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Planview Customer Success Center

Requests Overview for Administrators

Using SSA, you can set up various request forms (called Details) on behalf of your organization's project management needs, so that project managers and other authorized users can quickly create a request and move it through the approval process (if one exists), and optionally create one or more PPM Pro entities. The PPM Pro request model includes the ability to use gates, which are milestones along the lifecycle of a request where you can require additional information and approval. Requests can be gated or gateless, the former using designated approvers to automatically move a request through defined workflow, the latter manually using the simple Status field to move a request to a new status.

In addition to setting up request Details that users can view on a grid or individually in a modal window, you can also set up "cards" to represent requests in the card/kanban view. This view provides end users with a visual representation of the request workflow. Cards typically contain a subset of fields that are on their corresponding Details modal. 

Use categories and the ability to configure different Details/Cards/Gates for each category to support a variety of request types.

As with other entities, such as projects and tasks, you will:

  • Use a combination of standard (out-of-the-box) fields as well as create custom fields for use on your Details. You create custom fields (referred to as "user-defined fields", or UDFs), and view standard fields on the Available Fields page.
  • Create at least one category (an initial category is supplied out-of-the-box) on the Categories page. 
  • Create gates (if you're planning to use them) per category
  • Design the Details layout(s) on the Details pages. You add fields to the Details layout using a combination of standard and user-defined fields; you can create different layouts for different categories.
  • Configure gate fields, including mapping request fields to associated entities (if you plan to create entities from requests, or even update existing entities with request data)
  • Configure gate approvers
  • Configure the columns to display in the request grid using the Grid Columns page.
  • Determine which fields are searchable from the global search facility using the Searchable Fields page.
  • Configure permissions.

Associations and Requests

You can configure request categories to include an Associations tab from where you can create project, issue, and task associations. Note that if you configure requests to support associations with other entities, then the other entities must also be configured to support request associations (for example, a project category must include request associations, and a task category must include request associations, and so on). Note that when creating associations, the user must have at leave View permission on the target entity, and Edit permission on the request. The opposite applies when creating the association from another entity with the request as the target.

Request categories that include an entity Associations tab/section allow a user to create new or add existing entities to the request. Users can create a new entity from within a request as long as they have permission to create that entity type (and the target entity is configured to support request associations). During the entity creation process, users can copy data from the request into the new entity based on the mapped fields. At any time after an associated entity has been added, users can also copy data from the request into mapped entity fields, provided they have edit permission on that associated entity. See Mapping Request Fields to Fields in Associated Entities.

There is no limit on the number of associated entities. For example, a user can associate more than one project to a request, or associate more than one request to the same project. As long as users have view or edit permissions on an associated entity, they can also open it from within the request. This allows users a quick way to see or update the entity, such as provide initial role demand on a project associated to the request.

Permissions

You grant permissions to view, edit, or delete requests globally using permission profiles - that is, you can grant users/groups/units permission to view/edit/delete all requests. Requesters, request creators, and approvers have implicit permissions (see Requester/Creator/Approver Permissions. You can grant additional permissions to these users, if necessary, using profiles. Additionally, you can grant any user permission to approve (referred to as a "wildcard" approver), for example if your organization has a request process manager who keeps the requests moving and covers for any approvers who are out of pocket, but is not configured as an approver on any request. See Setting Up Permissions for Requests for more information.

Scoring

You can associate a scoring profile with a request category. If you want the request category to support scoring, make sure the check the Scoring section in the New Request Category dialog. A scoring profile must be specified for the category, so it's a good idea to create the profile before you configure the category, though you can always edit the category to late add the profile. If there is no profile associated with the category, the Scoring tab will not appear on the request. See Creating Categories for Requests.