Overview
This week is all about bringing things together and pulling them apart! We've got several exciting updates, and with the exception of the bonus tweak to Insights Date Picker, these all represent new features you can adopt at your leisure.
We've split them up below into four separate categories for easy digestion, and don't forget to check out any additional links we include for further insight!
Project Role Association/Splitting
While each change we've made with Role Association may not be too complicated on it's own, they build on each other for a greater whole. To that end, we've created an entire article on how they work and how to use them, but as a quick summary, you can now:
- Group (or Associate) separate Project Roles of the same name together as a unit.
- Split a single Project Role into multiple Associated Project Roles.
In practice, this allows you to indicate that multiple People are essentially sharing a single Role or are swapping in and out to replace one another. If you need to swap someone out of a Project, it's as easy as picking a date, splitting their Project Role, then adding someone new to fill it!
Check out this article for more info!
Offerings with Rate Cards
This update is very much what it sounds like - the ability to add a Rate Card to the Service Offering Templates that you've saved.
Historically, when adding a Offering to a Project using the Service Offering Templates found under Settings > Service Offerings, the primary Rate Card was automatically applied to the Service Offering. This meant that each time you added an Offering using a Template, you'd need to update the Rate Card (unless you were using the Primary). This could be particularly bothersome when adding a new Offering to an in-flight Project - since Rate Cards cannot be updated while the Project is In Progress.
With this update, Rate Cards are now baked into the Service Offering Templates you create, so you don't need to worry about defaulting to the Primary Rate Card. If you have similar shapes that you want available with multiple different Rate Cards, you can simply duplicate the Offering and update the Rate Card applied to the duplicate!
Updating the Rate Card on a Service Offering is easy - just visit Settings > Service Offerings and click on the Service Offering you want to edit. You'll find the attached Rate Card in a dropdown at the top of the page; just change the Rate Card there and select "Save". It's as easy as that!
For more information about Service Offering Templates, check out this article!
Offering Splitting
This one comes on the heels of Project Role Splitting; it takes the same concept, but applies it to an Offering, instead of a Project Role. This will be useful for instances where an Offering has grown too large, and needs to be scoped/sold separately to the Client.
To do this, simply:
- Right-click on the cell for the Date you want the New Offering to Start in the Offering Header.
- Select the option "Split Offering" from the menu that appears.
- The Row you've selected and all future Rows will be moved to a new Offering*.
The new Offering will inherit the name of the old one, with the addition of the identifier "[Split]", but once created, you can rename the Offering right within the Shaper!
*Parallax Tip - Don't forget about your Sold Snapshot!
Anytime you create a new Offering while a Project is In Progress, that Offering was not a part of the original sale - so it will appear as $0 and 0h on the Sold Snapshot. However, you can manually update each Role from the "Sold" section of your Sold Snapshot, as needed.
Date-Selection in Insights
As an added bonus with this update, we've made an upgrade to the way Dates are selected within Insights. We've split this up by the two different ways you can select a Date Relative Dates and Date Ranges in order to break down how it works.
Relative Dates
The Custom Relative Dates option allows you to select a window relative to a point in time. This allows you to select the standard ranges each time you visit a Report, instead of having to change it each time you visit. Here are the options you'll see:
- Report Timeframe - Here you'll select the past, present or future (Last/This/Next), the Period you want to see (may vary between Reports and include any combination of Days, Weeks, Months, Quarters or Years) and specify the quantity you want to see. In order to see both past and future, you can click Add Another Relative Date to add a second range, as well.
- Relative to: This allows you to set when you want the timeframe to start - either from Today or from the beginning of the period you're selecting.
- Report View: This tells you the Unit the data will be organized by - for example, if you select Monthly, then each column of the report will be a month.
- Selected Dates: This will give you a summary of the Dates you've selected.
Date Range
The Date Range option allows you to select a timeframe window using calendar dates you select, instead of a range of units. This means there's less to select and you don't need to worry about any specific reference point. Here's what you'll see:
- Start Range Calendar: This Calendar is where you'll select the Start of the range you're picking.
- End of Range Calendar: This Calendar is where you'll select the End of the range you're picking.
- Report View: This tells you the Unit the data will be organized by - for example, if you select Monthly, then each column of the report will be a month.
- Selected Dates: This will give you a summary of the Dates you've selected.
Parallax Tip - What if I want more than 2 months?
While the Start/End Range Calendars may look like a single, extended Calendar, they're really separate. This means that once you've selected a date on the Start Calendar, you can scroll as many months in the future as you need to on the End Calendar and the highlighter will automatically follow to indicate the range.