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UMT360 Blog

Using Dependencies & Validations for Project Online/Server Fields

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 ...

Strike & Maintain the Right Innovation Balance

IT and the business knows: The year-to-year viability of a company depends on its ability to innovate. We have learned over the years that innovation comes from three sources. Top Down – Driven by management imperatives (i.e. we have to be in the cloud) Bottom Up – Can originate anywhere in the organization, everyone participates and ...

What is Portfolio Management?

Ask ten people to define portfolio management and you’ll likely receive ten different answers. Of the various definitions, most will focus on some sort of aggregate reporting across portfolios or highlight alignment of spend with strategic priorities and selecting the optimal project portfolio under varying budget constraints. I believe firmly that neither definition aptly describes ...

UMT360 Announces the Release of UMT360 Portfolios

UMT360 today announced the release of the newest module in its leading Enterprise Portfolio Management solution – UMT360 Portfolios.  UMT360 Portfolios connects siloed portfolios (e.g. project, application, IT Service and business capability) to build a dynamic blueprint of a company’s operating fabric.  It provides three breakthrough EPM models to help CIOs, Portfolio Managers and PMOs visualize ...

Cumulative Update 4 (CU4) for UMT Project Essentials 2012

We are pleased to announce the release of the UMT Project Essentials 2012 Cumulative Update 4 (CU4). This update includes a number of fixes, therefore UMT strongly recommends that you test this in a test environment based on your production environment before putting this fix live in production. Here’s the list of fixes and improvements addressed: Core ...

5 Principles Essential to IT Cost Optimization

IT investments face a leaner, slimmer future but the companies that master IT investment cost optimization will emerge with better ROI on their investments.  IT investments are positioned as so essential to core operations and integral to business success that they often remain remarkably resistant to cutbacks, even in economic downturns.  Although IT investment budgets ...

Should You Shift from a Project to Product-Based Investment Approach?

It’s been a topic of discussion by industry analysts in recent days – businesses making the move from a project to product-based investment approach. What’s the difference? In his latest white paper, UMT360 CEO Mike Gruia explains why the project-focused project and portfolio management (PPM) processes which organizations have used for the last decade are ...

The Evolution of Portfolio Analytics

UMT360 CEO Mike Gruia talked a bit about the history of UMT360 when he introduced Gartner’s Donna Fitzgerald recently at the Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim.  Below is his introduction during which he discussed UMT’s history in the evolution of portfolio analytics. I’ve been fortunate to be involved with portfolio topics for the last 20 ...

How to get Started Integrating Project Financial Controls

At this week’s Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim, attendees packed into the session about Benefits Realization wanting to know what they can do to better achieve project and portfolio benefits.  UMT360’s Ben Chamberlain presented the Benefits Realization session and told the crowd that it is essential to start looking at projects as business investments.  That ...

Talking Benefits Realization at the Microsoft Project Conference

In a packed session in this week’s 2014 Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim, UMT360’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer Ben Chamberlain talked about the importance of benefits realization software and how UMT360 is helping organizations better achieve that. Industry analysts agree that there’s an issue with organizations not realizing benefits from their investments – PPM ...

Reflecting on Microsoft’s 2006 Acquisition of UMT Innovation

The UMT360 team is enjoying a great first day at the Microsoft Project Conference in Anaheim, CA.  An energetic response to this morning’s keynote presentations from the GM for Microsoft Office Jared Spataro and the Director of Development for Project Server Ludovic Hauduc. Among highlights, talk about how these are days of rapid innovation and it’s ...

Marquette University Shares How UMT360 Helped Them Get More from Project Server

Marquette University has expanded its use of Project Server – adding UMT360 capabilities to help it maximize the value of its PPM platform.  The university went from using Project Server as a simple repository of project schedules to doing so much more including using it for the capital selection process. At Microsoft’s Project Conference next week in ...

Ushering in 2014 & Your Application Spend

As we ring in 2014, IT spending is on its way up.  Gartner is forecasting a 3.1% increase in worldwide IT spending this year taking it to an estimated $3.8 trillion.  Also on the rise, the amount of software budgets dedicated to applications.  In a Gartner enterprise IT spending study last year, respondents indicated the ...

UMT360 for Project Server Data Sheet Now Available

Built on the Microsoft SharePoint Server, UMT360 helps companies get more value from their Project Server investments.  It helps companies digitalize investment planning and controls to gain complete financial transparency across their project and program portfolios.  Check out the new UMT360 Data Sheet  – Project and Portfolio Financial Intelligence for Microsoft Project Server.  If you ...

Why organizations need more from portfolio management.

In a UMT360 webcast, an industry analyst said that business leaders are now “reaching out to the market again looking for independent portfolio management functionality that will allow them to justify new investments and justify the redistribution especially of funds in order to exploit new business opportunities.”   Today, it can be a daunting process for ...

What is PPM 2.0?

UMT360 is focused on delivering PPM2.0 for our customers – the new PPM which provides organizations with the complete perspective they need to make better decisions about projects – decisions which ultimately will translate to more ROI.  But what does PPM 2.0 really mean? PPM has evolved significantly over the last 15 years.   Organizations have ...

UMT360 Lends a Helping Hand

In early October, UMT360’s northwest team took a day to disconnect from technology and lend a helping hand to a wonderful nonprofit in Washington state.  The team spent a day volunteering at the Harmony Hill Cancer and Wellness Retreat Center on Hood Canal.  Harmony Hill opened back in 1986 as a wellness retreat and added its cancer ...

Are you ready for PPM 2.0?

UMT360 is pleased to bring you a series of webinars on PPM 2.0 – Why Portfolio  Financial Intelligence (PFI) is Key.  You can click here to view the recording of the first in the series presented in late September  by UMT360 CEO Mike Gruia.  Join us for the next three webinars being presented by Frank ...

UMT360 is Growing with New Openings Announced

As UMT360 continues to expand its team, we’re accepting applications for a number of positions including Sales/Business Development Representatives, Software Sales Executives, Technical Sales Engineers, Program Managers and Technical Writers.  Interested applicants can read more about the positions on the UMT360 website or contact our HR department at hr@umt360.com.  Based in Bellevue, WA, UMT360 provides ...

Cumulative Update 3 (CU3) for UMT Project Essentials 2012

We are pleased to announce the release of the UMT Project Essentials 2012 Cumulative Update 3 (CU3). This includes a number of fixes, therefore UMT strongly recommends that you test this in a test environment based on your production environment before putting this fix live in production. Here’s the list of fixes and improvements included: ...

UMT360 Revolutionizes Portfolio Management

UMT’s product group, UMT360, is pleased to announce the release of its most ambitious product offering to date. UMT360 revolutionizes portfolio management by providing comprehensive, integrated solutions to help companies gain financial transparency and dramatically improve investment decisions across their projects, products and asset portfolios. UMT360 CEO Mike Gruia commented, “UMT360 is the culmination of ...

Release Announcement: UMT360

We’re thrilled to announce the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) and General Availability (GA) of UMT 360, the latest iteration of our flagship product offering. UMT360 is the culmination of 5+ years of development that saw UMT’s product offering evolving from a financial add-on to Project Server (UMT Project Financial Server), to a comprehensive financial governance ...

Cumulative Update 9 (CU9) for UMT Project Essentials 2010

Here’s the list of fixes and improvements included: Schedule and Resource Plan integration Values for deleted tasks are correctly removed on publish. Note: project schedules have to be republished before delete tasks for changes to be correctly tracked Addressed issues with mappings for Cost Nodes and Cost Centers being lost on Schedule Publish Added new ...

Cumulative Update 2 (CU2) for UMT Project Essentials 2012

Here’s the list of fixes and improvements included: Performance and reliability Addressed issues with updates to a lookup table generating a large number of Reporting Updates jobs on the Queue which would impact overall system performance Significantly reduced storage needs for the Queue and Audit SQL tables (cmQueuedItems and cmOperationsLog) Schedule and Resource Plan integration ...

Cumulative Update 1 (CU1) for UMT Project Essentials 2012

Here’s the list of fixes and improvements included: Financials Fixed data refresh issues for higher-level Unallocated values when data is entered at a lower detailed level Fixed data refresh issues for aggregation of data to higher levels Eliminated restrictions around using Financial Dimension copy when the project is in execution and values are synchronized with ...

UMT Project Essentials 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

We’re thrilled to announce the public availability of UMT Project Essentials Service Pack 1! SP1 includes significant performance, scalability and usability fixes across the product and is distributed as one package than can be used for both for new installations and upgrades from UMT Project Essentials 2010, as well as a patch that can be installed ...

Cumulative Update 8 (CU8) for UMT Project Essentials 2010

Here’s the list of fixes and improvements included: Performance Reduced number of Update Custom Field queue transactions when updating financial values Improved reliability of Update Custom Field queue jobs by waiting for the Project Server queue to complete jobs related to the current project Significant performance improvements on scanning a large number of projects when ...

Out-of-band Hotfix A for UMT Project Essentials 2012

An out-of-band hotfix that addresses issues with the in-place upgrade of UMT Project Essentials 2010 to UMT Project Essentials 2012 has been released on the UMT Customer and Partner Portals. Scenarios addresses by the hotfix: Projects in execution with no timeline defined for Benefits If a 2010 instance being upgraded to 2012 includes projects in ...

Cumulative Update 7 (CU7) for UMT Project Essentials 2010

Here’s the list of fixes and improvements included: Reporting Infrastructure Recurrent exceptions are correctly taken into consideration Projects without a defined financial timeline or Cost Tree Template will no longer be processed by the reporting job Corrected issues with Custom Field values not being copied over to the reporting database Corrected issues with orphaned projects ...

Announcing the public availability of UMT Project Essentials 2012

We are excited to announce the public availability of UMT Project Essentials 2012! Here’s a quick summary of the major new features and improvements: The relevant download links have been added to the Customer and Partner portals. Visit the version history page for version details.

Cumulative Update 6 (CU6) for UMT Project Essentials

Here’s the list of fixes and improvements included: Data Import The user locale is correctly considered in conjunction with the field separators Addressed issue where the workflow stage selection was not always enforced Addressed issues with importing projects that had a different EPT than the one selected Better handling of negative values Addressed pagination issues ...

UMT Project Essentials – Public Availability

UMT Project Essentials is a significant release for the UMT family of products built on top of the Microsoft Project Server 2010 infrastructure. UMT Project Essentials is a major rebranding effort which merges the UMT Project Financial Server and UMT Workflow Designer platforms and adds new features and improvements. The setup can be run as ...

Cumulative Update 4 (CU4) for Project Financial Server 2010

Cumulative Update 4 for Project Financial Server 2010 provides the following enhancements in response to customer and partner feedback: Language packs Added Finnish as the 5th fully supported language (alongside English, German, French, Spanish) Updates to the German Language Pack License compliance warning The following message is displayed in the Project Financial Server – Financial ...

Cumulative Update 3 (CU3) for Project Financial Server 2010

Cumulative Update 3 for Project Financial Server 2010 provides the following enhancements in response to customer and partner feedback: List of issues addressed by CU3: Setup, installation, provisioning The installer can be executed in silent mode, with the following command line parameters: /s: starts the setup in silent mode, /i: installs the package, /u: uninstalls ...

UMT Project Financial Server 2010 Cumulative Update (CU) 2

Cumulative Update 2 for Project Financial Server 2010 provides the following enhancements in response to customer and partner feedback: Setup, installation, provisioning The install / uninstall action checks if Project Financial Server 2010 dlls are locked by processes. If DLLs are blocked by Project Financial Server processes, an application recycle is performed. Otherwise users will ...

UMT Project Financial Server Cumulative Update (CU) 1

As per our ongoing plan to release a cumulative update (CU) about every two months, the first cumulative updates pack is available for SP1 since beginning of March 2011. New features: Patch will now detect and upgrade the language packs as well Licensing control is moved to its dedicated page in Central Administration PFS Reporting ...