1. Company Settings
Welcome to the getting started guide. This guide will walk you through some of the basic processes to to create projects and start using InScope.
This is step one of the guide. It pertains to System - Company Settings that we recommend setting up before you create a project.
When you first log in to InScope you will likely land on the projects screen. Navigate to and select the System tab in the top navigation bar as highlighted below.
This will take you to your Company, General Info settings in the system menu where you can edit your company name and add your company logo.
There are several other Company settings that you will likely want to edit before you start creating a project. Those can be navigated to in the left hand navigation bar as highlighted below.
From here out we will be using this navigation bar to flip through the company settings and briefly describe each setting and how it can be used to help you when you create a project.
In the Offices tab you can add or edit the offices within your company.
The next tab you can edit is Certifications. Here you can choose which certifications apply to your company or create new certifications. To create a certification you may need if it's not in the per-populated list, just hit the blue + Create new button.
The next menu in the company settings is Clients were you can view your company client list, edit client information or add new clients. Clients are associated with each project and client information may be entered here, or entered when you create each new project.
Next is the scheduling tab where you enter your company's typical work days and how many hours their work day is. This information is used for project schedules and workload allocations.
Units is the next company setting you can create and edit units of measure for your expense and equipment categories. For example, your unit of measure for travel expenses may be miles, day, dollars or different units of measure for different travel items.
Next we have Categories. Categories is where you create and edit your company's personnel, expense, and equipment categories. These will be used throughout your project when creating budgets, adding resources, and billing expenses to the project. You can add these in at anytime, but its good to pre-populate the ones you know you're going to need or be using.
The Rate table is next and builds off the categories setting just mentioned. Here you can create and edit your company's rates for personnel and expense categories. Select the resource type, category, and unit for the rate. Then enter the personnel, expenses, and equipment rates your company typically charges. These rates will be used for each project. Don't worry, you can always modify an individual projects rate table if you would like the project rates to be different from your typical company rates.
You can even have the system calculate an escalation rate for an item that may increase cost over your set period. Be sure to set the period for the time table that best suits your company. Then be sure to save the table once you have it as you need it.
The next section is for activity codes. This is where you can edit or add your accounting codes to project personnel hours and expense charges. Common activity codes may include Billable, Direct, Overhead, or Non-Billable; but these can be edited or created to fit your company needs.
The second to last category in Company settings is Scope statuses. You can create or edit scope statuses, and use these to help you track pieces of scope that are in progress, complete, impeded, or blocked. These are directly linked to each scope status so you can more quickly analyze what pieces are in motion, need help, or any custom status you may want.
The last setting tab is Agile Scores. If your company uses Agile scoring, or if you're running an Agile project, hybrid, or even waterfall you may want to have a way of quickly estimating what you think a task may take, and have a comparable scale to measure tasks against. Here in the Agile scores settings you can edit how your scores display or add new scores and the values they represent. This can be used for story pointing or any type of agile estimation.
That's it, we have now made it through all the company settings pages. We recommend continuing on to the second getting started guide: 2. User Roles. This will help you get prepared for adding new users within the platform and the roles and access they will have within.