Portfolio

Portfolio

This page reflects the content of Oracle’s Project Portfolio with Spend report. This means that MARS contains projects which have an Oracle type of 'Research' and an Oracle status of 'Approved', 'At Risk', 'Dormant' or 'Pending Close'. External collaborator elements will not appear in MARS as they are excluded from the report.

 

  1. Click on the Portfolio tab to display a list of projects.  
picture displaying the portfolio tab on main screen

 

  1. The list may be sorted by Project Name, Funder, Oracle Ref or Announced end date by clicking on the two arrows to the right of the required item.
picture displaying the four filter tabs able to select (Project name, Funder, Oracle Ref, Announced end date) after selecting Portfolio from the main screen.

 

Project Name: A short name is displayed where possible, otherwise a trimmed version of the long name is shown. Note that long names are received from Oracle. If it has been possible to match it with a project in X5, the X5 short name is used instead.

Project Budget: As received from Oracle (sum of column X in the Project Portfolio with Spend report for the project)

display of a search box to find a n individual project

Note: You can use the Search box to find a project rather than scrolling down the portfolio list.

 

 

 

Individual project
  1. From the Portfolio page, click on a project to display its details or use the search box to retrieve it.
  2. Click on the expansion arrow to the right of the screen to expand the Project Information box.
picture of the individual project info screen collasped not displaying any information except the project name.

 

The project detail is displayed:

picture of the individual project information expanded displaying it's details

 

The information displayed in this screen is as follows:

Principal Investigator Person listed as Project Manager by Oracle
Department Investigators People listed as Top Task Managers in Oracle
Funder Imported from X5
Scheme Imported from X5
Owning Department Lead department in a collaboration
Project Dates Start date and announced end date from Oracle. Duration is calculated by MARS.
X5 references One or more X5 costing references which have been associated with the Oracle project number. Imported from X5.
GoPro references One or more GoPro reference which appear on X5 costings associated with the Oracle project number. Imported from X5.
Funder reference Imported from X5.
Lead department reference Department’s own reference. In a collaboration, only the reference of the lead department is taken. Imported from X5.

 

  1. Click the expansion arrow again to collapse the Project Information box.
Viewing the finance graphs

The finance graphs can be viewed by Top Task. You will see all Top Tasks set up in Oracle for your department. In addition, if you are the lead department in a collaboration, you will also see Top Tasks for your collaborating departments. If you are a collaborating department and another department is leading, you will only see the Top Tasks for your own department.

picture of the tasks finance graph pick list with All Top Tasks selected

Select the Top Task option from the pick list to refresh the finance graphs.

 

display of the All Top Tasks selected from the Tasks pick list.

 

The Actual graph

This is the default finance graph. It shows two columns for each directly incurred resource/expenditure category: Budget (taken from Project Portfolio and Spend report, column X) and Spend (taken from Project Portfolio with Spend report, columns Y Costs and Z Commitments). The total of all directly incurred expenditure categories is shown in a separate graph labelled ‘DI Total’. This can be toggled with the Overheads graph. Hovering over any item on the Actual graph shows the total budget, actual spend, committed spend and remaining budget for that item (from Project Portfolio and Spend report, columns X, Y, Z and AB). 

Normally for Spend only one total is shown (Costs + Commitments), but where one is positive and the other negative, both are shown. 

The run rate graph

This graph shows the same data as the Actual graph but presented in a different way. The horizontal dotted line indicates today’s date and is calculated by MARS as the percentage of time from the project start to the announced end date. Each expenditure category is indicated by one bar, with the proportion of spend against available budget indicated as a percentage calculated by MARS. Hovering over any item shows the percentage spent so far, the budget (Project Portfolio with Spend report, column X) and Spend (Project Portfolio with Spend report, columns Y Costs and Z Commitments). Overheads can also be displayed as a run rate. 

Normally for Spend only one total is shown (Costs + Commitments), but where one is positive and the other negative, both are shown. 

Overheads

This is a total of all lines in the Oracle Project Portfolio with Spend report where the Resource (Project Portfolio with Spend report, column W) begins with ‘FEC’ or contains the word ‘Overheads’. 

Project staff

Information about staff paid directly from the project this month is imported monthly from the CoreHR. The project staff information shown is applicable to the current month only.

Date of import – date of the last import from CoreHR.

Names and derived FTE of staff paid directly from the project are imported from CoreHR Condensed Payroll Costing report, columns F, G and O, where the Oracle project number matches the cost centre given in column V. Note that you will only see HR project staff costed to your own department, even if you are the lead department. This differs from financial data, where lead departments can see the financial data of collaborating partner departments.

Key dates, links and notes

Dates, URL links (including to a document on SharePoint) and free text notes can be added to a project. They are not overwritten when other project data is refreshed from Oracle, X5 and CoreHR.