What is Mapping?

Mapping is a way of integrating the two Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) in Vision — the firmwide WBS specified in the Project Info Center and the plan-specific WBS you build for a plan — to support reporting actual labor hours, labor amounts, expenses, and consultant amounts.

When you map your plan, you connect its elements to existing or to-be-created project, phase, and task records in the Vision Info Center. Once work begins on the plan and you are using either the Time and Expense application or the Transaction Center application to report actual hours worked and actual expense and consultant costs, Vision automatically updates your plan with those hours and amounts.

Two Breakdown Structures

The two breakdown structures in Vision are:

• Project Info Center WBS — The firmwide structure you establish for the Project Info Center WBS affects all Vision applications, particularly Accounting and Time and Expense. This is the structure that consists of the project, phase, and task records.

• Plan WBS — The Plan WBS is the WBS that is specific to that plan; it is not a firmwide structure. It is not used outside the Planning application.

Three Levels of WBS Elements for Mapped Plans

The Project Info Center supports work breakdown structures of up to three levels: project, phases, and tasks.

Planning does not limit the number of WBS levels, as the Project Info Center does. However, if you intend to map a plan's WBS elements to the Project Info Center WBS, you must consider how to accommodate the Project Info Center's WBS structure. Mapping the levels helps support the reporting of actual hours and costs on the project plan.

For example, if your project will only use the project and phase WBS levels, including those levels in your plan allows you to link those plan levels to your project’s WBS level records. For planning purposes, your plan could have additional plan levels, but you cannot link them to the levels in your project.

If your firm is using labor codes, you can establish a level for them within your plan and link them to existing labor codes. This allows more detailed planning and reporting of labor.

How Do I Know if a Plan is Mapped to a Project Record?

Vision includes three internal status settings for mapping plans: Not Mapped, To Be Created, and Existing. These statuses are not visible to you, but, based on certain criteria, you can determine the plan's status and whether or not it is mapped to a project record.

Vision Plan's Internal Status	What You See
Not Mapped	There are no values entered for the WBS1. This is the status when you create a new plan.
To Be Created	There are values entered for the WBS1, but they do not exist in a Vision Project record.
Existing	There are values entered for WBS1 that also exist in a Vision Project record. For example, you enter a task on the Labor grid, and select a project number that already exists in the Vision database.