Portfolio Planning Workflow Template

This introduction article will help system administrators to create steps for project request workflows using the TDAdmin. The user must have administrator-level access for TDAdmin.

Overview

A portfolio planning workflow template is used to create workflow steps for use in project request workflows. All steps created in the template will be available for use in any project request workflow, and can be activated/deactivated as required.

Common workflow steps are:

• Initial review
• Requirements gathering
• Scope creation
• Resource estimates
• Scoring
• Steering committee or leadership review
• Scheduling
• Converting the project request to a project

Where to Find This

This feature appears in the Portfolio Planning area in TDAdmin.

Navigate to the Workflow Template as follows:

• TDAdmin > Portfolio Planning > Workflow Template

Using the Portfolio Planning Workflow Template

Reviewing and Modifying the Portfolio Planning Workflow Template

The Portfolio Planning Workflow Template provides the foundation from which to create workflows. All the steps a project request may go through should be included as part of this template. When each Portfolio Planning workflow is set up, it will use one or more of these steps from the template to appropriately route requests of different types.

Changes made to the template will not impact existing workflows, only newly created ones.

To view the steps that are currently on the workflow template, navigate to TDAdmin > Portfolio Planning > Workflow Template.

To add a new step to the workflow template:

1. Click the +New Step button on the Portfolio Planning Workflow Template page.
2. Enter a Name and (optionally) a Description.
3. Click Save.
4. Reorder the template steps by dragging and dropping them in the appropriate order.

Once you create the workflow, the templated steps will be applied. At that point, the steps inside the workflow that you create cannot have their order changed, even if you change the order of the workflow template steps. 

Deleting a Portfolio Planning Workflow Template Step

Workflow steps may sometimes go unused and should be removed from the system. Deleting a portfolio planning template step will not remove it from existing Portfolio Planning workflows, it will only affect new workflows.

To delete a workflow step from the template:

1. In TDAdmin, navigate to Portfolio Planning > Workflows > Workflow Template.
2. Click the Delete link beneath the template step.
3. Click the OK button in the confirmation dialog.

Creating a Portfolio Planning Workflow

When a workflow is created, each template step is copied over from the template with all settings disabled. Only Portfolio Planning workflow steps which are specified on the workflow template can be used. After a workflow is created the steps can be configured.

When a new workflow is created, every template step is disabled. Each step can be activated as needed, but they do not all need to be activated for a workflow to be activated. The only requirement for activating a workflow is to specify a Ready for Reporting step.

To create a new workflow:

1. In TDAdmin, navigate to Portfolio Planning > Workflows.  
2. Click the +New button.
3. On the Workflow Detail page, click the Steps tab.
4. [enter steps].

For more details about configuring a project request workflow and its steps, see the Configuring Portfolio Planning Workflows article.