Setting up your portfolio

To start working in Portfoleon you will need a portfolio. Portfolio is where you will store your data items, such as projects, products, milestones.

Go to the navigation pane, press New, and then Portfolio.

In each portfolio you can define a different subject domain and terminology by creating item types, fields, and forms.

Watch a video or scroll past the video to read on!

Portfoleon item types

Item types are different kinds of things that you can create in Portfoleon. For example, you can define Projects, Milestones, or Strategic Goals.

Each item type can be a Range, Point, or a Card.

  • Ranges are items, which take a certain period in time. For example, you can define Projects as ranges. If you do, then for each Project you could define a start and end date, assign resources, define phases, and show them on timelines.
  • Points are items, which occur on a certain day. For example, Milestones can be points. They can be shown as flags on timelines.
  • Cards are items, which do not have a time component. For example, Strategic Goals can be cards. You cannot show cards on timelines, but you can show them on spreadsheets or kanban boards.

How to define item types

To define an item type you must have the Owner access to your portfolio.

Go to the navigation pane, and press Item types in your portfolio section:

In the item types editor you can define:

Attribute
 Description
Item type name How the items of this type are called. For example, your can have a Project, an Epic, a Milestone, an Event, or a Campaign. Use a singular form here, without an article.
Class Whether these items are Ranges, Points, or Cards. Please see above what it means.
Form setting For each item type you can define an editing form. For example, for a Project you can show the Project Leader field, for a Marketing campaign you can show the Target market field, while for both of them you can show the Total budget field.

Custom fields

Custom fields define your data structure. You can define all kinds of fields: text, numbers, dates, lists, multi-select lists (tags), and many more. You can pivot and color-code your items with custom fields, and display fields on cards.

How to define custom fields

Go to the navigation pane, and press Fields in your portfolio section:

In the fields editor you can define:

Attribute
 Description
Field name This is a system name of the field. It can be used for some advanced automation scenarios. It has to be unique for every field in the portfolio, deleted fields also count. This field name is never shown on the screen.
Field caption This is the display name of your field. It is also a good idea it’s unique, but it does not have to be. The field caption is shown everywhere - in column titles, pivot tables, display forms, and more.
Data type What kind of data is going to be stored in this field. Please check the full data type reference.
List values With List and Tag data types you can define your own data lists. For example, for a Region field you can define NAM, EMEA, and APAC as list values. For every field that can have List values Portfoleon will show a button to edit the list values.

Data types

Every custom field you define can be of one of the following data types.

Data type What it does
Text A plain text field, good for a short line of text, for example Project Theme. If you want to input longer text with font styles and bullet lists, use Rich Text instead.
Number Integers and fractions. Portfoleon can calculate sums and averages for number fields. For example, you can use a number field for Estimated Cost. You can color-code cards based on a Number field.
Date Dates, without time component.
List A dropdown field where you can pick one value out of a fixed list. You can pivot and color-code cards based on list fields.
Tags A multi-select dropdown. You can pivot based on Tags.
Rich text An extended text field, good for several lines of formatted text. For example, a User Story Description can be a rich text field.
User Allows you to pick a Portfoleon user, who has an account in your Organization.
Resource, Role, Team, Location A dropdown field where you can pick one of your Resource management entities.