Celoxis 14.5 — the complete Knowledge Base

This quick start guide will help you understand:

1. How information is organized
2. How to log in
3. How to work with your dashboard
4. How to navigate the U.I.
5. How to change your preferences
6. How to create your first project
7. How to work with the gantt chart
8. How to report progress on tasks
9. How to log time
10. How to track projects
11. How to run reports
12. How to get help

A. How information is organized

You can create projects, tasks, risks, issues, change requests, etc. You can also log time and expenses, upload files, and enter comments. Let’s see how they are all organized.

 
Organization
│
├── Workspace 1 (e.g. Engineering)
│   │
│   ├── Project 1.1
│   │   │
│   │   ├── Tasks
│   │   │   │
│   │   │   ├── Subtasks
│   │   │   ├── Time Logs
│   │   │   ├── Expenses
│   │   │   ├── Updates
│   │   │   └── Files
│   │   │
│   │   ├── Discussions
│   │   │
│   │   ├── Risks (Custom App)
│   │   │   │
│   │   │   ├── Time Logs
│   │   │   ├── Updates
│   │   │   └── Files
│   │   │
│   │   ├── Issues (Custom App)
│   │   │   │
│   │   │   ├── Time Logs
│   │   │   ├── Updates
│   │   │   └── Files
│   │   │
│   │   └── Files
│   │
│   ├── Project 1.2
│   │   ...
│   └── Project 1.N
│   
├── Workspace 2 (e.g. Marketing)
│   │
│   ├── Project 2.1
│   │   ...
│   └── Project 2.N
│
└── Workspace M (e.g. Sales)
    │
    ├── Project M.1
    │   ...
    └── Project M.N

are like departments. They enable you to easily segregate and control access to data. If you don't plan on using this functionality, then it is automatically hidden from your user interface.

contain tasks, risks, issues and other custom apps. You can also conduct discussions in a project and also upload files. A project belongs to one workspace.

can contain sub tasks. You can log time and expenses against tasks. You can also upload files or enter comments.

Custom apps like

and

are contained in projects. You can log time against them. You can also upload files or enter comments.

B. How to log in

When user accounts are created, they are notified via email of their username, password and the link to log in. Consult that email to obtain your username and password. After logging in, you should change your password.

SaaS

URL: https://celoxis.com

On-Premise

Contact your system administrator or refer the email in your inbox as mentioned earlier.

As you can see the login screen is straightforward. If your organization uses single sign-on, then click on the SSO link highlighted in the image.

C. Dashboard

Your account will be pre-populated with multiple dashboards that we think are useful. Use them as is or as a starting point for your customizations.

There are 5 things that you should know:

1Multiple Dashboards

You can create multiple dashboards to suit your working style. You can create different dashboards based on role – for example a dashboard each for project manager, team member, resource manager, PMO director, etc. You can even create different dashboards based on function – for example a dashboard each for planning, tracking, QA, resource utilization, etc.

Multiple dashboards can be assigned to one user.

2Customizing Dashboards

You can customize the widgets, layouts, columns, filters, grouping and much more.

In the following example, a widget is deleted and a new widget is added and resized.

3Performing Actions on Dashboards

You should be able to do most of your work from your dashboards.

In the following example, a manager drills down a pie chart to list all overdue tasks and requests an update from the assignees.

4Sharing Dashboards

Dashboards can be exported to PDF that you can send via email.

5Scheduling Dashboards

You can schedule dashboards to be sent via email at scheduled times.

Click on next to the dashboard name and then click on Schedule tab to enter your schedule details and recipients.

D. Navigating the User Interface

The Celoxis User Interface (UI) is consistent and predictable. This means that if you understand how one page works, you will understand how 90% of other pages work.

We shall now look at the basic elements of the user interface:

1. The Top Menu
2. The Side Menu
3. The Recent Items Menu
4. Starred Reports
5. A Typical Page

1The Top Menu (or Top Bar)

The left hand side elements of the top menu i.e. the page title and actions change with every page while the right hand side elements starting with the search icon do not. The following image describes the elements in the top menu.

The Add Menu

The add button is always available on all pages and can be used to add projects, tasks, issues, risks, users and more as show below. You can quickly jump to the timesheet by clicking on the timesheet icon.

2The Sidebar (or Main Menu)

The sidebar is used to navigate to different pages as shown below.

Sidebar > Apps Menu

The Apps menu is the way to go to lists of your custom apps. In the following example, clicking on Issues will take you to the list of issues.

3The Recent Items Menu

This menu is a great time saver. It lets you quickly jump to your recently accessed Project, Task, Issue, Bug, Report, etc.

4Starred Reports

If you use a report frequently then mark it as favorite by clicking on the star icon in the report. Once done, this report will start appearing in your Reports menu.

In the above example, clicking on the star for the report X makes it available in the Reports menu.

Tip: Get more screen real-estate by clicking on the

5A Typical Page

Most pages will have the same structure as the example below.

Viewing an item like project, task, issue or a custom app item.

Clicking on an item's name will open its panel. In the following example, we click on a project to view it.

The Project Panel

The panels have tabs so you can quickly view associated items like tasks, files, risks and even reports. Clicking on the icon will reveal a comprehensive action menu like shown below. Panels for tasks, issues etc are organized similarly.

E. Changing your preferences

Click Main MenuProfile

Click on the Preferences tab to change your language, date formats, email notification options and other preferences.

F. Creating your first project

Click on Main MenuProject to add a project. You will be presented with a few options as shown below. If you have Microsoft Project files, you can import those or you can start with a blank project.

Activate your project

Mark this project as active which will indicate to the system that this progress is underway. This will enable email notifications and color indicators for this project and you shall get a better experience of the software's capabilities.

G. Gantt Chart

Click on on the project's panel to open the Gantt chart.

The following video highlights some of the important capabilities of the gantt chart like:

• Inline editing
• Drag-n-drop for changing task schedule, moving tasks and adding dependencies
• Adding multiple tasks quickly
• Assigning resources to tasks
• Identifying tasks with overloaded resources with the icon
• Selecting multiple tasks and right-clicking to perform actions on them
• Viewing critical path

H. Reporting progress on tasks

Team members can report progress on tasks from their dashboard.

Reporting progress on multiple tasks at once

Select the tasks to report on, click on the icon and choose the appropriate action. The On Track option can be used to indicate that things are progressing as per the plan.

Reporting detailed progress on a single task

You can enter a detailed update and even log time at the same time using the Log Progress action as shown below.

This will open a form like this:

I. Filling Timesheets

In the last section, we have seen how to log time on a specific task while updating its progress. We shall now look at logging time via the weekly screen.

To open your weekly timesheet click Main MenuTimesheet.

You can log time on tasks as well as non project time on the weekly timesheet. While logging time, you can also update task progress.

J. Tracking Projects

As team members report progress on their tasks, the system automatically calculates the estimated completion dates and costs of tasks and projects. This is indicated using RAG indicators.

The Project Manager dashboard is a great place to track projects. You can customize the columns in list widgets, add chart widgets and drill-down into problem areas quickly. See the dashboards section of this document for more information.

Tracking a single project

When you click on a project, a panel will open. This panel will have a lot of interesting tracking information about the schedule, cost, revenue and even identify high priority items in issues, change requests etc.

You can also click on the various tabs to get various reports for a project. A sample is shown below. All tabs are fully customizable and you can add, customize or delete tabs as per your requirements.

K. Reporting

Celoxis has one of the most sophisticated reporting engines in the industry. We provide a number of pre-built reports that you can use as-is or as a starting point for building your report. To go to reports, click Main MenuReportsAll Reports.

The sample reports shown below demonstrate the power of our reporting.

Budget Tracking

Cost Performance by Division

Cost S-Curve

Monthly Cost Breakdown

Revenue Performance by BU & Manager

Product Roadmap

L. Getting Help

Context sensitive help is available on many pages that will directly take you to the documentation for that topic. Watch out of the icon as shown below.

To ask our support team a question or to go to the documentation portal, click on the appropriate items in Main Menu.

This quick start guide will help you understand how to:

1. Turn off unwanted features
2. Configure account settings
3. Configure password policies
4. Customize project settings
5. Set up work calendars
6. Enter your holidays
7. Customize project types
8. Add custom fields
9. Set up dashboards
10. Customize Kanban lanes
11. Configure time tracking
12. Add users
13. Add clients

A. Turn off unwanted features

When you turn off features that you do not plan on using, related buttons and menus are not shown to users in your account making the user interface easier to use. To do this go to Main MenuAdmin. Then, switch the features on or off as shown below. In the following image, Expenses and Contacts functionality has been turned off.

B. Configure account settings

A number of organization widget settings are used while display various user interface widgets like calendars or while displaying reports. Configure the options highlighted in the image below by navigating to Main MenuAdminAccount ManagementCompany Information

C. Configure password policies

You can configure login settings by navigating to Main MenuAdminAccount ManagementCompany Information and then clicking on the Password Policies tab.

if you use single sign-on, then we recommend that you first get a feel for the software and turn the single sign-on functionality on later.

D. Customize project settings

You can customize some basic project management settings by going to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject Options. We recommend that you leave the settings as is if you are not sure of your exact requirements.

E. Set up work calendars

The software has the capability to automatically schedule tasks based on the assignee's work timings and holidays in addition to other parameters like dependencies, constraints, etc. So it is important to set the working timings correctly.

To set up, go to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementWork Calendars. If your users work in different shifts or time zones, create a calendar for each. Name them so it is easy to identify e.g. "Half Day" or "London Office".

F. Enter your holidays

Celoxis will schedule tasks taking holidays into consideration. Holidays can be entered for every one (e.g. Christmas), or for specific work calendars (e.g. 4th July - only for U.S. calendars), or for a specific user (e.g. Joe is on leave from 10th March 2020 to 20th April 2020).

To enter holidays, go to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementWork Calendars and then click on the Exceptions tab.

G. Customize project types

Project types help categorize projects that help you in filtering and reporting. You can also attach different custom fields to different project types. To input your project types, go to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject Types.

H. Add Custom Fields

You can create a number of custom fields for projects, tasks, users, issues, risks, etc. Celoxis supports a varierty of custom fields like text, single select, multi select and more. You can even create formula fields.

A number of custom fields have already been created. To edit them or create your own, go to Main MenuAdminAccount ManagementCustom Fields.

You can attach the same custom field to multiple types. For example, the following custom fields is available for all project types, the "Project Request" custom app and tasks. To change, click on the icon in the list as shown above.

J. Set up Dashboards

Before you add users, you should prepare dashboards for them. We have already created a few dashboards for managers, executives and team members. To view and modify them go to Main MenuReportsAll Reports.

For more information, refer the dashboard section in the getting started for users guide.

K. Customize Kanban Lanes

If your organization uses a Kanban like view to track tasks, you should configure your lanes if required. We provide the three most common lanes: Backlog, In Progress and Done..

To change, go to Main MenuAdminCustom Fields and click on icon besides Kanban State field and change the options to the ones you need.

L. Configure Time Tracking

Celoxis provides a comprehensive, flexible and customizable time tracking module. Setting it up is easy.

Time Codes

If you do activity based billing, or if you want to categorize time logs, you should customize this list by going to Main MenuAdminTimesheetTime Codes.

Billing Model

Celoxis provides you the option of turning billing off, or using an activity based billing model where a per hour rate is defined for an activity, or a per user model where a per hour rate is defined for a user. To change, go to Main MenuAdminTimesheet and choose the appropriate option as shown below.

Timesheet Options

Click on Main MenuAdminTimesheetTimesheet Options to customize time tracking as per your requirements. There are many useful options that you should be aware of. If you are not sure, you can always change them later.

M. Add Users

Celoxis allows you to create a user that is "like" some other user – the new user will inherit dashboards, notification preferences, security privileges, etc. thus making it very convenient for you to create similar users.

You can add multiple users in one go by uploading a CSV file. Read More.

Viewing the user list

Go to Main MenuMoreUsers

Logging in as another user

To check what any user sees, you can login as that user quickly. Go to Main MenuMoreUsers and click on Log In As for a user as shown below.

Switching back

To switch back, click on the button as shown below.

N. Clients

Projects can be associated with clients. You can, optionally, give clients a login and a dashboard so they can access project status and collaborate with your team through the software. To view or add clients, go to Main MenuMoreClients.

Project states enable you to define and track the project lifecycle from initiation to closure. By default, we provide the following states: Draft, Active, Canceled, On-Hold, Archived; but you can customize them to suit your business.

States also allow you to control some aspects of system behaviour. For example, you could disallow logging time for projects in the Draft and Archived project states.

System behaviour is also different based on the project state's stage.

Stage

Every project state must belong to one and only one of the following project stages: Planning, Execution and Closure. The system will behave differently for projects based on the stage its project state represents as described below:

For example, if you define a project state called Unapproved and set its stage to be Planning, then any project in the state Unapproved will not have RAG indicators nor will it generate email notifications. However, any work exceptions added for work calendars or resources will result in the project plan to be recalculated.

Using project states

A project may belong to only one project state.

Project state can be set on the add/edit project screen under the Custom Fields tab. To modify project state for many projects at once you can use the bulk edit screen.

Project states can also be used in columns, filters, groups, and charts.

Managing project states

Only administrators can manage project states. To manage project states navigate to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject States

If you do projects that are similar in structure, then instead of building your project plan from scratch every time, you can create and save those projects as templates to get a new project up and running quickly.

Using project templates

To create a new project from a template, click on Main MenuProjectUse a Template

Managing project templates

Only administrators can create and manage project templates.

A template can be created from any project. To create or manage project templates, navigate to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject Templates

Project types help you categorize your projects. Using our reports, you can get important KPIs like profit, effort and margin aggregated for your project types, thus helping you understand business performance.

You can also setup custom fields specific to your project types to capture relevant business data.

For example, a legal firm may have project types such as Bankruptcy and Patents. Custom fields could be Insurance Company and Loan Number for the former; and Patent number, Patent Sponsor and Patent state for the latter.

Using project types

A project may belong to only one project type.

Project types can be set on the add/edit project screen under the Custom Fields tab. To modify project type for many projects at once you can use the bulk edit screen.

Project types can also be used in columns, filters, groups, and charts.

Managing project types

Only administrators can manage project types. To manage project types navigate to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject Types

Clients are individuals or organizations for whom projects are executed. Associating clients with projects helps in filtering, reporting, charting, and in many other areas.

In addition, you can give your clients access so that they can login to view reports shared with them, engage in online discussions, share files and even participate in business workflows (e.g. bugs, change requests and approvals).

Client access is free.

Client Login

Virtual clients are clients that do not have a username and password. They cannot log in to Celoxis. When you create a client, you can optionally assign it a username and a password. You can also set their login credentials from the edit client screen.

If, at a later time, you wish to withdraw login access, simply blank out the username and password for that client.

To prevent any accidents, clients are not notified about their usernames and passwords. It is up to you to communicate their credentials to them.

Client privileges

Every client account can be configured to have the following privileges:

Allow client to view task information, excluding financial information.: This determines whether clients can view task details. Financial fields (including custom fields) are never shown to the clients.

Allow client to view details of progress update on tasks.: This determines whether clients can view updates and comments on the task.

Allow client to do progress update on tasks.: This determines whether clients can add comments on a task.

If you share reports with your client, then the above privileges override the data shared in reports. For example, if you share a task list report to a client that does not have the Allow client to view task information, excluding financial information. privilege, then that client will see an empty report.

Client Hierarchy

Consider the following scenarios:

• More than one person from a client organization wants to collaborate on a project.
• Your company does projects for different departments (or branches) of a client, but executives want consolidated reporting. For example, your company may do projects for IBM India and IBM France and your CXOs may want a consolidated report for IBM. Also, you don’t want people from IBM India to access IBM France’s projects and vice-versa.
• You want to prevent accidental access of one client to another’s project. For example, you do not want to give CBM access to IBM’s projects because of a typo.

That’s where the concept of Client Hierarchy comes in. Celoxis allows you to create client hierarchies for better reporting, collaboration and access control.

Example

Consider the following clients:

 1    Peter Parker

 2    IBM
 3    ├── John
 4    └── Alisha

 5    Acme
 6    ├── Acme (France)
 7    │   ├── Pierre
 8    │   └── Chloe
      │
 9    └── Acme (India)
10        ├── Ravi
11        └── Suresh

There are a total of 11 clients.

Peter Parker is an individual client. There is no hierarchy.

IBM has two child clients - John and Alisha.

Acme has two child clients - Acme (France) & Acme (India), each having two child clients - Pierre and Chloe for the former and Ravi and Suresh for the latter.

To create this parent-child relationship, use the “Parent” field from the add/edit client screen.

Project Visibility

When you assign a project to a client, it is visible to that client and all its descendants. Continuing with the above example:

Setting project clients

You can set a project's clients from the project's add/edit screen or from project bulk actions. The first client becomes the project's primary client

Clients Reports and Dashboards

You can share reports and dashboards with clients. You can share tabular, pie charts, bar charts and many other views of reports. For more information, read the chapter on dashboards

To share it with a client, select the client in the Visible to Clients field in the add/edit report form. If you pick the All option, the report will be shared with all clients.

You can also control which project tabs are visible to clients in a similar way. Navigate to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject Tabs, edit the view and select the clients as described above.

For more information on report and dashboard sharing, read the chapter on report sharing.

Note that clients can modify filters that are marked as promptable in the report's filter tab.

Financial data is never displayed to clients even if those columns are accidentally selected.

Client Actions

Clients can actively collaborate through the system increasing transparency and reducing duplicate work. It also helps maintain an audit trail and ensures things don't fall through the cracks.

Viewing clients

Clients can be viewed by admins and those users having the View Client privilege.

To see the client list, from the LHS menu click on MoreClients

Creating clients

Clients can be added by admins and those users having the Add Client privilege.

To add a client"

1. Click on Main MenuClient
2. In the Basic tab:
   1. Fill in Name, Email, and Phone number.
   2. If the client account is part of a hierarchy, enter the parent.
   3. If you do not wish the client to have a login, enter login and password, click on the virtual checkbox.
   4. Assign appropriate privileges.
3. In the Custom Fields tab, fill in the appropriate custom fields.
4. In the Preferences tab, select the appropriate locale, date formats and dashboards.
5. Check the Add another check box if you wish to add more clients.
6. Submit

Importing Clients from CSV

Celoxis provides you with the ability to import clients from CSV. If you have a Microsoft Excel file, then you can export it in CSV (comma separated values) format and then import it in Celoxis.

To import clients, go to the clients page – Main MenuMoreClients and then click on the Import button. Upload the client in the format described below.

Fields supported:

• Name - mandatory
• Email
• Phone
• Username - the login name.
• Password - the plain text password.
• Virtual - false or true to indicate whether the client can login or not respectively.
• Custom Fields - you will have to create the fields in Celoxis first

Clients are

notified of their login accounts.

Deleting Clients

To delete a client, click on that client and from the actions choose Delete.

When a client is deleted, all its sub-clients are deleted as well. Data like projects, tasks, issues, files etc. is not deleted.

If you accidentally delete a client, you can go to Main MenuAdminPeople Bin and restore that client.

A project team is a set of users who work on a project. The main advantages in defining a project team are:

1. Convenience - you will see only the users in your project team while assigning tasks to users.
2. Security - you can assign special privileges to users in the project team. For example, you can configure the system such that any user in the project team can comment on any task in the project.

Defining a project's team

Project team can be set on the add/edit project screen under the Advanced tab.

A few rules to remember:

• Project managers defined for the project are always part of that project's team.
• Users assigned to tasks in a project are always part of that project's team.

Enabling project team capability

To enable the project team capability, navigate to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject Options and uncheck the When assigning tasks to users, display all users, not just project team members. option.

For small teams, this capability may be an overkill and is better to disable it.

Celoxis is a great alternative to Microsoft Project. Celoxis' integration with Microsoft Project is one of the most comprehensive in the industry. If you understand how it works, you can achieve a perfect 2-way synchronization with Microsoft Project thus getting the best of both worlds.

Importing from Microsoft Project

You can create a project directly from a Microsoft Project file by clicking on (Main MenuProjectImportX/MSProject) or import tasks into an existing project (Project OptionsImportX/MSProject).

When you import a Microsoft Project file (XML or MPP), Celoxis will import:

• Parent-child relationships
• Dependencies including lead-lag times
• Constraints
• Resource assignments
• The default baseline

What is not imported:

• Calendar options - e.g. hours/day, days/month, etc.
• Resource list
• Custom fields
• Non-default baselines
• Calendars and exceptions
• Time-phased data

Import field mappings

While the field mappings in most cases are self-explanatory (they have the same name in MS Project and Celoxis), some fields deserve a special mention:

Understanding Deviations

Celoxis and Microsoft Project while similar in many ways are different in certain areas (see the list of what is not imported above) and that can cause certain surprises. If dates do not match in Celoxis after importing, ensure that:

• Work calendars and exceptions in MS Project and Celoxis match. Note that MS Project does not support time-zones or fractional non-working times.
• You are not using any of the options or features in Microsoft Project that Celoxis does not import
• You mapped the resources correctly during the import

Exporting to Microsoft Project

When you export a project to Microsoft Project (Project OptionsExportX/MSProject), the following will be exported:

• Parent-child relationships
• Dependencies including lead-lag times
• Constraints
• Resource assignments
• The default baseline
• Work Calendars and Exceptions
• Resources and their individual exceptions

What is not exported:

• Custom fields
• Inter-project predecessors
• Fields that have no corresponding field in Microsoft Project (e.g. workspace, budget, etc.)
• Resource allocation in hours is changed to % because Microsoft Project does not support allocation in hours

Export field mappings

While the field mappings in most cases are self-explanatory (they have the same name in MS Project and Celoxis), some fields deserve a special mention:

Understanding Deviations

Celoxis and Microsoft Project while similar in many ways are different in certain areas (see the list of what is not exported above) and that can cause certain surprises. If dates do not match in Microsoft Project after exporting, ensure that:

• Work calendars and exceptions in MS Project and Celoxis match. Note that MS Project does not support time-zones or fractional non-working times.
• You are not using any of the options or features in Microsoft Project that Celoxis does not import
• You have not allocated resources in hours and only used % in Celoxis. Microsoft Project does not support allocation in hours.

RAG stands for Red, Amber and Green. RAG indicators visually indicate the health of projects or tasks with respect to schedule and cost.

Celoxis automatically calculates the RAG indicators for projects and tasks regularly if the project's is in the Execution stage. Otherwise, the RAG indicator is shown as Inactive.

Schedule RAG Indicators

For every project and task, Celoxis automatically calculates its projected finish date based on the current rate of progress once a day. It is the date on which the project or task is likely to finish based on the current rate of progress.

For example, say a task was scheduled to complete in 4 days and after 2 days it is only 25% complete. Celoxis will calculate the projected finish date of the task to be the 8th day instead of the original 4th.

For a project or summary task, its projected finish date is the maximum of the projected finish dates of its leaf-level tasks.

RAG indicators are assigned as follows:

Cost RAG Indicators

For every project and task, Celoxis automatically calculates its projected cost based on the current rate of spend once a day. It is the cost the project or task is likely to incur based on the current rate of spend.

For example, say a task's budget is $1000 and it is 25% complete with an actual cost of $200. Celoxis will calculate the projected cost of the task to be the $800 instead of $1000.

For a project or summary task, its projected cost is the sum of the projected cost of all its leaf-level tasks.

RAG indicators are assigned as follows:

If budget is unspecified, the planned cost will be used instead while calculating the RAG status.

Calculation of Projections

Calculating projections is a resource intensive operation hence it is infeasible for the system to maintain RAG indicators in real-time.

Celoxis calculates projections once a day on a best effort basis. However, you can ask the system to recalculate projections for a project anytime using ProjectRecalculateStats. You can even recalculate projections for multiple projects using Project Bulk ActionsProjectRecalculateStats from your project list view.

A work calendar defines the working and nonworking times for an organization. It specifies the work hours for each work day, the work days for each week, and any exceptions, such as holidays.

You can define many work calendars each with its own time-zone, working hours and exceptions.

Work calendars are used in scheduling tasks.

Using Work Calendars

Every user must belong to one and only one work calendar. Work calendar can be set for a user from the add/edit user screen or from the bulk edit screen.

Every project has a default work calendar. All dates on its interactive Gantt chart are shown with respect to this work calendar's time-zone. The default work Calendar can be set for a project from its add/edit screen.

Managing Work Calendars

Only administrators can manage work calendars. To manage work calendars, navigate to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementWork Calendars

Exceptions (Holidays, Vacations, etc.)

Exceptions are times that are an aberration to the rules defined in the work calendar. Exceptions can be defined for the entire organization (e.g. Christmas holiday), for work calendars (e.g. 4th July holiday only in the U.S.) or for individuals (e.g. Joe is going on a vacation from 3rd to 10th May 2016).

When exceptions are added, modified or deleted, task dates are recalculated. For example, if Mark is sick on a 3rd May and a work exception is entered, all tasks that Mark was supposed to work on 3rd May will be pushed a day ahead.

Working and Non-Working Exceptions

While most exceptions are non-working, you can also enter working exceptions. For example, if Peter is going to work on a Saturday, the 10th of June, you can enter a working exception for Peter on 10th June and all tasks assigned to Peter will be rescheduled appropriately.

Managing Exceptions

Only administrators can add organization wide or work calendar exceptions. To manage exceptions, go to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementWork Calendars and click on the Exceptions tab.

When you delete a project, it along with all its contents like tasks, time logs and files, is moved to the Project Bin. This allows you to recover from accidental deletions. Once moved, the project will stay there for 30 days after which it will be irrevocably deleted from the database by the system.

Deleted projects and their data never appear in any view or report. For the system, they are as good as deleted.

Recovering a deleted project

To recover a deleted project, navigate to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProjectRecycleBin and click on the icon. The project along with all its contents like tasks, time logs and files will be restored. Inter-project dependencies are not restored.

To create a project, click Main MenuProject

Blank Project

This creates a project with no tasks.

Copy Project

This clones the project and its entire task WBS. All project and task fields (including custom fields but excluding constraints), dependencies, resource assignments and file attachments are also copied. The new project is then replanned as per the new project's start date. If the original project had manually scheduled tasks, those tasks in the new project will have a similar duration and will start at the same time after the new project's start.

Use a Template

For more details, click here.

Import Microsoft Project

For more details, click here.

You can attach file or files from your local drive or Google Drive to a project's folder. Click on a project to open its panel and then click Project ActionsAttach Files. Files attached to a project (or its tasks) can be viewed from the Files tab.

Depending on whether you use user-based billing or time code based billing, either the default bill rate for a user or time code is used while calculating the bill amounts. You can override those rates per project.

To override the default rates, click on a project to open its panel and then click Project ActionsBilling Rates.

In the above example, Chris Patt's bill rate for the project has been set to $80. As you can see, you can click on the Add button to add a rate, click on the Rate cell to edit a rate, or click on the icon to delete a row which will default the rate for that user back to the default rate.

By default, the labor cost rate specified for a user is used while calculating the labor cost of a task. You can override those rates per project.

To override the default rates, click on a project to open its panel and then click Project ActionsCost Rates.

In the above example, Chris Patt's cost rate for the project has been set to $50. As you can see, you can click on the Add button to add a rate, click on the Rate cell to edit a rate, or click on the icon to delete a row which will default the rate for that user back to the default rate.

Celoxis provides you with the ability to import clients from CSV. If you have a Microsoft Excel file, then you can export it in CSV (comma separated values) format and then import it in Celoxis.

To import clients, go to the clients page – Main MenuClients and then click on the Import button.

Fields supported:

• Name - mandatory
• Email
• Phone
• Username - the login name
• Password - the plain text password
• Virtual - false or true to indicate whether the client can login or not respectively. If you specify false or blank, then you must provide a username and password
• Custom Fields - you will have to create the fields in Celoxis first
• ID - mandatory, only when you are updating Clients using a CSV file

Updating Clients

Celoxis also provides the ability to update the existing Clients by importing a CSV file. To update, you must include the ID of the Clients in the CSV file.
To find the ID of the Clients, add ID column in the Clients report(Main MenuClients).

For security reasons, no emails are sent to clients. It is up to you to notify them of their login information.

You can select multiple projects and perform actions on them. Click on the next to the checkbox in the report table header as shown below:

Recalculate Projections

For details, refer the Calculation of Projections section here

Edit

Allows multiple attributes to be modified at once, including custom fields as shown below:

Portfolio management, often referred to as project and portfolio management or PPM isn’t as complicated as one might think. Using Celoxis, you can initiate project requests, develop project scoring model, view project request queues and available resource capacities, achieve desired portfolio balance and track project pipelines and portfolio accounting so that you are always staying ahead of your projects.

Setup

1. Enable Portfolio feature in your account (Main MenuAdminProject ManagementFeatures).
   This enables the Portfolio section in Projects to capture Alignment, Benefit and Risk parameters for the portfolio. These are the standard attributes we provide for portfolio management.
2. Create a new Project State ‘What-if’ (Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject States).
   Keep this state in ‘Planning’ Stage and keep ‘Allow Time’ unchecked. We will use this state to perform rudimentary what-if analysis to arrive at a desired portfolio balance.
3. Import the Project Requests App. (Main MenuAdminCustom AppsAppsImport).
   With this you get a standard out-of-the-box project request workflow. You can customize this workflow to suit your business process. Edit the app and uncheck the “Active” checkbox under Basic tab. This way the app is not available to your users till we set up the rest of the pieces.
4. Develop your Project Scoring model.
   Define the additional project attributes that will be potentially important factors to scoring projects. This will be done through custom fields (Main MenuAdminAccount ManagementCustom Fields). Attach these custom fields to all Project Categories and also to the Project Requests App.
   In addition to your specific project scoring attributes, you will also need to create the following 3 custom fields and attach them only to the Project Requests App:
   • - Strategic Alignment (Numeric: 1 to 100),
   • - Overall Benefit (Numeric: 1 to 100), and
   • - Project Risk (Single-select Drop down: Very High to Very Low).

   These are required to match the standard portfolio parameters on the project, so that you can later copy them into your project. Lastly, create a custom formula field “Project Score” that will take in these project attributes and arrive at a potential score for the new project.

5. Create a ‘Project Requests Queue’ report for viewing your incoming project request pipeline (Main MenuReportsAll ReportsPlusProject Requests).
   In the Output tab, select ‘Tabular’ and choose all columns that are important for your executive approval. Make sure to include the “Project Score” in the list so that you can directly see the calculated score for each project request in the pipeline.

New Project Requests

Each new project enters the system through a project request. The ‘Project Queue’ report that we created comes handy in viewing the incoming project requests and ranking/re-ranking them based on your criteria.

1. Go back to your Project Requests App definition (Main MenuAdminCustom AppsApps) and mark this as “Active”. Now this app is available to your users for submitting new project requests.
2. For each of your new projects, create a project request in the system (To add click Main MenuProject Requests).
   Since a project container is not created as yet, create this app within a workspace (if you have defined workspaces) or select non-project (if there are no workspaces in your company). You will have to establish scoring values for each project request and put them in the respective custom fields on the New Project Requests form.
3. As your request is approved, you will need to create a project container for your new project (To add click Main MenuProjectNew Project).
   Enter the necessary information (such as tentative start date, client, budget, etc.) about this new project in the form. Keep the project in ‘What-if’ state. This way it does not interfere with your other active projects. Additionally, copy over all the scoring parameters from the project request into the project’s portfolio section and the defined custom fields.
4. Now move the project request associated with this new project under the project itself (Go to the said ProjectRequests itemMove and select the new project from the list). This way, the approved request stays within the project’s repository.

Desired Portfolio Balance

Now that you have created all your project containers, you will need to validate them against your available resource capacities and revise them based on resource availabilities, priorities and strategic importance.

1. Check available resource capacities. Go to Main MenuReportsAll ReportsResource Capacity. This is a built-in report that gives you insights into your organizational resource capacities for the near future. Looking at this report you can get a good idea of how your existing resources are stacked up to take in the new projects in your portfolio. You can increase the default period in the report to get farther insights into your resource capacities. You can also search for resources with specific skillsets by using the “Resource: Search” filter.
2. Now, for each project, define the WBS and resources. Since the project is in ‘What-if’ state, it will not affect your existing project workload. Open the Resource Load View (Main MenuResource Load). From the filters, add ‘What-if’ to your Project State filter. Now your Resource load will start showing your new projects in addition to your draft and active projects.
3. Use the Resource Load View to conduct a rudimentary what-if analysis to understand the impact of your new projects onto the existing resource load.
4. From the Resource Load View, you can
   Check if there are any resourcing problems You can replace resources, if necessary. Mouseover the task in contention, and select the Edit Resources. You can also shift out tasks by changing their dates (Mouseover the task Edit Task)
5. If you still have a resourcing issue, change the start date of the other low priority projects so that all other tasks in those projects are rescheduled. However, please note that Celoxis does not currently support an UNDO feature. If you need to revert, you will have to manually revert the project to its earlier state.

Portfolio Reports

Celoxis gives our several best practices portfolio reports for managers and executives that you can use out-of-the box. You can also create your reports.

1. Budget Allocations

   This is a bar chart report that lays out budget allocations per manager aligned by their projects’ start month and year. This gives a visual insight into your approved budget allocations for managers and their projects.

   

2. Project Portfolio Analysis

   This bubble chart gives you a good 30,000 feet overview of how your projects are aligned with organizational strategy and financial or operational benefit. The color coding on the bubbles indicates the perceived risk from the project.

   

3. Projects (By Schedule)

   This is a tracking report that gives you an overview of all projects in your portfolio and their schedule status.

   

4. Project Status (Gantt)

   This is timeline view of all projects in your portfolio. Again a tracking report, and gives managers and executives a good overview of how the projects and their top-level tasks are lined up with their schedules.

   

5. Cost Overrun

   Cost Overrun is a tabular report that identifies projects whose actuals costs have exceeded their estimated costs.

   

6. Resource Capacity

   With this time-phased report, executives and project approvers can get a clear picture of your resource capacity at any point and make better resourcing decisions for new projects.

   Planned Capacity (%) = 1 − Planned UtilizationActual Capacity (%) = 1 − Actual Utilization

   

7. Resource Utilization

   This report can help track the utilization of resources against the plans.

   Planned Utilization (%) = PlaneedEffort ÷ Available HoursActual Utilization (%) = Actual Effort ÷ Available Hours

   

8. Resource Efficiency

   This is an excellent report for monitoring resource performance.

   Efficiency (%) = Planned Effort ÷ Actual Effort

   

Cost is one of the important components of the project management triangle. Celoxis makes it very easy to track budgeting and costing for entire projects, as well as the individual tasks. After following this simple how-to manual, you will be able to easily arrive at the realistic project budget, keeping an eye on the breakdown budgets of the individual tasks. You will also learn, among other things:

• How to specify Fixed and Material cost of each task
• How to properly allocate human resources
• How to track financial state of the projects and tasks through important metrics like Project/Task Estimated Cost, Actual Cost and the Visual Health Indicators.

Arriving at your Project’s Budget

To Budget for a project you must first know what it will cost to execute the project. Once the execution value is established, add a buffer, and a desired margin (if applicable) and you will arrive to a realistic budget figure. Here is how you do this:

First, for each resource you specify a Cost Rate per hour. This will typically be the salary you pay the resource or it could be an hourly rate for a contractor.

The next step is to create the tasks for your project and assign resources to each task. Celoxis then automatically calculates the cost of the task based on the Cost Rate and the allocated effort of the resource. For example, if Alison’s rate is $50phr and she is projected to work for 10 hours on a given task the cost will be 10*50 = $500. If John (another resource) was to also work on this task, his cost would be added as well. Combined, the costs of Alison and John will constitute the task's labor cost.

Now let’s say you had to purchase computers worth $1000 for the task #2 on the figure above. You can enter this amount in the Planned Non-Labor Cost field for a task.

Now the Planned Cost of this task will be $1500 (i.e. $500 + $1000)

Once you complete this activity for all tasks in your plan, the total sum of Planned Costs of all the tasks will be the Planned Cost for the project. You will use the Planned Cost as a base for the budget of your project.

To see the project’s Planned cost, turn to the Financials section of the Project Details tab.

Add your buffer/desired margin to the Planned Cost to set the project’s budget.

Tracking Actual Costs

When the work on the project begins, and through the duration of the project, all resources will be filling their timesheets to log the actual hours they spend on each task. Once these hours are approved by the manager, they are used by the system to automatically calculate the Actual Cost of each task. For the non-labor cost, such as the purchase of computers, a resource must add Expenses to the corresponding tasks. The expenses will constitute the Actual Material Cost of each task, and will be added to the overall Actual Cost. Just like in the case of the logged hours, each expense will need to be approved by the manager before it can be factored into the Actual Cost of the task.

Displaying the appropriate columns in the Interactive Gantt will allow tracking of the Budget Status of each task, along with the Actual Effort.

As your team updates status on tasks and log hours or expenses, Celoxis automatically and instantly calculates the Projected Cost for each task. This allows the “early warning” mechanisms such as Budget Health RAG indicators to warn you beforehand if your costs are going to exceed the budget (or estimates). For example, if a task is 50% completed, and has already incurred the cost of $100, then the projected cost of the task is $200.

RAG indicator for the budgetary health of tasks (and for the project)

• Off Track - if the Actual Costs exceeds the Budget. If Budget is not specified, then it considers the Estimated Cost.
• On Track - if the Projected Cost is less than or equal to the Budget (or Estimated Cost, if Budget is unspecified).
• At Risk - if the Projected Cost exceeds the Budget (or Estimated Cost, if Budget is unspecified).

This makes it easy to track the budget status for each task individually. However, in most cases you are likely to be more concerned about the overall health of the project. This information is always conveniently displayed next to the project name.

For the basic metrics of the Project’s financials, turn to the Financials section of the Project’s Detail tab.

Manager and Executive Cross-project Reports

Below are just few examples of the helpful and easy-to-generate reports which can additionally inform you about budget allocations, actual costs and other financial aspects across multiple projects. Each report can be easily configured, grouped, ordered or turned to a visual chart to your liking.

Other Scenarios

1. My projects have a pre-allocated budget. Can the system alert me when the planned costs risks exceeding this value?

   Yes! Set the project’s budget in the Advanced tab of the Edit Project dialogue, and watch for the financial health indicator of the project. The RAG indicators will warn you if the project’s budget will get off track.

2. Some of my tasks incur a fixed fee. How do I account for it?

   Make sure to add the Fixed cost under the Advanced tab if the Edit Task dialogue. Then the cost of the task will be calculated automatically when you update the completion progress. For example, if the fixed cost is set to be $1000, and the task is %30 completed, the Actual Cost of the task is %30 of $1000 = $300.

3. Some of my tasks may have a budgetary cap which should be met, regardless of who handles the task. How to set this up?

   Same as with the budget of a project – set the budget under the Advanced tab of the Edit Task dialogue, then watch for the RAG health indicators. Make sure to display the Budget Status column in your Interactive Gantt to keep the status of each individual task visible.

4. We don’t book our resources in the initial project validation stage. How can I arrive at estimated costs with knowing my resources?

   Create “virtual” users such as Project Manager, Graphic Designer, Web Developer, etc. Set each virtual user with the appropriate cost for the given role. Allocate the work for the virtual users - this will help you to arrive at the projected cost of the project. Once the project team was named, use the Resources >> Replace a resource function of the Interactive Gantt to replace each virtual user with the actual resource. Note that the allocated hours will remain intact after the replacement.

5. We have different resource rates for certain projects. How can I achieve that?

   You can specify the project-specific cost rates for every user and for every project using More >> Cost Rate function. If the cost of the user is not specified for the project, it will default to the cost set in the Edit User dialogue.

6. What happens when there is a cost adjustment to resources with projects in progress?

   The cost for the work already performed will be calculated at the previous rate. The cost of all future work will be calculated using the new rate.

7. How do I account for an unplanned expenditure on my project?

   Any unplanned expenditure should be added as an expense to an appropriate task(s) of the project. For example, let say that per manager’s approval a resource has purchased a single-user license for a graphic editing software. The cost of the license should then be added to the very task that the software will be used on. Note that the expense will need to be approved by the Project Manager before it can be factored into the cost of the task.

8. Can I categorize the activities and expenses incurred across my projects for management reporting?

   Yes. Multiple time and expense codes can be set by the Celoxis administrator in the Timesheet and Expenses sections of the Administration page. Typical expense categories may include Travel, Meals, Office Supplies, Vendor fees, etc. Typical time codes may include Meetings, R&D, Marketing, Training and Onboarding, PTO, Vacation, etc.

9. Does Celoxis support the Project Baseline?

   Yes. Exactly one baseline can be set per project, covering either the entire project, or selected tasks. You can then compare the moving project timeline with the previously set baseline. Since only one baseline exists per project, setting new baseline will override the existing one. Please refer to the Working with Baseline guide in our How-to series.

Conclusion/Final Points

The Celoxis functionality covered in this document are just some of the techniques you can use to your advantage when tracking budgets and costs of your projects. The cross-project reports representing multiple views and slices of your projects’ data can be created, configured and shared easily, forming an accurate at-a-glance view of individual accounts, project portfolios and the entire organization. The multiple input and output data points, including but not limited by those listed below can easily be represented in various reports and visual charts, placing all the crucial data at your fingertips. Just remember that even for the most comprehensive and sophisticated systems, the output data is going to be only as good as your inputs. Always encourage your team to track the required financial data accurately, and enter the time and expense information in a regularly and diligently manner. Then, just leave the rest to the system to supply you with the accurate real time project health representations.

Input fields by you

Some of the outputs that help tracking the projects’ and tasks’ health

Celoxis provides your organization with two flexible billing models: User based, and Time code based (also know as activity based billing), making it easy to track the billing amounts for different types of projects. Furthermore, Celoxis allows you to have the projects of Fixed price, as well as Hourly billing types, providing for both the flat fee and the time-and-material billing approaches. By following this simple how-to manual, you will be able to easily arrive to the estimated, and actual billing amounts for your invoices, regardless of the billing model your company follows. After studying this manual, you will learn about:

• Setting up the organization’s billing model
• Setting up project’s billing type
• Setting up bill rates
• Tracking actual and estimated billing amounts
• Valuable billing-related input and output metrics

Setting up your organization’s billing model

When setting up Celoxis for the first time, one of the major decisions that will affect every project in the system, is to adopt one of the two available billing models:

• User based
• Time code based

This is done on the Timesheet section of the Administration page. You must have the Administration rights to access these settings. Select the appropriate billing model to instantly affect the settings for the entire system.

In the User-based model, separate bill rates will be added for every billable user in the system. The rates then will be factored into the billing amounts for the projects, both actual and estimated.

To provide the default billing rate for a user, open the user’s settings and enter the desired hourly amount in the Bill field of the Default Rates ($/Hour) section in the Basic tab

For every user in the system you can have default/company billing rate which will automatically apply to every project. At the same time, you can override rates for any given user on any given project. See the Other scenarios, and frequently asked questions section for more information on this subject.

The billing amount for this model is calculated by multiplying the number of billable hours entered by each user into the timesheet of the project, by the billing rate of the user.

To provide the default billing rate for the time code, navigate to the Administration page (you must have the Admin privileges) and follow the Time Codes link in the Timesheet section. Enter the desired hourly rate amount into the Bill field. Note that the Bill field will only be available, if the company’s billing model is set to Time code based.

Setting up project’s billing type

Celoxis allows you the flexibility to specify Fixed Price or Hourly billing type for each project.

Setting up billing for the Fixed Price projects

In a Fixed Price billing type, the tasks you undertake and bill for, are for a fixed pre-defined price.

To set the project to the Fixed Price type, navigate to the Financials section of the Advanced tab in the Add/Edit Project dialogue. Note that the different billing models are only available to the client projects. For the projects where the client is not specified, the Billing Model field will stay hidden.

Selecting the Fixed Price option from the Billing Model dropdown, opens the new Fixed Price field, allowing you to enter the amount you are planning on invoicing.

When you opt for this type, the ‘billable’ option for expenses and time entries in the project is not checked, by default.

How rates work for Hourly projects

When you choose Hourly from the Billing Model dropdown, the billing amounts are calculated from the hours that the users log in their timesheets. The bill rate of each user is taken either from user’s settings or from the time code, depending upon the company's billing model.

When this billing type is used, the ‘Billable’ option for expenses and time entries in the project will be automatically checked, by default.

Tracking Actual Billing Amounts

With the billing rates set, the actual billable amount for each task is calculated using this formula, which takes in consideration both the labor and the material bills:

Amount (Act, Billable) of a task = Hours (Act, Billable) × Bill rate + Approved and Billable expenses on the task

Amount (Act, Billable) of the project is calculated from the sum of the amounts of the project’s top tasks. Depending upon the org billing model, the bill rates comes from either the user’s bill rate or from the time codes picked in the timesheet.

For example, if a resource working at the bill rate $30phr reported 10 billable hours for a task, and the project manager approves the $1000.00 billable material expense for the same task, the Amount (Act, Billable) for this task will be calculated as follows:

Amount (Act, Billable) = 10hrs × $30phr + $1000 = $1300.00

Celoxis provides another useful indicator that captures the estimated billable amount for all the labor effort on the project. Amount (Est, Billable) is calculated by using a similar formula, as the sum-product of user's bill rate and estimated hours on that task.

Amount (Est, Billable) of the project is calculated from the sum of the amounts of the project’s top tasks.

Note that the Amount (Est, Billable) is available and calculated only when the User based billing model is used. In addition, with the User based billing, if project's billing type is Fixed Price, the estimated billing for the project equals the set fixed price and therefore does not provide estimated billing values at the task level.

For Time code based billing, estimated billing cannot be calculated, thus the Amount (Est, Billable) column is not available.

Celoxis also lets you keep track of time entries and expenses that have been invoiced. The Invoice status of the items for any given task can be seen in the Task Details dialogue.

On the organization level, you can also create a cross-project report that shows per project:

• Amount (Expense, Invoiced)
• Amount (Time, Invoiced)
• Hours (Invoiced)

Manager and Executive Cross-Project Reports

Below are just few examples of the helpful and easy-to-generate reports which can additionally inform you about important billing metrics. Each report can be easily configured, grouped, ordered or turned to a visual chart to your liking.

Other scenarios, and frequently asked questions

1. What happens if I change the company’s billing model?

   This is a major step that may impact the running projects as well as the visible column of the financial reports. Please refer to the Switching between Billing Models article for the complete list of the potential ramifications.

2. Why are there the "None" options for the company’s and the projects’ billing models?

   The company billing model should be set to None if your organization does not do billing, or if for some reason you do not want to track your billing in Celoxis.
   Setting the billing type to None at the project level means that no billing is done for this particular project. This is helpful for internal project, proof of concepts, or pro bono initiatives.

3. We have different billing rates for certain projects. How can I achieve that?

   You can specify the project-specific billing rates for every user and for every project using More >> Billing Rate function. If the billing rate of the user is not specified for the project, it will default to the rate set in the Edit User dialogue.

4. What happens when there is a billing rate adjustment to the users with projects in progress?

   The actual billing amount for the work already performed will be calculated at the previous rate. The amount of all future work will be calculated using the new rate. If you have any saved entries, and the rate has changed before the entries were committed, the new rate will be used upon commit and approval of the entries.

5. What happens when there is a bill rate adjustment to the time codes with projects in progress?

   Similar to the users’ billing rates, the billing for the work already performed will be calculated at the previous rate. The billing of all future work (including any saved time entries) will be calculated using the new rate.

6. Why some of the time entries and expenses are automatically marked as Billable, while others are not?

   Whenever new time entries or expenses added to the projects, they can be marked as billable or non-billable. The project billing model determines the default behavior for the billable checkboxes.
   

   • Fixed Price model – billable is unchecked by default
   • Hourly model – billable is checked by default

   This default behavior takes in consideration that with the Hourly model, the hours must be tracked in order to generate the proper client invoices, while in the Fixed Price model the invoicing is based on the fixed price but is not affected by the actual efforts spent by the project resources.

7. Do you provide integration with any accounting software?

   Yes, Celoxis has an out-of-the-box integration with QuickBooks Online for managing and recording invoices. Here’s the link to a short video.

Conclusion/Final Points

As with any type of data, the billing in Celoxis depends on the accuracy and thoroughness of the inputs provided by project managers, administrators and other users. Please make sure you take time discussing the parameters of Celoxis implementation before the system is deployed to the organization, to arrive to the most optimal billing model for your company. By the same token, please make sure your project managers are aware of the differences between the project billing model, and are using the correct model for every project. Finally, encourage your project managers to keep an eye on the users, and time codes’ billing rates, to guarantee that the accurate billing data exists across all projects in the system.

The following input and output fields exists in the out-of-the-box configuration of Celoxis to help with your day-to-date billing needs

Input fields by you

Some of the outputs that help with the projects’ billing

Celoxis is a very flexible platform and quickly adjusts to manage your scrum projects. In this document, we will show you how to setup your projects for Scrum. With Celoxis, you can quickly define and manage your product backlog as well as plan and run your sprints.

Managing the Product Backlog

1. Create your Scrum Project with a suitable name from (Main MenuProjectNew Project). Start: Date when your first sprint is scheduled to start Manager: Select a user who is the Product Owner/ Scrum Master. Client: Select the project’s client.
2. Now, create a task called “Product Backlog” which is a summary task. This is where the Product Owner will plan and manage backlog items for sprint planning.
3. For each user story, the Product Owner will create a task in the Product Backlog Project. The Product Owner will not define any resources or dates at this point. So leave the default dates as-is for every user story added.
4. The backlog should be groomed regularly by the Product Owner, stacking up the stories as per their priority and assigning relative size to them. To assign relative size to items (tasks), create a single select custom field “Story Points” using the famed Fibonacci series options. Attach this custom field to tasks and add the column to your Gantt.

Planning Sprints

1. Create your Sprint 1 task (From Gantt click AddTask).
   Each Sprint will be represented as a summary task in Celoxis.
2. Next, expand the Product Backlog and look for stories that the Product Owner, the Team and the Scrum Master think make sense to be done in this sprint. The selection should made based on the target velocity that the team decides for the sprints. Select user stories whose Story Points add up to this target velocity.
3. Move the selected user stories from the Product Backlog into your Sprint as subtasks under Sprint 1 (Summary Task)
4. Once the user stories are picked up for the Sprint, your team gets to decomposing them into smaller activities or subtasks.
5. For each of these activities, the team selects the appropriate dates and assigns resources and estimates the effort.
6. Once all stories are converted into tasks, review the sprint to make sure its duration adheres to the sprint iteration. Despite the fact that sprint’s Story Points hits the target velocity, some tasks or activities required to complete them may affect the fixed iterations. In this case, you will need to work with your team to reshuffle the work or remove one of the stories from the sprint (i.e. move it back to the Product Backlog)

Running Sprints

1. Once your sprint is loaded and your project is Active, your team can get the work done. Your team can also update the Status field which depicts the current status of the task in the sprint.
2. As they work through the items, they can fill Timesheets to log the actual hours spent on each task. Once these hours are approved by the Scrum Master, the system will automatically update the Remaining Work on the task.

Reports

a. Sprint Status

This is tabular report that gives you a real-time picture of all the stories in your current sprint.

b. Burndown

This chart will help you to see the progress line of your tasks in sprint since it starts to the completion. This makes it effortless for the team to understand if things are going as per plan or if they have to make changes so they can hit the goal on time.

You can baseline a project and its tasks, and, in the future, compare actuals versus the baseline values to understand the deviation. Celoxis also supports Earned Value Analysis (EVA). In most scenarios, you would want to think of baseline as the "original estimate". In such cases, you would baseline the project just before kick-off. Celoxis currently supports 6 baselines.

Celoxis currently supports 6 baselines: Baseline, Baseline 1, ... Baseline 5.

Creating a Baseline

To create or delete a baseline, you will required the Baseline privilege.

Go to the project's gantt chart by clicking on . Then click on ToolbarBaselineSetProject. At any point in time, you can also choose to add or reset baselines of selected tasks. For example, if the scope increased and new tasks were added, you can add only these new tasks to the baseline by selecting this tasks and clicking on ToolbarBaselineSetSelected tasks.

The following fields are baselined:

• Planned Start
• Planned Finish
• Planned Effort
• Planned Cost
• Budget

Visualizing the Baseline

Go to the project's gantt chart by clicking on . Then click on ToolbarBaselineGanttShow.

Setting the Default Baseline for a Project

Go to the project's gantt chart by clicking on . Choose a baseline to view by clicking on ToolbarBaselineView and then selecting your baseline. Once data is loaded, click on ToolbarBaselineSet as default to set this baseline as the default. When you see data related to baseline (e.g. CPI, Start Variance, etc.) in reports, the data will be based on this default baseline.

Reporting on Baselines

Once you baseline project, the entire Earned Value Analysis (EVA) attributes like BCWS, BCWP, EV, PV, CPI and SPI are available in project and task reports. If you would to know more about earned value analysis, please read our blog article.

There are many baseline related columns available in projects and tasks.

Milestone-based billing is the billing model common in companies with project-driven revenues. This type of billing typically occurs only as certain project milestones have been attained. Tracking the milestones using the project Gantt chart makes it just as easy to track the billing invoices for the project in the same way as the actual deliverable milestones of the project.

Alternatively, depending on how the payment milestones for your projects are structured, you can bill your clients on specific dates regardless of your project’s progress. This too can be achieved using the milestone-based billing techniques suggested in this manual.

At the end of this manual, you will learn how to:

• Define billing milestones that are part of your project.
• Use invoicing reports to track project billing

Invoicing Fields

In this scenario, sending an invoice to the client becomes one of the tasks in the project plan. Using Celoxis default and custom fields, we will create several additional attributes which will allow you to set a special type of task - an Invoice task. You can create custom fields under Main MenuAdminAccount ManagementCustom Fields.

1. Date Invoiced
   • Name: Date Invoiced
   • Type: Date
   • Required financial privilege to view: Yes
   • Required?: No
   • Formula Key: date_invoiced
   • Attached To: Task
   • Rational: to record the date when the invoice was sent
2. Date Paid
   • Name: Date Paid
   • Type: Date
   • Required financial privilege to view: Yes
   • Required?: No
   • Formula Key: date_paid
   • Attached To: Task
   • Rational: to record the date when the invoice was paid
3. Invoice Status
   • Name: Invoice Status
   • Type: Formula, use the below mentioned formula. ${ label = 'Unknown'; now = Date.now(); label = !empty entity.date_invoiced ? 'INVOICED' : label; label = Date.before(entity.startCalendar, now ) && entity.date_invoiced < now ? 'OVERDUE' : label; label = !empty entity.date_paid ? 'PAID' : label; label = Date.after(entity.startCalendar, now) ? 'FUTURE' : label; label } ** These options can be customized.
   • Required financial privilege to view: Yes
   • Required?: No
   • Formula Key: invoice_status
   • Attached To: Task

Adding Invoice Milestones to the project timeline

When you put together contracts, or statements of work defining the project (note that this work is done outside of, and independent of Celoxis), you are likely to have the Payment Milestone section of the contract, defining exactly what payments are made, and when. Depending on the rules of the contract, and on the nature of work you perform, the payment milestones may be tied to specific deliverables, specific days or both. In order to track the project’ billing using the task attributes we set in the previous section, you will need to create an Invoice task for every payment milestone, and configure it according to the rules of your contract.

For example, imagine the scenario where you are building a Corporate Intranet for the client, under a $100,000 fixed price contract. Your payment schedule may look something like this:

In this situation, the payment milestone #1 will need to be manually scheduled in the project plan to occur on 9/25/17, while all other invoices may be delayed, if the project timeline is extended through the duration of the project.

To ensure proper milestone-based billing in this scenario:

1. Add the Invoicing milestone tasks to your project plan

   These tasks are going to be your milestone tasks (AddMilestone)

   

   Note that the task 6 is manually scheduled, as indicated by the M icon next to the task ID.

   

   The remaining milestones 7, 27 and 32, are scheduled to start when the preceding phases are complete, as dictated by the project contract.

2. Set milestone tasks’ attributes

   Here, it is time to put the Fixed Price amounts on these milestones. For each of the Invoice milestone tasks, set these amounts under the Edit TaskAdvanced tab.

   • Set Billing Type to Fixed Price
   • Set the Fixed Price
   • Under the Custom Fields tab, you can also set the Date Invoiced so that you can see the details as described in step 3.
3. Status of the invoices

   As the project progresses, and you invoice your client, the Invoice Status will automatically be calculated based on logic defined above.

   

   Once the payment is received, you can mark the Date Paid against the milestone so that the Invoice Status automatically sets to Paid.

Invoicing Reports

Below are the examples of the reports that can be used to track the billing of the projects:

Project Billing Milestones

Cross-project table, showing Fixed Price and Invoice Status for all invoices: Paid, Sent or Invoiced.

To create this task-based report, use the Milestone filter set to Yes, including only the tasks which are your payment milestones.

Projects Invoices by Status

Bar chart, showing Invoice Status for all active projects. This is again a task report.

Just like any other chart in Celoxis, this report is interactive. Click on each bar to reveal the detailed information for the invoices of the chosen status.

A Sample dashboard for your Accountant to track the Invoice details:

Conclusion/Final Points

As shown in the examples above, it is very easy to create and maintain the milestone-based billing setup in Celoxis.

Over the course of normal business, projects need to be properly re-evaluated for appropriate reprioritization. Often, at executive management directive, managers need to address an incoming high priority project request drop into the mix of pre-existing projects. This guide addresses how to:

1. Assess the impact of a new project on the existing resource workload,
2. Identify under-utilized or free resources,
3. Replace resources on tasks,
4. Shift out certain tasks to level out the workload,
5. If needed, shift out a low priority project completely to a later date.

Assessing Impact of New Project on Existing Workload

1. Create a new project state, say Requests (Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject States). Keep this new state in “Planning” stage and disallow time. This helps keeping the new project requests separate from the regular projects.
2. Create a project for your new project request and keep it in “Requests” state (Click Main MenuProjectNew Project). Enter the planned start date for this project.
3. From the project’s Interactive Gantt tab, define the WBS and resources. Since the project is in “Requests” state, it will not affect your existing workload.
4. Access the Resource Load (Main MenuResource Load). By default, this view will show you pre-existing planned and active projects.
5. Edit Filters and Add “Requests” to the Project State Filter. Click on Apply. Now, your resource load view will immediately show you the impact that any new project requests will have on the existing mix and workload.
6. Because of the new project request, the impact on the existing workload is high and a lot of resources are overallocated.
7. You can download this view (Select “PDF” option from the top right button group) and send this to your executives to show the direct impact of the new requests on the existing mix of projects.

Identify Under-utilized or Free Resources

From the same Resource Load View, you can easily identify the under-utilized or free resources. These are the resources that are color-coded as blue.

Replace Resources on Tasks

You can directly replace resources on problematic tasks (Mouseover the task in contention, and select the Edit Resources)

In the example below, you can Edit the “Survey commercial spaces” task and reassign it to Tanya who is relatively free in that period.

Shift out Tasks

There could be situations where free resources are not readily available. In such cases, you may need to shift out certain tasks that are of low priority and can be easily shifted out. To do this,

1. Mouse over the appropriate task.
2. Click on the 3-line menu.
3. Select Edit Task. Here you can change the task’s start date to a later one.

Shift out Low Priority Projects

If you still have a resourcing issue, change the start date of the other low priority projects so that all other tasks in those projects are rescheduled. To do this,

1. Click on the project to open it in a new tab.
2. In the new tab, click on Edit (from the top right button group)
3. From the Edit Project pop up, change its Start Date. This will automatically shift all tasks (except any manually scheduled tasks) in perspective to the new start date.

In this article, we will learn to automate a workflow which will create a New Project in Celoxis whenever a Project Request is moved to the Approved state in Celoxis. For this we will be using Zapier, if you are not familiar with Zapier then first read this article.

Automatically convert Project Request to a Project

1. Make a Zap

   

2. Choose Celoxis app and Issue Status Updated as the Trigger

   

3. Sign In to your Celoxis account

   If the account already exists then select it from the list.

   

4. Paste your Celoxis API key

   

5. Check the details and Continue

   

6. Test the Trigger

   

7. Select a Sample

   The data from the sample will be used in other steps to set up the Zap.

   

8. Choose the Filter app

   

9. Setup Filter

   

10. Continue

    

11. Test the Filter

    

12. Choose Celoxis app and Create Project as the Action

    

13. Select the account

    

14. Customize the Project

    Here you can map all the fields from request app to a project.

    

15. Test the Action

    

16. Turn On the Zap

    

17. Zap is Ready!

    

Celoxis enables you to perform backward scheduling of your projects in cases where the project end date is fixed and cannot be exceeded at any cost.
Backward planning involves starting a plan at the end goal and then working through required steps in reverse-chronological order.

This can be done in Celoxis by following the below steps. Here we will take an example of a simple website project.

1. Create a project. Here, define a Deadline as the project end date and since we are planning the project so select the State as Draft and click on Save.
2. Create the first task with the End date of the project and add the Must Finish On constraint.
3. Add a predecessor task to the first task and put As Late As Possible constraint on the predecessor task and define its duration. Once you set up the duration of Predecessor task, the Start date will be shifted because your last task has a fixed End date. Here, As Late As Possible constraint is set to overcome the buffer time of the predecessor task.
4. Since the end date of the last task is fixed, the start date of the predecessor task will keep on shifting as you enter new tasks.
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 until you list down all the tasks for the project.

   An alternative and quicker way to do this is to add the columns Constraint Type and Constraint Date in your Gantt and set them through there directly along with setting the predecessors.

6. At the end of this process you will get the start date of the project.
7. Replace the start date of the project with the date deduced by backward scheduling and your final plan is ready in Celoxis.

Yes. Click on a project name. This will open its panel. Then click Access Control. On the screen, click on the user icon for Project Manager. Select the user(s) you wish to add as secondary managers and save.

To exclude completed projects from your view, you need to edit the report and add the filter Schedule Health and check all the options in the drop-down except the Completed value. Save the report for the new filters to be applied.

If a task has child tasks, then it is called a summary task. Many attributes of summary tasks are rolled up from its child tasks. Some of the non trivial attributes are described below.

Start Date (planned/actual/projected)
It is the minimum of planned/actual/projected start date of its children.

Finish Date (planned/actual/projected)
It is the maximum of planned/actual/projected finish date of its children

Work (Effort)
It is the sum of work of its children.

Constraints
Constraints are not applicable for summary tasks.

Resource allocation
Resources assigned to a summary task will not be factored into the planned cost of the summary task, nor displayed on the resource load charts.

% Complete

% Complete = (W1×P1 + W2×P2 + ... + Wn×Pn) ÷ (W1 + W2 + ... + Wn)

For all

leaf-level descendants where

is the work and

is the % complete of its

descendant.

Predecessors
If a summary task has a predecessor, the system considers it to be equivalent to having that predecessor for all its children.

Auto/Manual Scheduling
Since the planned start and finish are calculated from its children, summary tasks are always considered to be auto scheduled.

Budget/Costs/Billing
It is the sum of the budget/costs/billing of its children.

Duration
It is the working time between the task's start and finish date as per the project's work calendar

A task's predecessors are tasks that affect its start or finish date.

In the Build farmhouse project, consider two tasks Buy land and Flatten land. You cannot start the land flattening process unless the land has been purchased. Hence, Buy land is a predecessor of Flatten land. Flatten land is called the successor of Buy land.

Once predecessors are entered, that task's start and finish dates are always kept up-to-date by the system when any of the predecessors are rescheduled. In the above example, if the finish date of the Buy land task is pushed ahead by 10 days, Celoxis will automatically push the start date of Flatten land by 10 days.

Types of predecessors

Lead Time

In some cases, when a task is nearing completion you may want to begin another task. For instance, 3 days prior to the construction of the walls of your home is completed, you may want to start selecting the color of the paint for the walls. So, for the

task you will select the

task as the predecessor and enter a lead time of 3 days. Lead time is specified as a negative number. E.g. -3d indicates a predecessor with 3 days lead time.

Lag Time

Sometimes a task cannot begin as soon as another task is completed. For example, once you paint the walls, it may take another 2 days for the paint to dry and only then you can begin furnishing the room. In this case, you would select the

as the predecessor of the

task and enter a lag of 2 days. Lag time is specified as a positive number. E.g. 4h indicates a predecessor with 4 hours lag time.

Setting predecessors

Predecessors can be set using the interactive gantt chart or from the add/edit task form. On the interactive gantt, you can set predecessors using:

• Drag-Drop: you can drag from the beginning or ending of a predecessor to the beginning or ending of a successor to create any of the four dependency types.
• Predecessor Column: you can enter the serial numbers of a tasks's predecessors separated by the semi-colon character. E.g. 2;3
• Successor Column: you can enter the serial numbers of a tasks's successors separated by the semi-colon character. E.g. 5;6
• Edit Task Screen: selecting a task and pressing the e key (or Right Click Edit) will open the edit task form. You can edit the predecessors as described earlier.

Setting inter-project predecessors

Inter-project predecessors can only be entered from the add/edit task screen. Open the task form using Edit and go to the Predecessors tab. Add a row. First pick the project and then the task dropdown will be populated with tasks from that project.

Note that inter-project dependencies cannot be edited from predecessors and successors columns in interactive gantt.

Constraints are applied to your tasks to impose restrictions on the way the task's start and finish dates are calculated. Often, they represent real world conditions. Examples:

• The last date to submit a bid is 20th May 2018
• Application testing can begin only after the phone is available in the market on 1st October 2020

We recommend that you use MSO and MFO only when absolutely required as they cause the schedule to be unnecessarily inflexible.

Setting Task Constraints

Task constraints can be set directly from the constraint columns or from the add/edit task screen.

Milestones are major checkpoints in a project. They can indicate the completion of key project tasks, the commencement of a phase or conclusion of the plan. For example, in a software development project, Research Complete can be a milestone that indicates that all the research activities have been completed and the project is now ready to move to the next step of preparing a Requirements Specification document.

In Celoxis, milestones are tasks that have zero duration and represented by a diamond symbol (◆) in the gantt chart.

Creating milestones

From the Interactive Gantt, click Gantt ToolbarAddMilestone.

To convert an existing task into a milestone, set its duration as zero.

Recommendations

• Set predecessors to your milestones. Doing this will illustrate the impact to your milestones.
• Set deadline (FNLT) constraints on milestones only if necessary as it will make it difficult to flexibly re-plan activities around your milestone.
• Indent milestones so that they appear under the correct WBS element

Critical tasks are those tasks which if slipped, could cause delays in the project. The critical tasks can be thought of as the longest dependent sequence of activities in a project plan which must be completed on time for the project to complete on the planned finish date. Critical tasks are automatically calculated by the system and cannot be manually marked.

Read our blog article on critical path for an in-depth look on this topic.

Tasks that have MSO/MFO/SNLT/FNLT constraint are also marked critical and will appear on the critical path.

A task stops being critical when it's completed, because it can no longer affect the completion of successor tasks or the project finish date.

Viewing critical paths

You can view the critical path from the interactive gantt by clicking Gantt ToolbarCritical Path.

Monitoring critical tasks

Tasks can be filtered using the Critical filter. Using this, for example, you can create a pie chart of critical tasks divided by their RAG indicators. Critical is also available as reporting attribute for tasks.

The topic of RAG indicators has been covered in-depth in this article.

Duration

Duration is the working time between a task's start and finish dates. For manually scheduled tasks,the duration has no significance.

Effort

Effort is the total amount of time resources will spend working on the task. Read our blog article on duration vs effort.

For manually scheduled tasks, if:

• Allocation is in % – the total work of that task is calculated as the sum: working hours x % allocation for each resource assigned.
• Allocation is in hours – the total work of that task is simply the sum of the individual allocations.

Units

The total allocation (in %) for the task. If a task is allocated – Joe[100%] and Peter[50%], its allocation is 1.5.

Relationship between D, W and U

The relationship between duration, work and allocation units is critical in understanding automatic scheduling of tasks. It is explained in detail in our

.

Schedule is an important pillar of the project management triangle. Celoxis has a flexible and powerful scheduling engine to help you take control of your project schedule.

Task scheduling is the process of calculating the start and finish dates of tasks. In this chapter we will understand how this is done in Celoxis.

We have already seen how start and finish dates of a summary task are calculated from its children. We shall now see how to calculate the dates for leaf-level tasks.

Manually Scheduled Tasks

Manually scheduled tasks are those tasks that have the Manually Scheduled option set. Celoxis never modifies the start and finish dates of manually scheduled tasks. Its predecessors are treated as FYI only and does not affect the start or finish dates.

The only constraint is that if you assign a resource with non-zero allocation, the resource must have non-zero (any value) allocation between the start and finish date of the task

Automatically Scheduled Tasks

Tasks that are not manually scheduled are automatically scheduled. Celoxis always keeps automatically scheduled tasks up-to-date. When a predecessor is extended, when a resource vacation is added, etc. the task dates are kept in sync.

Factors that affect scheduling of an automatically scheduled task are:

• predecessors
• constraints
• effort
• allocation units
• resource work calendars
• default work calendar (if no resource is assigned yet)

Scheduling Logic:

1. First, the task's predecessors are scheduled. Now all predecessors have correct start and finish dates.
2. Based on the dependency types, lead and lag, the task's tentative start (or finish if SF or FF predecessors exist) date is calculated. If the task has dependencies on both its start and finish dates (e.g. when a task has both FS and FF predecessors), a date is chosen that satisfies both dependencies. The date can either be a start date or a finish date.
3. Next, based on the effort and resource work calendars (or the default work calendar if the task is unassigned), the end date (or start date, if the previous step resulted in a tentative finish date) is calculated. To do this, the scheduler simply tries to exhaust the effort as per the allocation and the date when the effort becomes zero is the new finish (or start) date.
4. Finally, constraints are applied. If this results in a change of start or finish, the new date is taken as a base and the complementary date is calculated in the same way as in the previous step.

The progress of a task is indicated by its % complete attribute. A value of 0% means that there has been no progress on the task while 100% means that the task has been completed. Celoxis rolls-up the percent completes of tasks to calculate the percent complete of the project.

% Complete Methods

There are three methods to update a task's % complete. They are described below with an example – assume that we have a task T with resources Joe assigned 40h and Peter assigned 10h to it.

Last % Entered

The % complete of a task is the last % complete entered for that task by any user. This supposes a working model where the the person updating the % complete knows the overall status of that task. In our case, if Joe updates the % complete of to 50% and then Peter updates the % complete to 25. The % complete of T will be 25%.

Weighted Average of % entered by each assigned resource

The % complete of a task will be calculated as a weighed average of the % completes entered by resources assigned to it. This supposes that when a resources enter % completes, they are indicating their how much of their work is complete, not the overall progress of the task. The % complete of the task is calculated as:

% Complete = (W1×P1 + W2×P2 + ... + Wn×Pn) ÷ (W1 + W2 + ... + Wn)

For all n assignees where Wi is the planned effort and Pi is the % complete of its ith assignee.

Let’s say Joe enters 50% while Peter enters 100%. The % complete of T will be: (50×40 + 100×10) ÷ (40 + 10) = 60%.

Auto-calculated from time logged against the task

In this model, users do not enter the % complete, rather it is calculated based on the time logged against the task. The formula is:

% Done = Actual Effort ÷ Planned Effort

Actual effort is the sum of all approved hours for that task.

A few things to note in this model:

• Users will not be shown the % complete field as that value is calculated.
• If time logged exceed the planned effort the % will show as 100%.
• Once a task starts and you think that the task's effort has been over or underestimated, you should decrease or increase the planned effort of the task. Otherwise the task may never show up as completed or may prematurely indicate as completed.

We recommend that this only be used in projects when the time logged will always match the planned effort. E.g. tasks such as “Do 20 hours of research”.

Specifying the % complete method

The default % complete method for tasks can be specified from the project add/edit screen's Advanced tab.

% Complete of Summary Tasks and Projects

% complete of summary tasks and projects is automatically calculated as a weighted average from its descendants as per the formula:

% Complete = (W1×P1 + W2×P2 + ... + Wn×Pn) ÷ (W1 + W2 + ... + Wn)

For all

leaf-level descendants where

is the work and

is the % complete of its

descendant. If a leaf-level task is unassigned, its duration (in hours) is used instead of its work in the calculation.

When you assign a resource to a task, Celoxis allows you to specify whether you want the resource to work full time (100%), half time (50%), any other fraction (e.g. 30%) or even a certain amount of hours (e.g. 20 hours).

Entering the correct allocation is important when you want to monitor resource workload. E.g. if Joe is scheduled to work 100% on task T1 from M-F and also 100% on task T2 in the same time period, the resource load chart will show Joe as overloaded that week. This is because the total effort expected by each task will be 40 i.e. a total of 80 but Joe works only 40 hours per week. If you intended that Joe work half the time on T1 and half the time on T2, then you should set Joe's allocation to 50% for both tasks.

If you want to ensure that your resources are optimally allocated, you should enter the correct estimations while allocating resources. Only then can the system show a true picture of the workload distribution.

In the following sections, let's assume that Mary works 36 hours per week, Monday through Friday as:

Allocation in percentage (%)

When you allocate a resource in % on a task, you tell Celoxis the fraction of time will that resource be dedicated on a task from his work hours.

For example, Mary works 8 hours per day and you allocate her 50% to a task, it means she will work 50% every day. Let's see how the system will allocate her the work per day:

Allocation in hours (h)

When you allocate a resource to work N hours on a task, it means that that resource will spend a total effort of N hours on that task from the task start to finish. N is proportionally distributed every day as per the resource’s working hours that day.

Let's see how the system would distribute her work if Mary was assigned 9h to a task that ran M-F:

On a task, you can either allocate resources in % or in hours but not both at the same time.

Assigning resources

There are many convenient ways of assigning, replacing or removing resources on tasks.

To assign resources on single task

On the interactive gantt, click on the resource cell -or- double click on the resources next to the task bar.

On the task overview or tasks list screens, Click on the icon that appear next to the resources.

From anywhere, click on Task ActionsEdit and click on Resources.

To assign resources on multiple tasks

On the interactive gantt, select the tasks and Right Click then Assign Resource.

To replace or remove a resource on multiple tasks

On the interactive gantt, select the tasks and Right Click then Replace a resource. To remove, do not select anyone to replace the resource with.

When you create tasks from API, CSV Import or using the Add Multiple action from the gantt, you can create tasks by specifying or not specifying the start, finish and duration attributes. This chapter helps you understand how Celoxis sets the attributes that are unspecified.

In the following table, we shall use S for Start, F for Finish and D for Duration. The symbol manual is set to true if the creator has indicated his preference for creating manually scheduled tasks. Also, auto means that the system will use scheduling logic to calculate that attribute.

if (manual) { 
    S = max(today, project's start)
    F = S + 1d
} else {
    D = 1d
    S = auto
    F = auto
}

if (manual) {
  F = S + 1d
} else {
  D = 1d
  SNET = S
  F = auto
  S = auto
}

if (manual) {
  S = F - 1d
} else {
  D = 1d
  FNLT = F
  F = auto
  S = auto
}

  manual = false
  S = auto
  F = auto

  manual = true

  manual = false
  SNET = S
  S = auto
  F = auto

  manual = false
  FNLT = F
  S = auto
  F = auto

  manual = true

Also, if the task is deemed to be manually scheduled and if S and F were specified but without time i.e 00:00 hours, then S/F time will be set to the start/end working time on their respective weekdays. If that day is a non-working day, then most common start and end times during a work week will be used instead.

Users having ‘Add Comment’ privileges can add checklist items against tasks and app items. Checking off the item will complete the item. The checklist does not impact the task progress.

Celoxis can create tasks from emails sent to it. This is especially useful when you don’t have the application open in front of you or you are on the go.

Emails have to be sent to a specific address and be in a specific format. Task is created from the from, to, cc, subject, body, attachments and priority as described below.

To (special address)

The email address to which the email should be sent can be found under Main MenuAdminProject ManagementTask Inbox. We recommend that you save it as a contact under "Celoxis Add Task” or something equivalent.

From

The user whose email address matches the from email address is considered to be the creator. This user must have Add TaskGranted in the project in which the task is to be created.

To and Cc

Users in Celoxis whose email address matches the email address of the email's recipients are assigned to the task with 100% allocation.

Subject

The subject should start with the name of the task followed key-value pairs of attributes encodes in square brackets. An example is shown below.

Add missing images in footer [project:Fifadom.com][parent:Images]

The above will add a task named “Add missing images in footer” in the project whose code or name is Fifadom.com under the summary task named “Images”.

Project is mandatory, rest all attributes are optional. Attributes supported in the subject are:

Body

The body of the email becomes the description of the task.

Attachments

All file attachments are attached to the task.

Priority

The value of the X-Priority header is checked to determine the task's priority. If it is 1 then the task's priority is consider High, if it is 5 then the priority is set to Low, otherwise it is set to Normal.

Celoxis provides you with the ability to import tasks in a project from CSV. If you have a Microsoft Excel file, then you can export it in CSV (comma separated values) format and then import it in Celoxis.

To import tasks in a project, first click on the project and then click Project ActionsMoreImport Tasks (CSV). Alternatively, if you are in the project Gantt chart, you can click AddImport CSV

Rules

Decimal NumberDo not use currency symbol or thousands separator. For example $10000.5 or 10,000.5 is not allowed. 10000.5 is allowed. BooleanSpecify either TRUE or FALSE. Empty text will be treated as FALSE. DateSpecify dates as YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss E.g. 1994-11-05T08:15:30 corresponds to November 5, 1994, 8:15:30 am. You can also specify YYYY-MM-DD where time is not material. E.g. 2021-12-25 corresponds to 25th December 2021.

Fields

To read more about tasks dates,

.

To download the project, navigate to Gantt and then click on MoreExportCSV. This will download the project plan with the columns you have selected on Gantt.

You can then open this in Excel using the steps below. To open the exported file (CSV) in Excel:

1. Open a New Excel Document, or open a new worksheet in your existing Excel workbook. Navigate to the Data tab.
2. Click on the From Text button.
3. Navigate to the folder holding the .csv file you want to open and click on the correct file name.
4. Click Import, the Text Import Wizard will open.
5. Make sure you choose the Delimited radio button/checkbox under Original Data Type in the open dialog box.
6. Select the My data has headers checkbox as well, click Next.
7. Select the checkbox corresponding to the correct delimiter which is comma(,). It is important to choose this delimiter to ensure the data fields can be properly parsed during the import.
8. Click Next, in the Data Preview field, only the first column of data will be highlighted. Drag the horizontal window control all the way to the right.
9. While holding down the Shift key, click on the final column heading. This should select and highlight every column in the Data Preview pane.
10. Choose Text as your Column Data Format. Every column should now be labeled Text in the Data Preview pane.
11. Review the Data Preview window to ensure your data looks the way it should. Click Finish.

Your data should appear in your spreadsheet, organized in columns and with the original headers.

Copying tasks copies task attribute, attached files and security while moving tasks also moves the attached entities like time logs, expenses and updates.

Copying or moving tasks in the same project

1. Open the project's interactive gantt chart
2. Select the tasks to copy or move
3. Press Ctrl+C to copy or Ctrl+X to cut
4. Select a task underwhich to copy/move these tasks and press Ctrl+V

Copying tasks from a different project

1. Open the project's interactive gantt chart in which you want to copy the tasks to
2. Click AddCopy from another project from the toolbar
3. Select a project and choose tasks to copy. If you choose a summary task, its descendants will also be copied.
4. Submit the form

A copy of the tasks will be created.

Moving tasks to a different project

1. Open the project's interactive gantt chart from which you want to move the tasks
2. Select the tasks to move
3. Right click and choose Move
4. Select the destination project

Tasks will be moved to the new project. The rolled-up data of both, the new and old, projects are updated.

Celoxis makes it easy for users to indicate their progress on tasks. In addition to entering comments on a task from its task screen, you can:

• Update progress of many tasks in bulk.
• Update progress of a task via email.
• Update progress of a single task, which is the topic of this chapter.

Clicking on the for a task in a task list will open a menu having convenient options to update progress.

% and Comments

As you can see from the below image, you can log a custom % complete, enter comments and also log time. You can also enter actual start and actual finish dates if you wish, else the system will assume that the task started and finished on time.

In addition to logging an update using the web interface, task assignees can also reply via email to file their update. When managers request an update, assignees get an email like this:

Clicking on the Update Progress button as shown above, opens up a new email compose window in which you can modify the subject to fill in % complete, hours and time code. All are optional. You can also attach files and add a description that will become the progress update's text. A sample is shown below:

A few minutes after the email is sent, this progress update will be added to the task. If you have put in hours, time will also be logged and sent for approval.

You can create copies of a task in a recurring pattern of you choice.

1. Open the interactive gantt in the project in which you want to create the recurring task.
2. Create a task and name it appropriately e.g. Weekly Meeting.
3. Right click on the task and click on Recur.
4. Enter the desired recurrence pattern. In the following example, we have chosen a weekly pattern.
5. Submit

Celoxis will create new tasks as per your recurrence pattern as shown below:

Things don't always go according to plan. Interruptions have become normal and you need a quick way to handle them in a way that keeps your plan accurate. That's where this functionality helps. There are two common interruption scenarios:

1. You want to suspend an in-progress task and postpone the remaining part.
2. You want to reassign an in-progress task to someone else.

In both cases, you want to capture the "done" part and do something else with the "remaining" part.

What happens when a task is split

Let's take an example where we want to split a task T that is of duration 6d. In the above example:

• Task T is split into two parts: T (1) and T (2).
• The predecessors of T become the predecessors of T (1) while its successors become the successors of T (2).
• An FS dependency created between T(1) and T(2).
• The effort, budget, duration and fixed price are divided in proportion as well. For example, if the budget was $600, the budget for T (1) will be $200 while it will be set to $400 for T (2).
• Custom fields are identical in both T (1) and T (2)
• If you select the Create a container task for the two split parts option while splitting, the baseline for T would be moved to the summary task, else it will remain with T (1).

Once a split has happened, you can now reschedule T (2) and/or assign it to someone else.

How to split a task

1. Open Interactive Gantt
2. Select a task and right-click on it
4. Select Split Task: {0}
5. Split On: The date on which the second part of the task should start.
   Create a container task for the two split parts: If you would like to automatically create a summary task that contains the two parts of the split task.
6. Submit

You can request an update on tasks from their assignees. There are two ways to do this: for a single task, click Request Update, while for multiple tasks you can use the bulk actions.

Assignees get an email to which they can simply reply to to record their update. They can also specify the % complete, log time and more as described in this chapter.

You can attach one or more files to a task from your local drive or from Google drive. Click on the task to open the slide panel and then click on Attach Files. Files attached to a task can be viewed from the Files tab on the slide panel.

If you follow a task, you will be notified about activities happening on the task e.g. when someone adds a comment or when someone attaches a file. The notifications will be through email as well as through the notification center. If you are an assignee or a project manager, then you are automatically notified and there is no need to explicitly follow the task.

Unfollowing

To unfollow a task, simply click on the Unfollow link on the task screen on in the footer of the email notification.

You can select multiple tasks and perform actions on them. Click on the next to the checkbox in the report table header as shown below:

50%, 100% & On Track

Updates the % complete of selected tasks. For "On Track", read this.

Request an Update

Sends an email to the assigned resources asking them for a progress update.

Edit

Allows multiple attributes to be modified at once, including custom fields as shown below:

Gantt in Celoxis provides a graphical overview of the project schedule. This is useful for the Project Manager to schedule his projects and keep track of them. The different features like the Export, Baseline, etc. help him with preparing and driving the project plan more efficiently.

The Gantt chart features include:

• Creating the WBS i.e your tasks, sub-tasks, milestones with start and finish dates
• Drag - Drop tasks to re-order them in hierarchy
• Add Constraints
• Drag - drop-dependencies
• Expand-collapse the task list
• Assign users on tasks
• Updating task progress
• Printing the Gantt
• View the schedule with different Zoom levels
• Auto Save and Manual Save options

Configuring the Gantt

The first time you access the Interactive Gantt of a project, you are presented with the below options to be configured. This is then remembered per person across all projects in Celoxis as a user preference. You can change this setting from the icon.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The scheduling mode of a task is determined from the Gantt preference which is saved per user. However, you can change the scheduling mode of one or more tasks from the Gantt. To do so, select the tasks and click on MoreSetSchedulingMode to the desired one from the Gantt.

Yes, you can create a report of type Task and the Output type as Gantt. On the Report's edit page, under the Visible to Client drop-down pick the client with whom you wish to share.

This report will then appear under the Reports menu for the client.

Once you add the dependecy, it will be shown as below:

For more details, refer the Setting inter-project predecessors section here.

A time entry in Celoxis passes through various states as shown below.

Saved

Saved indicates that the time entry has been saved but not submitted for approval.

• Anyone with add time privilege can create a time entry in this state.

Submitted

Pending approval indicates that the time entry has been submitted for approval.

• Anyone with add time privilege can create a time entry in this state.
• The submitter can continue to edit time entries in this state.

Approved

Approved indicates that the time entry has been approved by

approvers setup in your approval workflow.

• Anyone part of the approval workflow can approve time.
• Once approved, that time entry cannot be edited by the submitter. However, anyone with the Approve privilege can make changes to the time entry.
• Information from approved time entries like hours, cost and revenue are rolled-up to their respective work items and projects.
• During approval, the time entry is updated with the latest bill and cost rate.

Rejected

Rejected indicates that the time entry has been rejected by

approver.

• Anyone part of the approval workflow can reject time.
• The submitter is notified through an email.
• The time entry will start showing in the weekly timesheet screen of the submitter where it can be edited or deleted and can be resubmitted for approval.
• A rejected time entry resubmitted for approval has to go through the entire approval workflow.

Invoiced

Invoiced indicates that the time entry has been marked as invoiced.

• Only time entries marked as Billable can be invoiced.
• Anyone with Invoice privilege can invoice a time entry.
• Once invoiced, the time entry’s invoiced hours and revenue are rolled-up to their respective work items and projects. E.g. invoiced revenue and invoiced hours.

A time code represents an activity type for a time entry. For example, a software development company may want to track activities like Programming, Designing and Testing, while a legal firm may want to track activities like Litigation, Research, Meetings, etc.

Time codes help in:

• Filtering: you can filter time entries based on activities and perform bulk actions on them.
• Reporting: you can aggregate information about your activities and create pie, bar and various other types of reports. For example, software development companies can understand the total time spent in Programming or Designing.
• Billing: if your organization uses activity based billing i.e. the billing rate is based on the activity performed not who performs it, then you can define billing rates for time codes. When time is logged, the appropriate bill rate gets applied to that time entry based on it's time code to calculate its bill amount.

Non-project time codes

Some activities are not associated with projects yet that time has to be accounted for. E.g. Meetings, Sick Leave, and Paid Vacation. This can be done using non-project time codes. A non-project time code is like a regular time code but with its

flag turned on.

Using time codes

Time codes are selected by the submitter while logging time. Time codes can be selected on the weekly time screen or while logging time on work items.

Managing time codes

Only administrators can manage time codes. Navigate to Main MenuAdminTimesheetTime Codes.

Costable

Every time code has a costable flag. When time is logged, if it's time code is costable, then the time entry is marked as costable. Costable time entries are considered towards project cost. Most of your time codes will be costable, however, some could be non-costable e.g. Unpaid Vacation and Unpaid Sick Leave.

In addition to tracking hours, timesheets are also used in calculating labor costs and for billing clients.

Labor Cost

All costs associated with time entries are labor costs since they are directly associated with human labor. Whether a time entry is considered towards project cost depends on its Costable flag. By default this is set based on whether its time code is costable or not. But this can be changed by a user having the Approve Time privilege.

Cost Rates

If time entry is marked as costable, its cost rate is the cost rate of the time entry's owner. If the owner's cost rate has been specifically set for that project, it is used. Otherwise, that resource's default cost rate is used.

If time entry is not marked as costable, its cost rate is set to zero.

Setting the default cost rate

A user's default cost rate can be set from its add/edit screen or from the bulk edit user screen.

Setting a project specific cost rate

You can override the default cost rate for users per project. Click on a project link that will slide in the project screen; then click Cost Rates.

Setting cost rates for a specific time entries

Users having the Approve Time privilege can edit a time entry (or many using the bulk edit time screen) and set a cost rate.

Billing

Whether a time entry is considered for billing depends on its Billable flag. By default this turned on if its work item's Billing Type is set to Time & Material. But this can be changed by a user having the Approve Time privilege. Note that changing the billing type of a work item will only affect its future time entries.

Celoxis supports two types of billing models:

• Time code based — This is when you bill your clients based on the activity performed, not on who performs that activity. For example, a software development may decide to charge a rate of $50 per hour for a junior Java developer; it does not matter which exact user does that work. In this case bill rates are defined per time code.
• User based — This is when the bill rate depends on the user performing the activity. For example, in a legal firm a star lawyer may charge twice the rate for the same kind of work. In this mode, bill rates are defined per user.

Your organization can have only one model at a time and administrators can select it from Main MenuAdminTimesheetBilling.

Overriding rates for a project

Like cost rates, billing rates can also be overridden per project. Click on a project link that will slide in the project screen; then click Billing Rates.

Setting bill rates for a specific time entries

Users having the Approve Time privilege can edit a time entry (or many using the bulk edit time screen) and set a bill rate.

You can setup a multi-level approval workflow for time entries. For a time entry to be marked as approved, it has to be approved by all the approvers. If any of the approver rejects it, the time entry is sent back to the submitter. On resubmission, the entire approval workflow is started.

For time on projects

For non-project time

Changing the workflow will result in resetting the approval status of all items that are pending approval. They will have to start from the first approval.

You can use timers in Celoxis to keep track of time spent on your work items. Timers can be used in tasks as well as your custom apps.

Timers can be started on work items using the icon in the toolbar as shown below. Once a timer is started, it automatically pauses the earlier running timer. Also, you can use the icon to pause a timer from a work item.

Once a timer is started, it is shown in green color at the bottom in LHS menu. You can click on it to view all you recent timers. This is also a convenient way to pause a timer or restart a new one.

Timer Enhancements

• A Delete option to remove all inactive timers. Earlier, you had to remove them one at a time
• The timer popup remains open after you have performed actions like Log time, pause etc., so you can take the next action. Earlier, it would close, adding an extra click to re-open the pop-up.
• Timer actions on the task panel will refresh the timer action on the LHS panel.

To fill your weekly timesheet, click on Main MenuTimesheet. The weekly timesheet screen is a quick, powerful and convenient way to log time as well as update task progress.

A	You can select another user for whom to fill time if you have the Time ProxyGranted privilege.
B	Navigate to previous or next week or jump to any date.
C	The projects and work items that you can select here are controlled by this option. Prefill Timesheet With Workitems - The screen comes pre-filed with rows with work items if Auto or Same work items as submitted option is selected.
D	Click to add more rows.
E	You can enter a % complete for a task and enter comments
F	Click on a cell to enter hours and click on the to add a comment for an individual time entry.
G	Click to add non-project time rows.

You can click Save to save the timesheet or Submit to save as well as submit the timesheet for approval.

You will need the Time & Expense > ApproveGranted privilege to approve time-entries. To approve time-entries, click Main MenuApprovalsApprove Time.

The above example shows time-entries submitted by Tanya and Joe Cool. You can check the boxes besides the users and then click Approve to approve all time-entries in one click OR click Timesheet to open Timesheet view to see the individual time-entries before approving.

The Incomplete Timesheets report helps you identify and remind users who have not filled their timesheets.

To view incomplete timesheets, click Main MenuReportsIncomplete Timesheets.

Customizing the definition of "Incomplete"

If you click on Edit Filters above, you can customize the value of the Hours (Submitted) filter. You have two options:

• Less than working hours – If Joe is supposed to work 40 hours per week and a non-working exception of 4 hours has been added, then Joe is supposed to log 36 hours of time. Anything below this will be treated as an incomplete timesheet.
• Less than N hours – You can decide the N and all uses who have logged time less than this value will be shown.

Setup daily timesheet reminders

If you have administrator privileges, you can set this up from Main MenuAdminTimesheetTimesheet Options. Check the Send incomplete timesheet reminder emails to users daily at option and select the time you want the emails to be sent and click on Save. The time selected is as per your company’s time zone.

By marking time entries as invoiced, you are indicating that the client has been sent an official invoice from your company. You will need the Time & Expense > InvoiceGranted privilege to mark time as invoiced. To mark time as invoiced, click Main MenuApprovalsInvoice Time. This will show a list of all billable time entries that have been approved but not invoiced.

You can select multiple time entries and perform actions on them. In any time log report, Click on the next to the checkbox in the report table header as shown below:

To perform an action, you will need the appropriate privilege. Also, time entry has to be in the correct state as per the workflow. So if you try to invoice an unapproved entry the action will fail.

Edit

You can set individual attributes of time entries or update the bill and cost rates to the latest values. The latter is especially useful when you have modified the rates and you need to update time entries with the new ones.

If you have administrator privileges, you can customize policies related to logging time for your organization from Main MenuAdminTimesheetTimesheet Options. Some of the non trivial options are covered below.

Limit time to Allocated hours

This policy allows enforces that uses cannot log more hours than they are allocated on a task.

For example, if user Joe is assigned 5 hours to a task then he can fill a total of 5 hours against that task. Let us assume he has already submitted 2 hours for this task in the previous week in addition to the 2 hours that were already approved. If he tries to log time of 1 hour each on Monday and Tuesday against for this task, the total hours will be 6 (2 approved, 2 already submitted, 2 hours being submitted now) and hence will not be allowed to submit the timesheet.

• This policy is checked only when submitting time for approval or editing time submitted for approval.
• While approving or after approval, it can be changed by whoever has privilege to approve the time
• Same logic is used when importing time via CSV and API.

Locking Timesheets

This policy prevents logging time for a month on a cut-off date.

For example, some companies follow a monthly invoicing of customers, and they don’t want users to accidentally submit time for the previous month. To avoid these errors you can enter a cut-off date of the month after which no more time can be logged for the previous month. Continuing with the example, say you invoice your customers on the 10th of each month. You can specify a cut-off date like 5th of every month. This allows users to complete their timesheets for the previous month by the 5th of the month. After that they cannot fill time for the previous month. Approvers get till the 9th to finish approving the time logs before they are invoiced on the 10th.

• If today is 3rd of May, and you have set the cut-off to 5, you can fill time for the month of April (previous month) but not for March or February. Those are already locked as the date for them has already passed.
• The lock date is checked only when a user is submitting time for approval, or editing time that is already submitted for approval.
• While approving OR after approval, it can be changed by whoever has the privilege to approve the time.
• Same logic mentioned above is used when importing time via CSV and API.

Celoxis provides you with the ability to import time entries from CSV. If you have a Microsoft Excel file, then you can export it in CSV (comma separated values) format and then import it in Celoxis.

To import time entries, navigate to Main MenuAdminTimesheetImport Time (CSV).

For reference, you can download a sample CSV file by clicking on

After uploading the CSV file you need to map each column in CSV file to the corresponding field in Celoxis. By default, Celoxis automatically maps the fields for you but you can also select a different column from the dropdown list. You can even use the

option for a field that you want to be automatically mapped by Celoxis.

Fields supported:

• Task/App
• User - mandatory
• Hours - mandatory
• Comments
• Date - YYYY-MM-DD format, mandatory
• State - mandatory
• Time Code - mandatory
• Billable
• Costable
• Approver
• Invoiced By
• Custom Fields - you will have to create the fields in Celoxis first
• ID - mandatory, only when you are updating time entries using a CSV file

Updating Time Entries

Celoxis also provides the ability to update the existing time entries by importing a CSV file. To update time entries you must include the ID of the time entries in the CSV file.
To find the ID of the time entries, add ID column in the Time Logs report(Main MenuTime Logs).

This article helps you understand how you can manage overtime hours and arrive at project costs and billing using the time codes in Celoxis.

Steps

1. Define additional Project Time codes for each of your overtime activities and mark them as costable. For example, if you have existing time codes as Research, Design, Development, then create additional overtime time codes such as Research (OT), Design (OT), Development (OT).
2. Define regular cost and bill (if user-based billing) rates for your users.
3. In case of Time code based billing, also define the overtime bill rates for your overtime time codes.
4. Create a ‘Time Entry’ report with below details,
   Name: Overtime Entries Select a filter ‘Time Code’ and select all overtime time codes in this filter Select a filter ‘User’ and mark it as promptable Output: Tabular. Select the columns as Date, Hours, Cost Rate, Bill Rate Group By: User, Time Code
5. When users want to log overtime hours, ask them to select appropriate overtime time code in the timesheet.
6. When approving time entries, filter the report (created in step 4) based on a specific user E.g. User: Joe Cool. This will display all the overtime entries by Joe Cool.
7. Now select all the overtime entries and click on bulk edit action.
8. In case of time code based billing model, select Cost Rate option, and set the overtime cost rate.
9. In case of User based billing, select the Cost Rate and Bill Rate options and then set the overtime cost rate and bill rate.
10. Approve the time entries.

Sample Reports

1. Regular vs Overtime (Tabular Report)

   

2. Overtime Distribution (Pie Chart Report)

   

Yes, Celoxis allows you to apply the new rates for time-entries already submitted or approved. When the time-entry is saved or submitted for approval, the new rates are automatically updated during approvals.

However, once a time-entry is approved, you need to consciously edit them to apply the new rates using the bulk actions.

For steps, refer here.

An expense in Celoxis passes through various states as shown below.

Submitted

Pending approval indicates that the expense has been submitted for approval.

• Anyone with Add Expense privilege can create an expense in this state.

Approved

Approved indicates that the expense has been approved by the project manager.

• Once approved, that expense cannot be edited by the submitter. However, anyone with the Approve privilege can make changes to the expense.
• Information from approved expense like cost and revenue are rolled-up to their respective work items and projects.

Rejected

Rejected indicates that the expense has been rejected by the project manager.

• The submitter is notified through an email.

Invoiced

Invoiced indicates that the expense has been marked as invoiced.

• Only expense marked as Billable can be invoiced.
• Anyone with Invoice privilege can invoice an expense.
• Once invoiced, the expense’s invoiced revenue are rolled-up to their respective work items and projects.

An expense code represents an expense type for an expense line item. Some common expense codes are Meals, Gas, Phone, etc.

Expense codes help in reporting. You can aggregate information about your activities and create pie, bar and various other types of reports. For example, you can understand how money is being spent across various avenues.

Using expense codes

Expense codes are selected by the submitter for each line item. You can use expense codes in filters, output columns and even charts.

Managing expense codes

Only administrators can manage expense codes. Navigate to Main MenuAdminExpensesExpense Codes.

The submitter of an expense can mark it as billable and costable. If an expense is marked as billable, its total amount is added to the work item's and consequently its project's revenue. If the expense is marked as costable, its total amount is added to the work item's and consequently its project's cost.

Expenses can be added against tasks. Each expense can have multiple line items. Each line item can be assigned an expense code like Travel, Food etc.

To add an expense, Main MenuExpense. Alternatively, you can also click on a task and from the task screen click Add Expense.

You will need the Time & Expense > ApproveGranted privilege to approve expenses. To approve expenses, click Main MenuApprovalsApprove Expenses.

The above example shows two expenses submitted by Tanya. You can click on an expense to approve or reject them individually OR select one or more expenses and click on One Click Approve to approve them in bulk..

By marking expenses as invoiced, you are indicating that the client has been sent an official invoice from your company. You will need the Time & Expense > InvoiceGranted privilege to invoice expenses. To invoice expenses, click Main MenuApprovalsInvoice Expenses. This will show a list of all billable expenses that have been approved but not invoiced.

Yes, you can edit the approved expenses if you have the requisite privileges. You need to have Time & Expense > EditGranted and Time & Expense > ApproveGranted privileges to be able to do this.

The notification center is used to communicate events and messages about items you are interested in. Events could include that someone completed a task in your project, or you received a new reply to an online discussion, or a new version of the file you are interested in is available, etc. The following image shows 2 new notifications and 1 new mention.

In-App Notifications

In-app notifications are events that happen in items that you follow, manage or own. The include new work assignments, modification to items, updates on tasks, replies in online discussions, etc. The number of unread notifications appear above the icon. You can click the icon anytime to view your recent notifications.

Clicking on any item in the panel will open that item's panel while clicking on Mark All Read will mark all unread notifications as read.

@ Mentions

@mentions is the best way to grab your colleague's attention to a work item. You can mention a user while:

• Adding a comment on a task or updating its progress.
• Performing an action, reassigning or adding a comment to an app item.
• Participating in discussions.

The number of unread messages appear above the

icon. You can click the icon anytime to view recent messages directed at you.

Clicking on any item in the panel will open that item's panel while clicking on Mark All Read will mark all unread messages as read.

Mentioning a User

The easiest way to mention a user is to click the icon in the text field's menu as shown below. Also, if easier, you can simply type @<first-name>, @<last-name>, @<username> or @<first-name><last-name> in the text field. In the following example, Emily and Tanya will see this message in their mentions when they login.

At times, you need to track updates on work items where you are not assigned but are related to the work you're doing. By following a work item:

• You get updates via email notifications about the updated on the work items.
• You can even reply to the emails, which will then add your comments against that work item.

Following a work item is a great way to stay up-to-date with its updates and comments. When you follow a work item, you see its updates in the Activity Stream and receive instant email notifications.

Follow a Work item

Assignees of a task or app item and the State Manager/Project Manager automatically follow that task or app item. To begin following a work item:

• Click on Follow link on the panel of the task/app item.
• Alternatively, go to the task or app item's actions menu and click Follow.

The Activity Stream report allows you to view the recent happenings on projects, tasks, bugs, etc. that you are assigned to, manage or follow. This report can also be placed on one of your dashboards. An example is shown below:

As you can see the history is grouped by each object and the recent happenings for that object are shown. You can click on View All to view all activities since that object's creation. There is also a comment area where you can put in your comment. And like any other report, you can customize what you wish to see.

Files often go through an evolutionary process and undergo a series of revisions. In teams, a file often involves contributions by different people. Without some kind of control, some important questions become difficult to answer:

• Do I have the latest version of the file?
• Am I overwriting someone else's changes to this file?
• Who all are working on this file?
• What changes were made since the last version that we sent to the customer?

Using Celoxis, you can answer these and many other questions. Celoxis offers a basic version control system that is simple, intuitive and user-friendly.

Basics

Files in project and task folders can be version controlled. The basic process is:

• Check-out a file
• Make changes on your local computer
• Check-in a file

Checkout

Checking out a file indicates to the system and your team that you intend to make modifications to that file. After check-out, you can keep this copy on your personal computer, make changes to it and then check it back in.

Multiple users can check-out a file at the same time except if a check-out has been marked as exclusive mode. An exclusive check-out means that no one else can perform a check-out on that file until you check it in or revert your check-out.

If someone else checks in a file while you are working on it you will be notified. For instance, if you have a version 1.3 of a file and some one checks in a version 1.4, you will be notified that you have an older version.

To check-out a file

Click Checkout.

To undo a check-out

If you have checked out a file but decided that you do not need to update it, you can revert the check-in by clicking Revert

Viewing current check-outs

If you select the versions column, or on the document info screen, you can see the list of users who have checked the file out. An X indicates that the check-out is exclusive.

Checkin

Once you are done with your changes to the file on your computer, you must perform a check-in for your team to see it. When you check-in a file, you have to upload the new version of the file and enter your comments. The system maintains a history of all check-ins.

Celoxis also warns you of potential conflicts. For instance, consider the following scenario:

• You checked out version 1.0 of a file on Monday in a non-exclusive mode because you want to add a few chapters.
• Joe checks out the same version i.e 1.0 on Tuesday to correct a few spelling mistakes.
• After correcting typos, Joe immediately checks it back in to create version 1.1. Now these corrections obviously don't show up in your file since you have an earlier copy. At this point, Celoxis will send you an email notification indicating that a new version of the file is available indicating that your version is possibly outdated.
• If you try to check-in your file, Celoxis will warn you that there was a checkin on the same file while you were making your changes and hence a potential for conflict. After this warning, you will need to merge the changes (e.g. using Microsoft Word's merge feature) and check the file back in.

To check-in a file

Click Checkin. You have the choice of indicating it as either major change (e.g. 1.2 → 2.0) or a minor change (1.2 → 1.3). Version numbers do not affect system behavior and can be used as per your business policies. A best practice is to indicate a check-in as major when you intend to send it to your client.

Revision history

To view all the revisions along with the comments, click View Details. You can also download a specific version of the file.

When you add calendar events, you can indicate the impact it has on resource availability. For example, if you are going to an off-site meeting for a day, you would not want any tasks to be scheduled for you that day.

When you add calendar events, you can indicate the impact on availability in the following ways:

• No – this event has no impact on availability
• Yes, Working – will add the event duration to the availability of the owner as well as all invitees who have accepted the invitation.
• Yes, Non-Working – will remove the event duration from the availability of the owner as well as all invitees who have accepted the invitation.

Sharing controls how others see your calendar. If you mark your event's sharing as:

• Private — The event is not visible to any user other than yourself and invitees.
• Show as busy —The event is shown as 'Busy' and no details are shown other than to you and the invitees.
• Public — The event is shown to everyone.

You and your team can conduct discussions in a project. You can also decide to involve the project clients in the discussion. An example where a team discusses the about a design is shown below.

Initiating a Discussion

To start a discussion, click Main MenuDiscussion. Alternatively, you can also click on a project to open its panel and then click Start a Discussion.

Managing Participants

Participants can view the discussion and also get email notifications of all replies. They can simply reply to the email and even add attachments and the discussion will be automatically updated.

To manage participants click on Edit button. You can change the followers or decide whether to give access to the project's clients from this form as shown below.

Closing a discussion for comments

If you close a discussion for comments, no more posts will be allowed in it. To close, click on Edit button and check the Close this discussion for comments as shown in the image above. You uncheck this option at any time in the future.

Celoxis sends email notifications on work items when you are either assigned to or manage a work item. You are also sent email notifications when you follow work items.

In either case, you can reply to these emails to record your comments. If you attach files in your email reply, they will be attached to the work items.

Unsubscribing from email notifications

If you are a follower and want to stop receiving email notifications, you can unfollow that work item by clicking on the Unfollow link in the email footer. If you are not a follower but are assigned to or manage the work item, you can adjust your email preferences.

Attaching files to projects

For details click here.

Attaching files to tasks

For details click here.

Attaching files to custom app items

For details click here.

Like adding files, you can also add links to folders by clicking on the icon for the folder and clicking Add Link.

Every project has its own folder by default. In most cases, you will be uploading files to this folder. If you have a lot of documents, you can create sub-folders in this folder. The following example shows that the project has two sub-folders Home Page Samples and Logos.

To add a sub-folder, click on a project to open its panel and then click on the Files tab. From the menu besides the project name folder, click on Add Subfolder as shown above.

As the project progresses, you might realize that the scope of the document or the documents in a folder is for another project or was simply attached to the wrong project or task.

In such situation, you can move the file/folder to the correct project/task using the Move option available under the Document actionsMove of the document.

To view all the revisions along with the comments, click View Details. You can also download a specific version of the file. The following image shows the version history. Clicking on the version number will download that version of the file.

You can add events in your calendar and if you have administrative privileges, you can also add events for other users, for a work calendar or for the entire company.

To add an event, click on the user icon on top-right and then Calendar. In the new page, click in the date cell on which you wish to add the event.

Follow the steps below to export the Celoxis Calendar to Outlook.

• Get the URL of the Celoxis Calendar.
• Copy the link.
• Now, go to the Calendar in your Outlook application.
• Click on Open Calendar > From Internet.

Yes, clients can participate in discussions once they are added to it as Followers. For more on Followers, refer here.

You can view calendar of other users. Events marked as "Public" by that user are shown and you can view details of the events. Events marked as "Busy" will show as "Busy" for the duration of the event. "Private" events are not shown.

To view them, click on the Users drop-down and select the user whose events you wish to see.

Yes, the document content is searched. Your search results will have the name of the document if any matching keywords are found.

In a Document report, there is a filter Attached To which helps you filter documents that are attached to a project or task.

Yes, you can share a document with a client. When upload documents, you will see a checkbox Share with client which once checked, will show the document in a document report shared with a client.

Custom Apps are powerful workflow-driven applications built by customers like you. You can define the steps, people involved at each step, capture custom fields and even define time-out rules. All this with our super powerful reporting capabilities makes Custom Apps a great complementary tool to the rich project management capabilities in Celoxis.

Customers are using custom apps to manage leave approvals, client change requests, equipment quality checks, software bugs, and many more! If you are using spreadsheets to maintain something, think about moving to Custom Apps.

The power of custom apps is best illustrated by a scenario. Acme Consulting has created a bug tracking application in Celoxis.

1. Acme's customer sends an email to bugs@acme.com with an image as a file attachment.

2. The bug is automatically created in Celoxis along with the image as its attachment.

3. Quentin, from the QA team, starts seeing the bug in the Unverified Bugs pane on his dashboard.

4. He verifies that it is indeed a bug and marks the bug as Verified.

5. The bug is automatically routed to Dave, a software developer.

6. Dave is notified via email and also sees the bug in the Bugs assigned to me pane on his dashboard.

7. Dave fixes the bug and marks the bug as Resolved. While doing this, as per the company's policy, he also enters the list of files modified in a custom field.

8. The bug is automatically assigned to the same user who verified the bug (Quentin) to test.

9. The company policy is to test all bugs within 72 hours but Quentin misses it.

10. An email is automatically sent to the QA manager and Quentin about the lapse and the bug is marked as delayed.

11. Quentin verifies the fix and marks the bug as Closed.

12. An email is automatically sent to the customer about the fix.

13. Customer likes Acme.

As you can see Celoxis created the bug from email, then routed it to the right people, and as they completed their bit of the work, captured necessary information from them before moving it to the next person’s bucket, and at the same time keeping a watch for any delays.

We shall learn about building custom apps through an example. We will build a simple bug tracking application. We shall assume we have two teams: Developers - they fix bugs, and QA (short for Quality Assurance) - they test the fixes by developers. We will to the model the following bug workflow:

In plain english, the diagram translates to:

• When a bug is reported, it is in the New state.
• QA verifies the bug. If it is not a bug, the bug moves to Closed; else to the Verified state.
• A verified bug fixed by a developer moves to the Fixed state.
• The fix is then tested by QA and the bug moves to Reopened, if test fails; or Closed, if the test passes.
• A Reopened bug fixed by the developer moves to the Fixed state.

Each bubble is represents a stage in the bug life-cycle while each arrow an end-user action. Next to each state we have defined the team responsible for it. Also, note that there is no way for a bug to move from any state directly to any other state e.g. A bug cannot move directly from

to

We, ourselves use our own bug tracking application but we have a lot more states to indicate whether a test case was present, if documentation was updated, if a test case was added, etc. Similarly you can make the workflow as complex or simple as you like. But for now, let's stick to the simple workflow that we discussed above.

Creating an App

To create an app, go to Main MenuAdminCustom AppsApps and click on

. You will see a form with many tabs. We will cover each tab below.

The Basic tab

This tab defines some basic properties of the app. In addition, it also controls certain behaviours of the app.

The States tab

This tab defines the states of the app. You can also mark the start and end states in the workflow. We have listed all the states in our bug workflow.

The Workflow tab

This tab defines all the

in the workflow diagram. Each arrow represents an end-user action. We shall see more about its usage later on in the documentation.

The Triggers tab

.

In our bug tracking app, we don't need any triggers. However, let's take this help desk workflow for example. In case of the help desk app, the requestor will be the person who asked a question. When that person replies via email, we would want the ticket to be automatically moved to the Unresolved state as then it would be brought to the attention of the support team. In other words, we would want the Reopen transitions to happen. In this case, we would be defining our triggers like this:

The State Managers tab

A state managers is a user who is treated as a Manager when an app is in a particular state. They are notified when things happen to an item in this state. In our example below, Mark is the QA manager, so he is responsible for the New and Fixed states where the QA team is supposed to do work. You can override state managers at a project level if the person managing that state is different.

What's Next?

We have created a custom app for our bug workflow. In the next chapter we will be adding some custom fields to the bug.

In the previous chapter, we created the workflow, here we create custom fields for our bug. By default, all workflows have the following fields:

• Name
• Priority
• Assigned To
• Requestor
• Due Date - an optional date indicating when the estimated completion date of this item
• Description

Let's add a few fields to our

:

• Affected Versions - a list of all versions affected by this bug
• Fixed Versions - a list of all versions in which this bug fix has been uploaded

Since we want the

field to be available while creating a bug, we attach it our

app. Since we want the developer to enter the

field

when he is marking the bugs as fixed i.e. Verified → Fixed and Reopened → Fixed, we attach it to the

actions as shown below:

What's Next?

We have created our application and also defined custom fields for it. In the next chapter, we will see our bug tracker in action.

Till now, we have been configuring our application. It's time we understand how your users will use the app. We will see how our app has affected the user interface and also walk you through a real-world scenario.

Bug app and the user interface

Add menu

appears as an option in the Main Menu menu.

View menu

also appears as an option on the Main MenuAppsBugs menu.

New Report menu

You will also be able to create a report for the

app. The entire arsenal of filters, groups, charts, etc. is available at your disposal.

Adding Bug

Megan wants to report a bug. She clicks on Main MenuBug and she sees the form: In addition to the regular fields, you can see the custom fields we added earlier.

Bug in state: New

The bug has been assigned to Quentin, our QA guy. He clicks on the bug link and sees:

Performing the Verify action

Quentin verifies the bug indeed exists and clicks on

. He is presented a form like this:

He assigns it to Vardhan, a developer. He also has the choice of notifying Megan, who has opened the bug. But since there is nothing noteworthy to report, he decides against it. After he submits the form the Bug moves to the Verified state.

Bug in state: Verified

Vardhan receives an email notification about his being assigned to this verified bug. He clicks on the link and sees the following:

Performing the Verify action

Vardhan fixes the bug and clicks on the

button. He is presented a form like this:

Notice how he is presented with the Fixed Versions custom field.

What's Next?

The example above demonstrates how the bug moves across states, how the right fields are captured at the right time and when notifications are sent. It should give you a good idea about the capabilities and advantages offered by Celoxis custom apps. We have also seen that there is an option to send emails to requestors. Celoxis allows customizations of these emails and that is the topic of the next chapter.

In the last chapter, we have seen that you can notify the requestor while performing actions. In this chapter, we will understand how to control the email format using simple templates. It is important to understand that these templates only control the emails sent to requestors not the other notification emails that are sent to users.

Customizing the email template

Open Main MenuAdminCustom AppsRequestor Email Template. You can customize the global template or customize the template per workspace. Click on the icon next to

workspace to edit the global template.

.

What's Next?

In this chapter we have seen how to configure the emails that are sent out to requestors. In the next chapter, we will see how to add time-based rules to our app.

Timeout policy is a set of rules that define what should happen when an app item exceeds its stay in a particular state for more then the specified hours.

In the earlier chapters, we created the workflow and also defined our custom fields. Now, we will add in some timeout rules.

Continuing with our Bug app, let's assume that our company is a strict on QA and mandates the following:

• Rule #1 A new bug should be verified within 48 hours. If it is a high priority bug, then it should be verified within 24 hours instead.
• Rule #2 A bug that has been marked fixed should be tested within 72 hours after the bug is marked fixed. If it is a high priority bug, then it should be tested within 48 hours instead.

Adding a Timeout Policy

Open the app list screen by going to Main MenuAdminCustom AppsApps and clicking on the icon for our Bug app. Then click on the Add button.

What's Next?

In this chapter we have seen how to define timeout policies and what they are used for. In the next chapter, we will see how to initiate workflows from emails.

Custom Apps can be initiated by emails. Emails can either be free form (sent by people) or structured (generated by filling a web form).

Direct Interface

This is used when we want to start workflows when people send an email to a particular address. For example, we may want to create bugs when our cutomers send an email to bugs@acme.com.

For more information visit the Main MenuAdminCustom AppsEmail Integration page.

Indirect Interface

This helps you integrate an existing system with one of your custom apps. For example you have a web based form on your web site that users fill and submit to initiate an workflow in Celoxis.

In this model, your program will send a plaintext email to an email address with a well formatted body as described in Main MenuAdminCustom AppsEmail Integration page.

Email Aliases

When you want to use the direct email interface, you would want to expose nice and simple email addresses to your users. For example, bugs@acme.com or support@weyland-yutani.com. However, addresses generated by Celoxis are like abracadbra+NEI-4.g0.1b.2m8.0.0-eqro@celoxis.com. The way to bridge the two is through email aliases.

Let's say that Acme wants create bugs in Celoxis when people send emails to bugs@acme.com. Acme would:

1. Generate the email address for the bug by going to: Main MenuAdminCustom AppsEmail Integration. Let's say that this email address is gobbledygook@celoxis.com
2. Acme in it's email server would create an alias that would redirect bugs@acme.com to gobbledygook@celoxis.com
3. If Acme is a SaaS customer, they would notify us of this mapping and we would update our servers. This typically would take one business day.
   If Acme is an On-Premise customer, they can open SiteAdminSite SettingsEmail Aliases and enter bugs@acme.com:gobbledygook@celoxis.com in the text area, save and restart the server.

You can use this functionality to link related items. For example, if a task was created in response to an issue then you can link the two by adding this relation. Once related, you can quickly access the issue from the task and vice-versa.

Once you add A as related to B, then B automatically becomes related to A which means you can access B from A and vice-versa.

Adding Related Items

Click on Add as shown below to add a related item. You can add up to 10 relations for an item.

A client can see issues, change requests, and any app items either created by them or assigned to them. This gave the client limited visibility, especially when the team needed to share the list of all issues raised in a project, etc. The highlighted option below allows you to pick app items you need the client to see, even if they play no role.

When working on an app item, the assignee or the manager at times might need to record comments on it.

To add comments, click on the app item for e.g your bug, risk, etc. On the panel of the item, click on MoreComment. You can check the Notify Requestor checkbox if you wish to notify the requestor of the app item about this comment.

Once the comment is added, all the followers receive an email notification with the new comments.

To attach files to a custom app item, click on the item and on its panel click Attach Files as shown below.

If you follow an app item (e.g. a bug), you will be notified about activities happening on it e.g. when someone adds a comment or when someone attaches a file. The notifications will be through email as well as through the notificiation center. If you are an assignee, project manager, or a state manager, then you are automatically notified and there is no need to explicitly follow the task.

Unfollowing

To unfollow, simply click on the Unfollow link on the item's Overview tab on in the footer of the email notification.

At times, you may want to re-assign the bug, issue to another user due to several reasons like the assigned user is on leave or is busy with other activities.

To reassign an app item, click on the app item for e.g your bug, risk, etc. On the panel of the item, click on Reassign. The new user will get an email notification about the new assignment.

You can move an app item to another project or workspace. To do so, click on the app item for e.g your bug, risk, etc. On the panel of the item, click on Move. You will be prompted to select the project or Workspace to which you wish to move the app item.

Celoxis provides you with the ability to import app items (your bugs, risks, etc) in a project from CSV. If you have a Microsoft Excel file, then you can export it in CSV (comma separated values) format and then import it in Celoxis.

To import app items in a project, first click on the project and then click Project ActionsImport Apps (CSV). For simplicity, we strongly recommend that you import one custom app at a time. So instead of having one file items.csv, you should split that into multiple files like bugs.csv, risks.csv, issues.csv and import them one at a time.

Fields supported:

• App – Mandatory field. The app name (e.g. Bug, Risk).
• Name – Mandatory field. A short description.
• Description
• State – This should be one of the states you defined for your app. If not present will be defaulted to the first state in the app definition.
• Due Date – YYYY-MM-DD format
• Assigned To – The name, username or email address of the user to whom the item is to be assigned.
• Requestor – The name, username or email address of the requestor whose account is in Celoxis.
• Requestor Email (External) – The email address of the requestor who does not have an account in Celoxis.
• Requestor Name (External) – The name of the requestor who does not have an account in Celoxis.
• Custom Fields – one column per custom field of the app

Allows multiple attributes to be modified at once, including custom fields as shown below:

Some business processes are periodic and need to be started at regular intervals. Some examples:

• Your sysadmins are required to apply security patches on your servers every week.
• Your accountants are required to complete cash settlements every month.
• Your HR department is required to collect feedback from your employees every quarter.
• Your marketing team is supposed to report on social media metrics every fortnight.

This integration will show you how you can initiate the workflows you have created in Celoxis on a regular basis. We will set up a workflow to start on a weekly basis. You can also set the cycle as daily or monthly.

Zapier

Celoxis integrates with many apps using Zapier. Zapier is a cloud-based service that allows you to build powerful integrations between different systems without writing code. For more information, visit their website: zapier.com.

Zap

An automation in Zapier is called a zap. A zap connections two apps - a trigger app and an action app. The trigger app notifies the zap about an event and the zap then performs an action in the action app. In our case, the trigger app is Schedule By Zapier because it will schedule our zap. The action app, in our case, is Email By Zapier because it will send the scheduled email. In this guide, we will be building a zap to automatically create apps in Celoxis via Email:

Initiate an App in Celoxis automatically on a Weekly basis

1. Make a Zap

   

2. Choose Schedule by Zapier as the Trigger App

   

3. Select the "Every Week" trigger

   

4. Click on "Continue" button to proceed

   

5. Select the Day and Hour for the event to be triggered

   

6. Click the "Test & Continue" button to save this step.

   

7. Choose Email by Zapier as the action app

   

8. Select the "Send Outbound Email" action and click the Continue button

   

9. Now customize the outbound email

   

   Go to Main MenuAdminCustom AppsEmail IntegrationIndirect Email, here you will find your company email address to which the email will be sent. In the body of email use the format provided here.

   Paste your company email address in the "To" field, paste the email body format from Celoxis and edit as per your requirement. In the example our app is Security Update Request. Note that we have put the due date as +2d which means 2 days from the date the app will be initiated. We also have a custom field Hostname in the body of the email as an example.

   Once you have composed the email then click on "Continue" button to proceed.

   

10. Test the email action by clicking on "Test & Continue"

    

11. After the test is successful click on Done Editing

    

12. Your Zap is ready to use

    

After you turn the Zap on,

app will be created in Celoxis on a weekly basis in the project you selected.

In this article, we will learn to create a process in which when the state of an app is updated it results in creation of a new app in Celoxis. To do this we will be using Zapier, if you are not familiar with Zapier then first read this article.

Create an Issue app when a Risk app is Mitigated in Celoxis

1. Make a Zap

   

2. Choose Celoxis as the Trigger app

   

3. Select the Issue Status Updated as the trigger

   

4. Add your Celoxis account

   If you have already added your Celoxis account then select it from the list of accounts.

   

5. Test the Trigger

   

6. Select a Sample

   The data from sample will be used in other steps to set up the Zap.

   

7. Choose Filter By Zapier app

   

8. Apply the Filter condition

   In our case, we are checking for the State of Risk app in Mitigated state.

   

9. Test your Filter

   

10. Choose Celoxis as the Action app

    

11. Select the Create Issue as the action

    

12. Select your Celoxis account

    

13. Customize the App

    Fill the data in the fields. You can also use the sample data from the trigger step.

    

14. Test the Action

    

15. Turn ON the Zap

    

Your Zap is now ready. So when ever a Risk is moved to Mitigated state then a new Issue app will be created with the data provided.

Yes, using the Direct or Indirect email integration, your clients can initiate app items via email.

For more details, refer

.

When defining your custom app, there is a check box Clients can initiate this app which you can uncheck so that your clients do not initiate this.

There are many entities in Celoxis like projects, tasks and time logs. Some entities are also created by you using custom apps like bugs, risks, and issues. Each entity has its own attributes as well as attributes aggregated from other entities contained in it. For example, the project entity has its own attributes like name, priority, manager as well as attributes approved hours, invoiced revenue, planned labor cost, actual labor cost, etc. that are calculated from other entities like tasks, time logs and expenses.

When you create a report on Celoxis you have to first pick an entity on which to report. You can choose from:

Trend

Time phased reports show how a quantity is distributed over time. For example, when you run a project report, you can see the total estimated cost of the project but if you want to understand the planned spend per week or month, then you will need to run a time phased report. Many quantities have time phased nature. E.g. budget, effort, cost, and revenue.

You can view time phased data in a tabular format as shown below or in the form of charts. Currently, unlike other entities, charts are not drill-down capable.

Hide Total Columns

This option will hide the total columns from time-phased reports to help you easily focus on specific data.

Celoxis enables you to create your own S-curves and Burndown charts. This is possible by using the Cumulative and Burndown options in the Line on Secondary Y-Axis section in a bar chart as shown below.

We shall understand these options using a simple example.

Let's say that we have the following data set and we are drawing a bar chart with Revenue on the Y-axis and a line, also of revenue, on the secondary Y-axis

The chart would look like ⟶

Cumulative

This means that each value of the line is the sum of the current value plus the sum of all previous values. The cumulative values would be:

The chart would look like ⟶

Burndown

This means that each value of the line is the sum of all values in the data set - the sum of all values till the current data point. The values would be:

Sum of all values = 90K

The chart would look like ⟶

Filtering allows you to exclude unwanted data in your reports. Celoxis provides comprehensive and powerful filters for a large number of attributes including your custom fields.

Setting filters

A report's filters can be changed from the add/edit report screen. A sample screen with multiple filters including a custom field (Module) is shown below.

When multiple filters are selected, row have to match all filters. If a filter has multiple values (e.g. Module), then the row has to match at least one of those values. If you create a report with the above filters, then only those rows will be returned where (Display Tasks is in In Progress) AND (Module is one of UI or Middleware) AND (Planned Finish is in This Month) etc.

Running User filter

In the above example, you can see the the assignee is set to the special value of - Running User -. This indicates that the assignee must be filtered based on the person who is running the report. E.g. when Joe runs this report, he will only see his tasks while when Mary runs the same report, she will see her tasks.

Running User's Subordinates filter

This option is available in most user filters. The user should be a subordinate, directly or indirectly, of the person running the report. This option is useful when a manager wants to keep track of activities of his/her reportees. For example, if Joe wants to monitor all the high priority tasks assigned to his team, he should create a report, set the priority filter to High and Very High, and set the resources filter to - Running User's Subordinates -.

Prompt filters

In many cases, you would want the end-user to change the values of some of the filters. In the above example, the report allows the end-user to change the values of Display Tasks, Module and Planned Finish at the time the report is run. The below diagram shows how a user running the above report can modify the filters:

In the above example, the user has changed the Planned Finish filter from This Month to Last Month and also cleared the Module filter.

The kind of display you want can be selected from the Output tab on the add/edit report screen.

Tabular

This is the default output type and presents the data in a tabular output.

The view is quite dynamic with multi-level grouping and sorting, group totals, grand totals, etc.

This view is highly personalizable - you can change columns, grouping and sorting to suit your needs. See the top right hand side of the image above.

This view also has great productivity boosters. You can do bulk actions, perform an action on a line item by clicking the icon and even edit an attribute right there by clicking on the icon.

Show totals only

Show the total rows only. If the option was checked in the above report. You would only see the group and grant total rows and not the individual project rows.

Show hierarchy

This organizes the row as per the parent-child relationship. It is only available for task, file and client reports. View this example that shows tasks grouped by project with the hierarchical option checked.

When this option is checked, the resulting totals only include those objects that result from the filters not the objects included (even if they don't match the filters) to show the hierarchy.

Hide Header Row

This option will hide the row showing the column names. It is handy when data is displayed on Status dashboards, and the column names do not really add value.

Gantt

The Gantt output is available only for project and task reports. In case of tasks, the output is a cross-project gantt chart as shown below.

Calendar

The Calendar output generates a calendar view for projects and tasks as shown below. The bar is colored as per the color of the project or task. You also have the option of turning off the bars in which case the start and finish event for the task and project will be separately generated.

Pie

It is easy to create pie charts in Celoxis. These settings were used to create the Pie chart below.

Bar

Celoxis supports a number of popular bar chart formats. Each of the bar chart type has been explained below and the form settings used to generate the chart has also been provided.

Simple Bar

The following bar chart was generated using these settings. Note how the Sort By setting sorts the bars in decreasing order. If you set the Bar Orientation as horizontal, it would result in this chart.

Comparison Bar

The following comparison bar chart was generated using these settings.

Stacked Bar

The following stacked bar chart was generated using these settings. Notice how the colors correspond to the color of the health indicator.

You also have the option of stacking it side-by-side.

Scatter

The following bubble chart was generated using these settings.

If you do not select the bubble size, then this will become a scatter chart and all bubbles will be of the same size.

Card

Card view is available as an output type for projects, tasks and apps. You can also drag and drop card across lanes if the lane's attribute is user-editable. For example, you can drag and drop if the lane was a custom field like Kanban State but not if the lane was system calculated field like Schedule Health.

Marking tasks as 100% complete

When a task is dragged to a certain column in the card view it is often desired that it should be automatically marked as 100% complete.

To set this up, log in as a user with administrator privilege and go to Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject Options. You should see a field called Final State in Kanban. Select the column in which you want the task to be marked as 100% complete and save.

In the following example, we have selected Kanban State > Done. You can select any other custom field that you use for your card view. This means that when the Kanban State custom field of a task is set to Done, the task will automatically be marked as 100% complete. This can be achieved by the end-user either by drag-n-drop in the card view or by editing the task and setting the Kanban State field to Done.

Naturally, if a task is marked 100% complete, its Kanban State will be automatically set to Done.

Also, if the custom field of a completed task is modified to anything other than Done, its percent complete will be reverted to the previous value. Similarly, if the percent complete of a completed task is set to anything other than 100%, its Kanban State field will be set to the previous value.

Administrators can schedule reports to be emailed to specific users at regular intervals. To schedule a report, open the edit report screen and then click on the Schedule tab. You will see something like:

In the above example, the report will be run with the running user as Megan every Monday (since 06th May 2019 is a Monday) at 1:00 AM and the resulting PDF will be emailed to Weyland and Yutani.

Only non-virtual users can be selected as the report subscribers

Reports can be shared with your team or with clients.

Sharing with users

Sharing with users is determined by the Visible to Users section in the Sharing tab on the add/edit report screen.

• To keep a report private, do not share it with anyone.
• To share it with everyone in your company, choose -All-
• To share it with specified workspaces, select those workspaces.
• To share it with specific job roles, select those job roles.

Adding reports to user's main menu

Administrators can, for convenience, make reports part of the main menu. To do this, edit the report and choose the main menu item from the Menu Shortcut field.

Sharing with clients

Sharing with clients is determined by the Visible to Clients section in the Sharing tab on the add/edit report screen.

• To keep a report hidden from clients, do not share it with anyone.
• To share it with specified clients, select those clients.
• To share it with all clients, choose -All-

.

The tabs that you see on the project screen are also reports.

Your account comes with some default tabs but your administrator can customize them to suit your organization. Open Main MenuAdminProject ManagementProject Tabs and you can add, edit, delete, and reorder the reports. A sample of the project views management screen is show below. Note now the order of the reports corresponds to the order of the project tabs.

Dashboards are one of the most important screens in Celoxis. Not just for the information they can convey but also for the amount of things you can get done right from your dashboard.

A dashboard is a collection of reports. You can create different dashboards for different roles and functions. For example, you can create a task and project monitoring dashboard as well as the popular RAID logs dashboard for your project managers.

You can also create dashboards for clients. Client can get a nice overview of their projects, track their change requests, approvals, etc., and keep tabs on their online discussions.

An example:

Creating Dashboards

Celoxis allows shared dashboards as well as private dashboards. To create a dashboard choose Dashboard from the Main MenuReportsAll ReportsPlus menu. An example: In the above example, we are creating a dashboard that is:

• Named: Sample Dashboard
• Shared with all users
• Shared with clients: Client1 and Client 2

Filters

The dashboard filters allow data of only those projects that match the filter criteria. Marking filters as Prompt enable the person running the report to change its values.

Shared Dashboards

To create shared dashboards you will need the Add ReportGranted privilege. This can be set from the Main MenuAdminAccount ManagementAccess Control screen. To maintain control, we recommend that you give this privilege only to responsible users.

Personal Dashboards

Personal dashboards are dashboards that are only visible to their creators. Personal dashboards can be created by users who have the privilege. To allow creation of personal dashboards, check the Allow Personal Dashboards option from Main MenuAdminAccess ControlCompany Information screen.

Assigning Dashboards to Users & Clients

Dashboards can be assigned to users and clients from their add/edit screen's Preferences tab. You can assign multiple dashboards and reorder them too. The first dashboard becomes the default dashboard for that user. Let's see the dashboard selection for Joe: From the above image we can see that Joe has been assigned three dashboards: Tracking Board - that lists out status of projects and tasks, RAID log - that tracks Risks, Issues, etc. and Weekly Status - that allows him to track the weekly updates.

If Joe, after logging in, clicks on Dashboard in the main menu, he would see something like:

Assigning dashboards similar to another user or client

Using the bulk edit screen's Dashboard Like... field, you can set the dashboard of multiple people to be like a particular person. For example, you can select Mark, Peter and Luke and make their dashboards exactly like Xavier.

Printing dashboards to PDF

You can export a dashboard to PDF or even an image. To print, consult the following image:

Limits

Please read the Limits chapter for more information.

Fetching and processing large amount of data not only slows down your response times but also for other users. We have put reasonable limits on the amount of data required to generate reports. If you are an On-Premise customer, you can change these limits but we strongly recommend that you do it after much deliberation.

Report Limits

15,000 records

For any report to run, it performs database queries. If a query returns more than 15,000 rows, the report does not run and an error message is shown to the user.

To remedy this problem, you should add more filters, especially those filters that can be performed in the database query itself. The most common filters are date filters since most likely you are interested in recent data. Project state filter, task completed filter and time entry state filter are also some useful filters that you should consider in limiting data.

Duration in Time Phased reports

Time phased reports are resource intensive as they perform a lot of dynamic calculations. The Period filter selects the duration of the report and is limited as follows:

• If zoom level is Day the period cannot exceed 3 months.
• If zoom level is Week or Month the period cannot exceed 12 months.

Dashboard Limits

A dashboard is a collection of reports. It is equivalent to running all the reports at once. Naturally, to control performance, we have to put some additional limitations on dashboards.

A dashboard has the following limits:

• Incomplete timesheet reports are not allowed on dashboards. You can star them for quick access.
• A dashboard can have a maximum of 10 reports.
• The number of shared dashboards per account depends on the number of purchases users.

  Shared dashboards = min(max(20, users × 2), 100)

  This means that every account will have a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 100 shared dashboards.

To create reports, you must have the Reports > AddGranted privilege. To add a report, open the reports' panel by clicking Main MenuReportsAll Reports and then click the New Report button. Then pick an appropriate report type. This will open a form, details of which are explained below:

Details

Menu Shortcut - The main menu item under which this report should appear for quick access.

Filters

The filters to limit the data for this report. Read More.

Output

The display you would like for this report - pie chart, bar chart, tabular, etc. Read More.

Sharing

Reports can be shared with your team or with clients. Read More.

Schedule

Whether you would like Celoxis to email this report at regular intervals. Read More.

To get quick access to reports, you must star it. Starred reports appear in the Main MenuReports menu. Some reports, because of performance reasons, cannot be put on dashboards. If you use them regularly, then it will be a good idea to star them so that you can access them in a couple of clicks.

To star or unstar a report, first run that report and then click on the or icon in the report title. In the above example, the report is already starred as indicated by the filled star prefixed in the report title.

PDF & Image

Click on or in the page title followed by Print. This will open up a popup like the one one shown below.

CSV

Click on in the page title followed by one of the following options:

• CSV – all records in the report are exported but there is no grouping of data
• CSV (Grouped) – all records in the report are exported and grouped as you see in your browser

The main purpose of access types is to reduce license costs for end-users. By selecting the appropriate access types for users, you can ensure that you pay only for what you use.

There are the following access types:

• Full Access
• Team Member
• Timesheet-only
• App-only
• Passive

Full Access

Users who are of this type can do everything in the system (if granted access). This type is meant for project managers, resource managers, portfolio managers and CXOs. Admin users must also be of this type.

Team Member

This type is meant for your team members who work on their own items and not manage other people's work.

They have access to limited functionality - they do not have access to gantt charts but can view and update tasks, log time and expense, engage in discussions and participate in issue tracking, change requests, risks, and other custom apps.

They can view dashboards and reports but do not have access to certain report types like trend reports. Also, they can only view data in tabular format.

Utilization analysis and capacity planning can be performed by managers on these users.

Timesheet-only

Timesheet-only users can only fill time sheets. They can also update % and enter comments for tasks but only from their timesheets.

These users are not considered in utilization analysis and capacity planning.

App-only

App-only users can only participate in apps - in predefined like issue tracking, risk management etc. and your custom apps as well. They cannot log time.

These users are not considered in utilization analysis and capacity planning.

Passive

Passive users do not have a login in Celoxis. This type is meant for those users for whom you wish to track tasks, utilization and capacity.

You can assign tasks, holidays, work exceptions to these users. You can also import their time logs via CSV or API however time cannot filled for them from the weekly timesheet screen.

Virtual users are like regular users except they don't have logins and hence cannot login to Celoxis. Virtual users are free but limited. Some use-cases are non-human resources like machinery, conference rooms and computers. Virtual users can also be used in instances where you want to assign tasks to that person but do not want to give access to the system. E.g. consultants.

Using Virtual Users

Virtual users:

• can be assigned to tasks
• receive related email notifications - task, discussions, etc if their account has an email address is specified.
• can themselves update progress and log time on their tasks via email. Read more.
• can participate in discussions via email
• can add comments to app items via email

Creating Virtual Users

A virtual user is created in the same way as a regular user except that the Virtual User option is turned on.

Virtual Users Limit

The maximum number of virtual users you can create depends on the number of licenses users you have. It is determined by the following formula:

Virtual Users = 10 + 5 × Licensed Users

So if you have a 12 user license, you can create a maximum of 10 + 5 × 12 = 70 virtual users.

You can create your organizational chart in Celoxis using Reporting Managers. The main advantages of creating your organizational structure are:

• Reporting managers have automatic visibility into their reportee's work.
• Reporting managers can be used in the time approval workflow.

Setting Reporting Managers

Since Reporting Manager is an attribute of the user, only administrators can change it. The field can be changed from the add/edit user screen in the Basic tab.