September 2024 Release Notes

Modified on Fri, 27 Sep at 7:20 PM

25th September Patch Release

Enhancements

Timesheet Upload Feed: Financial administrators can now bulk edit timesheets, allowing you to specify the number of hours for a project for a given week. The upload process will split the hours across the week and save the timesheet as submitted, triggering an approval request for resource managers.
Project Pipeline Board: Automatically manage project status as projects are created from the pipeline board. The project status will update automatically based on the column the card is in, allowing for multiple statuses across the workflow.
FYF Variance Binding: Two new binding elements have been added for financial exports to Word/PPT:
- FYF Variance from Funding Value: {ProjectFinancials.FYFVarianceFromFundingValue}
- FYF Variance from Funding Percentage: {ProjectFinancials.FYFVarianceFromFundingPercentageValue}
Auto-Generate Actuals from Forecast: Enhanced the functionality to auto-generate actuals from forecasts, now automatically assigning the same financial reference to the actuals as that of the original forecast for more consistent tracking.

16th September Release

This release brings significant enhancements to process boards and workflows, introducing greater flexibility in managing 'Completed' states and automating decision workflows for improved project management and governance.

New - Enhanced Flexibility with Multiple 'Completed' States in Process Boards

In many workflow or Kanban boards, columns are arranged from left to right to reflect the progression of tasks from start to finish, with the rightmost column typically indicating the 'Completed' or 'Done' state. This final column marks the point where tasks are fully closed, requiring no further action.

However, some workflows require multiple 'Completed' states, where different types of tasks might reach different final stages. To address this, our latest release allows board owners to set multiple columns as 'Completed'. This feature ensures that any task moved to these columns is marked as done, effectively removing it from the assignees' action dashboards.

Each 'Completed' column is marked by a check badge icon, indicating that it represents a final, fully closed state for tasks. Once tasks are moved to these columns, they can be archived directly by selecting the archive icon in the column header, allowing for efficient management and removal of completed tasks from active workflows.

New - Automated Decision Workflows

This release shows the introduction of Automated Decision Workflows within process boards to enhance project management efficiency and support PMOs in maintaining rigorous governance and oversight. This new functionality allows users to configure specific columns so that when a card is moved into these columns, a decision is automatically created and assigned to the column owners.

Key Benefits:

Automated Decision Triggers: When a card is moved to a particular column, a decision is automatically created and assigned to the column owners. This is particularly important in processes such as project intake or stage gate reviews, where approvals are required to move forward. This feature ensures that decisions are automatically initiated when needed. This helps avoid delays, as decisions are promptly assigned to the relevant owners without requiring manual intervention, keeping projects progressing smoothly through each stage.

Tracking and Auditing: Automated decisions are linked directly to the associated task and appear in the owners' action dashboards, providing a clear and auditable trail. This enhances accountability and ensures that all decisions are documented and easily accessible for review.

Improved Workflow Management: By integrating automated decision triggers directly into process boards, project managers and PMOs can ensure that critical decision points within workflows are consistently addressed.

Enhancements

Project Search: Enhanced search capabilities now include the option to search by project alternate reference, or use it as a filter criteria in project dashboards, addressing specific client feedback.
Project Dashboards: We've added security to the project dashboards by ensuring that users can only see projects for which they have permissions. Users with Project Viewer rights can see all projects, while others can only see projects they manage or are part of.
User Record Management: Administrators can now update the external reference used as the unique identifier in user records, either via the user interface or through the Resource Plans bulk edit. A new 'External Reference' column has been added to the file template.
Schedule Tasks Dependency Lines: After feedback, dependency lines in schedule tasks have been reverted to straight lines for easier readability.
Resource Profile: Resource managers or timesheet administrators can now download the timesheets and missing timesheets for specific resources directly from their resource profile page.

Fixed

Board Task Assignments: Resolved an issue where board tasks assigned to projects were not appearing on the project's actions and decisions dashboard.
Completing Stage Gates: Fixed the checkbox functionality for completing stage gate criteria on a project workspace, ensuring smoother transitions and updates.

4th September Patch Release

Fixed

Project Dashboard: Change Portfolio click not filtering on Portfolio.
Resource Feeds: Resource Forecast and Resource plan feeds also support reference value for resource/ManagerRef columns.
Jira Integration: Support paging of results to get all subtasks for a jira issue, not just the default max of 20
Schedule flex tasks: Fix deadlock in backend when forecasts generated from flex schedule task hours.