolio of projects the aggregate budgeted dollars and aggregate costs as determined by plan progress.

Open …

  • Opens a previously created project plan by launching a File Open Dialog Window. Navigate to the project plan that you wish to open, select the project plan, and hit Open. Project 2007 will open and the project plan you selected will now be set as the Active Project in ProjectGoo. This means that any other tab that you select and view a “Project xxx” button will be displaying information for this project plan. Only plans that are opent through ProjectGoo can be the Active Project. If you open other plans from Microsoft Project, these will not interfere with ProjectGoo’s Active Project.

New …

  • Creates a new project plan and sets this new project plan as the ProjectGoo Active Project. You can work with you project plan, add ProjectGoo Enterprise Resources to the plan as well as create defects, issues, risks and documents for this project.

View Portfolio

  • Displays the top-level information for any project plans published with ProjectGoo by either the portfolio administrator or any Project Managers that were created by the portfolio administrator.

Publish Project

  • Publishes the current ProjectGoo Active Project to the Google Cloud and distributes the task assignments to the resources assigned to each task. Inactive unless a project plan has been set as the ProjectGoo Active Project by opening the project plan with ProjectGoo.

Update Project

  • Updates the current ProjectGoo Active Project plan with the status updates completed by team members utilizing the ProjectGoo Team Client. Inactive unless a project plan has been set as the ProjectGoo Active Project by opening the project plan with ProjectGoo.

Delete Project

  • Deletes the project tasks from the Google Cloud and removes the assigned project tasks from the team members’ queue in the Team Client. Additionally, removes the project from the ProjectGoo portfolio. Inactive unless a project plan has been set as the ProjectGoo Active Project by opening the project plan with ProjectGoo.

Defects Tab

Chart

  • Displays the count by severity of all the open defects in the ProjectGoo portfolio.

Portfolio Defects

  • Displays a list of all the portfolio defects grouped by their project and sorted by severity. Portfolio Administrators can read/write/delete information here, while Project Managers are restricted to read privileges.
Project Defects
  • Displays a list of all the project defects grouped by status for the current ProjectGoo Active Project. Portfolio Administrators and Project Managers have read/write access. Inactive unless a project plan has been set as the ProjectGoo Active Project by opening the project plan with ProjectGoo.
New …
  • Quick defect entry for use by the portfolio administrator to add a project defect for a particular project. Inactive for project managers.

Documents Tab

Display Area

  • Displays all the projects that have documents associated with them and the number of documents for each project.

Portfolio Documents

  • Displays all the documents grouped by project and sorted by title that have been associated to projects within the ProjectGoo portfolio.

Project Documents

  • Displays a list of all the project documents for the current ProjectGoo Active Project. Project Managers have read/write access. Inactive unless a project plan has been set as the ProjectGoo Active Project by opening the project plan with ProjectGoo.

Issues Tab

Chart

  • Displays the count by category of all the open issues in the ProjectGoo portfolio.

Portfolio Issues

  • Displays a list of all the portfolio issues grouped by their project and sorted by priority. Portfolio Administrators can read/write/delete information here, while Project Managers are restricted to read privileges.
Project Issues
  • Displays a list of all the project issues grouped by status for the current ProjectGoo Active Project. Portfolio Administrators and Project Managers have read/write access. Inactive unless a project plan has been set as the ProjectGoo Active Project by opening the project plan with ProjectGoo.
New …
  • Quick issue entry for use by the portfolio administrator to add a project issue for a particular project. Inactive for project managers.

Risks Tab

Chart

  • Displays the count by type of all the open risks in the ProjectGoo portfolio.

Portfolio Risks

  • Displays a list of all the portfolio risks grouped by their project and sorted by status. Portfolio Administrators can read/write/delete information here, while Project Managers are restricted to read privileges.
Project Risks
  • Displays a list of all the project risks grouped by status for the current ProjectGoo Active Project. Portfolio Administrators and Project Managers have read/write access. Inactive unless a project plan has been set as the ProjectGoo Active Project by opening the project plan with ProjectGoo.
New …
  • Quick risk entry for use by the portfolio administrator to add a project risk for a particular project. Inactive for project managers.

Resources Tab

Chart

  • Displays the count by type of all the active resources in the ProjectGoo Enterprise Resource Pool.

Portfolio Resources

  • Displays a list of all the portfolio resources grouped by their status and sorted by resource type. Portfolio Administrators can read/write/delete information here, while Project Managers are restricted to read privileges, resource availability checks, and adding resources to their project plan(s).
New …
  • Quick resource entry for use by the portfolio administrator to add a new resource to the Enterprise Resource Pool. Inactive for project managers.

Analysis Tab

Portfolio Analysis

  • Enables Portfolio Administrators and Project Managers to review different metrics for the portfolio’s aggregate issues, defects, and risks.
Project Analysis
  • Enables Portfolio Administrators and Project Managers to review different metrics for the current ProjectGoo Active Project. Inactive unless a project plan has been set as the ProjectGoo Active Project by opening the project plan with ProjectGoo.

The ProjectGoo Team Client

The ProjectGoo Team Client Initial View

  • Displays all task assignments grouped by Project and their current status (Current, Upcoming, Overdue) labeled and color-coded

Update Button

  • When a task assignment is selected in the Assignment View, clicking Update allows the team member to update their percent complete for the task assignment

Defects Button

  • Displays all defects grouped by project that are assigned for review or resolution by the authenticated team member

Issues Button

  • Displays all issues grouped by project that are assigned for review or resolution by the authenticated team member

Risks Button

  • Displays all risks grouped by project that are assigned for review or resolution by the authenticated team member

Documents Button

  • Displays all documents grouped by project that are available for review and editing by the authenticated team member