The PlanMinder Manual - 09 Settings

This is one chapter from the manual. Access the full manual here.

Settings

The settings page has a collection of tools to configure and manage your The PlanMinder instance. Some settings are personal, but most require Administrator privileges to use.

The page is divided into these tabs

About
Users
Categories
Work Types
Hour Costs
System Settings
Registration
License Keys
Manage Data

About

The about page contains version and contact information.

The system information on the right side contain some details about your system and database. You can select and copy this text. If you ever will encounter a problem, including this information in your support request may be helpful.

Users

The Users tabs lists the users in your instance of The PlanMinder. As an administrator, you can create, edit or delete users here. This is also where all users can change their own login password.

Change password

To change your own password, click on the row of your user in the list, and then on the “Change Password” button.

If you have administrative rights, with a checkbox in the Adm column in the list, you can change password of other users too.

If a user has no UserName in the table, they can not log in and does not have a password. The delete option in the change password dialog removes the UserName from the user, preventing them from logging in at all. It will not delete the user. You can enter a new username and password if you click “Change Password” again.

Create and edit user

Clicking the “New User” button will open a create new user dialog. Here is a short description of the fields:

UserName: Login user name used to log in to the database.
Password: Password to log in to the database.
First and Last Name: Used where the full name of the user is displayed.
Initials: Two or three letters used when the full name is too long to display.
Email address: Optional information.
Cost / h: Select the cost category the user belongs to. Used when calculating costs. Cost categories are defined in the Hour Cost tab.
Color: A color used to identify the user in the user interface. Select one of the predefined colors not already in use. This is only necessary if the user is a developer.
Developer: A user that can be assigned to activities, and can report work on projects. Developers can be scheduled, and the number of developers must be matched by license keys to run the scheduler.
Manager: Can be assigned as project managers, and can create new projects.
Administrator: Can edit all settings, projects and users.
Team: User will be shown as a team symbol, indicating that it is not a specific person, but a team with potential to do more than 8 hours of work in a single day.
Vacant: User will be shown as vacant. Use this when you want to plan work for a position that is not yet filled. Edit the user and remove this flag when you know who the person will be.
Regular: Flags user as part of the regular staff. Will affect sort order on some screens, and can affect what information is shown to user.

Click OK to close dialog and create the user.

Double clicking on a row, or selecting it and clicking the “Edit User” button, will open a similar edit user dialog. The edit dialog does not contain the User Name and password entries.

You can not delete a user on this tab. Deleting a user affects a lot of other information potentially associated with the user, both currently and historically. You can delete users with a tool on the Manage Data tab. You can edit the user and remove the login and all privileges from a user that is no longer active.

Login links

At the end of each user row, there is one or possibly two buttons.

The login link creates a link with all login information, except the password, and copies it to the clipboard. You can send this link to a user, or create a shortcut on your desktop. When the link is clicked on a system with The PlanMinder installed, the login dialog will open with all login information entered, except password. You can also use the paste button in the login window to pass the information.

If The PlanMinder Online is enabled in your registration, there will also be a login link button for The PlanMinder Online. This link opens The PlanMinder Online in a web browser. You can read more about The PlanMinder Online here.

The Someone Imaginary User

There is a special user called Someone Imaginary. Why this special imaginary user exists is explained in Someone Imaginary virtual developer.

This user can not be deleted, and editing is limited to name and initials.

Work Types

The Work Types tab contains the editable two level tree structure for work types. Work types are used to categorize work, so that it can be identified regardless of what project it belongs to. Instructions are available on the right side, and you can read the Setting up The PlanMinder for Your Organization for further tips on how to create meaningful work types.

You can put an asterisk as the first character in the description of a work type to make it the default work type for new activities. If you have another activity selected when you create a new activity, the work type and group setting will be copied as default values to the create activity dialog.

You can not delete work types without specifying what it should be replaced with in existing reports, and there must always be at least one work type.

You can explore how much work of each type has been reported historically and planned for the future in the Reports / Explore tab. The Key Person Analysis function sums up how much work of each type is required to reach a milestone

Hour Costs

The Hour cost tab contains the editable list of hour cost definitions. They are associated with users, and are used to convert hours of work to monetary value. Select the currency used on the System Settings tab.

Instructions are available on the right side on the page.

System Settings

The system settings tab contains a list of instance wide system settings on the left side, and local user preferences on the right side.

Use Billable Flag

If you are not tracking if individual time report entries are billable or not, set this to false. This will hide this option, in dialogs, like on the report time page.

Currency settings

There are three settings that relates to how costs are displayed. The first is the name of the currency, such as $, € or SEK. Currency is prefix decides if the name is placed before or after the value. Currency decimals decides the number of decimals used for currency values.

Start of a typical work day

Set the time of day a typical work day starts. This is used by the scheduler to determine how much work can be scheduled on the current day.

Activity Reference Size

Several view modes in Kairos changes the area of the activity circles to represent the expected amount of total or remaining work. By default the normal size of the circle represent 40 hours of work. With this setting you can change the normal size to represent 24 or 12 hours of work instead.

Select a setting based on how large your activities normally are to make the view Kairos view mode most informative. 24 hours represents an activity that most developers would be able to complete in one calendar week, assuming 8 h work days and around 70 % base modifier. 12 h should normally be completed in two days.

Activity reference size settings example

Remember that this is a system setting affecting all users.

Enable Long Plans

Normally The PlanMinder limits the schedule to 1024 days into the future. That is nearly 3 years. If your plan exceeds this limit you will get a warning, even if it is just in one case of the Monte Carlo simulation. Changing this setting to True doubles the limit to 2048 days. The drawback is that The PlanMinder will need a little more memory, scheduling takes a little more time, and maybe you will miss getting a warning if you by mistake cause a plan to schedule things too far into the future.

Set to True if you make plans that stretches more than two years into the future.

Registration

You need to register your database to be able to get license keys, including the trial license, and to run the scheduler. There are instructions on the right side.

When registering you will be sent a confirmation email. You must click on the link in the email to complete the registration.

You will set a registration password when first registering. You must provide this password to change your registration information, and to read out the information stored with Auspicia AB. The password is also used to confirm invoiced license key purchases.

The PlanMinder uses an operating system encryption service to save the password. You can use the "Change Password" button to change the password, and to request a password reset if you have lost it. This will send a password reset link to the contact person email address and to the secondary email. For an organization it is important to enter a secondary email that is tied to a function and not to an individual, so that the password can be reset if the contact person no longer is available.

If you are inside the EU, and have a VAT number, it is important to enter it in the registration for correct billing. You can start with the VAT number, as it is checked against European VAT Information Exchange System (VIES), and retrieves the organisation name. Customers outside the EU do not need to provide a VAT number.

When you update registration information, click "Change Information" to send it to the server. If you make changes that fail to upload, the information you see may become out of sync with the stored information. The PlanMinder compares hash values with the server, and displays a warning triangle if the information is out of sync. You can click the “Read Registration” button to read back the information stored with Auspicia AB.

License Keys

The License Keys tab is where you handle license keys. On the left is a list of your stored license keys.

On the top right you can see current status.

Click “Download Keys” to check the license server for new keys and automatically download them. You can download your trial license keys this way after you have completed the registration process.

“Load Key from File” is a backup method you can use if the download does not work. You can install license keys sent to you by mail this way.

The “Buy License Keys” button opens a browser window where you can buy new license keys for your database. To ensure that correct information is available when issuing license keys, this is the only way to open the web page. The web page will automatically suggest keys based on your current need. Check that they are correct and make adjustments. Download the new keys when the purchase is complete.

Each license key file can contain keys for a maximum of 12 developers, valid for between one and three months. Multiple files are used when you have more than 12 developers.

Payments are handled by the payment processor Stripe. Credit card numbers are not handled by Auspicia AB.

Free Tier Mode

If you do not have sufficient license keys, and have seven or less developers, you have the option to enter Free Tier Mode. Tick the checkbox, and Free Tier Mode will be enabled until you do get sufficiently licensed, you exceed the seven developer limit or until you uncheck the box.

Monte Carlo simulations and associated uncertainty calculations are not available in the Free Tier Mode. Neither is The PlanMinder Online service. Automatic scheduling, and all other functionality, is still available. You can read more in this article.

In Free Tier Mode the status symbol will be changed to an F. This symbol will also be shown on the Home Page, to make users aware of the reduced functionality.

Manage Data

The Manage Data lets you manage data in you database. There are tools to delete, anonymize and export data. These tools are designed to help you comply with privacy legislation, policies and guidelines.

Instructions are available on the right side of the page.

Working with templates

On three of the setting tabs there are buttons to import and export settings. These tabs are Categories, Work Types and Hour Costs.

They allow you to export these settings to a template file, and import selected settings from a file when setting up a new database. Template files has the extension .tpmt, and can also store project templates.

See Cloning a project on how to create and import project templates.

The dialog to import settings and project templates handles all types of data that can be in a template file. When exporting settings you can select to export all three types of settings to the same file. A project template file contains one project, plus the Work Types it uses as importable settings.

Import template dialog example screenshot.

The imported settings (categories in the example above) are compared with the existing settings. A status symbol indicates if the setting is new with a plus sign, already exists with the same name and desription with an equal sign, or exists with a different description with an update symbol. Check mark those settings you wish to import or update. Then click the Import button to execute.

Activities in imported project templates each are associated with a Work Type. These work types may not exist in the database the project is imported to. In that case you will need to reassign work types by equating each work type used in the template with a work type that exists in your database. (You can also edit work types later in the Kairos view after the project has been imported.)

Import template example of work type mapping for project.

If no matching work type is found in the database the default work type is used, indicated with a red not equal symbol. The symbol will change to a green assignment arrow if you manually assign a new work type.

The work types used by the project template are included in the file. You have the option to import them on the Work Type tab before importing the project for a perfect match.