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Planview Customer Success Center

User Types/Permissions

Overview

To log in and interact with the PPM Pro system, you must be a licensed user in the system. There are several user types available when creating or editing a user. User types allow you to grant users different permissions to functions and information throughout PPM Pro. For example:

  • Only Portfolio Manager (Full) user types can have administrative access (by way of membership in standard Admin group)
  • Only Portfolio Manager (Full) users can own projects, be final time approvers, and be added to standard groups 
  • Only Portfolio Manager (Full), Stakeholder, and Time users can approve requests

See this pdf matrix showing core PPM Pro functionality by common license/user types.

Note: Resources who are not users can, for reference purposes, be added to project teams and can own tasks and issues in those projects. However, they cannot log in and therefore they cannot interact with the tasks and issues that they own.

Licenses vs User Types

PPM Pro licenses correspond to user types. User types describes the particular access user has to the system. Sometimes the license name and the corresponding user type have the same name, sometimes they don't. We have recently renamed several of our license types.

Contractual License Type Technical User Type Description
Portfolio Manager

Full User

Full users can have access to all functions, can be added to standard groups, and can have administrative access. When you set up a new user and choose the Full user type, the Full User license count is decreased.

Request

Request User

Request users have access to request management functions only. They can create requests, and view/edit (including deleting, and including scoring if it is configured for the request) their requests prior to submission. Post-submission they can view their request Details. Request users cannot approve requests. Request users can see others' requests if they have been assigned a permissions profile Request > View permission.

Note that Request users cannot be added to standard groups.

Stakeholder Stakeholder

Stakeholder users are generally executives or other key people who need to keep informed about work, but do not need to enter data unless it is dealing with requests. These users have the ability to view and drill down to entity details from reports and dashboards to which they have the appropriate permissions, and the ability to create, approve, and score requests. For example, Stakeholder users with permissions to view projects (and permitted sections) can drill down to a project from a dashboard link.

Stakeholder users can be configured as request gate approvers and scorers, and can view others' requests (with appropriate profile permission). Stakeholders users can also be granted explicit request approver permission with a permission profile that includes the Request > Approve/Reject/Send Back to Prior Gate permission. See Setting up Permissions for Requests.

Team Member

This is a new name for the Time license. The documentation refers to users with Team Member licenses as "Time users".

Time User

Enhanced Time User (needs to be enabled by Customer Care)

Time users can enter timesheet data, access the tasks that they own or are scheduled to, and access the issues/project logs that they own. 

Time users can edit issues they own and can edit some fields on tasks they own. Time users scheduled to a task can edit if the Time user has Project > Edit > Tasks permission. See Implied Permissions for Entity Owners for information about the task fields that a Time User can edit (with appropriate permissions).

Time users:

  • Cannot create tasks/issues
  • Count against the Team Member license count
  • Cannot be added to standard groups

Time users and requests

Time users have a variety of permissions on requests where they are the requester/creator - depending on whether the request has been submitted or not. Time users can view others' requests if given Request > View permissions via a permissions profile. Time users can approve requests provided they have approval permission - either implicitly derived or explicit. See Setting up Permissions for Requests.

"Enhanced" Time Users

The Time user type has an optional "enhanced" mode that gives Time Users additional capabilities (provided the user is granted appropriate permissions). Additional capabilities are: 

  • can be added to relevant standard groups (Internal Costs, Organization)
  • ability to create reports
  • ability to drill down from permitted reports and dashboards
  • can view SSA-enabled entities assigned to/owned by others (portfolios, projects, tasks, issues)

Please contact Customer Care if you are interested in using the enhanced Time User.

WS API WS API

If your organization is using PPM Pro web services, the WS API User will be available in Admin.

Web Services API users have access to all system information that is available via Web Services. WS API Users do not have access to the application user interface and will not be able to log into the system from the login page.

Click here for more information about Web Services.

Integration Time Integration

Integration Time users are resources who are in the PPM Pro system but are not users of the system. This user type is for organizations who wish to manage resources in PPM Pro (create timesheets, allocate to projects, for example), but those resource do not typically need user logins. An Integration Time user can be granted a user login as a request user.

NA Support For use by Planview support. 
Portfolio Manager Team - to be deprecated, do not use.

PPM Pro offers another user type called a Team user, which also uses a Portfolio Manager license. Creating Team user types will count against the Portfolio Manager license count. The Team user type has limited permissions (only can view entities whose teams they are on) and was useful before we implemented our profile-based permissions. Now, you can simply configure permissions for a Full user type that mimic what the Team user type used to do - no need for two user types any longer. PLEASE NOTE: we would like to deprecate the Team user type  - please do not choose this user type when setting up new users, but use the Full user type instead.

Please note that Team user is distinct from a Team Member license that we used to call Time.