ResourceFirst Navigation

Overview

This article provides an overview of navigation, including login, understanding menus and icons, setting filters, and more.

Navigating ResourceFirst

Login

When you first get to ResourceFirst from a browser, you will be presented with a login dialog.  Enter your user name and password, provided to you by your ResourceFirst administrator, and click the Login button to login.

If your username or password is incorrect you will be presented with the failed login message.

Logout

Click your name in upper right, and select Logout from the drop down menu.

The next time you open ResourceFirst, you will need to enter your user name and password again.

Changing Password

Step 1: To change your password (if your company is not integrated with Active Directory), click on your name in upper right, and then select Profile from the drop down menu.

Step 2: Your profile page will appear.

Step 3: Click on Reset Password and a dialog box will appear.

Step 4: Enter the old and new passwords and click Change Password.

Interface & Navigation

Once your login is confirmed you will see the default ResourceFirst home page.  On a horizontal colored bar called the Navigation Bar, you’ll notice a set of icons on the upper left, and a set of icons on the upper right.

Navigation Bar: Upper Left Icons – Main System Areas

The main system icons are in the upper left of the Navigation Bar:

These icons represent the following Areas:

• Home (Team member)
• Resources
• Projects
• Financials
• PMO/Portfolio
• Reporting (Qlik)
• Actuals (Timesheets and Timesheet Management)
• Administration

Hovering over any of the icons presents a dropdown menu (pictured below for the Resources area), where you can go directly to various pages in the system:

Your user rights determine the Areas you see in this list. For example, if you do not have any financial rights you will not see the Financial area in the list.

Note: If you are using a version of ResourceFirst prior to 2020, the main menu will look like this:

• Home (Team member)
• Resources
• Projects
• PMO
• Financials
• Reporting (Qlik)
• Timesheet Actuals
• Administration

Navigation Bar: Upper Right Icons – Special Functions

There is also a set of icons on the upper right of the Navigation Bar:

• The   icon (Data Settings) allows you to set options for calculation and display of allocation and shortfall. See Data Settings – Allocation Options for more.
• The  icon allows you to save the current page as your home screen. It also shows you the last 10 pages you’ve visited, so you can go back and forth among recently used pages.
• The  icon brings up help documentation in the PDWare Success Center, as well as any policies you’ve defined.
• The  icon is where you set the data load parameters for your current session (more on this below)
• The  icon allows you to manage and load Scenarios.
• The  icon is where you’ll find system notifications.

Your User Name appears to the right of these controls, where you can update your profile, delegate rights, and logout. See Personal Profile Options for more.

(Note: If you’re using a version prior to ResourceFirst Release 8 (2020), the icons lookdifferent, but perform the same function, with the exception of “Data Settings” which doesn’t exist prior to Release 8)

Opening Multiple ResourceFirst Pages at Once

Often, it is necessary to go back and forth between pages in ResourceFirst, such as when comparing data, or in a Portfolio Review meeting when comparing multiple projects or multiple resource workloads.

There are two ways of moving back and forth between pages or keeping multiple pages open (otherwise known as “breadcrumbs”).

The Favorites Method: As mentioned above, the  icon in the upper right of the navigation bar allows you to save the current page as your home screen. It also shows you the last 10 pages you’ve visited, so you can go back and forth among recently used pages.

The Browser Tabs Method: You can right-click on the browser tab while on any ResourceFirst page, and select Duplicate. A new browser tab will open with the current page open. In this way, you could open browser tabs for as many projects or pages as you wish.

The ResourceFirst Toolbar

Each page in ResourceFirst has its own toolbar below the main Navigation Bar.

The screenshot below shows the Project Data page.

Below the title of the page, you can see the horizontal toolbar. The toolbar buttons on the left vary depending on the page, and usually consist of function-related options, such as add, delete, copy, and so on.

In this example, the buttons (left to right) are for:

• Adding projects
• Deleting projects
• Copying Projects
• Creating Baselines and Scenarios for Projects

The buttons to the right are mostly standard and usually feature options to adjust filters, select your view, create your own view, save your data, and export or import data.

In this example, the functions left to right are:

• Filter Options
• View Selector
• Edit Views (for creating your own custom view)
• Save Data
• Import
• Export

Entering Data in ResourceFirst

The grid-like display below the toolbar is called a View. The Assignments view below features both attribute (field) and period data cells (time-period based data, such as forecasts by month or quarter). The granularity of time-period data depends on the date settings in your Data Load dialog.

IMPORTANT:  After changing any data on this page, whether attributes or period cells, you must click the Save icon to save your data.

There are some Administration pages where Save occurs when the value is changed on screen. There is no Save icon on these pages.

See Managing and Editing Views for more on using views.

Navigation Prior to Release 8

On versions prior to Release 8 (2020), clicking each Function Area icon will open a separate tab for that area. In the diagram below, both the Home screen and the Analytics tab are open, with the Home tab currently selected.  Likewise, clicking on an individual project name hyperlink on any list page that lists projects will open up a tab for that project.

Most of the icons produce a set of sub-tabs related to that function. For example, below are several selected icons and their related sub-tabs (these are fully explained in the respective sections on this site for each center).

Notice the top tier of the screen represents the main Functional Area icons, then there are the tabs for each icon or function chosen. Then there’s a set of sub-tabs for each main page.

• Team Member (initial default Home page)

• In addition, as noted in the beginning of this article, there are icons for PMO and Financials. Notice they don’t appear in the screenshots above. That’s because the user wasn’t authorized to those functions.