Microsoft recently released a new feature for Project called Roadmap. According to Microsoft, “Roadmap is a visually exciting way to combine information from multiple Waterfall and Agile projects and share it with co-workers.” But that’s just the beginning…

Gartner’s recent market guide on Strategy Execution Management Software advises that any PPM leader interested in driving business transformation invest in tools to help them more effectively manage strategy execution. So what does that mean?

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For the seventh consecutive year, UMT360 is once again recognized as a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Integrated IT Portfolio Analysis Applications (IIPA). In its 2018 report, Gartner recognizes UMT360 for its completeness of vision and ability to execute. The full report can be found here (Gartner subscription required).

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Every year, UMT360 participates in the Gartner PPM Summit. This year’s event was held June 12-14 in National Harbor, MD. As they have in previous years, the folks at ProjectManagement.com asked me to provide some observations on this year’s Summit. You can find the whole article here, but if you don’t have an account (register for free here) here’s a brief overview.

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UMT360 has once again been recognized as a Visionary in Gartner’s 2017 Magic Quadrant for Integrated IT Portfolio Analysis Applications (IIPA). This is the sixth consecutive year that UMT360 has been recognized by Gartner for its completeness of vision and ability to execute. The full report can be found here (Gartner subscription required).

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I was recently teaching a class for UMT360 Administrators, and as I was covering the feature Dependencies and Validations for Project Server Fields, one of my students in the class exclaimed in a eureka moment, “I didn’t know we could do that!” So I thought, maybe others who are not aware of what their UMT360 product can do for them would like to learn about this too!

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There’s no question that Microsoft Project Online and Project Server are world-class PPM solutions. When implemented correctly, Microsoft’s PPM platform enables organizations to establish the solid foundation they need to manage project execution. But when it comes to extending capabilities beyond Microsoft’s core PPM features, organizations have historically relied on expensive and complicated customizations and work-arounds.

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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 v5.12 – Product Update 12 (PU12). Product 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.

• New features and significant enhancements
  • Portfolio Manager – Enable organizations to model the impact of changes to project and program portfolios using what-if analysis
    • Measure the impact of changes using key portfolio metrics
    • Leverage interactive roadmaps to model changes to project portfolios, such as adding, removing or rescheduling projects
    • Optimize resource utilization by running analysis at summary level (e.g. role, team, location) or drill down to the named resource level
    • Optimize cost by running multi-year fiscal planning, cost reduction scenarios, budget utilization, etc.
    • Maximize ROI and accelerate payback
• Core Financial Capabilities
  • Display the Proposed End Date in the Manage Financial Timeline dialog, while Change Requests that include timeline changes are in a Pending or Draft state
  • Fixed issue with duplicate snapshots being created during Stage Transitions when processing the transitions takes a long time
  • Fixed issue with ribbon becoming disabled in UMT360 Actuals web part when submitting a period without previously saving the financial values
  • Fixed an error which occurred when the timeline of an entity which aggregates financial values from one or more entities was modified and then returned to its original value
  • Fixed issue with Forecast period becoming editable when the last Actuals period is re-opened and the Lock Forecast Values upon approving Financial Status Periods option is being used
  • Fixed an error which occurred when exporting Financial grids to Excel and having long entity names
• Resource Management
  • Added Weekly granularity in the context of UMT360 Resources, UMT360 My Resource Plans and UMT360 My Resources web parts
  • Improved performance in the Add Resources popup from the UMT360 Resources, UMT360 My Resource Plans and UMT360 My Resources web parts
  • Added the ability to automatically remove resources from Build Team when they are no longer included in the UMT360 Resource Plans, when those resources do not have a task assignment in the Project Plan
  • Added Email Address field in Create Resource popup from Resource Pool administration page
  • The value limit for Full Time Equivalent (FTE) has been removed
  • Fixed Values have been changed in another session error displayed in UMT360 Resources web part upon publishing the Project while using UMT360 Resources Edit Values only through Project Synchronization and Automatically Update Values on Project Plan Publish
  • The order of the Resource Dimensions in the Displayed Resource Dimensions field is persisted in the web part editor
  • The Apply button is now functional in the UMT360 Resources web part editor o Values are properly updated in UMT360 Resources web part when using Project Plan Integration and reassigning an assignment to a resource which is synchronized from Project
  • Fixed issue with Fields Update queue job getting stuck in a sleeping state whenever a new resources was added to the UMT360 Resource Plan while using Field Mappings
• Roadmap and Milestone Management
  • Added a new Synchronized column to the Milestones OData view
  • Date Range Settings from Portfolio Roadmap Timeline Views are now persisted o The Entity bars are now properly adjusted in Roadmaps when using intrinsic Project fields to capture their Start and End Dates
  • Fixed issue with read-only Date Fields being editable in Milestones on certain browsers
  • The Project Summary Task is no longer synchronized with the UMT360 Milestones web part when the Project Schedule contains only milestone tasks
• Other
  • The Global Options administration page has been redesigned with a more user friendly UI
  • Added Start Date and End Date fields to the Entities OData view
  • Fixed issue with UMT360 Queue processes being fired for entities which no longer exist in Project
  • Calculated SharePoint columns are now supported in the UMT360 Entity Details web part
  • The web part order from Project Detail Pages and UMT360 Forms is now persisted after upgrading to the latest UMT360 Version
  • Sync Provider Assignments and Synchronize Entity Information to the Reporting Database queue jobs are no longer started for projects that don’t exist in Project anymore
  • The Synchronize Entities dialog from the Manage Entity Type Settings administration page is filtered to show only Projects that are not created in UMT360 

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details. Customers and Partners can download CU12 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

We’re pleased to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.11 – Cumulative Update 11 (CU11). 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.

• New features and significant enhancements
  • Ability to snapshot all UMT360 entities in one session, including multiple entity and container types
• Resource Management
  • Introduced the ability to filter available resources in the UMT360 My Resources web part
  • Introduced the ability to filter available resource plans in the UMT360 My Resource Plans web part
  • Added the ability to group resource plans by Entity Type Name in the UMT360 My Resource Plans web part
  • Added new option to Scroll to Assignment in UMT360 My Resource Plans and UMT360 My Resources web parts
  • Added the ability to edit Resource Field values for multiple resources at once in the UMT360 Resource Pool
  • Added the ability to modify the Custom Attributes of existing Resource Fields
  • The Max Units percentage value is now included in the Resource Capacity calculation when resources are synchronized with the Microsoft Project resource pool
  • Added a new Global Option that can be used to enable/disable filtering of available resources based on the Resource Owner field in the UMT360 My Resources web part
  • Calculated Resource Dimensions can now be included in Snapshots
  • Fixed Resource Field formatting issues in the Add Resources window
  • Fixed issue with the order in which entities are displayed in the UMT360 My Resources web part
  • Introduced a new OData view called EntityAssignmentsTimeline which can be used to calculate the resource Full Time Equivalent at granularities higher than Months
• Core Financial Capabilities
  • Added the Change Request Approver and Change Request Approved Date in the reporting tables and the corresponding OData views
  • Improved Change Request creation performance
  • Removed character limit for Change Request names
  • Email notifications are no longer sent to the Submitter when automatic Change Requests are approved or rejected
  • The workflow stage Detail Level is now enforced for Financial Breakdowns as well
  • Reporting values are updated correctly when copying values from a blank Financial Dimension
  • Improved reliability when synchronizing snapshotted financial values with Enterprise Custom Fields
  • Fixed random issue when displaying financial values in the UMT360 Forecast web part
• Roadmap and Milestone Management
  • Added the ability to select which Milestones will be displayed in Roadmaps
  • Increased the maximum number of entities that can be displayed in Roadmaps (up to 300 entities)
  • Entities are now alphabetically ordered in Roadmaps
  • Added a new OData view called SnapshotMilestones which exposes information from snapshotted Milestones
  • Fixed issue with Roadmaps and Milestones not being displayed when using calculated fields to determine the roadmap start or end dates for entities
• Data Exchange
  • Fixed issue with the Financial Breakdown Field value being removed from the Data Exchange wizard
  • Added DataImportDeleteTemplate public method to help delete Data Exchange Templates
• Other
  • Added the ability to select and retry multiple queue jobs at once
  • Improved performance in Manage Financial Status Periods page
  • Added two additional OData views: SharePointListItemsFieldDefinitions and SharePointListItemsFieldValues
  • Fixed issue causing a conflict between the UMT360 OData Authentication feature and certain SharePoint features
  • Fixed issue that led to incorrect values being saved in financial grids and Financial Custom Fields when using specific locales
  • Fixed issue with the Associated Field section being hidden each time a Survey was edited
  • Fixed an error that occurred when using external group names longer than 50 characters
  • Fixed random issue with the UMT360 Provisioning process getting stuck when changing the license key

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU11 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

We’re pleased to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.10 – Cumulative Update 10 (CU10). 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.

• New features and significant enhancements
  • UMT360 My Resources: adds the ability for Resource Owners to manage individual assignments of all resources they are responsible for
  • Added the ability to reassign work from one resource to another
  • Added calculated Resource Dimensions to display time-phased work variance: Planned vs. Committed and Actuals vs. Committed
  • Roadmap Tracking Icons: added visual indicators that help track milestone status and interdependencies within UMT360 Roadmaps
• Core Financial Capabilities
  • Fixed issues when setting the Timeline Start Date/End Date to a non-working day after resetting the execution of a project
  • Fixed issue with UMT360 Update Entity Timelines jobs failing while using specific locales (regional settings)
  • The View Total column is now governed by the order set for the Financial Custom Fields
  • Number of decimals displayed for financial values is no longer trimmed when Currency Symbol is not in use
  • Fixed issue with the Timeline End Date not reverting to its original value when deleting or rejecting a Change Request
  • Change Request approval no longer requires projects to be checked-in unless Custom Fields are included with that Change Request
  • Fixed issue with Financial Custom Field values not being saved when Change Requests were not enabled
  • Fixed issue with inaccurate Change Request approver lists when using comma as a name separator
  • Fixed issues that occurred when disabling Change Requests for existing entities in execution
  • Fixed issue with changing the Enterprise Financial Type properties from Budget Only to Budget, Actuals and Forecast
  • Automatic Snapshots triggered by Stage Transitions are now  executed even if the UMT360 Project Instance has not yet been created
  • Fixed issue with financial values not being updated when integrating with Resource Plans and updating a resource assignment with 0h
  • Fixed issue with financial and work values not being properly updated when using the Edit Values only through Project Server Synchronization option
  • Synchronize Entity Project Plan queue job no longer fails when publishing a Project Plan that has a task assigned to a resource with its Cost Type value mapped to lower levels in the financial hierarchy
• Resource Management
  • Resources are now added to Build Team when the project is checked-out
  • Fixed issue with the Sync Provider Assignments queue job not waiting for Project Publish, and causing values not to be displayed in the Project Integration pop-up
  • Default values of Assignment Fields are now displayed in OData.AssignmentFieldValues view upon the first assignment being saved
  • Improved handing of recurring calendar exceptions
  • Availability is now recalculated when changing the Resource Timeline via Crop/Redistribute or when performing a Copy to Dimension action
  • Fixed issue with financial values being imported from the Resource Plan while using specific locales (regional settings)
  • Fixed grouping when using Assignment or Resources Fields of type Flag
  • Fixed grouping when using Resource Fields of type Text with the Allow multiple values to be selected from lookup table option enabled
  • Added the ability to search for resources using Custom resource fields in Add Resources popup
• Data Exchange
  • Fixed issue with creating entities and importing values at the same time
  • Entire Project no longer needs to be inserted in the input file in order to import to Entire Timeline granularity
  • Updated status of the import operations to better reflect unsupported update scenarios
  • Fixed issue with importing values in multiple financial nodes for projects using Identifier column for Nodes and Allocation Centers
  • Fixed issue with not being able to reach Step 3 of the Data Exchange process, when using and updating a Data Exchange Template with additional mappings
  • Values are now imported when using a Custom Field as Entity Identifier and the import file contains a space character after the identifier value
  • Added a more relevant error message in Import Entity Data queue error details when a Custom Field cannot be updated due to a value mismatch
  • Improved performance when using a large number of columns in the import file
• Jira Integration
  • Resources from Project no longer require a login account in order for them to be synchronized with the Assignee Jira Field
  • The Project Name value is no longer updated when manually synchronizing projects from Microsoft Project to Jira
  • Assignee field is no longer cleared when Tasks are synchronized from Microsoft Project
  • Fixed issue with the Provision Connector queue job failing when connecting to a JIRA Server running version 7.4.x or older
  • Fixed issue with the Sync Connector Concepts queue job failing when attempting to bring an empty value from a Text Custom Field to the Description Field in Jira
• Other
  • Fixed issue with Workflow Viewer displaying the incorrect workflow chart for projects having PWA URL set as site address
  • Enterprise Custom Fields are no longer validated when creating an Enterprise Association based on a SharePoint Field
  • Multiple Entity Details web parts can now be added to the same UMT360 Form of type New
  • Entity Start Date and Entity End Date out of the box fields are now populated correctly in Portfolio Center views and in Entity Details web parts
  • Entity Details web part no longer validates required SharePoint Fields and Columns that are hidden
  • Fixed issue with generic error message and ribbon buttons being disabled when adding an invalid date in Entity Details web part
  • Timeline can now be updated on existing entities, after addressing gaps in the definition of existing Fiscal Periods
  • Fixed issue with Stage Transitions not being executed when multiple consecutive submits firing Sync Remote Entity queue jobs are executed in a short period of time
  • Improved performance in Entity Settings page when having thousands of users in SharePoint groups
  • Values from calculated Currency fields are now rolled up and formatted correctly in Portfolio Center views
  • Update Breakdown Fields Values for Reporting queue job no longer fails when updating values on a Subtraction Financial Breakdown
  • Fixed error in UMT360 Roadmap web part when the timeline of the Entity is not set and the Roadmap Template uses any other option than Use the Start and End Date of the Entity as the default Date Range
  • Added the ability to edit the Description field of UMT360 Milestones that are synchronized with the Project Plan
  • Improved handling of non-working day variance calculation between the Actual Date and the Planned Date of a milestone
  • Values are now correctly saved and displayed in UMT360 Fields web part when using Default and Available Values outcome dependencies between Custom Fields
  • Added the ability to reverse the status of a Milestone from Completed to Planned by using the Unlock ribbon button
  • The Planned Date of a Milestone is now read-only when the Milestone status is Active or Completed
  • When UMT360 Milestones are synchronized from Project Schedule and their Percent Complete is set to 100%, users are now able to set them all as Completed without Locking them first

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU10 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

We’re pleased to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.9 – Cumulative Update 9 (CU9). 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 timeout issues when submitting Change Requests on sites with large number of users
  • Fixed issue with Entities availability after upgrade, when using Custom Granularities
  • Fixed performance issue when updating data for reporting for Change Requests and Snapshots
  • Fixed queue constraints error when creating Bulk Snapshots
  • Fixed the Copy Stage Transition error when destination Financial Dimension had a different granularity than the source Financial Dimension
  • Fixed issue with non-working days not being handled properly after a major upgrade
  • UI improvements to better differentiate between closed and open financial reporting periods
  • Fixed performance issue when editing Global Templates on sites with large number of users
  • The Not Applicable option from Entity Type Settings is no longer applied when Pushing Settings
• Resource Management
  • Added the ability to associate a Lookup Table to the Phase resource assignment field
  • Fixed issue with automatically updating a Project Plan Team with multiple resources
  • Fixed issue with Financial Views when updating the resource plan with 0h of work
  • Improved performance on the My Resource Plans web part
  • Improved user experience when adding resources to a Resource Plan based on Availability
  • Fixed issue with searching for resources using special characters
• Roadmap and Milestone Management
  • Fixed issue with the Milestone variance calculation
  • Fixed issue with changing the date range for Portfolio Timeline Roadmaps
• Data Exchange
  • Fixed issue with Change Requests not being created when importing values into a Budget Financial Dimension in execution using identifiers
  • Multi-select fields can now be updated with more than one value through a single Data Exchange session
  • Fixed issue with too many Fields Update queue jobs being triggered when saving values or importing through Data Exchange
• Jira Connector
  • Values from the Priority Jira Field can now be synchronized to Microsoft Project
  • Fixed issue with Jira Connector Settings resetting to default after upgrade
  • Fixed issue with Jira events not being received when having at least two site bindings set on the SharePoint Site of the Web Application, created with the same type
  • When manually synchronizing entities, the Projects in the Synchronize Projects popup are no longer filtered by the Synchronization Filed, and this Filed is automatically set to Yes when the mapping is saved
• Performance and Reliability
  • Fixed error in the Reporting Update Financial Dimension queue job when deleting a Financial Dimension
  • Fixed issue with Field Updates queue items getting stuck in Sleeping state for long periods of time or even failing
  • Fixed issue with Aggregate Values for Entity queue job being triggered when values are updated on Financial Dimensions which were not involved in Financial Aggregations
  • Fixed the ProjectServerError(s) LastError=DatabaseUndefinedError issue
  • Fixed errors related Create Snapshots for Entity queue jobs
  • Improved OData Refresh reliability
  • Fixed OData performance issues for FinancialValuesLeaves view while the system was heavily used
  • Fixed issue with OData calls made from Sharepoint Designer
  • Added a new Snapshots OData View which exposes CreationDate
  • Added a new EntityRelationships OData view to help easily identify the Entities in a Relationship
  • Added a new SurveyUserAnswers OData view which shows the Survey Question Answers per Entity
• Other
  • Added the ability to define filtering conditions in the definition of Portfolio Center Views
  • Added CreateFiscalPeriods, DeleteFiscalPeriods, ReadAllFiscalPeriods, ReadFiscalPeriodByUid, ReadFiscalPeriods, UpdateFiscalPeriod API methods
  • Values can be imported via API/CSOM at parent node level even though there are values in their children nodes
  • Provider Connectivity Settings can be updated regardless of the state of the UMT360 site
  • Fixed error in Create Enterprise Association pop-up when using a Financials Legacy
  • Fixed issue with Field Mappings displaying 0 when the PWA Currency was the same as the UMT360 Reference Currency but both were different from USD
  • Fiscal Periods can the sorted By Start/Finish Date in the UMT360 Fiscal Periods page
  • Modifying the name of a Project Details Page is now updated under Form Mappings
  • Fixed error when trying to delete a UMT360 instance connected to Project Online when the Provider Connectivity user no longer has rights in Project Online
  • Fixed timeout issue when using Synchronize with Reporting option from Global Options
  • Fixed issue with Entity Start Date and Entity End Date field values not being displayed in UMT360 Forms and in Portfolio Center Views
  • Fixed rendering issue when loading the UMT360 Workflow Viewer web part

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU9 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.

We’re pleased to announce the availability of UMT360 v5.8 – Cumulative Update 8 (CU8). 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.

• New features and significant enhancements
  • UMT360 My Resource Plans: added the ability to bulk update Resource Plans across multiple projects
  • Resource Availability: added new availability views that provide the ability to easily find and add resources with availability to a Resource Plan, including advanced searching and filtering
  • UMT360 Jira Connector: this is the general availability / public release of the bi-directional Jira integration, previously available to select customers only
• Core Financial Capabilities
  • UI improvements to preserve the order of the selected Breakdown Financial Custom Fields across sessions
  • Fixed Value’s period must match project’s period error which occurred when values were saved on Actuals reporting periods in Financial Breakdowns
  • Fixed issue with nodes selection when editing the Breakdown Template
• • Fixed issue with UMT360 Fiscal Periods definition when using specific regional settings other than US
  • Fixed error when performing timeline changes during execution, with a username larger than 50 characters
  • Financial Breakdown timelines are properly adjusted when the financial timeline is cropped using Change Requests
  • Fixed ribbon issue when using Breakdown FCFs with Lookup Table
• Resource Management
  • Resource Dimensions can now be set as Read-only at the workflow stage level
  • Added the ability to create Assignment Fields with Lookup Tables
  • Enabled the use of Crop and Redistribute adjustment types when addressing inconsistencies in the Resources Timeline
  • Improved performance when creating or editing UMT360 Resources, when more than 300 Allocation Centers are in use
• Data Exchange
  • Improved usability when using Financial Period Identifier in Data Exchange
  • Improved handling of special characters when matching Financial Period names and using Fiscal Calendars
• Queue
  • Fixed error in UMT360 Queue page when multiple UpdateRelationshipFieldTable queue jobs were generated and one of them fails
  • Addressed timeout error for UpdateEntity Reporting Queue job when deleting a project
  • Fixed issue with Sync Entity Project Plan and Sync Milestones queue jobs being fired when the Resource Plan was published and Milestones with Automatically update Milestones when the Project Plan is Published were used
  • Improved queue usability by automatically retrying the queue jobs which have failed with ‘PSError’ or ‘Unknown Error’ and also by resetting the Number of Retries to 0 when the job is manually retried
  • Fixed timeout issue on Update Entity reporting queue job when deleting a project
  • Fixed ProjectHasWriteLock error on Update Entity on External Publish Event and Fields Update queue jobs when pushing project settings
  • Snapshots are no longer duplicated when being created in bulk and the UMT360 Queue Service is running on multiple servers
  • Fixed Update Instance queue job error when the financial timeline of an entity in execution was reduced using Crop Adjustment Type to fit its previous End Date
• Other
  • UI Improvements to the UMT360 Relationships web part
  • Improved handling of Fiscal Calendars for time periods labels in UMT360 Roadmaps
  • Fixed issue with the UMT360 Fields web part not functioning properly when using Custom Labels
  • Search field from Create Relationship is no longer case sensitive
  • Added UpdateChangeRequestApproversForEntity public method to help set approvers for Change Requests
  • Values are now reflected correctly via FinancialValuesLeaves OData View when there are periods with nodes in leaves at different levels

Visit the UMT360 Product Version History page for version details.

Customers and Partners can download CU8 via the online portals on www.umt360.com.