Use the guidelines below when you are putting together your overall configuration plan, in order to get the best results and the most value out of ProjectWise Project Insights.

1. Data preparation considerations
   1. ProjectWise Project Insights uses a combination of dimensions and workflow states to group and count documents, and the administrator's job is to assign a ProjectWise environment attribute or attributes to each dimension. For this reason it is critical that the ProjectWise datasource and work area(s) whose data you plan to upload uses environments and workflows, otherwise there will be very little data to collect and display in ProjectWise Project Insights, besides a basic document count.
      • audit trail - make sure audit trail is enabled in the datasource, and that it is configured to record information about workflow state changes
      • workflows - make sure the work area you plan to associate to the ProjectWise project has a ProjectWise workflow assigned
      • custom document attributes - make sure the work area you plan to associate to the ProjectWise project has a ProjectWise environment assigned, and that the environment contains the attributes you want to use to group your documents in ProjectWise Project Insights
   2. Before you configure any settings, you should familiarize yourself with the dashboard settings. Specifically, take a look at the dimensions on the Pick ProjectWise Attributes settings page. Each dimension contains a tooltip with an explanation of how and where it is used. Please make sure you read these descriptions. To read them, you will need to turn on ProjectWise Project Insights in your ProjectWise project and then go to the dashboard settings.
2. Upload Service considerations
   1. When configuring a connection to a database whose data you want to upload, you will also configure the schedule for when the Upload Service will both collect and upload data (these are two different jobs). The default schedule settings are optimized for performance, but you can also customize the schedule if needed.
   2. Initial data inventory, audit trail upload, and pushing first set of data for existing work areas that already have documents in them might take a while (up to several days for very large datasources/projects).
3. Using a work area that already contain documents is recommended for the first project in which you turn on ProjectWise Project Insights
   • You can use any work area with ProjectWise Project Insights, but for the first project you set up, it is recommended that you use a work area that already contains documents. This way there will be document data readily available for the Upload Service to collect and upload, and which the ProjectWise Project Insights service can then process and visualize in the dashboard. Another reason to use a work area that already contains documents is that you cannot configure dashboard settings if no document data has been uploaded yet from your work area.
   • Once you have a better understanding of how to successfully configure ProjectWise Project Insights, the next project in which you turn on ProjectWise Project Insights can use any work area, including those with no documents. One benefit of setting up a project to use a work area that does not have any documents yet is that you have more flexibility with how you configure your ProjectWise workflows and environments.
4. Dashboard settings - assigning attributes to dimensions
   • Before you begin assigning ProjectWise attributes to dimensions in the dashboard settings, you should make a plan of what you would like to see in the dashboards, because whenever you make attribute-related changes in the dashboard settings, it may take up to 24 hours for ProjectWise Project Insights to reconfigure the display based on your selections. In other words, don't just select some attributes and see what happens - because you will be waiting a while to see the effects of your changes.
   • Think about what are the key business attributes you want to group and sort documents by - this should come from your business teams (BIM Manager, Information Manager, PM).
   • It may go without saying, but it is important that you assign the correct attribute to the correct dimension - better to leave a dimension undefined if you are unsure of which attribute to select, than to select an attribute that has nothing to do with the dimension (you would never assign the "Date Approved" attribute to the "Document Type" dimension). Selecting the wrong attributes will end up showing confusing data in the dashboards.
   • After you make your initial selection of ProjectWise attributes, it is recommended that you let ProjectWise Project Insights run for some time to get data collected and displayed.
5. Dashboard settings - filtering out data
   • After basic configuration and initial attribute selections are made, it is recommended that you use ProjectWise Project Insights for a while before you start making any changes to the way the data is represented.
   • You will probably want to filter out the "noise" - the unwanted data - so that only the important data displays in the dashboards, and does not get lost or hidden by irrelevant data.
   • For example, one work area might contain hundreds of thousands of documents, and you might only want the dashboard reports to focus on a particular type of document, with a particular deliverables status, which could end up being a very small percentage of the total documents in the work area.
   • Spend some time adjusting the dimension filters on each tab in the dashboard to see how they affect the data display.
   • Use the Filter Out Data page in the dashboard settings if you want to set a global default filter to apply for the entire project team.
6. Dashboard settings - renaming document attribute values for better readability
   • Document attribute values uploaded from ProjectWise might not always be clear or concise to users who are viewing the document reports in ProjectWise Project Insights.
   • Use the Value Refinement Rules page of the dashboard settings to configure the automatic renaming and/or merging of selected document attribute values.
   • Example A (renaming attribute values) - define a rule that says, whenever the value of the "Document Type" attribute is set to "D", display the value in the report as "Drawing" instead, or whenever the value of the "Document Type" attribute is set to "S", display the value in the report as "Submittal" instead.
   • Example B (merging multiple attribute values into one) - define a rule that ways, whenever the value of the "Document Type" attribute is set to either "2D Model" or "3D Model", display the value in the report as "Model" instead.
7. Making changes in ProjectWise
   • After using ProjectWise Project Insights for a while, you might find it necessary or helpful to go back to the ProjectWise datasource and make some changes in order to improve the quality of the data that is uploaded to ProjectWise Project Insights.
   • Think about how you could modify the environment attributes in your ProjectWise datasource in order to have better quality data (more understandable) available for analysis in the dashboards.
   • Think about what additional business attributes would help better group and sort documents in the dashboards.
8. Setting up ProjectWise Project Insights in multiple projects
   • If you plan to use ProjectWise Project Insights in more than one project, you should configure dashboard settings in one project, and then import those dashboard settings into the ProjectWise Project Insights portal of your other projects.
9. Troubleshooting dashboard issues (collection, processing or display):
   • If you see something in the dashboard that is different than what you were expecting, you could go and see the list of documents included in the chart, and then analyse why you see or do not see some data (with filter applied or cleared).
   • Right-click a document in the report and select Drill through > Document List