user guide to safran web access -...

User guide to Safran Web Access

Version 1.1

Safran Web Access User Guide v1.1

Copyright (c) 2010, Safran Software Solutions AS. All Rights reserved.

AccuracyAlthough every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this document, no

warranty, expressed or implied, is made by Safran Software Solutions AS as to the accuracy of this

publication and the features or the applicability of techniques suggested.

CopyrightNoticeThe information provided in this manual is for informational purposes only. It may be changed without

notice, and does not represent a commitment as to merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose

by Safran Software Solutions AS.

The software described in this manual is provided by Safran Software Solutions AS under a Safran

License Agreement. The software may be used only in accordance with the terms of the license

agreement.

No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying and recording, for any purpose without the express written

permission of Safran Software Solutions AS.

Safran is a registered trademark of Safran Software Solutions AS. Safran Planner, Safran Planner SQL,

Safran Project, Safran for the Microsoft Project Platform, Safran Details, Safran Details Developer, Safran

Enterprise Developer, Safran Web Access and Working Smarter are trademarks of Safran Software

Solutions AS.

All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

This document was published June 2010.


TableofContentsAccuracy ........................................................................................................................................................ 2

Copyright Notice ........................................................................................................................................... 2

About this guide ............................................................................................................................................ 5

Overview ....................................................................................................................................................... 5

Introduction‐ Quick Start .............................................................................................................................. 7

User Interface ........................................................................................................................................... 7

Login, User Access ..................................................................................................................................... 7

Database Connection ................................................................................................................................ 8

Safran Web Access User Access ................................................................................................................ 8

Project Access ........................................................................................................................................... 8

Report Groups. .......................................................................................................................................... 8

Safran Planner SQL ................................................................................................................................ 8

Safran Project ........................................................................................................................................ 9

Filter Groups. ............................................................................................................................................ 9

General functionality .................................................................................................................................... 9

Navigation and Route ............................................................................................................................... 9

Sorting and Filtering in grids ..................................................................................................................... 9

Printing graphs, Grids and reports .......................................................................................................... 10

Export to excel ........................................................................................................................................ 10

Project Selection ..................................................................................................................................... 10

View Network/Project details ................................................................................................................. 10

Selecting database .................................................................................................................................. 11

Hiding Web Part Content ........................................................................................................................ 12

The Welcome Page ..................................................................................................................................... 13

The Projects Page ........................................................................................................................................ 14

The Report Library Pages ............................................................................................................................ 16

The Report Generation Page ...................................................................................................................... 18

Report list ................................................................................................................................................ 18

Report types for Safran Planner SQL users ......................................................................................... 18

Report types for Safran Project users ................................................................................................. 18

Added flexibility .................................................................................................................................. 19


The Virtual Portfolio Reporting Page .......................................................................................................... 20

The Progress Update page .......................................................................................................................... 22

The Administrator Page .............................................................................................................................. 24


AboutthisguideThis document is the user guide to the Safran Web Access software from Safran Software Solutions AS. It

contains guidelines and instructions on how to use the Safran Web Access application and an overview

of the features and functions available.

The intended audience for this document is the occasional and full time user of the portal platform.

Users of Safran Web Access may gain from having a basic understanding of Safran Project and or Safran

Planner 4.1. We therefore recommend that this guide should be studied together with the user guides

or training material for these two applications.

The features described in this manual may vary from what is installed or implemented at your site.

Running Safran Web Access as part of your Safran Project implementation will bring features not

available to the Safran Planner implementation.

OverviewSafran Web Access is the latest software offering from Safran software Solutions AS providing users with

a browser based tool for accessing the firms project data, viewing and running project reports and

performance data from the Safran database repository. It is designed as a configurable web portal with

components and functions for user control, database access control, report execution, project

information, report library, progress update and more.

The implementation of Safran Web Access may vary from client to client.

Using Safran Web Access allows organizations to keep all project members updated on status; on‐line,

reducing the amount of reports needed to be issued weekly, bi‐weekly or monthly and reducing the

need for printed output. This saves both time and resources from the planning department.

Users of Safran Web Access are allowed access to Project data without the need to use a professional

planning or project management tool such as Safran Planner SQL or Safran Project.

Unlike many other tools of this category Safran Web Access does not require a cube database, or

reporting database, as the SWA accesses the Safran database directly, reducing IT overload and ensuring

updated information. Adding to this it requires less installation and implementation resources than most

other solutions.

Safran Web Access runs in a Microsoft Sharepoint Services 3 environment. Supported database

environments for the Safran Project data is Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. Please contact Safran

technical support for details on supported versions.

Using the Safran Web Access organizations can share information with partners, clients, contractors and

project owners. When planning the implementation and deployment of Safran Web Access, you should

at this stage be aware of that access to projects and project data can be limited to a specific project in a

specific Safran Database.


Deploying Safran Web Access as part of your Safran Project or Safran Planner SQL end user environment

allow companies to adapt new and improved project communication as well as to help developing and

adopting corporate standards across all projects.


Introduction‐QuickStart

UserInterfaceThe Safran Web Access ‐ SWA for short ‐ is designed around the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services

tool (WSS) . The user interface of the browser as well as SharePoint Services are familiar to many users

in many organizations.

Safran Web Access is deved in several page collections. The number of features and pages available will

depend on your implementation and also if your Safran Web Access runs against a Safran Planner SQL

database or a Safran Project database.

Login,UserAccessUser Access to project data, reports and filters are controlled by 5 features.

Database Connection

User Access rights

Project Access

Report groups

Filter groups


DatabaseConnection The Safran Web Access Manager defines which Safran database(s) the Safran Web Access client should

be allowed to access. For most users this will be the Safran database in the production environment. But

we also find that many organizations have multiple Safran databases. Please note that allowing access to

a Safran database does not automatically give access to project data and information. To be able to

access project data you must have access to projects/networks in the Safran database. See next section.

SafranWebAccessUserAccessSafran Web Access user access is controlled by the SharePoint user, SharePoint groups or active

directory standard user access.

ProjectAccessAccess to data is also controlled by access to projects and networks stored in the Safran database. This

access can be controlled by and from either the Safran Planner SQL or Safran Project applications or by

using the Safran Web Access User Admin.

If you are the project owner, that is the person who created the project or network in Safran Planner

SQL or Safran Project you are allowed to give SWA access to your project by individual users or

Sharepoint groups of users from within the Safran Planner or Safran Project. This functionality is

identical to giving access to your schedule within the Safran database environment. Using Safran Project

or Safran Planner SQL to give access this way saves the planner from having to give access using two

different tools, and it updates the Safran WA access list within the Sharepoint services environment.

Alternatively you will need access to the SWA admin page to give SWA users access to your project and

its data. Normally there will be some restriction on who can actually access the features of the SWA

admin page.

ReportGroups.Only reports included in the SWA report group can be executed and viewed from Safran Web Access.

This is a Safran Planner SQL or Safran Project System Administration feature. The Reports or rather

report specifications that Safran Web Access users should be allowed to run live on the database are

controlled by the Report Groups feature. Report specifications are included into the SWA report group.

Once included into the SWA group they will show up as available reports in the Safran Web Access

reports page.

SafranPlannerSQLIf you are running the SWA together with a Safran Planner SQL environment these are the Report types

available:

Bar Chart Editor Layouts

Histogram Layouts


SafranProjectTogether with Safran Project you will have several report types available to be included in the SWA

report group:


Bar Chart Editor Histogram Layouts

Histogram / S‐Curves

Performance Charts

Bull's Eye report

Pie Charts

Progress Summary Reports

6 Period Summary Reports

FilterGroups. In the same way as with reports, pre defined filters may be included in a Safran group feature. This

allows the Safran user to predefine selection criteria that can be used to narrow down information and

reports on the SWA client. Creating filters normally requires knowledge of the corporate setup and the

project definitions. To create a filter group and include a library of filters into this you must use the

Safran Project or Safran Planner System Administration module.

Filters can be applied to the Progress & Expended update page and when running reports.

Generalfunctionality

NavigationandRouteThe top part of the page shows the navigation route to the current page. Pages can be accessed by

selecting the appropriate page from the top link bar. This also works as a page refresh.

SortingandFilteringingridsSorting and filtering in grids or lists is possible by clicking the column name. Filter may be set column by

column. This will open the sort and filter menu. Information can be filtered by using several columns at

the same time. If you filter by several columns this is identical to applying an "and" operator in a Safran

filter.


Printinggraphs,GridsandreportsAll charts and gauges are images that can be copied. Reports are displayed as pdf format files and can be

saved, printed or copied to be pasted into other applications. The SWA pages support wss print

capabilities. The SWA grids also contain an export to excel and save as pdf feature.

!FIG!

ExporttoexcelGrids and lists includes an Export to Excel function that exports the information visible to Excel for

further analysis or for easy data exchange with other applications.

ProjectSelectionEven though you have selected a project for the Projects page, you can use the quick project selection

drop down to select a new project and view its data and information without having to navigate back to

the Projects page. This ‘two way’ selection increases the SWA user’s productivity and SWA usability.

ViewNetwork/ProjectdetailsBy pressing the + sign to you can view more of the Project/Network information.


SelectingdatabaseThe Virtual Portfolio page also allows you to select a Database. This is due to the fact that this page

allows you to create on‐demand or ad‐hoc reports across selected or all schedules in a database. For this

reporting purpose, one step up the hierarchy is to select database. But please notice that the selected

database then presides when you navigate to the other pages. Selecting database on the Virtual

Portfolio page is identical to selecting database on the Projects /Project info page.


HidingWebPartContentYou can use the Sharepoint built inn feature to hide the content of a web part on any of the pages. Use

the restore option to bring it back again.


TheWelcomePageThe home or the welcome page is the first entry into the Safran web access. This page may be

customized or replaced to provide information about your organization. It may also contain shortcuts or

links to any other page.


TheProjectsPageThe project page allows you to select database to connect to, given that you have more than one

database license/instance for your Safran implementation.

Once the database to connect to is selected, Safran Web Access displays available projects from this

database. Safran Web Access remembers your last database connection, and will automatically list

projects from this.

To select a specific project, highlight the project in the list window. The project you highlight will be the

default project selected for reporting, both report generation and report viewing from the report library,

Progress & Expended Update, and Quick Info. As described in the introduction section of this manual,

you can use the Project quick selection drop down to select another project.

You can use the auto filter capabilities of the list/grid to limit your list of projects. This is specially

convenient and helpful if you have access to many projects, and need to narrow down to select the

correct project.

The information displayed is the network name and network description as saved from within Safran

Project. If you are using Safran Planner SQL the information displayed is the Safran Planner SQL project

Name and Title. The net Id is provided as a quick reference to the data in your Safran Project


Management database. The grid will also list all defined enterprise fields. If your database is set up with

a large number of Enterprise User Fields the grid may become very wide.

If you remove the check mark for "Show Enterprise fields" the enterprise fields will be hidden from the

grid, providing a smaller table of data.

The page also contains an export to XL and allows you to create a quick pdf report of the grid data.


TheReportLibraryPagesThe Report library pages contain, as it name suggests, a library of the projects official reports. Normally

this will be the reports issued to present status and health of your project at weekly, bi‐weekly or

monthly cutoffs.

The library contains reports saved from Safran Project or Safran Planner SQL using the Save to SWA

feature. Reports are saved in the Portable document format (pdf) and an Adobe reader (or equivalent) is

required.

You can browse your Project status reports by report type or by cut‐off. Having selected the required

status report, it is displayed as a pdf report or document. You can noweither view, print or copy the

report as a picture in order to include it (paste) into other window applications.

On the Report Library II page, reports may be selected and filtered by clicking the field or column header

or by clicking the filter (funnel) icon. The Report Library II page contains report metadata that can be

used to sort and single out the required reports. This page lists all reports for all projects you have

access to on the selected or specified database. To narrow down to a specific project you would simply

add a column filter by code or name.


TheReportGenerationPageBeing able to run predefined report specifications on the latest updated Safran Project or Planner SQL

data is a powerful and valuable while bringing reporting to a wider and broader user community.

Allowing more people to actively run, view and evaluate the reports themselves also reduces the

traditional report production task from the planners and frees up time that can be used to pro‐actively

work with the plan and look for project opportunities.

Allowing more people access to reports and up‐to‐date data increases project schedule ownership as

well as being updated on the project, its schedule and its goals.

The reports or rather report types available will differ depending whether you are running a Safran

Planner SQL user environment or if you are running a Safran Project user environment.

ReportlistThe actual reports available to the SWA users are controlled by the Safran Project or Safran Planner SQL

Report group feature. Reports or rather report specifications that are to be available for Safran Web

Access must be included in the SWA report group.

The reports are grouped by type and to ease selection the list, in addition to the report name also

contains the reports remarks field or column.

The Safran Web Access report list contains report specifications defined and deployed by your Safran

planners. This includes both the number of report specifications available, the report content and the

look and feel of the report. In some companies this role is likely to be given to the Safran System

administrator.

Reports and reports types available may vary between different Safran database as this is a per

database feature.

ReporttypesforSafranPlannerSQLusersRunning Safran Web Access together with Safran Planner SQL allows you to deploy these report types:



ReporttypesforSafranProjectusersRunning Safran Web Access together with Safran Project allows you to deploy the following report

types:



Pie Charts

Histogram / S‐Curve reports

Bull's Eye reports

Progress Summary reports


6 Period Summary reports

Performance Charts

AddedflexibilityAlthough the report specifications have been created in Safran Project or Safran Planner SQL and may

be perceived as fixed format, a number of editing capabilities are provided to give SWA Client end user

reporting flexibility.

When running the report you may override setting for report span, narrowing your report down by

selecting from predefined filters, as well as defining X‐axis scaling and interval and date format for the

Editor Histogram.

Selecting filters, defining span with start and end dates, and defining X‐ axis interval and date display

formats, temporarily override the definitions of the report. Your settings will not be saved back to the

report specification in the Safran Database.

If you require updates or amendments to the original report specification, you must edit this using the

Safran Planner SQL client or the Safran Project client as this is stored in the respective Safran database.


TheVirtualPortfolioReportingPage

How would you value the ability to run on‐demand cross project reports?

Using Safran Project you can easily group Projects into Portfolios, Programs or Multi‐projects by using

the Network group feature. Programs in terms of Frame agreements are addressed by the Sup‐project

module.

Safran Planner SQL allows you to create multi‐projects, programs and portfolios by inserting projects

into one master schedule.

Using the Virtual Portfolio Reporting Page of the Safran Web Access, you can select projects from your

list of projects and run your Bar Charts and Histograms across all these projects. This is a powerful

feature that allows project team members to ad‐hoc create cross project reports in almost any valid

combination of projects. The reports, Bar Chart and Histogram will be produced for the projects you see

in your list. That is you can select any combination of projects, to cross report from, without any need to

define a project group.

Note: You should not combine schedules with different calendar units as this will give erroneous results!

In order to select projects efficiently, you will probably need to use the Safran Project and Safran

Planner SQL project enterprise codes. These are codes that are defined at project level and are Safran

database specific. That is: they may vary from database to database, unless you have a corporate

strategy stating that they should be identical for all projects across all Safran databases.


To narrow down and select the projects or schedules you wish to report on for your total overview you

can use the fields or columns filtering features.

Report Types for virtual Portfolio Reporting are Bar charts and Histograms. We recommend that reports

that are designed or specified to show portfolio, program or multi‐project effects are used.

After selecting the appropriate projects, selecting the desired report, you press the preview report

button. The report will be displayed in a new window.


TheProgressUpdatepageCollecting progress and expended man hours for your daily , weekly or monthly status update can be a

cumbersome task. By deploying Safran Web Access for Safran Project you also deploy a tool for easy

updating of actual progress (%) and expended QTY.

You can use the Network selection to select/change the network you want to update. Note that Safran

Web Access displays the cut‐off date you are about to enter progress for. This period or status date

corresponds with the update period selected in Safran Project.

To narrow down the number of activities displayed in the grid, you can select pre defined filters and

press the Retrieve/Filter button. Filters can be defined for area of responsibility, by contractor,

subcontractor etc. Filter to be used in Safran Web Access are created in Safran Project and added to the

SWA filter group using the Safran Project Sys adm. application.

You may also add a custom filter on activity to do a selection on activity id's by applying a "contains"

condition.


You can further narrow down the number of activities displayed by applying a column filter.

Once you have completed the progress update for the activities within your area, you press the Update

progress button to update the Safran database.

After all progress is updated, your planner will run the status update function in Safran Project and

prepare new status reports. It is also from within Safran Project new cut‐off dates are initiated for

progress update.


TheAdministratorPageNormally the features of this page are hidden for most users and are not included in the general end‐

user deployment of the Safran Web Access. Access to the Admin page should only be granted to the

person(s) responsible for Safran Web Access user, project and database administration.

The Admin page contains functions for:

Database administration – adding/removing Safran databases from the system

SWA User Administration ‐ adding/removing user access

SharePoint user Administration

Site Content

The full content and how to use the Admin page is not a part of this document. If you need more

information on this subject please refer to the relevant SWA admin documentation. The information

above is included for information purposes only.

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