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While Costpoint Analytics is primarily intended for executives, some firms want to make the project analytics (Revenue, Profit, Backlog, and Projects at Risk) available to project managers or program managers for analyzing data for the projects for which they are responsible. For those users, data access based on project manager assignments is often more appropriate than access based on organization. To accommodate this need, Costpoint Analytics gives you the option to set up project managers and program managers as users and limit them to the data for projects for which they are responsible. This access is based on project manager assignments as of the current period in Costpoint Analytics (the most recent fiscal period for which Costpoint data has been loaded into Costpoint Analytics). Costpoint Analytics SaaS: If you have a Costpoint Analytics SaaS Subscription, the option to base security on project manager and program manager assignments is not available. |
In this topicCommon Approaches to Providing Access Access for Revenue-Level and Billing-Level Project Managers Access for Top-Level Project Managers Employee Analytics, Summary Analytics, and Capture Analytics User Access Point for Costpoint Analytics |
Firms commonly use one or both of the following approaches to provide access based on project manager:
Give project managers access to their own projects
Give program managers access to the projects of a group of project managers
To give a project manager access to his or her own projects, you link that person’s network user ID to his or her employee ID from Costpoint. The project manager’s employee ID, in turn, provides the link to that person’s projects. In Costpoint Analytics, that user can then only view and analyze data for his or her projects.
For a program manager who is responsible for a group of project managers, you can link that person’s network user ID to the employee IDs for each of their project managers. That gives that person access to data for all of the projects for which his or her project managers are responsible.
If you set up a revenue-level or billing-level project manager as a Costpoint Analytics user, that person only has access to the data for the revenue-level or, in the Projects at Risk Analytics, billing-level projects that they manage. They do not have access to other project data unless they are also the top-level project manager for one or more projects.
Exception: Because the AR and DSO data is only calculated for top-level projects, a project manager at a lower level who has access to the AR and DSO Analytics can view the AR and DSO data for the top-level project with which their lower-level project is associated.
If you set up a top-level project manager as a Costpoint Analytics user, that person automatically has access to all data for the top-level project and for the revenue-level and, in the Projects at Risk Analytics, billing-level projects under that top-level project. A top-level project manager has access to the complete data for his or her projects even if other project managers are assigned to some or all of those lower-level projects.
If you set up a program manager as a Costpoint Analytics user, that person automatically has access to all data for the projects that are managed by the project managers to which they are linked in Costpoint Analytics.
If a program manager is linked to one or more top-level project managers, that person has access to all data for the top-level projects and to all data for the revenue-level and, in the Projects at Risk Analytics, billing-level projects under those top-level projects. A program manager has this access to the complete data for the projects managed by his or her top-level project managers even if other project managers are assigned to some or all of those lower-level projects.
Security based on project manager does not apply to Costpoint Analytics – Employee, Costpoint Analytics – Summary, or Capture Analytics. If you only set up a user with access based on project manager, that user cannot use those applications.
If you want such a user to also have access to Costpoint Analytics – Employee or Costpoint Analytics – Summary (to the Labor Utilization Analytics, for example), you must also set them up as a standard Costpoint Analytics user and specify their access to tabs and organizations as described in Security: Key Concepts and the related topics. If you do that, you should not give them access to any of the project analytics tabs because if they enter Costpoint Analytics through Costpoint Analytics – Summary, their access to data is controlled only by their organization access. The project manager access does not apply in that situation. Note also that if you set up both types of security for a user, the organization access you specify is not enforced when they use Costpoint Analytics – Project based on project manager access.
If your firm has Capture Analytics and you want users subject to project manager security in Costpoint Analytics to have access to Capture Analytics, you must set up that access separately using the Capture Analytics security configuration settings and the related security spreadsheets.
Security based on project manager requires single sign on user authentication. Each user’s access is determined based on the project managers to which his or her network user ID is linked in the Costpoint Analytics security setup information.
While most Costpoint Analytics users enter Costpoint Analytics through the summary analytics in Costpoint Analytics – Summary, users subject to project manager security cannot do so. The most common approach for these users is to make Costpoint Analytics – Project available to them through an AccessPoint site. An alternative is to set up a shortcut to his or her .QVW file for each of these users.
When you complete the project manager setup procedure and load the security data into Costpoint Analytics, the process creates a separate copy of Costpoint Analytics – Project for each network user ID listed in the CostpointAnalyticsPMSecuritySetup.xlsx file. Each copy contains only the data that user can access, based on the project manager security setup information.
The file names of those copies are Costpoint_Analytics_Projects_<network user ID>.QVW (for example, Costpoint_Analytics_Projects_TomNoland). These files are located in the <installation location>\PM folder.
Each time you load new data from Costpoint into Costpoint Analytics, the data contained in each of those copies of Costpoint Analytics – Project is updated automatically.
To make the process of setting up project manager security more efficient, you can import the following for each active employee who is assigned as a project manager for at least one revenue-level project, billing-level project, or top-level project in Costpoint:
Employee ID
Employee name
Network user ID
You then copy that information to an Excel spreadsheet, where you can delete the project managers to whom you do not want to grant access to Costpoint Analytics and can enter additional security information for those who will have access. When the access information is correct and complete in the Excel file, you load it into Costpoint Analytics.
For more information, see Set Up Project Manager Security.