New features update! [21.05.2022]

New Features Update

With upcoming changes going on live servers we’ve made a couple of substantial changes in the Primetric. This article will help walk you through all of those changes. 

Table of contents

• New UI
• Quick search bar
• Calendar changes
  • Timeline in the Calendar
  • New calendar assignment filtering
  • New calendar customization look
• New Colour Palette for projects
• New Assignment form
• New report - Profitability
• Custom attributes
• New utilization and overbooking settings
• API update
  
  

New UI

The very first thing we will see once we log into Primetric is the change in the UI of the application. Let’s go through all of the changes.

This is our new left bar UI. As we can see, icons have changed their colours and shape. Also, we’ve removed My Profile from the left bar, which now has been moved to the bottom left Account button, which also had overgone change, now showing our name and company. We can access My Profile by either clicking on our name or expanding the new Account menu.

Lastly, we have a new menu for the Account. Now all options are listed from the get-go. 

Quick search bar

As you might have noticed in the previous section, in our new left-side menu appeared a new option - a quick search bar. This is a wholly new feature, that allows you to quickly search for people or projects in your profile. 

Calendar changes

One of the biggest changes we’ve implemented in this build is an overhaul of the calendar. Changes were made to the assignment filtering and calendar view, and we also added a new feature - Timeline.

Timeline in the Calendar

A new addition to all Calendars is Timeline. It is a blue line above the assignments. Hovering the mouse over this line and moving along with it will tell us how many and what type of assignments our employee or Project has on this particular day. The timeline will also help us see how long the assignment really lasts. Not only moving the mouse along the timeline will show us that on particular days there are no assignments but also timeline itself will change shape to show us exact range of that assignment.

As we can see, our assignments will be highlighted to show us what assignments our timeline is informing us about.

New calendar assignment filtering

The new approach to filtering assignments in the calendar allows us to have all types of assignment filters from the get-go, without needing to add them artificially. Now we don’t need to add filters to see specific types of assignments in the calendar, instead, we can hide or show the different types of assignments by simply clicking the corresponding panel. 

Once we hide some assignments we can also show them again by clicking on “Show all” in the calendar. This will work within the Person or Project section in corresponding calendars. 

All assignments can also be grouped. 

• People calendar 
• Can be grouped by projects
• Project calendar 
• Can be grouped by phases
• Can be grouped by people

The grouping option is not mandatory, we can leave all assignments ungrouped by choosing “grouping disabled”.

All changes we’ve made in every type of calendar will remain there after we leave them, so once we set the perfect set of filters, we can return to that calendar anytime and they will still be there.

New calendar customization look

We also added new settings for the calendar view. While options of the settings remain pretty much the same, the outcome of our settings will differ from the old version of the calendar. 

Let’s go over each section of settings and how it changes how the calendar looks. 

With Details separated into People and Calendar, we can create a very compact or wider calendar.

People details will now inform us about scheduled utilization and what type of assignments affects utilization in a set date range (more on that in this section). Details also retain information about employees such as position, seniority and department.

Calendar details allow us to show numerical values of progress bars or leave them as regular progress bars.

In the Show option of the Settings, we’ve added the option to remove space for the “plus” button for assignments/time-offs by checking the “Create assignment/time off button”. 

All previous options were carried over from the last version of the calendar, although now each of them is easily recognizable. If we add all of them to the calendar, simply hovering the mouse over one of them will inform us which setting we’re currently looking at.

In the Assignment details, we’ve added a new option - Highlight overlapped assignments as marked one. This option allows us to highlight all assignments that are overlapping with our current assignment. It will also affect timeline - our assignment will have bigger blue bar, and assignments that are overlapping will have their timelines slightly bigger than usual.

New Colour Palette for projects

As you might have noticed in the Calendar section, our assignments also went through a visual change. Now when we create a new project we will have more colour options. This is how assignments can look in the calendar.

We can also add a logo to a project. When we create a new project, and go to this project, by clicking on the paper icon next to the name of the project we will get an option to add a picture which will serve as a new project logo.

New Assignment form

With changes to the calendar and projects, we also made a visual overhaul to the assignment section.

The very first thing we will notice will be a new tab above the Edit section - this is an information tab, that shows us what type of assignment it is, the avatar and name of our employee, in what project and phase our assignment is allocated in. Below that panel, we have a table showing us information about scheduled and tracked work and finances. For settled assignments it will also show settled costs and incomes.

Below we have an Edit section which was changed from vertical to horizontal. To edit assignments we need to move through tabs, which are:

• “General” - here we decide what type of assignments we will use, what phase this assignment will be, the role of our employee in this assignment, the start and end of the assignment and the option to mark the assignment as background work or non-billable assignment.
• Utilization - utilization settings for assignment (More on that in this article)
• Budget - here we will set the hourly cost and if we will track only billable work
• Details - here we will add optional hashtags to the assignment and notes
• Custom attribute - this will be explained later in the article

There is also a change in saving our changes. Now instead of auto-save, we have to click “Apply” to see how our changes will affect the assignment. To save our changes and close the window we need to click “Apply and close”.

With new assignments, we can also withdraw already settled assignments from the Calendar level. Simply clicking on settled assignments in the calendar will prompt a new assignment form with locked editing and a new information panel, that will allow us to withdraw the settled assignment.

New report - Profitability

In this release, we will also include a new type of report that will allow us to calculate the profit margin of our employees. 

We will see their costs, incomes, average hour cost and rate, profit and margin of that profit. This report will allow us to sort by all available data, including mentioned, name, team and department. We also added the option of including company overheads.

Let’s take a look at how each of these values is calculated.

• For a whole company
  • Cost - organization overheads+sum of all employees' costs (Salary of each employee) + sum of all Contractors' costs (Salary of each contractor)
  • Income - Organization overhead Income + sum of all incomes of employees on projects
  • Avg hour cost - Cost/Work time of all employees
  • Avg hour rate - Income/Billable work time of all employees
  • Profit - the sum of all employees’ profits (all employees’ incomes - all employees’ costs)
  • Margin - Profit/Income * 100 %
• For a single employee
  • All = Salary+Overheads
    • Salary is taken from employee settings, in the case of Contractors it is calculated based on an hourly rate multiplied by the number of settled hours, in the case of regular employees it’s their monthly rate, but if the date range for the report doesn’t cover the last day of the months, the cost will be 0 for that month
    • Overheads - [Overheads value/Sum of contract capacity for all employees (which is the whole employee capacity without counting time off)] * Contract capacity of an employee
  • Income - the sum of all incomes from the project
    • If there is a Fixed price project Settled income will be divided by hours tracked for that employee
  • Avg hour cost - Average employees’ cost/(sum of tracked hours+sum of scheduled work)
  • Avg hour rate - Average employees’ income/(sum of tracked hours+sum of scheduled work)
  • Profit - Employees’ income - Employees’ cost
  • Margin - Profit/Employee income * 100%

If there was a Fixed Price project in a given range, then:

For a closed project:

• Project income: Income = Settled Income
• Total time reported on the project: Work = Tracked work
• Employee income: Income / Work * tracked hours (employee) (in a given period of time)

For an open project

• Project income: 
• Income = Estimated income when Estimated income is greater than Scheduled income and Settled income
• Income = Scheduled income when Scheduled income is greater than Estimated income and Settled income
• Income = Settled income when Settled income is greater than Estimated income and Scheduled income
• Total working time in the project:
• Work = Total estimated work when Total estimated work is greater than Total scheduled work and Total settled work
• Work = Total scheduled work when Total scheduled work is greater than Total estimated work and Total settled work
• Work = Total settled work when Total settled work is greater than Total estimated work and Total scheduled work
• Employee income: Income / [Work * (Scheduled work (for unsettled assignment of employee)) + settled work (for settled assignment of employee))]  - in a given period of time

Employees' income on the Time and Material project is calculated on the basis of:

• For the settled assignment: 
• Income set in the assignment budget * settled hours (in a given period of time)
• For unsettled assignments: 
• Income set in the assignment budget * scheduled hours (in a given period of time)

This is a beta version of our report and if you have any feedback regarding our algorithm for calculating these values, please reach out to us and share it!

Custom attributes

Perhaps one of the biggest changes in our system is the addition of Custom attributes. This feature will allow us to add custom attributes to the Assignments, Capacity, Employee profile, Project phase, Time offs, Vacancies and Worklogs. In the future, we will be able to search custom attributes through the Search bar and we will also be able to decide where we will display them.

How to create a new custom attribute

1. Change view to Administrator
2. Go to Settings and choose Custom attributes
3. Choose where you want to add your custom attribute
4. Click “Add custom attribute+”
5. Type a label name for the attribute
6. Choose what type of attribute you want (Text, number, date, time etc.)
7. (Optional) Choose whether this attribute will be in form of a list or not
8. (Optional) Choose whether this attribute will be required
9. (Optional) Choose what will be the default value of this attribute
10. (Optional) Choose how this default value will be propagated throughout the rest of the attributes
11. (Optional) Add description
12. (Optional) Click the “Financial data” checkbox to mark the attribute as financial which means it will be visible only for managers with finance permission
13. Set permissions

If we choose the list type of attributes, once we click “Add” our attributes form will appear again allowing us to add possible values for the list.

For more in-depth documentation on custom attributes please CLICK HERE. 

New utilization and overbooking settings

In our previous releases, utilization and overbooking information were different in different views. For example, the People’s list showed scheduled utilization for the selected period. We’ve decided to unify both of that information and give full control over how they are calculated. Now every manager simply needs to go to his profile and choose what types of assignments will count towards scheduled utilization and overbooking, allowing them to customize their view of both of those pieces of information. 

Changes in these settings will be shown in People’s list, in Calendar (both in People details and also in filtering settings for numerical values such as “Availability / Capacity”), in team member search results in Projects and also in reports.

API update

With our new changes to API, by adding new endpoints, we’ve allowed the possibility for full CRUD on phases, assignments, and one-time overheads within the project as scheduled, not settled and settled and committing scheduled one-time overheads. Documentation regarding this update will appear on developer.primetric.com