ResourceFirst Navigation
Login
When you first get to ResourceFirst from a browser, you will be presented with a login dialog. Enter your user name and password, provided to you by your PDWare administrator, and hit the Login button to login.
If your username or password is incorrect you will be presented with the failed login message.
Logout
Click your name in upper right, and select Logout from the drop down menu.
The next time you click your ResourceFirst icon, you will need to enter your user name and password.
Changing Password
To change your password (if your company is not integrated with Active Directory), click on your name in upper right, and then select Profile from the drop down menu.
Your profile page will appear.
Click on Reset Password and a dialog box will appear.
Enter the old and new passwords and click Change Password.
Interface & Navigation
Once your login is confirmed you will see the default ResourceFirst home page. On a horizontal colored bar called the Navigation Bar, you'll notice a set of icons on the upper left, and a set of icons on the upper left.
Navigation Bar: Upper Left Icons - Main System Areas
The main system icons below (depicted in the upper left tray in ResourceFirst) are depicted below:
The icons to the right of the ResourceFirst logo represent:
- Home (Team member)
- Resources
- Projects
- Financials
- PMO/Portfolio
- Reporting (Qlik)
- Actuals (aka Timesheets)
- Administration
Hovering over any of the icons presents a dropdown menu (pictured below for the Resources area), where you can go directly to various pages in the system:
These Function Areas and details within will be available according to your rights.
Note: If you are using a version of ResourceFirst prior to 2020, the main menu will look as follows, with the icons representing:
- Home (Team member)
- Resources
- Projects
- PMO
- Financials
- Reporting (Qlik)
- Timesheet Actuals
- Administration
Navigation Bar: Upper Right Icons - Special Functions
In addition to the upper left Main Center icons, there are a set of icons on the upper right, as follows:
- The
icon (Data Settings) allows you to set certain allocation options as to how allocations are calculated and shown throughout the system. See Data Settings - Allocation Options for more. - The
icon allows you to save the current page as your home screen. It also shows you the last 10 pages you've visited, so you can go back and forth between recently used pages. - The
icon brings up help documentation in the PDWare Success Center, as well as any policies you've defined. - The
icon is where you set the data filters for your current session (more on this below) - The
icon allows you to manage and load Scenarios. - The
icon is where you'll find system notifications.
Your User Name will appear to the right of these controls, where you can update your profile, delegate rights, and logout. See Personal Profile Options for more.
(Note: If you're using a version prior to ResourceFirst Release 8 (2020), the icons will look as below, but perform the same function, with the exception of "Data Settings" which doesn't exist prior to Release 8)
Opening Multiple ResourceFirst Pages at Once
Often, it is necessary to go back and forth between pages in ResourceFirst, such as when comparing data, or in a Portfolio Review meeting when comparing multiple projects or multiple resource workloads.
There are two ways of moving back and forth between pages or keeping multipe pages open (otherwise known as "breadcrumbs"):.
The Favorites Method: As mentioned above, the icon in the upper right of the navigation bar allows you to save the current page as your home screen. It also shows you the last 10 pages you've visited, so you can go back and forth between recently used pages.
The Browser Tabs Method: You can also, on any page in ResourceFirst, right-click on the browser tab, and select Duplicate. A new browser tab will open with the current page open. In this way, you could open browser tabs for as many projects as you wish.
The ResourceFirst Toolbar
Below the main Navigation Bar, pages in ResourceFirst each have their own Toolbar.
The screenshot below shows the Project Data page.
Below the title of the page, you can see the horizontal toolbar. The toolbar buttons on the left vary depending on the page, and usually consist of function-related options, such as add, delete, copy, and so on.
In this example, the buttons (left to right) are for:
- Adding projects
- Deleting projects
- Copying Projects
- Creating Baselines and Scenarios for Projects
The buttons to the right are mostly standard and usually feature options to adjust filters, select your view, create your own view, save your data, and export or import data.
In this example, which is fairly standard for most views, the functions left to right are:
- Filter Options
- View Selector
- Edit Views (for creating your own custom view)
- Save Data
- Import
- Export
Entering Data in ResourceFirst
The grid-like display below the toolbar is called a View. The Assignments view below features both attributes and period cells (time-period based data, such as forecasts by month or quarter). The granularity of time-period based data depends upon your date settings in your Global Filters. The view above, Project Data, only included attributes.
IMPORTANT: After changing any data, whether attributes or period cells, you must click the Save icon 
to save your data.
See Managing and Editing Views for more on using views.
Navigation Prior to Release 8
On versions prior to Release 8 (2020), clicking each Function Area icon will open a separate tab for that area (the newer UI as of 2020 will allos for going directly to pages via the left side menu). In the diagram below, both the Home screen and the Analytics tab are open, with the Home tab currently selected. Likewise, clicking on an individual project name hyperlink on any list page that lists projects will open up a tab for that project.
Most of the icons produce a set of sub-tabs related to that function. For example, below are several selected icons and their related sub-tabs (these are fully explained in the respective sections on this site for each center).
Notice the top tier of the screen represents the main Functional Area icons, then there are the tabs for each icon or function chosen. Then there's a set of sub-tabs for each main page.
- Team Member (initial default “Home” page)
- In addition, as noted in the beginning of this article, there are icons for PMO and Financials. Notice they don't appear in the screenshots above. That's because the user wasn't authorized to those functions.