Introducing visual summaries and enhanced portfolio-level reporting!

Your AnalyticsHub (yes, that’s our new name for this area of the solution!) contains a new “dashboard” tab (available for Professional accounts) to summarise overall project performance and empower strategic, portfolio-level decision-making.

You can access the AnalyticsHub by clicking on the graph icon in the left-hand navigation menu.

In the new “Dashboard” tab of the AnalyticsHub, you will now find a visual summary of all grids in your account. The top four pods in this view show:

A visual grid (RAG) status overview of all grids.
A visual grid (RAG) status based trend analysis (showing snapshots of your account’s grid status summary for the preceding 12 weeks). These snapshots are taken every Monday morning – just after midnight – for display against this week commencing (Monday) date.
A visual summary of all grids assigned to you (showing: open grids, overdue grids, grids due to complete this week and flagged grids).
A visual summary of all grids you have access to (showing: open grids, overdue grids, grids due to complete this week and flagged grids).

Clicking on the RAG status visual overview or the circled numbers takes you to the Grids overview table – filtered by the relevant logic.

By example, clicking on the “FLAGGED” grids circle within the “My Grids | Overview” pod will open the Grid overview table view filtered by flagged grids assigned to you.

This new “Dashboard” tab of the AnalyticsHub also displays a visual summary of all the elements and tasks in your account. The relevant dashboard pods show:

My Elements | Overview. A visual summary of all elements assigned to you (showing: open elements, overdue elements, elements due to complete this week and flagged elements).
My Elements | Forward Look. A visual summary of the elements assigned to you that are due to complete each week in a forward six-week view (i.e. showing the number of elements with “due dates” falling within the respective weeks). The displayed date is the week commencing date (Monday).
All Elements | Overview. A visual summary of all elements you have access to (showing: open elements, overdue elements, elements due to complete this week and flagged elements).
All Elements | Forward Look. A visual summary of all elements you have access to that are due to complete each week in a forward six-week view (i.e. showing the number of elements with “due dates” falling within the respective weeks). The displayed date is the week commencing date (Monday).
My Tasks | Overview. A visual summary of all tasks assigned to you (showing: open tasks, overdue tasks, tasks due to complete this week and flagged tasks).
My Tasks | Forward Look. A visual summary of the tasks assigned to you that are due to complete each week in a forward six-week view (i.e. showing the number of tasks with “due dates” falling within the respective weeks). The displayed date is the week commencing date (Monday).
All Tasks | Overview. A visual summary of all tasks within the grids that you have access to (showing: open tasks, overdue tasks, tasks due to complete this week and flagged tasks).
All Tasks | Forward Look. A visual summary of all tasks within the grids that you have access to that are due to complete each week in a forward six-week view (i.e. showing the number of tasks with “due dates” falling within the respective weeks). The displayed date is the week commencing date (Monday).

Clicking on the circled numbers takes you to the relevant overview table – filtered by the relevant logic.

By example, clicking on the “FLAGGED” task circle within the “My Tasks | Overview” pod will open the Tasks overview table view filtered by flagged tasks assigned to you.

It should be noted that with this release, we have changed the logic on the overview table views (grids, elements, tasks). These now all default to grids/elements/tasks owned by you in the first instance; you can change this setting via the “Assigned to” filter.

This new visual dashboard view can be sent to print (via the print action button in the top right corner).

This is another big step forward within our management information roadmap theme but please note there is a lot more to come in this regard; for example, we plan for such dashboard views to be customisable in future releases (via bespoke dashboard widgets). If you have any requests or ideas in this regard, please join the conversation in our community site (see below).

The Method Grid community platform

The Method Grid Community platform is available to all users of Method Grid. A place for you to feedback, ask questions, make suggestions for future features and to share all best-practice resources and tips with fellow users. Just ask a question or start a discussion to get started.

You can login to the community platform via the Help menu within the application – or – directly via community.methodgrid.com/

Your community login credentials are the same as those to your main Method Grid account (i.e. this works with single sign on).

If you are already logged into Method Grid, you will automatically login to the community platform; else, you access via the main Method Grid login page.

Next up for our fast-moving development team?

Our Microsoft Teams App integration is still in the hands of the Microsoft accreditation team. We think the end is finally in sight, so stay tuned for an announcement on that soon.

The next sprint we will be working on is a customisable “Save to PDF” (or print if you prefer) feature for grids. You will be able to decide which grid features you want to display and then output as a PDF file via your OS print capability. The idea for this feature comes from the various requests from our community, requiring the need for a “clean” grid view that can be placed into presentations to prospect clients (as an example).

Please continue to keep the feedback and new feature ideas coming (there is nothing we like more).

Is there a feature you would love to see us add to our development stack? If so, please let us know in the comments below or email [email protected]

About the Author

Tom Knights is a co-founder of Method Grid (a platform on which to design, build and share your methodologies and procedures). Tom is a graphic designer and has always had a passion for art and design. He tries to use design to engage, inspire and educate across all forms of media.

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn