Need to build resource usage / budgeting site

Question

I am new to SP but I don't think that it is such a rocket science to prevent some "hit and try" for a person like me. So, the challenge I have is to build a site (with possibility of a dashboard) to showcase the resource usage on different projects. Each project will have 4-5 phases (SDLC phases for instance) and we need to show the resource usage along with those phases. On the other hand, each project will have a budgeted figure as well and we also need to show the total and consumed budget by multiplying no of days consumed with per day effort.

Once having above info maintained and showcased on a site or page, I need to build a dashboard showing charts with restricted access as this dashboard will serve the limited audience, mainly higher management. Can someone point in the direction as what kind of pages or sites would be needed to start with? If I get some detailed guidance to build one project and its phases end-to-end, will be of great help. Thanks!

Answer 1

From what I understand, you need :

1. A portal that lets you track resource usage in a project end-to-end
   
2. Reports regarding projects in-progress/completed etc, resource allocation etc.

Project Server 2013 is a seperate platform altogether around resource management and project tracking. You will get everything you want out of the box in this. Moreover, it has got excellent integration to sharepoint. This can be configured relative to a farm inside of sharepoint and you can leverage required functionalities from inside sharepoint.

If you have a sharepoint server follow this article to configure Project Server.

Project online another similar O365 offering that has seamless integration with sharepoint online. You can follow this article and learn more about it.

If you dont want to use either then, a significant amount of custom development might be required in order to achieve the objects. The best approach is to start with a "Project Site" site collection template and move on from there with UI customization using Javascript plugins such as charts.js etc.

More about project site template : Project Site Template SP 2013