How do I use Sockets to view the information I want?

In this article we will review sockets, what they are, and how best to use them to quickly view the information you want.

A socket is a grouping of project data. The sockets currently available are Details, Budget, Actual, Remaining, Forecast, and Schedule.

Sockets can be turned on or off so they are viewable or hidden. They can be moved around so you can see the information in the order best for you, and they can be expanded or collapsed to show more or less detail.

Let's review how to best do these processes below, We'll start with turning sockets on and off.

In the below photo you can see the arrows pointing to the sockets within your project. Each socket is labeled with the data section it represents.

Clicking where the arrow is pointing, or anywhere within each labeled box, will hide the information from your view. Or alternatively if you already had it hidden it will reveal the information for you. Note that turning off or on a socket does not remove any information from your project. Turning off sockets simply hides it from your view to give you a cleaner screen and allows you to focus on the data you are interested in monitoring at any moment.

Now lets learn to move sockets around to view the information in a different order. Lets say I want to view actual numbers before I view the budget numbers; that is, I want to move the Actual socket in to the left of the Budget socket. To do this, I click the Actual socket header and drag and drop it where want it, in this case just left of the Budget socket.

This drag and drop method makes it very easy to re-arrange the information in the order you want to see it. You can click anywhere in the socket top bar where the heading is as the arrow points to in the below image.

InScope also lets you easily reorganize information within the sockets. In the example below within the actual socket we can move the total column to the right of the Cost % Complete column by clicking on the total heading and dragging and dropping the total column to the right of the Cost % Complete column.

This can also be done for things like resources in the Budget section, lets say I want to see the project manager before the technician, I would just grab the project manager and drag it in front of the technician to swap it.

You can not, however, drag and drop columns from one socket into another.

Try playing around in a demo project and seeing what you can move around. You can also do this in a real project as you can always move things back how they were to begin with.

The sockets can also expand or collapse to show more or less detail. To expand or collapse a socket, click the arrow icon next to the socket name in the header. the below image illustrates the location of the expand and collapse arrow icons in the socket headers.

As you can see in the previous photo, the Actual socket is collapsed and the Budget socket is expanded. In the below photo the Actual socket is expanded and the Budget socket is collapsed.

You can also see similar small arrows within each socket such as in the actual column below for personnel and expenses. Those can also be expanded and collapsed by clicking the arrows same as the sockets.

Try playing around with the sockets to get the information just as you want it, and remember you can expand you screen across two monitors if you want to view all the information at once.