Nesting Planning Elements in Hierarchies

Planners who are also Process Managers can create a hierarchy of planning elements by adding one or more child elements to any element and then adding child elements to those children, and so on. Using hierarchies allows Planners to create complex plans by modeling elements that are components of, or in some sense subordinate to, other elements.

To add an element to a child board, you must have Add Project rights to the access group assigned to the parent element. In addition, if security lists are in use, you must have rights to the same security list values as the parent to add an element to a parent's child board. Access groups are assigned to the parent element in the element details.

If your company has purchased Accolade Portfolio Center, the children of a planning element become that element's portfolio and you can use Portfolio Optimizer for management purposes. See Portfolios and Innovation Planner for more information.

To add one or more child elements to a planning element:

1. From the Planning menu, select Planning Board.

2. Do one of the following:

• Drag new elements onto a child board - In any view, hover over the element and click to open the element's child board.

When you display an element's child board, and the name of the parent element display at the top of the board. The board you are viewing shows one level of the hierarchy, the children of the parent element identified above. You can add child elements by dragging them from the planning pad or Types list.

• Create a child relationship link - Click and hold on the parent element until your cursor changes to , then drag the line to the child element.

You can also create these links by dragging from Quick Search results.

• Move elements to the child board of an existing element - In the Canvas view, drag an element or selected group of elements until it exactly covers the parent element. See Working with Elements in the Canvas View for more information.

Drop the element or group when a blue, down arrow displays.

Notice that with this technique the elements are moved to the child board, but you remain on the board where the parent element resides. You lose this ability to move elements to another element's child board if you change to a Grid view while you are on the child board.

3. Add as many planning elements to the board as you need and enter their names, details, and metric values as needed.
4. Continue to build the hierarchy by hovering over one of the child elements, clicking and adding the next level of child elements to it.

Click in the top left corner of the page to navigate back up through the hierarchy.

Move Planning Elements Up One Level in the Hierarchy

From an element's child board, drag the element towards the button above the planning board. Drop the element when a blue, up arrow displays.

Using Auto-Linking Rules for Element Organization

You can use the Accolade auto-linking feature to define rules based on a metric selection that establishes the parent/child relationship automatically as you add planning elements. See Linking Related Projects for more information.

For example, if a planning initiative is set to a specific business unit or is classified into a specific product area, using a link rule allows for the link to be created automatically without having to move the element manually to establish the hierarchy. In addition, if something in your organization changes, you can update all the links at once by changing only the rule definition, and not opening each element to reset the link.

Notes:    Elements added to the child board inherit the security settings from the elements on their parent board. Innovation Planning and Roadmapping are optional Accolade components that you may not have access to. To implement these solutions, contact Sopheon Customer Support.