21th December Release

New - Enhancing Risk Management for Optimal Project Outcomes

We recognise the importance of risk management in portfolio and project management. This is why we are excited to introduce our latest feature: the Impact Analysis Dashboard. 

This new dashboard lists all the promoted impacts for the projects included in the view but it also includes an Impact Matrix and a Project RAG (Red, Amber, Green) by Risk Rating. The objective of this new dashboard is to help with the process of identifying, evaluating, and addressing potential threats that could jeopardise the projects' success. 

The Impact Matrix offers a visual representation of the various project impacts. It classifies these impacts based on their probability and severity. This approach is important for effective risk mitigation, directing attention and resources towards the most critical risks to the projects' outcomes. 

The RAG by Risk Ratings complements this by providing an immediate visual cue of the risks based on their ratings, making high-risk impacts readily apparent. 

The Impact Matrix and the Project RAG by Risk Rating chart are both designed to be interactive. By selecting a specific cell in the matrix or a segment in the bar chart, you can filter and view the impacts that match the chosen criteria.

Key advantages of the Impact Analysis Dashboard include: 

• Enhanced Risk Visualisation: The dashboard provides a clear and comprehensive visual representation of impacts, categorising them by probability and severity. This helps in quickly understanding the risk landscape across the project portfolio.

• Improved Decision-Making: With project impacts clearly mapped out, project managers and the PMO team can make more informed decisions. They can prioritise resources and attention to the project impacts that pose the greatest threat to the projects' success or strategic objectives.

• Proactive Risk Management: The dashboard facilitates a proactive approach to risk management. Having a clear visualisation of potential risks and their impacts helps being proactive in developing strategies to mitigate them in advance rather than reacting to issues as they arise.

• Strategic Alignment: The dashboard helps ensure that risk management efforts are in line with broader strategic goals. It helps quickly identify risks that could potentially derail strategic initiatives and make sure the focus is placed on the right projects.

• Resource Optimisation: By prioritising project impacts, the dashboard enables more effective allocation of resources. This ensures that resources are allocated to projects that need them the most and where they can have the maximum impact.

• Improved Communication: The dashboard can be a powerful communication tool, providing stakeholders with an easy-to-understand overview of impact status, which is essential for maintaining transparency and fostering collaborative risk management.

• Time Efficiency: It reduces the time spent on analysing and reporting risks by presenting all necessary information in a user-friendly, accessible format.

We built this dashboard so that it becomes an integral part of your risk management strategy, ensuring that you're always a step ahead in ensuring your projects' success and outcomes.

New - Enhanced Project Insight and Management through Catalog Integration

Strategic Catalog Assignment for Project Impacts

Catalogs play a key role in providing organisational understanding and collaboration. They help detail project environments and interdependencies, offering a holistic view that enhances decision-making processes, effectively promotes transparency and centralises your organisations key data.

The latest update introduces a significant enhancement to the use of catalogs. Previously, catalog items were used as properties linked to various elements such as projects, schedule tasks, impacts, and more. This integration facilitated a deeper understanding and organisation of the operational environment within which these elements operates.

With this new release, we've expanded the capabilities of catalogs. Now, you have the ability to directly assign catalog items to project impacts or set a catalog item as a dependency. 

This allows you to clearly map out how specific project impacts are influenced by or influence various organisational components catalogued in the system, such as applications, risk register, or strategic drivers.

This enhancement enables stakeholders and project managers to have a comprehensive view of the impact and dependencies of risks and issues, ensuring better management and strategic alignment.

Catalog Workspaces: Insightful Interactions Analysis between Projects and Catalog Items

The Catalog Workspace page is designed to provide a comprehensive view of all projects, risks, and issues associated with the specific catalog item. This association may be because a project or a project impact is either assigned to, dependent on, or has the catalog item set as a property.

On this page, each project or project impact linked to the catalog item is displayed, offering a clear and detailed understanding of how these various elements interact with the catalog item. For instance, if a project impacts a specific strategic objective (catalog item), this relationship is visible on the page. Similarly, if a risk or issue depends on a certain application (another catalog item), this dependency is also displayed.

Catalog Workspaces provide a clear view of how different projects and project impacts are interconnected with key organisational elements. This visibility is important for effective project management, as it helps in identifying potential areas of concern or opportunity within the project lifecycle. 

Additionally, this integrated view helps with strategic decision-making. By understanding the network of associations between projects, risks, issues, and catalog items, decision-makers can align their strategies more closely with organisational goals and resources. It enables a more informed approach to resource allocation, risk mitigation, and prioritisation of projects based on their impact on critical organisational elements.

New - Redesigned Manage Financial Forecast Page

We've done a complete redesign of the Manage Financial Forecast page, aimed at significantly enhancing your experience in managing project financial forecasts. The new layout introduces several key improvements: 

• Enhanced User Experience: The interface has been redesigned for better usability, ensuring a smoother, more intuitive interaction. 

• Clear Visibility of Locked Forecasts: Forecasts for closed months are now clearly marked as 'locked', providing a straightforward view of which months are closed. 

• Easy Management of Custom Properties: The new design allows for the display and simple updating of custom properties associated with each forecast record, making the management process more straightforward and efficient.
  
  To display the additional properties, simply click on the Show Data Fields button. Click on Hide Data Fields button to return to the concise view.

• Full Year Forecast Overview: A comprehensive full-year forecast (FYF) view is now available, showing actuals for closed months alongside forecast for upcoming months, enabling more informed adjustments and planning. 

• Delta View Feature: A new Delta view lets you easily compare actuals with forecasts in closed months, offering a quick reference to identify areas of over or under spending.

Note that you can collapse the data on any of the views and use the Expended View button to expand the data.

This redesign reflects our commitment to providing tools that not only meet your project management needs but also enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your financial forecasting efforts.

New - Enhanced Navigation with Page Commands

The new Page Commands feature, available on both the homepage and admin console page, significantly enhances your ability to navigate the application. By simply pressing 'Alt-C', you can bring up a dialog that allows for quick searching and direct navigation to different pages, or performing a range of actions. 

Once activated, just start typing, and the Command Dialog will intuitively display a list of relevant pages and actions. This not only simplifies the process of moving between different parts of the application but also enables you to execute commands directly from the dialog, enhancing your overall efficiency and user experience. Whether you need to swiftly transition to another page or execute a specific function, the Page Commands feature is designed to facilitate these tasks effortlessly. 

The addition of Page Commands represents a significant step in making the application more user-friendly and efficient, ensuring that you spend less time searching and more time doing.

New - Improved Admin Console with Descriptive Links

This release includes an upgrade to the admin console page, transforming it from a simple list of links into a more informative and user-friendly interface. Alongside each link, you'll now find clear descriptions, providing context and guidance on the function of each administrative tool. This enhancement not only makes it easier to understand and navigate through the various admin functions but also adds an extra layer of efficiency to your workflow.

Moreover, these improvements seamlessly integrate with the Page Commands feature. By pressing 'Alt-C', you can quickly access any of these links directly through the command dialog. This means less time spent searching for the right administrative function and more time focusing on effective management.

With this update, the admin console becomes not just a gateway, but a guided tour of the administrative capabilities of our application, ensuring you have all the information you need right at your fingertips. This enhancement is part of our ongoing commitment to providing a more intuitive and efficient user experience.

Additional Features

• Configurable Financial Actuals editing function: Enhancing control and accuracy, the application now offers a configuration option that restricts the editing of financial actuals to Project Administrators only. This feature aims to centralise financial entry and maintain data integrity within the user interface. 
• Refined DevOps / Jira Integration: We've upgraded our DevOps and Jira integration capabilities. You now have the option to prevent the automatic creation of ADO/Jira items for cards initially created in the backlog. This added flexibility allows for a more tailored approach to how backlog items are managed and integrated across platforms.
• User records designated as 'Unlicensed' cannot be assigned the 'User' role, as unlicensed users do not have login access to the application.
• We've enhanced the readability and user-friendliness of the Project Status dashboard, making it simpler to review and understand project updates. You can still switch to the 'Full Report' layout to view detailed status reports along with the previous RAG status.

9th December Patch Release

Fixed

• Resolved an issue where changing the dates of schedule tasks did not appropriately update their dependencies.
• Corrected a problem that occurred while saving impact probabilities when the settings for probability and impact values differed.
• Amended the Impact Bulk edit template to use the correct column heading label for 'Owner'.
• Enhanced the Resource Plans bulk edit process to prevent placeholders to be changed to user records and vice versa.