Activity Reports

All Team members can report progress on the activities they have been assigned and provide notes regarding status.

To do this,  click Report>Activity Report, Goal Director will open a dialogue box, giving you the option of selecting the year and week to report. The week you are currently in is the default week. (you may also report for others by selecting that person's name under Person in the drop-down menu.)

After you have chosen a year and week for the report, a window will pop up with only the activities that the person is scheduled to work on during the period you have selected. At the far right of the window you may view activity information such as the scheduled finish date and original estimates. You may customize the view by clicking on View>Personal Activity Report and then select options.

Activity report fields

You may report the following information in the columns in the left area of the window:

Work Done
Here you may report the total number of hours or days you have worked in the period. If you wish to report on your work accomplished each day of the week instead of for the entire week, you may click View>Personal activity report>Show Weekdays.

Work to do
This is the amount of time, in hours and days, that you estimate will be required to complete the activity.

On schedule
Enter a Y or N according to whether or not you will make the scheduled finish date.

Quality accepted
Enter a Y or N according to whether or not the quality of the work you have done is good enough.

Responsibility Chart kept
Enter a Y or N according to whether or not people worked on the activity according to the responsibility chart.

Changes Req.
Enter a Y or N according to whether or not modifications were necessary on the work you have accomplished.

Waiting time
Enter a Y or N according to whether or not you were required to wait for other people to complete their tasks before you could start or continue your work.

Special problems
Enter a Y or N according to whether or not special problems have arisen. The text field under is available for expanded descriptions.

Delay
Report delays for the activities.

Accumulated
This column shows the sum of prior reported hours, days, weeks or month.

Annotating the report
For example, if you report N for the field On Schedule, Goal Director shows this in a red color.  You may annotate any of the Y or N answers in the following way:

• Click on Add in the lower right area of the window
  
• Give the annotation a description name.
• Type your comments in the fields:  Description, Cause, Consequence, Action.
• Highlight the Y or N field you wish to annotate.
  
• Click on Link to connect the annotation.

Comments can be deleted or given a new name by highlighting the comments and clicking on Delete or Rename.

If you wish to delete a connection you already have created, you can highlight the report field and click on Unlink.
 

Viewing Activity Report options

Sort by
The activities are iniitially shown and sorted by activity code. You can show  and sort by the full  identity of the activities by clicking View>Personal activity report>Sort by>Project, Milestone Plan, Milestone...

All : Shows all activities you are scheduled to work on, in every time period.

Ongoing: Shows all activities you are working on in the current period.

Ongoing and recently worked on: Shows all activities you are working on in the current period plus the activities you worked on in the previous period (week).

When all team members have created their Activity reports, Project Leaders and others can then create an overall report agregating those individual activity reports by clicking Report>Agregate.  It will show the agregate total work hours, remaining work and all the annotations of problems or issues on specific activities.

Printing the Personal Activity Reports

You can choose print properties to control: time period, Gantt display, Codes, Revised dates, Responsibility codes, Estimates, or Both. 

Click Ok to print.

Printing, Previewing, Making .GIF files
Throughout Goal Director, you can print reports to either a printer, screen or a  .gif file that can be put into other applications (for example Word, Notes etc.) If you want to send a report to a printer, click the Printer icon in the toolbar. If you want to preview on the screen, click the Print Preview icon in the toolbar. If you want to make a .gif file click on Copy in the Print Preview toolbar to save it to a subdirectory of your choice.

Email  Activities

You can Email the activities defined for a project to a person.  To Email them, click Report>Mail activities.

Email Timesheet

You can Email a timesheet to a person.  For example, you can send it to a person who will enter it into the administrative system. To Email it, click Report>Mail timesheet.

Aggregate Report

Project Leaders can create a total project report by agregating all Activity Reports submitted by all team members working on the project.  This report enables a project leader to consider annotations made by team members, and make necessary decisions.  These reports may also be used to provide overall progress information to oversight groups.

Report types:
Aggregate reports can be summarized at the following levels:

• Activity level
• Milestone level
• Project level

Aggregate reports are run by clicking Report>Aggregate. The dialogue box shown below enables you to choose which type of report and which time interval you want to run. You can also update existing reports by checking Regenerate existing reports.

Click on Start to create the aggregate report.

After Goal Director has finished aggregating your report, a dialogue box will pop up (see below) telling you if a New report has been saved and for which Milestone.  To view a report, highlight the desired report and click on the button Open Report. The reports are saved under the indicated Milestone in the project tree corresponding to the report's level.

Deleting reports
All reports that have been printed out are kept to maintain a project report history. It is, however, possible to delete reports by right clicking on the report in the project tree and clicking Delete.

Below is an example of an Aggregate Activity Report that shows the agregated status and annotations reported by all people who submitted activity reports for the various activities for the selected period of time.

Printing the report
You can choose print properties to control: time period, whether to display the Gantt, Codes, Revised dates, Responsibility codes, Estimates, or Both. 

Click Ok to print out..

Accumulated work done

The accumulated work done report shows work done pr person for the selected projects, persons, on different levels. To open the Accumulated work done report, click  Report>Accumulated work done.

You may  select other  projects to as well by clicking on the project name and the the button Load data

Projectportfolio

The projectportfolio is an overview of the selected projects timeframe(start- and finishdate) in a Gantt format. The deviation between the finishdate and revised date is printed in red. To open the projectportfolio,  click Report>Portfolioreports>Projectportfolio

Revised Milestone Plan

Based on the information you have accumulated from your project team members, and aggregate reports, you may need to revise the Milestone Plan. This is done by clicking on Report>Revised Milestoneplan.

When you choose to revise a milestoneplan, a dialogue box will open for you to enter the year and week that the revision is to be made.

You may enter a Revised date, Report text, and the date of the revision in the column entitled "Reported" for any milestone.

Printing a Milestone plan report
You will be given several options regarding  the format of the report (see below)

Click Ok to print.

Extending Milestoneplan or Milestone Activities finish dates

To report on ongoing activities that are beyond the the planned finish date, you must extend the finish dates.

To extend  the finish dates for all activities belonging to a milestone or all activities belonging to a milestoneplan, click Tools>Displace activity dates and select the Milestoneplan, or specific Milestones and the number of days to displace.

Project description

Project description is a printout of all the different properties of the project, selected by year. The report contains:

• Project Properties
• Responsible persons
• Timeframe
• Budget
• Mandate
• Milestoneplans

To print this report open the project, then highlight the project name and click Report> Project description  No preview is available for this printout. It is sent directly to the printer.

Statusreports

Status report by the Project leader

The report will include projects where the report month falls within the project start and finish dates as defined in the project properties.

The following fields are editable by the Project Manager:

Date changed: Proposed new finish date.  Proposed change to the  finish date will not be updated in the project properties, plans or budget. These changes must be updated manually in the Project properties.

Planned status: Narrative

Actual status:  Narrative

Cost change: Proposed change to the  cost will not be updated in the budget. This changes must be updated manually in the Project property>Budget dialogs.

Progress evaluation: select from pre-defined drop down list box options

Status and comments on deviation

Revision: Date or number of this Status report

The report will initially show the last months revision number to help the project leader select a new revision number for the new report. (the revision field will be empty until the first report has been saved)

The data in this status report is included in the Progress report (see below)

Status report for Program Managers

This report displays only the projects where:
- the logged on person has status as Program Manager(defined in project properties).
- the report period falls within the project's timeframe as defined in the project properties dialog (start and finish dates).

The program manager can approve/reject a Project Leader's suggestion for cost change, by editing the field Funding change(+/-).

To view the report on screen, click the print preview icon in the toolbar.

Progress report

Progress report is a printout containing:

• Project Properties
• Budget status
• Progress

This report is generated using data from the Project Leader's  Status Report

To generate this printout you must have created a Project Leader Status report on at least one project, and have one of your projects opened.

Click on Report> Progress report.

In the dialog choose the report period and the project you want the report for. Only projects of the logged on Project Leader are shown.

Resource Extract (overview of planned and actual resources)

You can get a report of the estimated, comleted, and future resource utilization by clicking Report>Extract. The Resource Extraction may filtered per the drop-down listboxes below.

You have the option of sorting the information by activity or person

If you check Include Totals, you will be given sub-totals for the levels you have chosen for sorting.

To generate the report, click  Load data

Below is an example of a Resource extract report.

In the example, we have created an overview of all projects and the person Christian Wahl for Weeks 24 through 31 of 2001. In the gantt area, Goal Director shows 3 resource numbers for the activity: The top number shows the reported Work done (actual completed), the middle shows how much Work remains to be done, and the bottom number shows the original  estimate

Sub-totals are given for every milestone plan:

The bottom of the report shows the Totals for the person  and the selected project(s).

Budget Report

To print a Budget Report, highlight either a Project, Milestone Plan or Activity Plan, the click on Report>Budget Report.

This report gives an overview of the following:

• Estimates (estimates from Activity Responsibility charts)
• Completed (the work hours that the project team members have reported as completed)
• Deviation (estimates vs. completed hours)
• Remaining (the work that hours the project team members have reported as remaining)
• Prognosis (the sum of hours completed and the reported remaining hours)
• Total (the original estimate minus the prognosis for completion)

The report below can be viewed on the screen by clicking Print preview icon or sent to the printer by clicking on the Print icon in the toolbar.

Budget Graph

To create a graphic presentation of the progress of the project, milestone plan or milestone, click Report>Budget Graph. The graph contains the following:

• Estimates (estimates from Activity Responsible charts)
• Completed (the work hours the project team members have reported as completed)

The report can be viewed on the screen or a sent to a printer by clicking on the appropriate icon in the toolbar.

S-Curve

To create a graphic presentation of the progress of the project, milestone plan or milestone including the prognosis, click Report>S-Curve. The graph contains the following:

• Estimates (estimates from Activity Responsible charts)
• Completed, in blue (the work hours that the project team members have reported as completed)
• Prognosis, in green (the sum of hours completed and the reported remaining hours)

The report above can be viewed  on the screen or sent to the printer by clicking on the appropriate icon in the toolbar.

Email Activities

If some team members do not have access to Goal Director, you can e-mail the activities to them. This is accomplished by choosing Report>Mail Activities.

Goal Director sends all the activities listed under the open project to the specified participant.

Tools

Selecting Language

From the Tools menu you can choose the language you want to use for the taskcodes and printouts presented on your machine or the language for the entire application. The language you select will be utilized in all projects.

You switch languages by clicking Tools>Language and select the language you want. To change the application language, you must restart Goal Director to activate the changes.

Click Ok and you have changed the language according to your choice.

Defining Criterias

• Businessarea
• Project Program
• Project Status
• Project Type
• Evaluation Status
• Progress Evaluation

Add

Delete

Edit

Checking-out and Checking-in projects

You have the option to work on your project in a local database on your workstation or laptop computer. This function allows you to check-out one project per client from the project database ("library"). When you check-out a project from the server it locks the project, so that no one else can make changes to the same project before you have checked it in again. Note: When you check-out a project, previously checked-out projects on your local machine will be deleted..

Check-out project
To check-out a project, click Tools>Check-out project. Goal Director will dowload the project to your local database.

Check-in project
To upload the project to the server click Tools>Check-in project.

Undo Check-out project
Click Tools>Undo Check-out project. If you made changes to the project on your local computer you will lose any of those changes.

Preferences

Click Tools>Preferences

Under the General tab, you have the following choices:

• 4  chars in year = all date formats in the application will display the year as 4 numbers (YYYY).
• Small font in printout = all printouts will have an 8 pt. font.
• Preview in Landscape = all previews will show up in the Landscape format.
• Preview in A3 = all previews will be shown in A3 format.
• Show the organisation-abbrevition as a person-prefix = you will be able to search for persons within organisations
• Auto resize the width of the taskcodes table = all responsibility charts will automatically adjust the size of the frame for roles/persons.
• Default timescale = Set the estimating unit as the default throughout Goal Director.
• Default gantt scale = Set the gantt scale as the default throughout Goal Director.

Under the E-mail tab, you have the following choices:

• E-mail Address = your own standard e-mail address. Must be added under resource menu.
• SMTP Server Host = the name of your email server 
• Port = the port you use for mail
• Timesheets = the initial e-mail address you want Goal Director to display  when you want to email your timesheets.
• Activities = the initial e-mail address you want Goal Director to display when you want to email all project activities.

Under the Server tab, you have the following choices:

• Server Hostname = Enter the Goal Director server's computer name (as recognized by the network) or its IP address.
• Server Port Number = You can specify which port Goal Director will use when being run as an application applet.  The default is 1099.
  

Connected users

You can find out which other users are connected to the Goal Director server by clicking Tools>Connected Users. Goal Director displays the users who are connected so you can send them a message to quit Goal Director.

Administration of Roles, Organizations and People

Roles

The Principle chart and Milestoneplan Responsibility charts use Roles (skills, groups) as defined for the organization. Click on Resource>Roles or Ctrl+Shift+R.  A window will pop up with options to Add new roles, Delete or Modify existing roles. You can also add new Roles while you are working with the Principle chart or Milestone Responsibility charts.

Organizations and Units

You may classify roles and persons by Organizations and Units.  Click Resource>Organizations/Units or Ctrl+Shift+O

In the example below, you see that we have set up several organizations. New organizations are set up by clicking on New and entering the name of the organization you want to set up.

You may define Units within Organizations. Highlight the organization, click on New and enter the name of the new unit.

You may also include predefined role(s) in an organization and unit by doing the following:

• Highlight the organization and unit
• Highlight role(s) and click on >> to include those roles
  

Persons

Defining persons in the organization is done by clicking Resource>Persons or Ctrl+Shift+P.

Goal Director will generate a dialogue box containing persons who have already been defined (eg. Supervisor).  Those persons with full login privileges are shown in boldface type. To add a new employee, click on Add.

When adding a new employee, the following information should be filled in:

• Name : First and last names
  
• Initials : Unique combination of letters, usually First letter of the first and last names
• E-mail : The person's e-mail address
• Username : If using Windows NT, the user name can be the same as the one for logging-on to the machine
• Password : The password that the person will need to supply during log-on.
• Usergroup : User level access control as defined on the server
• Organization : The organizational entity the person belongs to (selected from drop-down list)
• Unit : The unit entity the person belongs to (selected from drop-down list)
• Roles : The role(s) the person has, or belongs to

All information entered for the person can be modified or deleted at any time by highlighting the person in the initial pop-up dialogue and clicking Modify or Delete.

When you are finished updating persons, click Close.

Copying the Database

CAUTION:  The following functions should only be used by experienced users.  They can cause your existing database to be overwritten. 

Alternatively, you may use your operating system's file copying functions to achieve similar results.

In any case, you should back up your database on a regular basis.

This function gives you the ability to copy the database you are working with, or select another database to work with. Before you log on to Goal Director, you will see the function File>Copy Database under the File menu. If you are already working with Goal Director, choose Log Out under the File menu and Copy Database will be archived.

When you have chosen Copy Database, the following dialogue box will pop up.

If you choose to save the database to a file, your current database will be saved to the named file. From that location, it can be used as an alternate database, either by you or other Goal Director users.

The following specific function  must be used with caution.
If you wish to save a database other than your existing database to an alternate location, highlight Choose File, which will become the database. Before you execute this function, it is highly recommended that you make a copy of your existing database, so as to prevent any loss of information.  It can cause your existing database to be overwritten.