Project Visualization

The Project Visualization is a graphical representation of key metrics for your projects, such as job-to-date revenue, billing, accounts receivable, profit, or spent amounts. The Project Visualization is available if your firm uses Vision Accounting and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Options

The options you specify on the tabs of the Project Visualization Options dialog box determine the contents of the visualization map, the grouping of the data, the colors used to represent metric values, and the metrics on which the sizes and colors of the blocks are based.

If you select multiple grouping, size, or color criteria, all of those criteria are available to you as you view the visualization map in the Visualization window. You can easily switch from one criterion to another to modify the focus of the map.

Security Considerations

Vision's security settings are by role. In the Roles form (Configuration > Security > Roles), your system administrator sets options that control your access to reports and report data.

The settings in the Roles form for record level access and report grouping access automatically apply to Visualization. To view certain metrics on visualization maps, such as Spent @ Cost - JTD, the Labor Cost Rates/Amounts option on the Accounting tab of the Roles form for your role must be set to Full Access.

Improve Performance with the Use Summary Table Option

Calculations performed for the Project Visualization place high demands on processor resources. In some cases, it can take a long time to generate a visualization map for large databases. To minimize the time it takes to generate visualization maps, run the Refresh Project Summary Table utility on a regular basis, and select the Use Summary Table check box on the General tab of the Project Visualization Options dialog box when you generate visualization maps.

Multicompany

If your firm uses the Multicompany feature, a visualization map can include projects from any companies in your enterprise. It is not restricted to those for the active company. To generate a visualization for a single company, select Company as one of the record selection criteria.

Vision excludes intercompany invoices from metric values that are based on billing and accounts receivable data.

Multicurrency

If your firm uses the Multicurrency feature, the visualization map displays all monetary amounts in the presentation currency you select on the General tab of the Project Visualization Options dialog box.

When you compare amounts from a visualization map to equivalent amounts from a project report, use the same presentation currency and exchange rate date for both the map and the report.

Note on Currency Formatting

If you select a presentation currency that requires different currency formatting (currency symbol, currency code, digit grouping, and so on) than you have specified in the Regional Settings for Microsoft Windows, the visualization blocks display correctly, and the supporting monetary amounts shown on the visualization map are correct, but the formatting may not match what is specified in Vision for that currency. The same is true if you apply special currency or number formats for metrics on the Metrics tab of the Project Visualization Options dialog box. Because of technical limitations in some cases, the Windows settings are applied instead of the formatting specified in Vision. If this occurs and it is important to have the correct formatting (because you are using the visualization map in a presentation, for example), temporarily change your Regional Settings in Windows to match the formatting you want for the visualization map.