An initiative classification is configured across a set of tabs. The General Configuration tab holds the classification's identity and the features available to initiatives that use it; the remaining tabs — Properties, Stage Gate Process, Baseline, Reports, Scenarios, Initiative Workbook, Status Report, Schedule, Advanced and Kanban Board — each configure one area in more detail.

This article follows the General Configuration tab from top to bottom, then covers the settings held on the other tabs.

General Configuration

• Specifying a name and a distinct colour
• Configuring dashboards and reporting
• General options
• Sub-initiatives
• Benefits
• Measures
• RAID items
• Goals
• Tasks
• Maps
• Costs
• Resources
• Pathway
• External IDs and Integrations
• Dates, forecasts and documents
• Return on Investment series
• Status reporting indicators

Other tabs and finishing up

• Settings on other tabs
• Setting a classification as the default type
• Removing a classification

Specifying a name and a distinct colour for the classification

When selecting Object Type of Initiative, you can specify the initiative name and the colour which will identify the classification across the Amplify interface.

To name an initiative classification and select a colour:

1. From the upper-right corner, click on your user name or avatar and then select Administration from the list of options.
2. Select the Classifications tab.
3. Click the New Classification button.
   The General Configuration tab displays by default.
4. Add a name for the classification in the Name field.
5. Use the Color picker to select the colour with which users will be able to identify it across the application interface.

Configuring dashboards and reporting

These settings determine which dashboards are available to initiatives using the classification, which one opens by default, and how financial values are reported. If you have built Power BI dashboards, you will be able to add them into Amplify's set of available dashboards.

1. Click in the Available Dashboards drop-down field. This lists all inbuilt Amplify dashboards and any custom dashboards your reporting team has set up. Select each dashboard you would like available for the initiative.
   • Performance 
   • Investment
   • Benefits
   • NPV
   • Map ROI
   • Process
   • Project
   • Reporting
   • Custom dashboards
2. Click in the Landing Page drop-down field and select the dashboard that opens by default. Custom (Power BI) dashboards can be embedded and viewed directly from Amplify using this selection field.
3. Click in the Reporting drop-down field and choose how financial values are reported for the classification:
   • Lifetime — dashboards show cumulative totals across the whole life of the initiative.
   • Annual — dashboards show totals for a single financial year. Selecting this reveals a Reporting Year for Annual Values field; enter the financial year you want reported, and the Baseline, Plan and Forecast totals for that year are shown on the dashboards.

General options

These options control how initiatives of this classification can be created and which general features they carry.

• Enable Chat: adds a chat button to the page header of initiatives of this classification. Clicking it opens a chat panel on whichever page the user is on, where they can leave a comment and tag other members of the team.
• If you want to allow users to create and maintain Business Cases, select the Enable Business Case option.

Sub-initiatives

• Enable Local Initiatives: allows the initiative to have direct sub-initiatives. Click in the Allowed Initiative Classifications drop-down field and select which initiative classifications are permitted as sub-initiatives.
• Enable Initiatives Register: gives access to the Initiatives register via the secondary menu. At higher-level initiatives you may want a user to view the register without being able to create or edit local initiatives, in which case enable the register without enabling local initiatives.

Benefits

Where initiatives of this classification need to capture benefits, the following settings control what they can do with them. Each object type on this page follows the same pattern: a local setting governs whether records can be created and edited, a register setting governs access to the list, and a ledger setting governs access to the ledger interface.

• Enable Local Benefits: allows the classification to have benefits associated with it, and to create and edit them. Enabling this automatically enables the Benefit Register.
• Allowed Benefit Classifications: select which benefit classifications may be used on initiatives of this type.
• Enable Benefit Register: gives access to the register via the secondary menu. At higher-level initiatives you may want a user to view the benefits register without being able to create or edit local benefits.
• Enable Benefit Ledger: gives access to the Benefit Ledger interface.

Measures

• Enable Local Measures: allows measures to be created for use in Advanced Benefit calculations. This is only possible where a benefit classification with the Advanced Benefit setting enabled is mapped against this initiative classification.
• Allowed Measure Classifications: select which measure classifications may be used on initiatives of this type.
• Enable Measures Register: gives access to the Measures register via the secondary menu, without necessarily allowing measures to be created or edited.
• Enable Measure Ledger: gives access to the Measure Ledger interface.

RAID items

• Enable Local RAID Items: allows the classification to have RAID items — Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies — associated with it, and to create and edit them. Enabling this automatically enables the RAID Register.
• Allowed RAID Classifications: select which RAID classifications may be used on initiatives of this type.
• Enable RAID Register: gives access to the register via the secondary menu. At higher-level initiatives you may want a user to view the RAID register without being able to create or edit RAID items.

Goals

• Enable Local Goals: allows the classification to have goals associated with it, and to create and edit them.

Tasks

Select Enable Tasks to give initiatives of this classification a schedule. This is the setting that governs task and milestone management, and it also makes the classification's Schedule tab available — see The Schedule tab for schedule templates.

Benefit milestones need no separate setting. A schedule task becomes a benefit milestone simply by being linked to a benefit, using the Benefits tab of the task editor in the Gantt.

Maps

Two settings on this tab relate to the Map, and they sit apart from each other on screen: Allow objects of this type to be created using the Map is near the top of the tab among the general options, while Enable Map is further down.

• Allow objects of this type to be created using the Map: allows initiatives of this classification to be created from Amplify's outcome Map section.
• Enable Map: makes the Map feature available for initiatives of this classification.

Costs

• Enable Costs: makes the Costs feature available on the initiative.
• Available Cost Categories: select which cost categories are permitted for initiatives of this type.
• Enable Costs Register: gives access to the Costs register via the secondary menu, without necessarily allowing costs to be created or edited.
• Enable Cost Ledger: makes cost ledgers visible and enabled for the classification.

Resources

• Enable Resource Capacity Planning: gives access to the overview of resources via the secondary menu. At higher-level initiatives you may want a user to view resource capacity without being able to input or edit resource demand.
• Enable Resource Demand: allows the classification to have resources associated with it, and to input and edit resource demand.
• Enable Resource Register: gives access to the Resources register via the secondary menu.

Pathway

• Enable Pathway: enables the Amplify Pathway tool within the classification. The Pathway feature is displayed in the hamburger menu for each initiative.

External IDs and Integrations

• Enable External ID: an advanced setting which enables a field to show External ID when data is being imported from another program.
• Enable Integrations: enables the Integrations dashboard on the secondary menu. Intended for advanced users and integration experts only.

Dates, forecasts and documents

• Format Dates using Accounting Periods: displays benefit and cost dates in the ledger as accounting periods rather than month names. The period names come from the accounting period translations configured under Administration > Translations.
• Hide Benefit Forecast: hides all references to the benefit forecast on dashboards. This does not affect how the benefit forecast is calculated, only whether it is displayed for this classification's dashboards.
• Hide Cost Forecast: hides all references to the cost forecast on dashboards. This does not affect how the cost forecast is calculated, only whether it is displayed for this classification's dashboards.
• Enable Documents: allows documents to be attached to initiatives of this classification.

Return on Investment series

The Return on Investment Series drop-down controls which pair of financial series is used to calculate ROI for initiatives of this classification.

• Forecast — ROI is calculated from the benefit Forecast against the cost Forecast. This reflects the current expected outcome and moves as forecasts are updated.
• Baseline — ROI is calculated from the benefit Plan against the cost Budget. This reflects the originally agreed case and stays stable for governance reporting.

The setting drives the ROI figure shown on the Initiative register and table views, in reports and the API, and the ROI criterion used in scenario prioritisation. The NPV dashboard and the Map ROI dashboard are calculated separately and are not affected by it.

Where the selected series has no data, ROI displays as not applicable rather than zero. Amplify does not fall back to the other series.

Status reporting indicators

Select Enable Status Reporting Indicators to display reporting indicators on the initiative Properties dashboard, then use Available Reporting Indicators to choose which ones appear — for example Schedule, Issue, Financial, Risk and Overall.

Settings on other tabs

The following settings are configured on their own tabs rather than on General Configuration.

The Schedule tab — schedule templates

This means initiatives of the same type can start from a consistent task structure rather than each schedule being built from nothing.

A schedule template is a reusable set of tasks and milestones held against an initiative classification. Templates are configured on the classification's Schedule tab, which is available where Enable Tasks is selected under General Configuration. Schedule templates apply to the Classic model.

To enable schedule templates for a classification:

1. Open Administration > Classifications and select the initiative classification.
2. Confirm Enable Tasks is selected under General Configuration.
3. Open the Schedule tab.
4. Switch on Enable Schedule Templates. This is off until you switch it on, on both new and existing classifications.
5. Click Save.

With the setting on, you can build templates for the classification. Each template has a Name, which must be unique within the classification, and a setting controlling whether it is applied automatically when an initiative of this classification is created. Only one template per classification can carry that setting; applying it to a second template clears it from the first. Templates are created, edited, duplicated and deleted in the same way as status report templates.

Within a template you can add tasks and milestones and set each one's Name, Type, Start Date, End Date, Duration, Owner, Assigned Resources, Display on Dashboard, Stage, Predecessor, Successor, and any custom fields mapped to the Schedule Task classification. Dates held in a template are placeholders: what is stored is each task's offset from the template's start, and those offsets are applied against the start date chosen when the template is used. Every day counts as a working day.

Where a stage gate process with Create Milestone(s) is mapped against the classification, a new template is pre-populated with that process's stage gate milestones. If you delete them from the template, an initiative generates its own evenly distributed stage gate milestones as usual. Changing the stage gate configuration later affects new templates only; existing templates keep the milestones they hold.

Administrators with Update access to Classifications can create, edit, duplicate and delete templates. Switching Enable Schedule Templates off hides templates from use without deleting them, and does not affect tasks already added to an initiative's schedule from a template.

For applying a template to an initiative's schedule, see Schedule Templates.

The Scenarios tab

Enabling scenarios allows them to be created on the Properties dashboard. You can choose which initiative level you would like the prioritisation filtering of scenarios to work at. Even where scenarios are enabled, visibility still depends on each user's role.

The Reports tab

Administrators can set which reports are available for an initiative classification, along with the default file format. If this is left blank, the Print icon on the related dashboard does not appear.

• Initiative Quick Print Report: sets what report prints from the printer icon in the secondary menu of an initiative dashboard.
• Benefit Quick Print Report: sets what report prints from the printer icon in the secondary menu of a benefit dashboard.

Setting a classification as the default type

Click Save at the foot of the tab to store your configuration.

After an initiative classification has been set up it will appear in the Classification dashboard list. To make it the default, open it for editing, scroll to the Default Classification section at the foot of the page and click Make Default. Only one classification can be the default for each object type.

Removing a classification

Make sure that the classification you are removing does not have any active objects. For example, you cannot remove a 'Project' type classification if there active projects in the system. The Remove option is found at the end of the Classification settings Edit form.