What's New in PPM 9.53

This section provides an overview of the features that were introduced or enhanced in PPM 9.53.

Team Management Updates

PPM 9.53 enhances Team Management as follows. They are only available when Team Management and Team Assignment in Staffing Profile are enabled.

Increase flexibility in setting up a team

Create a team from a resource pool
Define team type and team specialty
Manage team capacity

For details, see Set up a team.

Show team costs calculated by team cost rules

Manage team cost rules
Calculate team assignment costs by team cost rules

For details, see View forecast labor costs from staffing profile.

Enhanced usability on team monitoring

Highlight team assignment pipelines in strategic theme colors
Easily drill down into initiative details
Filter team assignments

For details, see Monitor your team.

Feature Management

We introduce the Feature Management platform for you as an administrator to enable or disable a feature, and its sub-features if there are any.

It is accessible from Administration Console > Administration Task > Feature Management.

View Forecasted Labor Costs from Staffing Profile

As the initiative managers, you can directly see forecasted labor costs details from within staffing profile Costs view.

It enables you to plan demand and assignment and view costs at the same time in a central location.

For details, see View forecast labor costs from staffing profile.

Enterprise Agile Updates

Log time on external tasks

When a hybrid project enables Time Management to track actuals at the task or summary task level, as a task owner, you can directly add external tasks into your time sheet to log agile effort.

For details, see Managing Work Items in a Time Sheet.

Control external task actual data in PPM

As a result of logging time on external tasks, actual data of external tasks is controlled in PPM. The External Work Plan Sync service imports external task scheduled information from agile to PPM, and the PM-TM Sync service updates external task actual information with time sheet data.

For details, see Synchronize agile data into PPM.

Capitalize costs of external tasks

The Activity column becomes editable for external tasks. As a project manager, you can associate a capitalized activity to an external task if you want to capitalize the cost of the external task.

Dashboard Enhancements

Sort portlet data by more than one column

A portlet is sorted primarily by the lastly-clicked column, then the last-but-one column, and so on, and finally by the settings of the "Sort by" option in the portlet preference.

Note: This enhancement is currently available only to Request List portlet, Project List portlet, and Resource Pool List portlet.

Demand Management Enhancements

Filter requests that are created or updated within a certain duration

From the Search Requests page, you can use the filter Creation Date Within xxx or Last Update Date Within xxx to filter requests that are created or updated within a certain duration.

Document Management Enhancement

Sort attachments in the References section by a certain column

You can use the parameter ATTACHMENT_SORT_COLUMN to specify a column by which the attachments in the References section are sorted ascendingly.

For details, see Server Parameters.

Financial Management Enhancements

Enhancement	Details
Add cost factors that are particular to teams	Echoing to Team Management and team assignment, PPM adds cost factors that are particular to teams to calculate team costs. These factors are Team, Team Type, and Team Specialty.
Add username as tooltip for resources in cost rule search results	To help you distinguish between cost rules that specify resources with the same full name, PPM provides username as tooltip for the resources in the cost rule search result.
Switch between local and base currencies when editing costs and benefits	If local currency of an entity is different from the system base currency, you can switch between local currency and base currency when editing costs and benefits.
Lock financial summary when editing financial summary related pages	When you edit forecast or actual costs or benefits in financial summary, cost and benefits are locked to prevent other users or background service from making changes. For details, see Preventing Concurrent Editing of Financial Summary Costs/Benefits When you edit financial summary settings for a proposal or an asset, the financial summary is locked until you successfully save the changes to the settings.

Platform Enhancements

Run single language optimizer to improve system performance

If you only use English language and do not deploy any language pack in your environment, you can run single language optimizer to strip unnecessary logic off the system so as to improve performance.

For details, see kSingleLanOptimize.sh.

Portfolio Management Enhancements

Enhancement	Details
Define maximum limit of initiatives in a portfolio	You can use the parameter `PORTFOLIO_MAX_PPA_INITIATIVES` to define the maximum number of initiatives (proposals, projects, and assets) that can be included in a portfolio. The default value is `1000`. Note: You should be careful when increasing the default value as it might have performance impact.
Add strategy alignment pie charts in what-if analysis	The Forecast costs per Strategic Theme and Resources demand per Strategic Theme pie charts are added in what-if analysis. For details, see Strategic Alignment.
Set colors for strategic themes	You can select a color for a portfolio strategic theme. The colors are used wherever strategic themes are used.
Align one business goal with one strategic theme	By aligning one business goal with one strategic theme, you can group business goals by strategic themes. For details, see Add business goals and How PPM Picks Relative KPIs?.
Improve KPI forecasting charts in what-if analysis	Display business goals target value and target date. Improve tooltips Improve layout for negative KPI impact values. Toggle initiatives in charts by clicking on their legend colors. For details, see KPIs Forecasting.

Program Management Enhancements

Show program type name in program title in program overview page

If you select the option Use Program Type Name as Title on Program Overview Page in program Settings > Program Overview Layout, the program title will show as <Program_type_name>: <Program_name>.

For details, see Program Overview Layout policy.

Project Management Enhancements

Enhancement Details

Enhancement	Details
Schedule from date by default displays project start date when project is in planning status	When a project is in planning status, the Schedule from date field in the Schedule Work Plan window displays the first day of the project planned start period. When a project is in active status, the Schedule from date field displays the date that was set in last scheduling.
Make activity required for tasks that would have time sheets to track actual effort	To make sure activities are always defined to capitalize cost, you can configure a project to make the Activity field required for tasks that would have time sheets to track actual effort. For details, see Time Management settings.
Specifying work plan default columns supports task user data	The parameter `WORK_PLAN_DEFAULT_COLUMNS` is used to specify default columns when viewing or creating a work plan for the first time. Now you can also use this parameter to specify default task user data fields by adding user data token values. For details, see Server Parameters.

Schedule from date by default displays project start date when project is in planning status

When a project is in planning status, the Schedule from date field in the Schedule Work Plan window displays the first day of the project planned start period.
When a project is in active status, the Schedule from date field displays the date that was set in last scheduling.

Make activity required for tasks that would have time sheets to track actual effort

To make sure activities are always defined to capitalize cost, you can configure a project to make the Activity field required for tasks that would have time sheets to track actual effort.

For details, see Time Management settings.

Specifying work plan default columns supports task user data

The parameter WORK_PLAN_DEFAULT_COLUMNS is used to specify default columns when viewing or creating a work plan for the first time. Now you can also use this parameter to specify default task user data fields by adding user data token values.