Understanding Reporting Groups

Reporting groups are the fundamental project organisational tool within an Amplify Program. Reporting groups allow you to create a flexible virtual hierarchy to group projects for reporting and management purposes. 

Key Functions of Reporting Groups

• All projects must nominate their reporting groups
• Teams of users can be automatically assigned to a project based on its Reporting Groups 
• A user may browse a program by nominating their preferred reporting groups; all areas of the program will be filtered to only show matching projects.
• Reporting groups are not hierarchical. However, Amplify will still present them in a hierarchy in the Hierarchy and Tree views. 

You create a basic reporting structure by adding all your organisational subdivisions or functions as options under a name. For example, if you want to group 'HR', 'Accounts', 'Services' and 'Research' under 'Workstreams', you can create a reporting group named 'Workstreams' and create all of the above options.

You can add multiple reporting groups to your program. Every new reporting structure you add is assigned a level below the previously added level, creating several levels in the virtual hierarchy.

While creating a project, the user must choose suitable reporting group options.

Even though they may represent different logical levels in your program’s functional hierarchy, Amplify handles them as groups to which projects can be added.  

The below screenshot shows a reporting structure configuration using the Reporting Groups feature.

When a Project Manager selects the reporting groups to group their new project, the chosen group options will serve as positional attributes that identify the project's hierarchy.

You can locate project items like costs and benefits can using the same attributes.

This article contains the following sections:

• Creating Reporting Groups
• Adding Reporting Group Options in Bulk

Create Reporting Groups

How you set up your reporting groups depends on how you want to define your reporting hierarchy. You might create groups by business functions or to represent the regions they operate.

To create a reporting group:

1. Navigate to the program.
2. From the side van menu, expand Configuration.
3. Select  Reporting Groups 
4. Click Add New.
5. Click in the first field and type in the name of your group. 
   
6. Under Options, click on the Add new button to add the first group. Every reporting group must have at least one option.
   
7. Click on the Save button.
   You have now created the top-level structural grouping. If you have several options to add, you can use the Bulk Add button to add them quickly. 
8. To create a second level, click on the Add New button in front of the top-level group name.
   

You have now created a reporting group and its subgroup. These fields will be available on the New Project form, so you will be able to assign the project to a specific reporting group while creating it.

The enterprise hierarchy will now display the project, as illustrated in the screenshot below. 

Add Reporting Group Options in Bulk

The Bulk Add option allows you to bulk copy large amounts of data into Amplify. If you have maintained your data in an Excel file, you can copy relevant data into the text field provided on the user interface.  

To add multiple options in bulk:

1. Click Bulk Add.
   This will display a single text field where you can paste multiple options and values from an Excel spreadsheet.
   
    Use the Copy command to copy the data from the spreadsheet. 
   
   You can copy the entire range of cells simultaneously into the text field.
    
2. After copying the data, click on the text field on the interface, and press CTRL + V or Command + V if you are on Mac. When you paste them all into the text field provided on the interface, Amplify will store them as separate options.
    
3. Click Save.