Building Project Timelines

Adding Timelines

Once you have created a Quote, you can begin to build your project timeline.

1. From your quote header 'Navigation Menu', click ‘New Timeline.’
2. When adding a timeline to your quote, you can search and select a timeline if you have created a template and saved it to your template library. Alternatively, you create a new timeline.

1. Select ‘Create New Timeline.’
2. Give the timeline a name.
3. Select ‘Frequency’ for the timeline from the dropdown. Options are Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly.
4. Based on the frequency selected, enter a ‘Start Date’ and ‘Number of Periods’ and the ‘End Date’ will auto calculate. Or enter ‘Start Date’ and ‘End Date’ and the ‘Number of Periods’ will auto calculate.
5. Indicate if you want Cost and T&E, or both, to impact ASM.
6. Upon creating a new Timeline, you can retrieve details for specific time periods by hovering over them. In this instance, the hovered time period encompasses 0x/0x/20xx through 0y/y0/y02y. For monthly timeline frequencies, each period is represented by the first three characters of the month and the last two digits of the year (e.g., Jan '20). Alternatively, if the timeline frequency is quarterly, each period is displayed as Qx and the last two digits of the year (e.g., Q4 '20). This feature provides a quick overview of the time span for enhanced timeline management.

The application will build a generic timeline based on the number of periods you specified. Your generic timeline will look something like the one below. Begin adding details to the new timeline.

1. Click in the cells on the Phase row under each week to designate the phase. Select a phase from the pop-up options. Available choice is Define with the fresh installation. You need to add more values in the 'Phases' global picklist such as Plan, Design, Dev, QA, Release Support etc. Or you can add your organisation specific phase values as well.
2. If you select the same phase for consecutive cells, the application will merge the cells into one phase. Or, select multiple cells and then click to select the phase. Again, the application will merge all of the cells.

1. To add resources to your timeline, scroll down and click an empty cell under ‘Total Hours Per Week.’ All roles on your rate cards are available to add to the timeline. Just start typing in the cell and roles will appear in a popup. Select the role you want then move down one row and repeat the process until all roles are added.
2. If a role will have the same effort across all phases of the project, click on the ‘%’ icon to the right of each role. Use this field to automatically calculate effort for a resource based on a percentage of project involvement.

As an illustration, by clicking on the '%' and assigning 50 percent to a specific resource, the system will automatically compute only 50% of the effort for that resource during each time period. The percentage is calculated in relation to the designated time frequency, whether it is in hours, days, weeks, months, or quarters. This streamlined process offers a rapid means to distribute consistent effort across the entirety of the project timeline for each designated role.

1. To customise the effort per role for each phase, click directly in each cell and edit the effort.
2. Simply drag and drop any role to reorganise your roles in the timeline.
3. Next, scroll to the right of all hours for all roles. The resource rates will display in black, green, or red. The green and red indicate that the rate is either within or beyond the maximum discount that can be offered to a customer on a resource. By default, the resource rate will show black.
4. You will see the total effort, total cost, and total price for the project. You can click in the rate cells or effort per role to make quick adjustments. Keep in mind, the total price on the timeline does not reflect any discounts. You can also click the capacity icon in the quote header row to see the effort needed versus actual effort by role, and take a look at the dashboard to quickly see where you may need to make adjustments.
5. Use the ‘Billable’ column to include or exclude a resource cost in the total project cost.
6. Once a resource has been added to the timeline, you can adjust the List Price and Adjusted Price, and you can elect to designate a resource as Billable or Non-billable.

Manage RateCards from the Timeline

1. You can manage your Ratecards right from the Timeline. Click the ‘Manage Ratecard’ button.
2. If a Ratecard has expired, it will display in red. A resource with an expired Ratecard will also display in red in the timeline.

You can validate the timeline resources hours against scopes through ‘Validate Needs’ button.

1. From the timeline click the ‘Other Costs’ tab and then begin typing in an empty resource cell.
2. Select an item from the Other Cost section in the popup menu.
3. Add the cost amount in the associated timeline period cell. When adding third party costs to the timeline, the list and cost price are both editable and you can select if you want the cost to be billable.

The project total cost for the third party service or vendor will populate in the ‘Total Costs’ and ‘Total Fees’ cells. If you would like to add a margin fee to the total for this specific other cost, put your total charge amount in the ‘Total Fees’ cell. If you need to add more costs for this specific service or vendor in another time period cell, the ‘Total Costs’ and ‘Total Fees’ amounts will update automatically and the ‘Total Fees’ cell will retain the added margin cost.

If your Cost Impact ASM flag is turned on, you can go to the overview section of the timeline and scroll over ‘Net Fees’ to see the breakdown of all fees included.

1. To add an existing timeline from the library, go to your quote header 'Navigation Menu' and click ‘New Timeline’ on the quote header row.
2. Select ‘Add from Timeline Library.’
   
3. Notice you can use the search and filter boxes at the top to find a specific timeline. Click the radio button next to the timeline if you would like to add to the quote.
4. Click ‘Save.’
5. The timeline you selected will appear and you can begin customising for your new project.

1. When creating a new timeline, if you turn on the T&E and Other Costs flags, you can add T&E and Other Costs to the timeline.
2. Click the ‘T&E’ tab to enter expenses. Next, add the T&E costs in the appropriate cell for a resource in the resource section. For example, you could enter $100 in the First Phase cell for the Manager - Principle.
3. Click on the ‘Other Costs’ tab, then go to the resource section of the timeline. Place the cursor in the cell and start typing. A list of all ‘QuoteX Other Costs’ will appear so you can easily select and then add other costs to your timeline.

After costs are added to the timeline, you can rollover Total Costs in the summary at the top of the timeline to see all of the costs that are included.

1. Once the roles and effort have been added to your timeline, the quote summary totals will populate in the overview section of the timeline including totals for Nearshore, Offshore, and Blended Rates. If needed click in the ‘Travel & Expenses’ box and add all anticipated expenses and they will be automatically added to the ‘Total Fee’ amount.
2. You can add a discount to the quote. Roll over the ‘Discount’ information icon to see the discount thresholds. Enter a discount percentage in the ‘Disc %’ field’ and you will see the impact to the ASM immediately.
   

For Fixed Fee :

For T&M :

If you need to change the quote from time and materials to fixed fee, simply click the drop down to ‘T&M’ and select Fixed Fee.’ Once you select fixed fee, you can enter other settings like fixed fee buffer etc.

Search for the fields appended with Summary in the label and api name; These fields contains the data of all the active timelines in the Quote. Find these fields on the Quote Object and use them to highlight in the header.

You can use the Timeline Presentation Mode to hide sensitive data from the timeline. This mode can be used to share timelines with your client.

1. Click the down arrow in the timeline header buttons and select Presentation Mode.
   
2. The Timeline will display without showing costs.

The Discount settings for your contract type, will impact how the Adjusted Rate displays in the timeline. The Adjusted Rate will display in the Rate column and the displayed rate will be shown with the black font.

The discount displays based on the org setting by admin.

1. If the discount setting is Resource Discount only, display the line item discount.
2. If the discount setting is Quote Level Only, display the timeline discount,
3. and if the discount setting is Allow Resource and Quote Discounts, display both discounts.
   
   

Next Step: Generate SOW

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