Portfolios

Group related projects into portfolios, roll up their budgets by currency and record portfolio health.

A portfolio groups related projects so you can see their combined budget and track their health in one place. A project can belong to any number of portfolios. Budgets are rolled up from the projects themselves, so there’s never a second budget to keep in sync.

Key concepts#

Member projects: The projects added to a portfolio. Adding a project to one portfolio never removes it from another.
Budget rollup: The total of the member projects’ budgets, grouped by currency and calculated fresh every time you open the portfolio.
Health: On track, At risk, Off track or No status. A portfolio’s health is set by hand with a reason, and it isn’t calculated from its projects. New portfolios start at No status.
Priority and status: Shown on the portfolio page. New portfolios created in the web app are Medium priority and active.

Who can use portfolios#

Permissions

portfolio.viewportfolio.manage

portfolio.view shows Portfolios in the sidebar and lets you open portfolios and see their projects and budget rollup. portfolio.manage lets you create portfolios, add and remove projects, and override health.

Create a portfolio#

Open Portfolios and select New portfolio
The Create a portfolio dialog opens.
Enter a Name
Required, up to 255 characters. For example, “Growth Initiatives”.
Optionally add a Description
Select Create portfolio
The portfolio appears as a card showing its name, health badge and description.

Add and remove projects#

Open a portfolio from Portfolios. The Projects section lists its member projects with their keys, and each name links to the project.

Open Add a project…
Only projects that aren’t already in this portfolio are offered.
Select Add
The project joins the portfolio and the budget rollup updates.

To remove a project, select the × on its row. The project itself isn’t changed. The add menu and remove buttons are only shown to people with portfolio.manage.

Read the budget rollup#

The Budget rollup section shows one line per currency, with the total and the number of projects contributing to it.

Budgets in different currencies are never added together, because UnitX doesn’t apply exchange rates.
Projects with no budget set are counted in a note rather than treated as costing nothing.
A project in several portfolios contributes its full budget to each one. The budget isn’t split between portfolios, so don’t add portfolio totals together.

Budgets belong to projects. Someone with project.manage sets a project’s budget from the budget button in the project’s header. See Projects.

Override portfolio health#

Select Override health on the portfolio page
The Override portfolio health dialog opens. The button is only shown to people with portfolio.manage.
Choose the Health
On track, At risk, Off track or No status.
Give a Reason
Required. For example, “Two of five projects slipped past their Q3 dates.”
Select Save
The badge updates, and the page shows Last override reason with what you wrote. UnitX also records who made the change and when.

Want a calculated view instead?#

A portfolio’s health is always a judgement someone makes. For figures calculated from the work itself across every active project, including risk, blocked and stale items and forecasts, use The state of everything.

Tips and limitations#

Use portfolios for the groupings leadership reports on, such as a fund, a product line or a region. Because projects can belong to several portfolios, the groupings can overlap.
Record a meaningful reason with every health override. It’s the only explanation readers get.
In the web app, a portfolio’s name and description are set when it’s created. There’s currently no option to rename, re-prioritise or delete a portfolio.

Portfolios and initiatives

A portfolio is a container for projects. An initiative is a piece of strategic work that links goals to the projects delivering them, with its own budget total from those projects.

FAQ#

I can’t create a portfolio.

Creating portfolios needs portfolio.manage. Ask an administrator to check your role in Settings → Roles.

Why doesn’t health change when my projects fall behind?

Portfolio health is only ever set by hand. For calculated figures, see The state of everything.

The rollup says no linked project has a budget set yet.

None of the member projects has a budget. Set budgets on the projects and the rollup fills in.

Still stuck? Search the docs with ⌘K, open Help inside UnitX, or contact support.