Overview

Portfolios offer an effective way to organize your projects. A project portfolio is a collection of all the projects that are currently underway or planned within an organization. It typically provides an organized view of the active, on-going, and proposed projects in terms of their scope, objectives, budget, resources, and timeline. The project portfolio also serves as a tool for decision-making, allowing executives and project managers to compare and prioritize each project based on the organization’s current priorities. Additionally, an effective project portfolio will use an efficient system for sequencing projects and ensuring that resources are allocated according to the organization's strategies and goals.

To efficiently manage portfolio Birdview PSA offers four portfolio access levels listed below from weakest to strongest:

• Portfolio participant,
• Portfolio viewer,
• Portfolio editor,
• Portfolio manager. 

For details, see below.

To make viewing portfolios possible, ‘Show portfolios’ must be enabled in User Menu | Company Settings | Advanced settings | Visibility settings. Managing portfolios is governed by Portfolio permissions which are part of a role’s global permissions. See Global permissions for additional details.

Creating portfolios

To create a portfolio:

1. Select Portfolios on User Menu > Company Settings.
2. Click + Add portfolio.
3. Name the portfolio, set its status, and give it a description.
4. Fill in the portfolio custom fields.
5. Add portfolio members.
6. Edit the members giving them appropriate permissions: Portfolio manager, Portfolio Editor, Portfolio Viewer, or Portfolio participant.
7. Click ‘Save’ to confirm your choice.

Portfolio members with the ‘Portfolio viewer’ permissions can view all projects and activities in that portfolio.

Portfolio members with the ‘Editor’ permissions can edit the portfolio's details, including the permissions of the portfolio team. NB: Be careful not to remove the 'Editor' permission from yourself as this will result in you being unable to edit the portfolio anymore.

A non-member who is the creator of a portfolio can view the portfolio with only those projects visible to which he has access to.

Portfolio members with the 'Viewer' and ‘Editor’ permissions can view, open and edit all projects and activities in that portfolio. Editing does NOT include editing project members or assignees.

Portfolio members granted the ‘Portfolio manager’ permission are given the ‘View’ and ‘Edit’ permissions automatically.

Portfolio member permissions

The table summarizes the portfolio member permissions:

If a user is assigned to a particular project or an activity – these permissions override the portfolio permissions. In other words, if user is not assigned to project, but assigned to portfolio, his permissions to portfolio projects and tasks are defined by portfolio permissions rather than "Permissions for projects where user is NOT a member of:" permissions.

A portfolio member with the Editor permission is able to modify portfolio details as well as all projects and activities in the portfolio unless he has "view only" permissions set specifically for a certain project.

A portfolio member with the Viewer permission is able to see but not modify portfolio details as well as all projects and activities belonging to this portfolio unless he or she has "edit" permissions set specifically for a certain project.