Difference between Project Primary portfolio x Top portfolio

[Alpa82]

Hello,

Could you please advise on the expected usage of the field 'Top portfolio' that is on the project level?

What is the difference between the Portfolio (primary_portfolio) and the Top portfolio (top_portfolio) or the use cases?

OOtB the Top portfolio i is not editable by the user who has rights to edit/assign Portfolio and seems it is automatically populated with the same value as in field primary_portfolio.

Can the top portfolio be used in a scenario, where we have a Parent Project assigned to Portfolio A and we need to assign the subprojects to a Portfolio A1 or Portfolio A2?

Thank you

[Community Alums]

Hi @Alpa82 ,

Portfolio is a collection of related programs, projects and demands.

Top Portfolio is a property of the planned_task table, which is an extension of task that project and project task are built off of.  Its there to ensure that any planned task now or in the future can link up to a portfolio (you'll notice that Project has a separate portfolio reference, but project_task does not).  

Top Portfolio should always contain the Portfolio reference for whichever portfolio the top project is related to (this is important if you ever start nesting projects within each other).

 In project management most tasks have a field called: top_portfolio - this allows the task to easily know which portfolio it will roll up into for reporting and using that information in business logic. 

[Alpa82]

@Community Alums Thank you for the answer, but it is still not clear to me whether the sub-project can be part of two portfolios, e.g. inherit one from the parent project and at the same time have its own portfolio assigned.

Thank you

[Community Alums]

Hi @Alpa82 ,

You will be able to add only main project to the program/portfolio. Its sub projects automatically appear on the portfolio/program. So you wont be able to add it to different portfolios/programs.

	Program	Sub Project
The Focus is On...	The benefit	The deliverable
Contains	Demands & Projects	Only Projects
Status Reporting	One report for all investments in the entire Program	Each project has their own status report
RIDAC	RIDAC info rolls up into the one Program	RIDAC info is individual and does not roll up
Rate Models	Independent rate models	One shared rate model (the parent)
Planned Start Dates	Independent of one another	Connected Planned Start Dates to the parent project
Task Dependencies	Can be accomplished through external dependencies	Can be accomplished through normal dependencies via Planning Console. Can see all Sub Projects in Planning Console of parent project.
Investment Portal	Program level rollups, but can also see individual investments	Can only see each individual project, no "master project" rollup
Portfolio/Program Workbench	Shows Programs in Timeline view	Can only see each individual project, no parent project rollup for timeline or Project KPIs
PMO Dashboard	Can see Program contents in rollups	Can only see each individual project, no parent project rollup
Analytics Tab	n/a	Data available