ResourceFirst User Interface
This article provides an overview of navigation, including login, understanding menus and icons, setting data parameters and filters, and more.
Login
Your ResourceFist administrator will provide you with the url for your ResourceFirst environment. Enter your username and password and click the Login button to login.
If your username or password is incorrect you will see this error message.
Note: If you use SSO (Single Sign-on) and want to bypass SSO to get a login screen, you can add /login to the URL for your environment. For example, https://pdwxxx.pdware.com/login (where pdwxxx represents your environment).
Logout
Click your name in upper right corner of the ResourceFirst window and select Logout from the drop-down menu.
The next time you open ResourceFirst you will need to enter your username and password again (unless you’ve saved it in your browser).
Changing Password
* Note: If your company is integrated with Active Directory, you may need to change your password elsewhere instead. See your ResourceFirst administrator for guidance.
Step 1: To change your password, click on your name in upper right, and select Profile from the drop-down menu.
Your profile page is displayed.
ill appear.
Step 2: Click on Reset Password and a dialog box will appear.
Step 3: Enter the old and new passwords and click the Reset Password button.
Once your login is confirmed you will see the page that was active when you last exited the application OR the page you explicitly set as your startup landing page (see Set Start Page below in User Settings).
Resource First User Interface
The default ResourceFirst page upon first login is the Home page. The Home page is a Dashboard type page (see article Dashboards and Widgets for more on Dashboards).
On all subsequent logins, the landing page is either the active page at last logout OR the page explicitly set as the landing page.
The primary User Interface (UI) elements are consistent on all pages. The terminology of the primary UI elements in ResourceFirst is as follows:
- Main Menu – The Main Menu takes you to areas that contain pages on which you access the data loaded from the database.
- User Session Settings – These settings are for your session as a user and are remembered after you log out.
- Page Menu – Most areas in ResourceFirst have multiple pages to select from.
- Page Toolbar – Icons on the left and right toolbar are page-specific and can vary from page to page.
- View/Filter Control Bar – This sits above any grid-like view page and can be toggled on or off.
Let’s take a closer look at these elements.
Main Menu
The ResourceFirst Main Menu consists of the following menu icons, which are used to access the main areas of ResourceFirst. The user’s access permissions (rights) determine which icons are visible.
Home – Displays the user Home page which allows for profile updates and shows the user’s current assigned work and events (e.g., issues, risks, etc.).
Projects – Displays the Project page group which contains the following pages: Dashboard, Data Demand, Events, and Initiation.
Resources – Displays the Resources page group which contains the following pages: Dashboard. Data, Skill Matrix, Capacity, and Utilization.
Assets – Displays the Assets group which contains the following pages: Data, Capacity, Utilization.
Teams – Displays the Teams group which contains the following pages: Teams (Detail: Team Members, Team Assignments).
Assignments – Displays the Assignments page group, which contains the following pages: Labor, Financial, Labor Targets, and Financial Targets.
Analysis – Displays the Analysis page group, which contains the following pages: Waterline, KPIs, Ranking, Roadmap, Swimlanes, and three Pivot Pages: Project, Resource, and Financial.
Reports – Takes you to the built-in Qlik reporting tool where you can view standard and custom-designed reports.
QlikSense – Activates the embedded QlikSense reporting tool.
Time – Depending on your role, offers Time Entry, Timesheet Management, and Compliance Reporting functions.
Administration – For System Administrators only, contains many pages and areas used in configuring and managing a ResourceFirst environment.
User Session Settings
The User Session Settings icon group is in the upper right of the ResourceFirst window. It is always present.
All ResourceFirst icons have tooltips (visible when hovering over the icon) to indicate their use. The User Session Settings icons are described below:
The User Options icon provides options for calculation and display of resource/skill supply and demand allocation and shortfall. See User Options for more.
The Help icon provides three menu options: Help, Filter Keys, and Privacy Policy to navigate to the ResourceFirst Knowledge Base and Privacy Policy Notice pages.
The Set Start Page icon sets the current page as your default home screen.
The History icon shows the last 10 pages you’ve visited, so you can go back and forth among recently used pages.
The Scenarios icon opens the scenario dialog with which you can load, manage, and show/hide Scenarios.
The Data Load Parameters icon opens the Data Load Parameters dialog where you define the data to be loaded from the database for your current session. See the article Setting Data Load Parameters for more detail on this feature.
Your username appears to the right of these controls. This is an action button that can access your profile, delegate rights, and logout. See Personal Profile Options for more.
Page Menu
Areas in ResourceFirst are presented in the form of pages. For instance, if you select the Projects area (the briefcase icon on the Main Menu), you will see a default page (either the Project Dashboard or the last page you were on in that area). Page menus for all the pages in the Project Area are displayed at the top left of the window:
Selecting a page on the Page Menu takes you to that page; in this case, the Data page was selected and appears below:
Opening Multiple ResourceFirst Pages at Once
You may wish 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:
The History Method: As mentioned above, the History icon in User Settings shows you the 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, but you can change the display to any other ResourceFirst page you wish. In this way, you could open browser tabs for as many projects or pages as needed.
Page Toolbar
Each page in ResourceFirst has its own Page Toolbar with various toolbar controls. Generally, there are controls (icons) at the left and the right of the toolbar. The usage is consistent throughout ResourceFirst.
For example, the Project Data page above has the following toolbar controls at the left of the Page Toolbar:
The icons at the right of the Page Toolbar include a Search control and a Save icon.
Grid Mode vs. Detail Mode
The illustration below highlights the key components of Detail Mode.
- Detail Mode icon – Activates Detail mode on Project Data and Resource Data Area pages.
- Object Detail Selection Pane – Displays all visible grid mode objects in grid mode order.
Left click displays the detail page space for the selected project. - Object Detail Display Space – Detail pages for the selected project are displayed in this area.
- Detail Page Bar – There is an icon for each page selected for display in the Project Detail Pages dialog.
On Project>Data in detail mode there is an ellipsis (. . . ) icon which activates the Project Detail Pages dialog. In the dialog, you can turn display of detail pages on and off.
The Resource Detail Page Menu Bar is similar, but with fewer icons and no ellipsis. - Detail Page Toolbar – The feature/function icon toolbar for the current Detail page.
This is equivalent to the Page Toolbar in Grid Mode. - Detail Page View/Filter Control Bar – The view/filter control bar for the current Detail page.
This is equivalent to the View/Filter Control Bar in Grid Mode.
Hide/Show (Collapse/Expand) Detail Selection Pane
The Detail mode project or resource list in the left pane can be hidden to provide a full window view of any of the detail pages.
Detail page collapsed, project list showing:
Detail page expanded, project list hidden:
Width of project list can be adjusted:
Select the border between the list and the page, and drag the double arrow symbol.
Data Display in ResourceFirst
Data in ResourceFirst is primarily displayed in spreadsheet-like grids. Named Views specify the content and layout of grid type pages.
System administrators create system views for all users; users can create personal views for themselves.
The Assignments>Labor page is shown below displaying the Forecast Expanded Copy view.
This page features both attribute (field) and period data cells (time-period based data, such as forecasts or actuals by week, month, quarter, half-year, or year). The granularity of time-period data depends on the date settings in your Data Load Parameters dialog.
Period data fields and data value types are NOT specified in views; they are inherent in specific pages.
See User Defined Views for more on using views.
Labor Assignments Page
Forms
Some pages display Forms. The screenshot below displays a form on the project Detail mode Forms page.
Forms are created by system administrators only. See the article Administering Forms for more detail
