28th June Patch Release

Fixed

1. Saving project dashboards: Fixed an issue when saving project dashboards that filtered projects by portfolio. 
2. Project Impacts: Improved the project impact dashboard layout to better handle the display of a large number of custom properties. 
3. DevOps Integration: Fixed a bug that caused attachments from Fluid to DevOps to be added twice and subsequently rejected by DevOps. 
4. Board Task Export to Excel: Board task Excel reports will now include all board custom properties, including those that are not reportable. 
5. Gantt Schedule: Fixed issues where dates could not be reset for manually scheduled tasks and where task status was reset to 'Not started' when dates were changed by dragging the task. An informational dialog has been added for users accessing tasks deleted by others without refreshing their web page.

26th June Patch Release

Fixed

1. JIRA integration: Added fix to re-add JIRA integration definitions if its missing. Also, added 3 new Fluid Action fields for integration task mapping, Action ID, Short Code, and Short ID, these fields help to uniquely identify the fluid action on the Devops/JIRA platofrm.
2. MS Project upload: Fix deadlocks on MS Project upload.
3. Schedule and Board task<: Filter out inactive LOBS from Flex hours section on Schedule and Board dialogs.
4. Project Edit: Tier dropdown is defaulted to 'Select' when no value is selected.
5. AD Sync: Improvements to error handling.
   
   

20th June Patch Release

Fixed

1. Impacts: Fixed an issue where projects you do not have manage access to could not be added as dependency to an impact.
2. Project dashboard: Fixed an issue where Risk & Impacts charts do not render on PDF report.

18th June Patch Release

Fixed

1. Financial Forecast and Actuals Uploads: These feeds have been enhanced to include Project Id and Project Name columns and validate for non-unique Project Reference.
2. Project dashboard: Fixed an issue where archived projects were seen by users who do not have App Admin/Project Admin/Project Viewer security role.

17th June Release

New - Stage Gates: Enhancing Project Management and Success

This release introduces stage gates, essential tools for effective project management. Stage gates are predefined checkpoints in a project's lifecycle, ensuring projects stay on track, within budget, and aligned with strategic objectives. They serve as entry or exit points for project phases, requiring the completion of specific deliverables and approvals before proceeding.

By configuring stage gates in the methodology settings, project admins establish structured review points throughout the project. When a methodology is assigned to a project, all associated stage gates are automatically applied. This setup ensures each project phase meets necessary criteria, providing a systematic approach to evaluate progress, identify issues, and make informed decisions.

Project managers can track and manage progress by marking stage gates as complete within the project workspace. Overdue gates are highlighted for timely intervention, helping to maintain alignment with timelines and goals.

PMOs and portfolio managers ensure governance and oversight by using stage gate filters on project dashboards to identify projects requiring attention. 

The ability to export project data, associated gates, and their status to Excel helps in detailed reporting and analysis.

Benefits:

• Enhanced Project Management: Ensures all necessary tasks and quality checks are completed at each phase.
• Risk Management: Identifies and addresses potential issues early in the project lifecycle.
• Resource Allocation: Helps in effective resource management by aligning project phases with organizational goals.
• Transparency: Provides a clear overview of project progress for all stakeholders.

For more information on the benefits of stage gates, read Stage Gates: Enhancing Project Management and Success. Application and Project Administrators can learn how to configure stage gates here.

Enhanced Financial Detailed Export

In the previous release, we introduced financial references to uniquely identify financial records. This release brings significant enhancements to the Financial Detailed export, aimed at improving financial reporting and allowing the export of this additional data to Excel. These changes include the addition of new columns and refined descriptions for existing ones, ensuring comprehensive and precise financial management.

Task Column

• Only applies to Resource Financial Records:
  • Resource Forecast Record: Represents the resource role in the community plan.
  • Schedule Task Forecast: Value is set to 'Schedule Task' to indicate the forecast originates from a schedule task.
  • Resource Actuals Record: Represents the timesheet sub activity.
    
    

Detail Column

• Varies by Financial Record Type:
  • Non Resource Forecast Record: Comment associated with the month forecast.
  • Non Resource Actuals Record: Comment associated with the month actuals.
  • Resource Actuals Record: Note associated with the timesheet entry.
    
    

Note Column

• Only applies to Actuals Records:
  • Non Resource Actuals Record: Invoice number.
  • Resource Actuals Record: Rate card used for the specific timesheet entry.
    
    

Financial Ref – New Column

• Only applies to Non Resource Financial Records:
  • The Financial Reference Value

Description – New Column

• Only applies to Forecast records:
  • Non Resource Forecast: Description of the expense.
  • Resource Forecast: Description associated with the community plan.
    
    

Other Enhancements / Fixes

1. Schedule View: You can now use filter options to hide completed items. Additionally, methodology phases are no longer displayed in the schedule section; they are now displayed in the project details section.
   
   
2. Project Search: Project search has been enhanced to allow searching by project name, external reference, alternate reference, or project ID, providing more flexible and efficient search capabilities.
   
   
3. Rate Cards: The rate card dialog has been redesigned to make capturing rate card data easier. You can now enter either the hourly, daily, or monthly rate using the Reference Rate Selection field, and the other two rates will be automatically calculated based on the following rules: 
   • If the hourly rate is entered: 
     • Daily Rate: Calculated by multiplying the hourly rate by the number of working hours per day. 
     • Monthly Rate: Calculated by multiplying the hourly rate by the number of working hours per day and then by the average number of working days per month. 
   • If the daily rate is entered: 
     • Hourly Rate: Calculated by dividing the daily rate by the number of working hours per day. 
     • Monthly Rate: Calculated by multiplying the daily rate by the average number of working days per month. 
   • If the monthly rate is entered: 
     • Hourly Rate: Calculated by dividing the monthly rate by the product of the number of working hours per day and the average number of working days per month. 
     • Daily Rate: Calculated by dividing the monthly rate by the average number of working days per month.
       
       
4. Submitting Work Requests: We have simplified the process for sending work requests by adding the Submit a Work Request component to the home page. This component allows you to quickly identify and submit the request type you need. If you do not see the type you need (as only up to 6 types are displayed by default), click on More Request Types for additional options.
   
   
5. Expense Types: We have added checks to ensure that expense types cannot be duplicated, with case-insensitive validation to prevent any redundancy.
   
   
6. Timesheets: Added a check to ensure users cannot book time against flex schedule tasks if the project is set to generate actuals automatically. This prevents any discrepancies and ensures accurate tracking of project hours.
   
   
7. Flex Schedules: Added a Tools menu item called "Trigger Flex Schedule Refresh" on the project workspace to facilitate easy updating of the flex schedule.
   
   
8. Financial Close Process: Hardened the financial close process code to fix an edge case where a few financial actual records were not included in the closed period, ensuring comprehensive and accurate financial closure.
   
   
9. Project Dashboards: Resolved an issue where pie charts showing the number of projects per PM were not displaying the correct number of projects if a project had more than one PM. The project was previously only counted against one PM instead of all PMs listed.
   
   
10. Minor UI Fixes: Implemented various minor user interface improvements to enhance overall user experience.

6th June Patch Release

Other Enhancements / Fixes

1. Gantt Schedule: We've listened to user feedback and changed the default behaviour when setting dependencies between schedule tasks. The lag will now default to 0. This improvement streamlines the scheduling process by eliminating unnecessary delays, allowing tasks to follow each other immediately unless specified otherwise. This makes it easier for users to manage timelines and dependencies more precisely.
   
   
2. Schedule Bulk Edit:Schedule tasks are defined by start date, end date, and effort. However, when uploading tasks, these three values are not always provided. We've improved the bulk edit functionality to make the rules consistent:
   • If only the start or end date is indicated, the effort will default to 1, and the missing date will be calculated using the given date and an effort of 1.
   • If only the effort is indicated, the start date defaults to today, and the end date is calculated accordingly.
   • If two values are indicated, the third value is deduced.
   • If all three values are indicated, the start date and effort take priority, and the end date is calculated accordingly.
     
     
3. Schedule Bulk Edit Status Issue: An issue that caused auto-calculated tasks to always have their status set to green has been corrected.
   
   
4. Process Board: To generate the PDF page for the board, you now need to use the Print Page functionality.
   
   
5. Export to Template: The export to template functionality was not always returning the latest status if more than one status had been recorded for the same day. This has been fixed to ensure the most recent status is always reflected.