GENERAL QUESTIONS

• What is CPM?
  CPM is an online collaboration and management platform to support organizations in achieving their business objectives. EGI CPM has evolved into a global community with engineering, healthcare and program management teams from all around the world. Users apply different tools in CPM to collaboratively manage distributive programs and projects, track issues, and carry meetings and online discussions. Company groups work as a team to define your own best practice and culture in innovating products and services for your customers.
  
  CPM uses a modeling technology to capture and refine the way managers and staff are working together in solving issues and accomplishing project objectives. It consists of configurable tool-sets to support project coordination, issue and action-item tracking, decision and history recording, document management and meeting facilitation. It observes the existing methodologies the group uses in managing their teamworks, such as Email threads, shared network drives, spreadsheet files, conference calls, online meetings and other desktop and mobile applications, and leverage them with newer and more effective communication paradigms such as blogging and forum discussions, chats, dynamic role-based matrix organizations, online project workflow processes, knowledge-based intelligent systems and team formation tools. The goal of CPM is to create an environment that enables an innovative culture for effective team collaboration at your finger tips.
  
  
• How do I get a user account on CPM?
  If you are a EGI CPM customer company personnel, you may go to the CPM Login Page and click Register New User to register yourself. Once your request is processed, CPM will notify you with an email.
  
  You may also be invited by other members CPM to join a Project. In this case, CPM will automatically send you a notification message with a username and password. You can logon to CPM by clicking this link: EGI CPM and using your username and password.
  
  You may also request for adding your entire group or project team into CPM. Please contact the CPM Team for more information.
  
  
• What do I need to have in order to use EGI CPM?
  CPM is a Cloud-based service; all you need is an access to the Internet and World Wide Web in order to use EGI CPM. As EGI CPM is a private communication network and knowledgebase, you would need to establish a user account on CPM to gain access. You must also have a valid email address as all of the alert notification and CPM communications are done through email. If you desire to access EGI CPM outside of a EGI facility, you would also need to have a VPN access. Please contact the CPM Team if you need more information.

• What is a Project in CPM?
  A project is a shared space, a common repository for a team to collaborate in CPM. A project has a folder tree which can be accessed online by all team members. A project has a set of objectives and is composed of a number of tasks and sub-tasks arranged in a hierachy (like an inversed tree). Each task is a piece of work that has an expected completion date (deadline) and is owned by a person (task owner). Each task goes through a life cycle of New, Open and Completed or Canceled. A task in its life time may also be On-hold or Late. Likewise, the project which owns all its tasks is going through a life cycle of New, Open, Completed or Canceled and Closed. A completed project will still remain in the database for members to access, while a closed project will eventually be archived (stored) away.
  
  Team members work collaboratively on projects. In the life-time of a project, users post progress, ideas, problems, solutions, files and other information to different tasks or to the overall project. They also track their decisions, action items and issues for the project as a means to strive towards common project objectives. CPM reminds people of critical deadlines or events by automatically sending out alert notification to different team members.
  
  Authorized users may create projects within the Town. By default the creator of the project is the Project Coordinator. S/he may assign another member to coordinate the project and regulate the blog postings on the project and tasks. A Project Coordinator may transfer his/her responsibility to other project team members by updating the Project Profile.
  
  If you are a project leader and would like to create a project in CPM, please contact the CPM Team.
  
  
• What is Project Blog in CPM?
  One key success factor of project coordination is in timely communication and transparency. For in-time coordination, team members need to be informed about status and issues of different parts of the project. Within the project tree, users may post blogs on the project folders (or called task folders). Alert messages will be sent flexibly to users based on what tasks they are "watching" actively. Author of the blog may also push notification email to all members in the project.
  
  In addition, multiple team members may post status report as a blog to their corresponding task folder, and a roll-up report by combining these task reports may be automatically composed in another folder for Executive Summary or as a total report of the project. This greatly reduced the effort of a team leader in generating periodic report for management.
  
  See Blogging section for more information on the topic.
  
  
• What kind of projects can I work on in CPM?
  You may work on any kind of projects in CPM, either by yourself or coordinating a joint effort with a team of people. At this point, EGI CPM is focused on product development projects. As a result, we provide you with a number of project templates which serves as initial guidelines to give you a head start in creating and managing projects. Project templates are categorized based on different industries and functions. Within each category there is a number of sample templates. Users are encouraged to share their refined project plans as standard templates by submitting them to the CPM Team.
  
  
• How do I form a Project Team?
  When you create a project, you become the Project Coordinator who can perform task management such as defining a project team, assigning task owners, setting timeline for the project, maintaining a file repository for the project and others. To create a project team for a project, update the Project Profile by selecting people into the project team. You may then assign team members to take on different tasks. A task owner may also transfer his task ownership to other people in the team.
  
  
• Can I update a project plan after it is created?
  A project may be frequently modified during its life time. CPM provides a graphical user interface for the Project Coordinator and the team to easily update the project plan. You may insert, delete or modify any tasks of the project at any time. CPM keeps the last 2 versions of the project plan in the database for your reference.
  
  When a team member update the project plan, CPM will request for the project coordinator to review and approve the changes. Only upon approval by the coordinator will the new project plan be published and replace the old version.
  
  
• Can other people see my project?
  The project coordinator may specify whether a project is a private, public or public read-only project. A private project will only been seen by the project team. If you are the only person on the project team, then you are the only person who will see the project. A public project will be seen by the whole Town. All the Town People may review and post blogs of in the project. Finally, public read-only project allows all Town people to view the posted blogs but only the project team people may write blogs.
  
  
• Will CPM remind me when my project/task deadline is up?
  Yes, although by default CPM will not send remind notification to you about task deadlines. To activate the automatic alert notification agent on your task, simply click on the task name on the project plan page and specify when you would like to receive a reminder notification on that task.
  
  
• Can I attach files to a project and/or its tasks?
  You may have file attachment on a project as well as its tasks. People who has access to the project may view or download the files.

ABOUT WORKTRAY AND TO-DO

• What is a Worktray in CPM?
  Worktray in CPM contains the current active work of a project or the tasks of a workflow process. A user's Worktray is usually used to contain and process his/her active work tasks. However, through the Worktray, a user may also peek into other people's active work. Using the Worktray, a manager may move the work around between team members and perform load balancing and resource management functions.
  
  
• How to create work tasks and assign them to people's worktray?
  When a project is active, based on the project task and project timeline, CPM will automatically creates tasks for the users. In addition, users may create Action Items and request other users to perform certain tasks. These Action Items may or may not associate to projects. In any event, users may review, accept, commit and reject the work requests they received in their Worktray.
  
  With the Worktray, users may easily review how much active works are scheduled for a project and who are responsible for these work tasks. It may also be used to track the contractors time and expense in association to different projects.
  
  
• What is To-do List in CPM? Not all work that a team member working on are formal tasks in project or in business process. More often in a teamwork environment, users are assigned to follow up some to-do items that are isolated in nature, or very short-lived that the member is expected to check it off very quickly. That doesn't mean you don't want to track them in the project or under the person's to-do list, but they are not formal tasks to be coordinated in a workflow, or a task to be completed as part of a project. CPM supports this kind of to-do list for both individual and for sharing between a group of people. Users can create a to-do item associated to a meeting or a project. Every to-do item has a coordinator, and the rest of the group are participants to that to-do item. If it is a to-do for an individual, then that person naturally becomes the coordinator of that item.

FILE SHARING

• What is File Sharing?
  File sharing is a very important element in team collaboration. CPM has a file repository enabling team to share files securely. Users can drag-and-drop files into the project task folder. Team members who are part of the project may access those files in the task folders.
  
  
• How to search files?
  Every page in CPM has a search bar on top right of the page. Users may enter their search keyword or phrase to search for matching files. Files that has filename or contents matching the search criteria will be returned. More sophisticated search criteria can be specified by opening Advanced Search feature. Simply click on magnify glass next to the search box to open the Advanced Search page.
  
  
• Does CPM support versioning?
  CPM support versioning when uploading files. When CPM detects that the file being uploaded already exists in the repository, it will append a version number to the end of the file name.

ABOUT CASE TRACKER

• What is the function of the CPM Case Tracker (CT)?
  In the product development process, the project team must manage the issues and customer cases carefully in order to deliver a desirable result. CPM CT has 3 major functions to assist project teams to achieve this objective. First, CT manages cases or service requests (SR) throughout their lifecycle:

  Identify a Case > Define Case > Handle/Resolve Case > Verify Case Completion > Close the Case

  CT applies a workflow process to manage the above lifecycle transition. Different personnel are involved to manage different stages of this lifecycle. Authorized users may assign and transfer the Case to different team members across multiple functions. As CPM has a blogging environment, CT supports users to post blogs associated to the Case. Users easily share test reports, observations, and potential resolutions using weblogs. In addition, CPM keeps a history of all activities related to the Case.
  
  Secondly, CT connects to other modules of CPM to support the project team in the business process. For instance, while using Meeting Facilitator to run meetings, the meeting coordinator may direct participants to review a Case by adding a link to the CT. Similarly, users may connect Cases to a specific task
  
  
• What is a Case? How is it different from a bug or a service request?
  An issue is a predecessor of a formal PR (Problem Report) or bug. An issue is simply a statement capturing a potential problem or a problem that the project team has not decide how to or whether it is necessary to tackle. When an issue, need or request surface in a project, it may grow to a point that the project team wants to track this issue/need as a Case. Members of a project team may identify an issue either in a meeting or simply directly in a project space. At a later point in time, if the team decided this is a formal problem, they may track this issue as a formal Case. Once an issue is moved into a Case, CPM CT will manage the Case through its lifecycle. See the above note for a description of the Case lifecycle.

ABOUT MEETING FACILITATOR

• What is Meeting Facilitator (MF)?
  MF is one of the collaborative tools on the CPM platform. It connects to other CPM modules to support users in the product development and other business processes. MF facilitates meeting activities in all 3 stages of a meeting life cycle. First, before the meeting starts, users use MF to create and prepare the meeting such as defining a detailed meeting agenda, uploading files to be reviewed in a meeting and gathering other information (such as bugs, online discussions, project/task status, etc. for the meeting. Note that all participants (invitees) of a meeting may upload files and contribute to the preparation of a meeting. They may also post blogs to the meeting space.
  
  Second, MF supports users during a live meeting. Users may take turn to play the facilitator role and take meeting minutes during a meeting. People who join the live meeting online can see the progress of the meeting by login to the MF meeting server. Unlike some Net Meeting environment which requires participants to surrender their desktop control, users in MF have the autonomy to control their desktop and are free to navigate to other areas in CPM. This helps users to formulate their ideas and contributions during a meeting. The goal is to encourage more vigorous interactions for the team in meetings. In addition to taking meeting notes, MF supports the facilitator to record decisions made in the meeting, track newly identified issues, and define action items (to-do) assigned to different team members.
  
  Finally, MF takes away most of the administrative burdens from users in following up after the meeting adjourned. One common challenge for project teams is that people often have great ideas and discussions over a meeting but find it very difficult to follow-up with concrete and result-oriented activities after the meeting. MF keeps track of all discussions of meetings in a central repository. It also supports team members to extract decisions, issues and action items from meetings and optionally associate them to a specific project. Over time the project team may review these items (actions, decisions and issues) and drive the project to a definitive and desirable direction accordingly.
  
  MF intelligently tracks the timeline requirements of action items items and sends email notification messages to responsible users in time. Recurring meetings (such as weekly or bi-weekly events) are connected together as a meeting stream such that users can easily navigate back and forth between meetings to review progress of their work over the life of a project.
  
  
• What is the difference between Meeting Facilitator (MF) and Other online meeting tools?
  Online Meeting tools today allow users to share their desktop window with remote users. They are very handy in supporting presentation type of meetings in which participants log on to the meeting through the network and share the information presented by the meeting coordinator. CPM MF is created for an entirely different but complementary purpose. MF looks at meetings as a means to achieve team objectives. Meetings are ways the project team uses to drive coherent actions towards a common goal. As a result, a meeting does not exist by itself; meetings must be connected together and contribute to the accomplishment of the project goals -- whether it is to resolve certain issues of a project or to coordinate project activities towards the completion of a project. Depending on the type of meetings, it is sometimes beneficial to use CPM along with Online Meeting tools in running meetings.
  
  
• How do I prepare a meeting agenda in MF?
  MF has a meeting agenda template library which contains EGI's common meeting agenda for you to choose from. To create a meeting, follow this sequence in CPM:

  Click Meeting Tab >> Click New Meeting >> Fill out basic meeting info >> Click Next

  An editor box will show up for you to type the agenda items. You may select different meeting agenda template by selected on the left. Agenda items are arranged as a table of content with items and sub-items. Use "*" to indent an agenda item. When finished, click the Next Button to review the agenda and define responsible person and time allocated for each agenda item.
  
  
• How do I use MF to run a meeting?
  Once a meeting is defined, it will show up in the MF Calendar. Note that users only see meetings that they involved. Click on the meeting in the calendar to display the details of the meeting. When the time comes to 15 minutes before the meeting, a link called Start Meeting will be shown on the top right corner of the page. Click on this link to start the meeting. A popup window will prompt you whether you want to host the meeting as a recorder or to join the meeting as a participant. If the meeting has already started, the link will say Join Meeting.
  
  
• How do I add a follow-up meeting?
  You can create a follow-up meeting after a meeting is finished or cancelled. This allows you to create "ad-hoc" meetings to follow-up issues after a meeting is completed, or you can use this feature to extend a chain of recurring events. Several things to bear in mind when using this function:
1. After a meeting is finished or expired (cancelled), a button called Create Followup Meeting will appear on the right-hand top portion of the View Meeting Page. You can click that to add a followup meeting after this meeting. And if this meeting is in the middle of a chain of recurring events, the newly added meeting will be inserted into the chain after the current meeting.
2. When you have finished the very last meeting of a chain of recurring event, you can use this "Create Followup Meeting" feature to extend the recurring events. For example, in the beginning you may have created 20 recurring meetings, and at the end of the last meeting (the 20th meeting) you realize that you need to continue on this recurring event. You can use Create Followup Meeting at the 20th meeting to create another 10 (or any number of) recurring events.
3. Note that if you are in the middle of a chain of recurring events and click Create Followup Meeting AND SPECIFY RECURRING EVENTS in this create, then the original chain will be broken and the newly created chain will be attached to the end of the current meeting. However, the original tail of meetings will not be deleted; they will still be on the calendar until you explicitly delete them.

ABOUT BLOGGING

• What is blogging?
  The word Blogging originally comes from the word WEBLOG, which literally means Web Log, is like an online journal. It allows users to capture and share their opinions, thoughts and ideas. CPM provides blogging to users for keeping and sharing information, ideas, issues, solutions, records in relate to project/task management, bug tracking and any other product development related activities. Users may attach files to their blogs, and may give comments to blogs posted by others.
  
  
• How do I use blogging in CPM?
  In CPM, blogs can be posted in two areas. Second users may write blogs on each of the tasks within a project. These task blogs are shared between the project team and serve as an organized discussion area for people who have a stake in that task. For public projects, task blogs can be viewed by all CPM members at EGI. Blogs in CPM support file attachments, as a result users may upload their presentations or data files when posting blogs. Over time task blogs creates a knowledgebase in regard to certain project expert areas.
  
  Blogs can also be posted on individual bugs (PR). Again, users may attach multiple files to the blogs they posted.
  
  
• What is Blog Template and Dynamic Blog? How do I use them?
  When using blogs to post reports, it is sometimes desirable to have a template to ensure everyone submitting a report in the project or task folder will have a similar format. CPM allows you to write a blog as a template. By using the Blog ID of this template blog, you can specify it in the project profile or the task management page so that the template be open when user attempt to post a blog on the project or the task folder respectively.
  
  The blog template can be a regular blog, in which case the person who use the template to post the blog will see the template as it is and fill-in the report or change the content at will. CPM also support Dynamic Blog. Dynamic Blog is specified in the content of the blog template to reference the last posted blog of another task folder. To use the feature Dynamic Blog, simply begin the template with the following syntax:
  
  

  <!@DynamicBlog>
  User can enter any content ...
  ...
  <!@12345>{title} <----- this tag will be replaced by the Title of the task with ID=12345
  <!@12345>{content} <----- this tag will be replaced by the Content of the last blog posted in the task folder with ID=12345
  ...
  User content ...
  ...
  

  
  Dynamic Blog may reference to any number of blogs from other tasks. It is a handy way to roll up a number of blog reports into one summary report.
  
  
• Will blogs be archived (stored) away over time?
  Blogs will be archived periodically depending on the among of blogs written to the task or bug. But they will continue to be accessible by users as if they are stored in the active database. Author of a blog may only edit the weblog before it is archived.

ABOUT COMPANY

• What is a Company in CPM? How many Companies can I join?
  A Company in CPM is equivalent to a company or an organization in the real world, except that a user may be associated to multiple companies. However, every user has a primary company s/he associated with, and in addition, s/he may associate to more companies.

  Conceptually, a Company in CPM are like settlements to allow groups of people with common goals to stay and work together on projects, and share ideas and thoughts. It also serves as a security boundary to own and share proprietary knowledge of the group. A user associates his/her membership with the primary Company but may work in other companies as a guest member when authorized by the foriegn Company; thus creates collaborative efforts between partner companies. A Company may have a number of projects open (active) for its own Company members to work on. Any authorized users within the Company may create projects and invite other inside and outside members to participate. Company members may post events and weblogs, and respond to postings.
  

ABOUT ALERT MESSAGE

• What are Alert Messages in CPM
  Alert messages in CPM may be email message and/or Web page alerts. Users may send an alert message to other users or project team members to notify them about an event. CPM may also trigger an alert notification message to users when a project, task, bug and action event has occurred. CPM may also send alert messages on system events.
  
  
• How do I send an alert message to people?
  You can only send alert message to people whenever you see an email icon (). To send an alert, click the icon and follow the instructions.
  
  
• What is the difference between using Email and Alert Message?
  Email is a context free message from a sender to a recipient. It relies on users to organize the email by filing it in different folders. CPM is an online community about team formation and teamwork. As a result, when you send an Alert Message, it is within the context of one or more projects. In addition, the page alert is shown and manage in CPM. This helps the user to organize his/her communications around the team and the project.
  
  Once you initiated a communication by sending a CPM Alert Message, you are binding the message with a certain project. From that point on, you and the recipients may then use email reply to keep the communication going.

For any other questions, please e-mail The CPM Team