26th April Release

New - Streamline Resource Management with Placeholders

Building on existing functionality and our commitment to delivering the best PPM/PMO software solution, we have refined and improved this essential feature to help you manage and plan for the unknown more effectively. Resource Placeholders allow you to allocate temporary, generic representations of required skills or roles for upcoming projects, even before you identify or hire the ideal candidates. With the ability to accurately estimate project costs, enhance capacity planning, and proactively manage resource gaps, our upgraded Resource Placeholders feature empowers you to optimize resource management, improve financial forecasting, and ultimately drive project success. 

You can use this page to:

• review, update and create resource pools or new headcounts.
• slide and dice the data using the filter and group functionality to see placeholders by rate cards, regions, managers, etc.
• sort the data by simply clicking on the column headers.
• use the current month, next month and av. future allocations column to easily identify if placeholders are used and which placeholders need to be with named resources as a priority. See the allocation breakdown by using the Show button.

User and Application administrators can access this page from: 

• the administration console page under the User Management section.

• or from the user management page by selecting the Manage Placeholders option.
  
  

New - Boost control and accuracy with the new Timesheet Recall Limit feature

Timesheet management is crucial for maintaining accurate records and ensuring smooth project operations. To enhance control and prevent unauthorized adjustments to approved timesheets, we are introducing a new feature that allows timesheet administrators to set a limit on how far back resource managers can recall approved timesheets. 

Adjusting actuals for closed months can be complex and may not always be permitted, as it involves creating reversals and posting new time actuals to open months. The new feature mitigates this issue by providing increased control over the recall of timesheets for closed months. 

Timesheet administrators can now  configure the recall limit in the Timesheet Administration page by specifying the number of weeks back that timesheets can be recalled. This improved functionality ensures better adherence to organizational policies and enhances the accuracy of timesheet management.

Enhancements

• We have made it easier for you to create new dashboards based on an exhaustive list of projects. To do so, navigate to the New Project Search page (accessible from the global Create button) and use the Unique Id field to search for the projects you want to include. You can search by the project title, the project external reference or the Fluid project ID.

• User administrators can now use the improved User Export to get the list of active and inactive resources  without duplicate user rows when the user record has multiple resource plans.

• We have improved the Project with Status RAG summary layout for better reading.

• The Financials component has been improved to display the funding to EAC margin. Projects with 0 financials are also excluded from the list.

• The Project dashboard pages have been slightly changed to better highlight available functionalities.

• Accountable Executive fields have been added to Timesheets export to Excel.

Fixed

• Fixed an issue with large schedule dependency count that was causing performance issue when rendering the project workspace page or exporting the schedule to Word and PowerPoint.

8th April Release

New - Enhanced Gantt Chart with Dependency Visualisation

We've upgraded our Gantt chart functionality to provide a more comprehensive view of task dependencies. This enhancement allows you to easily identify and report on dependencies within the Gantt schedule, which can now be printed with these visualisations for improved communication and planning. 

Use the Full Page View button to navigate to the print view.

New - Introducing Project Templates for Streamlined Project Management

Our new Project Templates feature brings numerous advantages for organisations aiming to enhance their project management processes. 

Project templates provide a standardised approach for project planning, ensuring consistency across multiple projects and facilitating the adoption of methodologies like Agile. They not only improve project execution and risk management but also save time for project managers by offering a solid starting point for new projects. 

Another advantage of using project templates is that they help maintain compliance with organisational standards, integrate quality assurance checkpoints, and ultimately increase overall efficiency by streamlining the project management process. 

Fluid comes with a set of predefined templates but project administrators have the ability to either customise the existing templates or create new ones to fit their organisation's processes and governance.

When creating a new project, click on the Choose a Template button.

You will then be presented with a list of predefined templates to chose from.

Simply select a template, click on Create and you project will be automatically set up for you.

New - Improved Resource Management with My Team Filter

Resource managers can now easily monitor their team's allocation and capacity using the new "My Team" filter on resource dashboards. This filter allows you to view data exclusively for your direct and indirect reports, enabling better management of team resources and workloads. 

New - Time-saving Default Meeting Templates 

To simplify meeting preparation, we've introduced default meeting templates that automatically generate meeting agendas when creating a new meeting. Choose from our diverse selection of templates to tailor your meeting to your specific needs and streamline the planning process.

Other Enhancements

• Project financials
  • Updated the Financial Details Export to also return capex or opex flag for time actuals submitted by resources on $0 hourly rate.
  • Fixed the capitalisation logic when recalling timesheets for closed projects or projects that have moved to a different project phase.
  • The Project Ongoing Cost page was wrongly showing a 'benefit' label.
  • The Financials report was not displaying child project's benefit amount.
• Resource dashboards
  • Logic to calculate resource's allocations and capacity has been hardened.
• Missing Timesheets
  • The logic to calculate Missing Timesheets export was not considering the correct resource end date when the end date had been updated after the resource was made inactive.
• The chat panel on process board pages was sometimes displayed behind the board columns headers making it impossible to close it.
• Fixed a javascript error that was occurring when a new board theme was created from the Create board task dialog.
• An incorrect project circular reference was displayed when creating new projects using bulk edit.