BP’s Neal Mistry at Gartner PPM Summit explains why roadmaps are critical for effectively orchestrating business transformation.

What we heard at this year’s Gartner Summit

A few thoughts about the recent Gartner Program & Portfolio Management Summit, held in Orlando this year…

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Gartner recently published its Market Guide for Strategy Execution Software. If you’re a Gartner client, you can access it here. The report speaks to the “execution gap” that many organizations are struggling with, and the main culprit seems to be a reliance on traditional tools and processes that keep project success rates stuck at around 64%.

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Microsoft recently announced new pricing for its Project Cloud PPM platform. As with any pricing change, how this new plan may impact your organization depends on your particular situation. Let’s first take a look at the facts, which will help provide a clearer idea of what it could mean to you.

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What do people really mean when they talk about business transformation? And why do we seem to be hearing so much about business transformation within the context of project and program management? Perhaps a few insights from this year’s Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit in Orlando can help to answer those questions.

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We’re excited to be participating in the Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit once again this year. The Summit will will be in Orlando from June 6-8. If you plan on attending, please do stop by the UMT360 booth and say hello.

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A recent Forrester Consulting report commissioned by Microsoft examines the costs and benefits of deploying Office 365 Project and Portfolio Management. The bottom-line? According to Forrester, a typical organization can realize a 301% ROI over three years! That’s a pretty bold claim, so let’s take a look at how they arrived at that figure.

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“Decades-old fables about Microsoft Project’s lack of capabilities bear little resemblance to today’s reality.”

We’ve all heard the age-old myths about the moon being made of cheese or fantastic creatures patrolling murky depths or hairy giants haunting the Pacific Northwest. With experience comes the wisdom to recognize which is truth and which isn’t. Yet, some of us do still occasionally fall for a modern myth or urban legend. Just ask anyone who still believes that Elvis has never really “left the building.”

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The end of the year is a time to connect with loved ones, celebrate the holidays, and make resolutions for the New Year. For PMO leaders, it’s also the perfect time to take a step back and assess the effectiveness of the processes you use to manage project and program investments, while also assessing their impact on your business.

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This fall, the UMT360 team participated in several industry events featuring PMO leaders presenting thought-provoking keynotes and informative breakout sessions. Attending these events always gives us a chance to learn, along with an opportunity to speak with PMO leaders from all walks of life. It also is a great reminder that no two organizations have exactly the same needs or face precisely the same challenges.

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UMT360’s own Ben Chamberlain presents the keynote at this year’s Project Management Days event in Helsinki.

I was invited to be the keynote speaker at this year’s Project Management Days in Helsinki. It was an honor to kick off this event in front of hundreds of project management professionals from around the world. But I have to admit to wondering how my presentation would resonate with the an audience comprised largely of folks who don’t share my native tongue. (Of course, some who know me would argue that an Englishman living in the U.S. must already have plenty of experience communicating with people who don’t speak his language.)

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The UMT360 team, along with PMO leaders from around the world, will be in Phoenix from November 8-11, 2015 for the PMO Symposium.

The PMO Symposium is one of our favorite events of the year. It’s where hundreds of business leaders gather for a behind-the-scenes look into the proven strategies and practices that drive success for some of the world’s leading PMOs. Each year it seems to get better and better, with just about everyone responsible for directing their organization’s portfolio of projects, programs and initiatives in attendance!

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It’s back-to-school time. And that means a fresh start for kids just looking for an opportunity to learn and grow. This year, the UMT360 team is hoping to make a difference for a few foster kids here in Washington state. Because each fall, thousands of them head back to school, and too many lack the essentials to succeed in the classroom.

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Part 5 in a series on how to extend the value of Microsoft Project Online & Project Server…
By now we know how important good business cases are to ensuring good project and program selection. A business case helps the organization determine the relative value of investments, and are also used to evaluate and prioritize competing initiatives.

But what happens to those business cases once the project has been approved? Read the rest of this entry

Part 4 in a series on how to extend the value of Microsoft Project Online & Project Server…
OK, so we’ve seen how to easy it is to integrate financials into our PPM process. We’ve recognized the importance of building robust business cases. We’ve realized that time wasted on manual reporting can be spent on more strategic activities. We should be feeling pretty good about ourselves now.

In fact, with all this newfound visibility and insight, we could do a much better job with our traditional “set-it-and-forget-it” approach to annual planning. Read the rest of this entry

Part 3 in a series on how to extend the value of Microsoft Project Online & Project Server…
One the banes of today’s Project Management professionals is status reporting. It’s an important component of any PPM process. But’s it’s often a logistical nightmare that typically involves manual processes that suck valuable time away from more strategic activities. Data must be gathered and reconciled from disparate systems and then reports must be manually developed. Read the rest of this entry

Part 2 in a series on how to extend the value of Microsoft Project Online & Project Server…
An organization’s portfolio of projects is really a collection of strategic investments. And these investments are of course made with the expectation that they will drive better business results. Too often, not enough is done on the front-end of the PPM process to manage the demand for new investments.

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Part 1 in a series on how to extend the value of Microsoft Project Online & Project Server…

The growing pressures on today’s PMO require that they deliver more than just strong tactical project management skills. To support these strategic demands, project management professionals need increased visibility. They need direct access to information that helps guide better decision-making. In short, they need to add more sophisticated business governance and investment planning and controls to their PPM process. But how?

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This year’s Gartner PPM Summit was held just outside of Dallas, TX, in early June. One of the highlights of the event was the standing room-only presentation by UMT360 client Frank LaRocca about how PMOs need to adjust their methods to adapt to a changing business environment.

Clicking on video will link to Gartner site and open new browser.
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No, the UMT360 team didn’t come up with the theme for this year’s Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit. But we certainly could have. Because from our perspective, the event’s theme — Thriving on Digital Chaos: Innovation, Agility and Collaboration — sounds exactly like what we’ve been telling our clients for years now. Read the rest of this entry

We met a lot of folks at the Microsoft Ignite Conference in Chicago last week. And while everyone we spoke with had unique and specific challenges, one common thread ran through our conversations. Most organizations we spoke with used Microsoft Project Online or Project Server as their PPM tool, yet still wanted a more efficient and effective way to manage their projects.
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If you work in public sector IT, you’ve probably heard of FedRAMP. And if it hasn’t yet made an impact on you or your agency, it soon will. FedRAMP stands for The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. It’s essentially a comprehensive framework, established in 2012, that defines what it takes for a company providing cloud products and services to federal agencies to be recognized as a secure provider.

Making it easy for federal agencies

I’m happy to report that UMT360’s Solutions for Microsoft Project Online & Project Server are now available as a FedRAMP Compliant Cloud Service.

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Close to 20,000 people will gather in Chicago for Microsoft Ignite during the first week of May. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone there, but we’re particularly interested in connecting with anyone who manages or depends on Microsoft Project Online and Project Server. If that sounds like you, and you’re planning on attending Ignite, please stop by booth # 549 – we’d love to see you! Because not only can we show you how to make Project work harder for you. We also have a fun challenge that could make all your walking of the show floor really pay off!

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A recent UMT360 webinar attracted about 200 project management professionals interested in learning more about how today’s PMO can bridge the planning and execution gap. Judging from the responses to our poll questions during the presentation, nobody doubts that there is a gap. But it’s clear that many organizations are not quite sure what may be causing that gap, and what they can do to start addressing it.
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We asked the audience attending a recent UMT360 webinar – comprised mostly of Enterprise Architects (EAs) – a few questions. I learn the most when I hear directly from the professionals in our industry, so I thought I’d share a few of the results that I found particularly illuminating.
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I am an avid proponent of the transformative effects of technology. Indeed, digitalizing traditional PPM is core to our mission of helping organizations bridge the gap between strategy and execution. That’s why the recent Q&A with Gartner “Thriving on Digital Chaos” caught my attention.

It’s an interesting read, one that touches on the disruptive impact that technology is having on today’s PPM professionals. One point in particular really resonated with me – traditional know-how is no longer enough for PPM professionals.
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(Final post of a series on the forces helping to drive a tactical to strategic transformation of the PMO.)

In this series of blog posts, we’ve established the importance of focusing on capabilities, prioritization, allocation and road maps as they relate to the Strategic PMO. But at the end of the day, all of those ideas and concepts simply set us up for being able to effectively deliver results. And delivery is a bit more complex than simply “finishing the project”. Successful delivery requires organizations to:

• Measure Outcomes
• Understand Variance
• Predict Impacts
• Realign
• Reallocate

Let’s take a look at each one of those capabilities in a bit more detail:
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(Part five of a series on the forces helping to drive a tactical to strategic transformation of the PMO.)

Effective planning and execution of strategic initiatives requires that processes, technology and implementation all be synchronized with company strategy. Organizations that ignore these dependencies risk not being able to implement even moderately complex programs.
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(Part four of a series on the forces helping to drive a tactical to strategic transformation of the PMO.)

For many companies, the allocation of resources is driven from the bottom up. Allocation decisions are often disconnected from business capabilities, are commonly based only on one year of data, or are guided by a simple “allocate-or-not” mindset. Needless to say, these static and stagnant approaches are not very efficient.
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(Part three of a series on the forces helping to drive a tactical to strategic transformation of the PMO.)

A recent Gartner report provides some interesting perspective on the impact that prioritization has on today’s enterprise. Gartner reports that a majority of CIOs agree that non-prioritized, competing projects and programs are an obstacle to implementing strategies. Clearly, the ability to appropriately set priorities is crucial when it comes to managing enterprise investments.
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(Part two of a series on the forces helping to drive a tactical to strategic transformation of the PMO.)

To be truly successful, every organization must have a well-articulated strategy. And it’s crucial that this strategy be tightly aligned with an execution plan. But for many, there’s still a significant gap between strategy and execution. Organizations struggle to bridge this gap because they lack the clarity required to focus on the capabilities that will help them achieve their strategy.
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(Part one of a series on the forces helping to drive a tactical to strategic transformation of the PMO.)

For decades now, the PMO has been typically focused on tactical execution. Which is what made the keynote address at this year’s PMO Symposium – by one of the world’s foremost authorities on competitive advantage – so fascinating. As I listened to Harvard Business School Professor Dr. Michael E. Porter’s presentation, some ideas occurred to me about the gaps between strategy and execution that are way too prevalent in today’s enterprise program and portfolio management (EPPM).
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The UMT360 team just returned from the PMO Symposium in South Florida, where we met lots of folks interested in learning about transforming their PMO. Symposium attendees stopping by the UMT360 booth learned about the benefits of establishing a strategic PMO and participated in the UMT360 PMO Maturity Assessment. The assessment survey helps organizations picture themselves on the continuum of establishing a strategic PMO. Literally. Because after taking the survey, each participant placed an old-school Polaroid selfie on the UMT360 booth corresponding to their score, showing how each respondent measured up against their peers. Read the rest of this entry

You’re probably familiar with the grim statistics. Industry analysts tell us that traditional PPM is failing to deliver the anticipated results. And despite continued and significant investments in PPM, companies are still losing up to 46% of the planned business value from their project portfolios.

Clearly, the status quo isn’t working. But a new breed of business leader is emerging to help buck the trend and transform PPM. And the UMT360 team will be at the PMO Symposium in Miami to help showcase how these leaders are breaking the cycle of unreliable planning, cost overruns and project failures.

If you’re planning on attending the PMO Symposium in Miami from November 16-19, stop by the UMT360 booth to say hello. You can participate in our survey, picture how you measure up against your peers and be in the running for one of the free GoPro cameras we’ll be giving away at the end of each day. Read the rest of this entry

A big thanks to all the attendees of the IT Portfolio Management Conference in Chicago who stopped by the UMT360 booth. The event was a fantastic opportunity to connect with IT leaders looking to transform how they manage enterprise IT investments.

Many of the folks who stopped by the UMT360 booth participated in our 2014 IT assessment survey. It was a quick and fun survey that measured responses on a scale ranging from “I have No Idea” to “We’re Awesome!” This survey was designed to help provide a sense of how IT leaders see their own organization’s development and transformation especially as it relates to these five principles of Enterprise Portfolio Management.

The results of the survey suggest that there’s ample opportunity for IT organizations to improve their portfolio management capabilities. Read the rest of this entry

Enterprises have invested billions of dollars implementing PPM solutions under the promise that they would increase project effectiveness and efficiency. But have those solutions delivered on their promises?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Traditional PPM is simply failing to deliver the anticipated results. There are many reasons, but at a fundamental level, PPM is notorious for lacking a business focus and for placing too much faith in scheduling. In a recent UMT360 webinar Transform 2015 Planning: Moving from Project to Capability Based Investment Planning, CEO Mike Gruia shared some startling statistics:

• Nearly 33% of projects fail to meet their goals or business intent
• Nearly one in five projects fail to be completed
• 43% of all projects are delivered late or over budget
• Only 54% of the investments deliver their promised value

Are We Just Planning for Planning’s Sake?
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UMT360’s recent webinar schedule has focused on enabling PMOs to be strategic. Great topics, with some world-class PMO professionals including Learning How to Establish a Strategic PMO with Carl Souchereau from SNC Lavalin T&D, and Changing the PMO Status Quo with Frank La Rocca from ConEd. In fact, we’ve seen so much interest in the Strategic PMO idea that we’ve created a local breakfast series, starting initially in Chicago and Houston.

But we also thought it would be good to step back and define just what makes up a strategic PMO. We reached out to some industry folks to get their views, and one response stood out in particular. Andy Jordan is the president at Roffensian Consulting, and has over 20 years within the portfolio, program, project and PMO space. Andy’s response aligned very closely with our view, and so we thought we’d let Andy share directly! You can reach Andy at andy.jordan@roffensian.com, and we thank him in advance for the guest post! – Paul

Just What is a Strategic PMO?

By Andy Jordan

In the last few years PMOs have been asked to take on much more ‘business critical’ functions. Some have embraced this opportunity, some have not. The idea of a project focused central services style PMO (people, process, tools, training) is rapidly losing favour because it is not delivering business results. Instead, the idea of a PMO more aligned with the business is gaining traction, and that is what PMOs should always have been. A Strategic PMO is a project centric business department and should be structured and managed in the same way as other business departments – goals and objectives set by enterprise leadership that help the organization as a whole succeed. That’s what we expect for sales, or operations, or fill in the blank other department, and that’s what we should expect of PMOs.

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Back in July, we ran a successful webinar discussing what it takes to create a strategic PMO. The webcast, led by Carl Souchereau, formerly of TransAlta and now Project Director at SNC Lavalin, provided practical advice around mastering the important yet tactical aspects of project management as well as taking strategic responsibility for managing the investment decisions for the portfolio. (If you missed the webcast, it is archived here.)

Because interest in the webinar was so strong, we wanted to extend the conversation and have created the UMT360 Strategic PMO Breakfast Series. We’re fortunate in that Carl has signed on to present his wisdom again, but we’ll also take some time to look at the latest product developments that help the Strategic PMO fulfill the vision Carl will present, including:

• Integrating investment planning and controls across the PPM life-cycle that result in optimized spend and maximized ROI
• Streamlining capital planning and building stronger business cases
• Automating financial tracking and variance analysis to enable dynamic planning
• Establishing a benefits realization framework to measure results

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During a recent UMT360 webinar covering How to Become a Strategic PMO (see archive here), we found that only 1% have regular dynamic reallocation reviews via automated processes. Another 39% have regular reviews, but require manual, time-intensive efforts to collect and standardize data.

UMT360’s message to PPM practitioners is that this is their opportunity to take the leap to becoming a strategic PMO office by focusing efforts on gaining control of their investments. Annual planning and traditional resource allocation is not enough, as it cannot accommodate the challenges of market complexity and rapid change. Portfolio rebalancing allows organizations to keep their investment priorities in check and optimize the resource allocation and consumption.

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We’re pleased to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.5 – Cumulative Update 5 (CU5). Cumulative Updates include all previously released public updates and private hotfixes. We strongly recommend that any patch and release is validated in a non-production environment first before being applied to production environments.

• Core financial capabilities
  • Addressed issues with automatically-generated Change Request approvals
  • When integrating with a schedule or resource plan, addressed synchronization issues related to tasks that end on the first day of a new period, or that have a 1-day duration
  • Improved handling of inactive resources on synchronization to financial structures
  • Start date for a timeline populated a project schedule is now correctly updated
  • Improved deletion logic for fiscal periods
  • Fixed data aggregation issues from child to parent entities when Enforce the use of Allocation Centers is used
• Data Exchange
  • Fixed handling of cases where a Financial Period is used as the identifier
  • Improved behavior when custom fields with specific names are defined in Project (such as Project ID)
  • Addressed import errors when updating financials on a yearly granularity or using list items
• Other
  • Addressed issues with handling of dependencies for specific cases within the UMT360 Fields web part
  • Improved handling of incorrect parameters for the UpdateBreakdownValues API method
  • Fixed settings import/export for Survey Display Settings
  • Improved validation of Provider connectivity settings on upgrade
  • Improved resiliency provisioning sequence when  the application principle permissions cannot be updated due to incorrect (limited) permissions
  • Various improvements to the Queue to increase resiliency when dealing to a large number of some specific job types such as bulk-creating projects or snapshots
  • Improved Queue resiliency when dealing with resource-starved SQL servers

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU5 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

We’re pleased to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.4 – Cumulative Update 4 (CU4). Cumulative Updates include all previously released public updates and private hotfixes. We strongly recommend that any patch and release is validated in a non-production environment first before being applied to production environments.

• Core financial capabilities
  • Fixed data aggregation issues from child to parent entities when Enforce the use of Allocation Centers is used
  • Values at higher (parent) levels are now correctly updated in cases where financials are updated at levels lower than the Detail Level
  • Addressed display errors when defining fiscal periods that are not contiguous (include gaps)
  • Improved resiliency of Change Requests when a financial structure is being changed
  • Improved internal adjustments of the first or last day of a financial period that are non-working days
  • Budget financial dimensions are now editable in Execution for entities not using Change Requests
• Other
  • Changed default sorting to alphabetical for the Available Entities list in the Synchronize Entities popup
  • Improved Data Exchange code to properly handle text surrounded by angle brackets (< and >)
  • Addressed issues with Data Exchange not properly identifying projects when using a custom identifier
  • Improved reliability when dealing with a very large number of Allocation Centers
  • Improved handling of progress message displayed when mapped Custom Fields are being updated
  • Added a new global option for controlling the clean-up interval for failed Queue jobs
  • Addressed display issues with projects not being rendered properly in Roadmaps under certain scenarios

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU4 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

We’re pleased to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.3 – Cumulative Update 3 (CU3). Cumulative Updates include all previously released public updates and private hotfixes. We strongly recommend that any patch and release is validated in a non-production environment first before being applied to production environments.

• Roadmaps
  • Slicer Roadmaps column headers now display the appropriate currency symbol
  • Addressed rendering issues with Roadmaps when entity-level start / end dates differ significantly from Workflow start / end dates
  • Other various improvements to Roadmap Views
• Other
  • Improved detection logic on the UMT360 side for projects that are deleted in Project Online, including the addition of an administrative page for monitoring such projects
  • Improved workflow handling for projects that are restarted
  • Addressed display issues for Financial Custom Fields in the UMT360 grids
  • Fixed issues with UMT360 web part description display
  • Improved detection of existing aggregation jobs for a specific project
  • Added an option to change a relationship type to include / not include financial aggregation
  • Added the ability to sort items in the UMT360 Relationship web part
  • Updated Queue is processing workflow label for stages that do not include UMT360 activities
  • Added Text and Date Custom Field values included with Snapshots and Change Requests to the reporting tables
  • Added the ability to control the way Forecast is locked for editing via a new Global Option (Lock Forecast Values)

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU3 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

We’re pleased to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.2 – Cumulative Update 2 (CU2). Cumulative Updates include all previously released public updates and private hotfixes. We strongly recommend that any patch and release is validated in a non-production environment first before being applied to production environments.

• Core financial capabilities
  • Significant improvements to the Allocation Center selection interface
  • Addressed issues with Roadmap dates not being updated consistently
  • Fixed behavior where Financial Custom Field values would not be copied when using a Copy Financial Dimension action
• Other
  • Added a global option to select the number of months (duration) to be used as the Default Timeline
  • Improved overall resiliency of the Data Exchange actions, including when using a template after changing underlying mappings (deleting mapped cost nodes etc.)
  • Addressed issues with the Data Exchange link not being visible for some users
  • Created a script that can be used by administrators to diagnose configuration issues for the SharePoint and UMT360 farms. This script will be made available on demand by the Support group.

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU2 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

We’re excited to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.0, a major release supporting SharePoint 2013, 2016 and Project Online. This release includes a set of new features, as well as significant performance improvements on loading and saving financial values, and various enhancements across all product areas:

• New features and capabilities
  • Portfolio Roadmap Views: enable rich and dynamic slicing and dicing of related portfolios and their data, with the ability to save templates as custom views
    • Timeline View
    • Impact View
    • Slicer View
  • UMT360 Milestones: ability to manage milestone repositories that function independently or can be synchronized with project plans; managing inter-dependencies at the milestone level; display milestone relationships as part of the UMT360 Roadmap Views
  • Custom granularities for financial views – the ability to use one granularity (ie. monthly) for current year and a different granularity (ie. quarterly or yearly) for future years as part of the same financial grid
• Core financial capabilities
  • Ability to set Allocation Centers as inactive
  • Values for deleted Breakdown Financial Custom Fields get emptied  correctly
  • The Field Width Financial Custom Fields setting applies only to individual Financial Custom Fields, not to all Financial Custom Fields
  • Addresses issues with handling of Flag-type Financial Custom Fields values
  • Addressed issues when Maintain Synchronized Financial Values is unchecked and values are imported to Financial Breakdowns
  • Fixed Sync Entity Project Plan queue job error when importing values in an entity that has an Enterprise Financial Type without the Use Allocation Centers option checked;
  • Integration values mapped only on Total Node are no longer imported if the node has values on Allocation Centers
  • Fixed Value’s period must match project’s period error when saving values on a Reporting Period not fully contained by the breakdown’s timeline
  • Financial Dimension Breakdowns can be created for Sites and List items
  • Financial Dimension Breakdowns can be ordered by Start/End Date in Manage Financial Breakdowns pop-up
  • Financial Dimension Breakdowns that use a Financial Breakdown Template inherit the settings and selections of the Template
  • When the timeline is cropped for an Enterprise Financial Type that has one Budget Financial Dimension in execution, values are now correctly calculated for the Financial Dimensions that are not in execution
  • Timelines are now adjusted to the nearest working day, when the predefined Start Date/End Date fall on a non-working day
  • When Timelines are extended, the next reporting period is automatically opened (also when the last period is in the Open for Edit status)
  • The Toggle All option is now persisted in the View dialog
• Data Exchange
  • Multi-line values and Flag Custom Fields can now be imported
  • Added the possibility to use ProjectGUID as Project Identifier
  • Custom Fields of type Number with Lookup Tables can now be updated correctly
  • Fixed Import Entity Data queue job failure when creating projects
  • The child value of a Lookup Table structure can be imported in a Financial Custom Field or Custom Field of type Text
  • Fixed issue with projects not being created and values not being imported when Import UMT360 financial information is unchecked
  • Fixed character encoding when using special characters
  • Values added at node level are now imported when % allocation is used and financial values already exist
  • Actual periods get correctly updated when Force update to a specific period option and Fiscal Calendars are used
  • Custom Fields update issues for projects which were promoted from sites or lists have been fixed
  • Fixed issues with Queue jobs failing when multiple import jobs updating the same Financial Dimension, period and node run simultaneously
• Relationships and aggregation of financial values
  • Lookup Tables are populated correctly when project names contain commas
  • Values are cleaned from the destination project/program/portfolio when the source project involved in the relationship is deleted
  • Lookup Tables are fully and correctly populated when projects are bulk imported are deleted using Delete Enterprise Projects
  • Users are redirected correctly when clicking on a list item/site in the UMT360 Relationship web part
  • Values are aggregated even when the Enterprise Financial Type does not have an Allocation Center Template assigned
  • Fixed queue job failure when aggregating values between projects with different granularities
  • Fixed queue job failure when changing the timeline of the projects involved in relationships
• Custom Field Mappings
  • Fixed the update mapped fields issue when fields are mapped to Forecast and the Forecast is overwritten with Actuals
  • Added a notification upon saving values informing the user there are pending operations waiting to update mapped custom fields when projects need to be checked in
• Change Requests
  • The Last Changed time stamp is now correctly updated after editing a Change Request
  • Fixed values display in Difference when removing a node from the structure
  • Fixed the issue of Automatic Change Requests created by timeline change not getting approved
  • First save now updates Financial Custom Fields values for Breakdowns in Change Requests
  • Fixed issue with updating the value of a Financial Custom Fields in a Change Request when a project using % allocation setting enters execution without financial values
  • Improved performance on Change Request and Reporting periods approval tasks
• UMT360 OLAP Cube
  • Added validation for Start Date field when creating a new OLAP Database;
  • Fixed issue of OLAP Cube build failure when a Project Owner no longer exists in Active Directory;
  • Addressed issues with Survey Question Scores and Snapshotted Survey Question Scores calculation
• Security and permissions
  • Added new permissions to View Surveys
  • Setting the Manage Allocation Center Templates permission to Deny disables the Templates button in Allocation Centers page
  • The View Budget permission no longer restricts access to Manage Currency Exchange Rates and now only affects the Budget web part
  • The Edit Items permissions on lists is no longer required in order to access the Workflow Viewer web part
  • Improvements to the job that runs when an UMT360 group is synchronized with an external group
• Portfolio Center
  • Entity Types for which the user does not have Entity Access are no longer displayed in the New dropdown list
  • Improvements to Custom Filters created for a Date type column
  • Multiple choice fields are now correctly displayed for SharePoint column of type person or group
  • List items without names can no longer be created from Portfolio Center
  • Columns with multiple lines of text columns are now correctly displayed in Portfolio Center
• Reporting
  • Improved performance by reducing the number of calls for Update Entity for Reporting, Update Custom Fields For Reporting, Synchronize Entity Information to Reporting, Snapshot Values for Reporting, Update Entity Values For Reporting
  • Other performance, reliability and data integrity improvements
• Push Settings
  • A new Synchronize button has been added in Entity Settings which will be used for the creation of UMT360 entities
  • Fixed Invalid entity type error displayed at Push settings for SharePoint Sites which do not have an Entity Type associated
• Surveys
  • Survey score is now updated on changing of associated Custom Field
  • The Create/Edit Survey or Question pages are now marked as mandatory sections
  • Fixed issue with inserting characters in Selection Range fields for a multiple selection question
• API Improvements
  • A new public API method which triggers a Data Exchange session with an existing Template has been implemented
  • Workflow Approval Tasks are now created for Change Requests submitted via the API
  • Change Request Values are now aggregated in Change Request grid when invoked via the API
  • Update Change Request Values For Reporting queue job is now triggered when a Change Request is submitted via the API;
  • Other API consistency and reliability improvements
• Upgrade
  • The UMT360 v5.0 requires at least UM360 SP1 CU4 Build in upgrade/migration scenarios in On Premise
• Other
  • List Workflows are now supported for UMT360 entities
  • Improvements to the Promoting Ideas functionality
  • Added the ability to  map SharePoint Site Columns not only PS Custom Fields
  • Locked budgets are no longer impacted by changes in granularity from one workflow stage to the next
  • Forecast is copied to any Budget and Forecast within the same Enterprise Financial Type
  • A new reporting period is created (Opened) only if the latest period is Approved
  • Fixed issue with values not being correctly calculated in Approved Change Request Actuals Columns
  • Improved performance and eliminated timeout when editing an Enterprise Financial Type with over 100 nodes and several Financial Dimension families
  • Fixed issue with not being able to open Excel document resulted by using Export To Excel from Manage CALs page
  • Project name get updated in UMT360 database correctly
  • New events have been exposed for Actuals Periods
  • New events have been exposed for Change Requests
  • Improved support for Fiscal Calendars for UMT360 entities based on SharePoint containers
  • CALs are now removed for users that no longer belong to a synchronized group
  • Dependencies with conditions having Custom Fields without Lookup Tables can now be created in the UMT360 Fields web part
  • Fixed the Change Calendar action when using Redistribute adjustment type

Upgrade and data migration known issues and fixes:

• Data migration issue when upgrading from build 4.1.0701.1000 to UMT360 v5.0: provider connectivity settings cannot be read if the URL post-migration is different
  • Fix: run Set-UMT360ProviderConnectivitySettings with the same provider used on the older build before creating the new UMT360 extension
• Configuration of UMT360 forms is lost when migrating  from versions 3.0.5112.1001 or 3.0.5218.1001 (SharePoint 2013) to UMT360 v5.0 on SharePoint 2016
  • Fix: before performing the backup of the DBs that are to be restored on a new SharePoint 2016 environment, run UMT.Upgrade.Webparts.exe -o export. The export tool can be provided upon request
• Data migration issue when moving from an older version of UMT360 on SharePoint 2013 to UMT360 v5.0 on SharePoint 2016
  • Fix: Before migration, upgrade the 2013 environment to UMT360 v5.0 on the same platform (SharePoint 2013), and then use the upgraded DBs for the migration to UMT360 v5.0 on SharePoint 2016

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download v5.0 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

Thank you,
The UMT360 Team

We are pleased to announce the release of the UMT360 for SharePoint 2013 (UMT360 v4.1) – Cumulative Update 7 / CU7. Cumulative Updates include all previously released public updates and private hotfixes. We strongly recommend that any patch and release is validated in a non-production environment first before being applied to production environments.

• Core financial capabilities
  • Changed behavior to not update Financial Custom Field values when financial values are overwritten by Actuals
  • Altered behavior for the Submit button for Actuals to also force-save
  • Reset values for mapped Custom Fields when the Execution state is reset for a project
  • Improved behavior for Copy Actuals/Forecast to Budget for past/future periods when granularities are different
  • Removed stage validation that requires a Financial Timeline to be set for an Enterprise Financial Type that reaches Execution when financials values are not in used
• Other
  • Resolved a number of issues with configuration for Views, Surveys, Relationships not being updated correctly when using the Import / Export Settings option
  • Addressed problems with the SharePoint farm backup / restore process where an UMT360 site would not be restored properly
  • Fixed UI refresh issue when using Fiscal Calendars and the Timeline is changed
  • Resolved issue with width settings for Financial Custom Fields being applied to all Financial Custom Fields rather than just the selected one
  • Resolved issues with the Is hidden condition not working properly for a multiple-line text field under specific conditions
  • Improved Queue cleanup reliability for jobs that are no longer supposed to be executed (cancelled, obsolete, etc.)
  • Improved logging for the Financial Timeline change operation
• API and Programmability
  • Modified the Get-UMT360WebInstance method to return all UMT360 extensions if the SiteCollectionUrl parameter is not set
  • Added new public API method (ReadBreakdownValues) which allows reading Financial Breakdown values by project
  • Added new public API method (UpdateInstanceCurrency) which allows changing the default currency for a project programmatically

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU7 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

Thank you,
The UMT360 Team

We are pleased to announce the release of the UMT360 for SharePoint 2013 (UMT360 v4.1) – Cumulative Update 6 / CU6. Cumulative Updates include all previously released public updates and private hotfixes. We strongly recommend that any patch and release is validated in a non-production environment first before being applied to production environments.

Here’s the list of fixes and improvements addressed:

• Core Financial Capabilities
  • Adjusted UI for the Create Change Request page to better promote the use of templates
  • Added the ability to deactivate Allocation Centers no longer relevant while maintain their values
  • Change behavior to automatically apply financial settings in the workflow stage where the Financial Timeline is first set
  • Improved reliability of the Copy Financial Values to Forecast operation when re-submitting a reporting period
  • Extended the Copy Budget action to work for any Financial Dimension within an Enterprise Financial Type, not just for linked Financial Dimensions
  • Addressed issues where corrections to the invalid Financial Timeline values were not handled properly
• Other
  • Improved reliability when upgrading from older major versions
  • Addressed issues with OLAP cubes failing when a multiline custom field has values exceeding 1024 characters or the Analysis Services serve name is long
  • Added a new API method (ReadQueueWorkItemDetails) that provides details on the affected items or errors for a Queue job
  • Improved performance for the Configure Workflow Visualization page, which would sometimes fail on large datasets
  • Removed unnecessary keyboard hotkey in the Create Change Request and Create Snapshot dialogs
  • Updated number format to use the Global Options settings for number of decimals when exporting data to Exce
  • Workflow stage settings are now correctly applied for entities promoted from SharePoint when the Financial Timeline is linked to formula-based Custom Fields
  • Addressed issues with Filter by Department not working for entities promoted from SharePoint
  • Improvements to the Queue performance and reliability
  • Addressed issues on Exporting to Excel and across some configuration pages on specific locales and language packs
  • Improved behavior for the Is Hidden condition when the UMT360 Fields web part is rendered as read-only
  • Survey scores are now properly mapped to Custom Fields for projects with a large volume of data
  • Improved identification of default Project Server / Online default permissions groups when security is set to SharePoint mode

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU6 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

Thank you,
The UMT360 Team