EPM Live WorkEngine

EPM Live
WorkEngine
Project Manager Today Software Review 219
Steve Cotterell looks at a SharePoint add-on that turns it into a full-blown
portfolio, project and work management tool.
Microsoft’s SharePoint is a major player on the corporate
collaboration scene. It therefore makes perfect sense
that any project oriented organisation that’s invested in
SharePoint technology would want to take advantage of that
investment when considering what project management
software they should use. Enter EPM Live, an American
company with offices in London and Australia and partners
in thirty-five other countries.
There are currently three Engines in EPM Live’s portfolio:
Project, Portfolio and Work Engines.
‘ProjectEngine’ is a free Web application that enables work
scheduling and team collaboration for simple projects. One
project manager can manage one project, whilst giving
other people access to it. ‘PortfolioEngine’ targets senior
managers and facilitates high-level portfolio and financial
management. Their other product is the ‘WorkEngine’ and
it’s this product’s out-of-the box version that I’m reviewing
here.
EPM Live started building the application about five years
ago, with the intention of facilitating resource management,
coordinating team members and connecting stakeholders
with the organisation. Although it’s an out-of-the-box
solution, it can be modified by the customer.
Almost every part of the product can be tailored by the
administrator and users also have a limited amount of
configuration capability. Regional settings, such as date
format and currency can be accommodated. EPM Live
has a consultancy service that can assist with system
configuration.
Scalable for use by both large and small organisations,
WorkEngine has been built using the SharePoint platform
and a SQL Server database. SharePoint must already be
installed on your system prior to WorkEngine’s installation.
If you don’t have it then EPM Live can install it for you.
WorkEngine has been designed to handle portfolio, project
and work management (including operational work and
issue tracking) and assists with financial, time and business
intelligence management.
It uses SharePoint sites and turns them into templates
that can apply particular project methodologies. The outof-the-box
templates provided include PMBOK, Agile
and construction projects. A Prince2 template exists but
is currently being updated for use with SharePoint 2010.
WorkEngine pulls together all of the data held in all the
workspaces and presents it via a single portal. It integrates
with MS Project, MS Project Server, MS Dynamics, Visual
Studio and other applications.
Scalable and flexible work hierarchies can be created, with
the data rolling up for reporting purposes. An organisation’s
structure can be accommodated in this hierarchy, with
different departments’ projects
sending their data up the tree for
common reporting.
When you first log in, you come
to your personal Home Page. The
project manager’s Home Page shows
‘My Active Projects’, showing the
work currently being managed and
displaying its high-level status. Also
shown are his/her assigned tasks on
all projects (not just those managed)
in overview detail. Announcements
can be displayed on this screen.
A system built
around MS
SharePoint, turning
SharePoint sites
into templates for
the application
of specific
methodologies
and designed to
handle portfolio,
project and work
management.
Home Page
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A dashboard report
links added using drag and drop
technology if required. Tasks can
be converted into milestones by
making their duration zero and
undo and redo functions are
available.
The Gantt is
interactive, with
tasks being
positioned and
links added using
drag and drop
technology if
required
From here you can click ‘New Project’ to see a list of the
templates available to you. In addition to locally held
templates, EPM Live has an online template library. Clients
can also create templates from existing workspaces, using
other projects as templates that include all tasks and
resource assignments - although these will probably need
‘cleaning up’.
You name the project and position it in the organisational
hierarchy. A new SharePoint site is created with the
required data links and you’re presented with a screen that
collects additional information, including some names and
dates. Where fields containing people’s names have to be
completed, a link will take you to your address book to
select the individuals required.
Fields can be set as required or optional. You can also set
the project date and other figures to be schedule driven or
entered manually. When you save this information, you’re
taken to the project’s workspace where a navigation bar
gives you access to a set of information screens - overview,
tasks, issues and so on.
A link on the right of the screen takes you to a set of
instructional videos and online help about the topics
displayed.
The project workspace shows the high-level status and,
from here, you can build your team. Press the ‘Build Team’
button to see a list of available resources. You check boxes
against the people you want, click ‘Add To Team’ and they
appear on your resource list.
Once you save your team, they get access to the project
workspace. To assign them to tasks, you click the ‘Edit
Plan’ button. The system, although linking with MS
Project if required, does include its own ‘Work Planner’ - a
straightforward project resourcer and scheduler. This works
in much the same way as a cross between Excel and MS
Project, with task data being entered into cells and a Gantt
chart being built on the right-hand side of the screen as you
enter data. You can set start and end dates and duration.
Tasks can be linked, using all four link types, and lags can be
applied. The critical path is automatically highlighted in red.
Work breakdown structures can be built by indenting and
out-denting tasks.
The Gantt is interactive, with tasks being positioned and
You can set the work estimates
(in hours) and assign resources
to each task. Multiple resources
can be assigned to a single task
with the total number of working
hours being automatically divided
between them but, unfortunately,
you can’t edit this division ratio. You can set a project
baseline and clear it.
Once you’ve planned the project and saved it, you can
‘Publish’ it, making it available to everyone who has the
necessary permission. The Gantt can be printed and exported
to Excel – you can choose which data to export and which
columns to print. If you return to the project workspace and
select the ‘Tasks’ tab, you see a read-only report that can be
filtered to display various sets of task information, including
overview, active tasks and milestones.
The ‘Assignment’ tab shows which tasks have been assigned
to each resource. Again this is filterable.
Issues can be added to the Issues Log. You can enter dates
and deadlines, assign effort and set the issue to be tracked
on timesheets. You can also relate your new issue to others
already entered. When resolved, the details of the resolution
can be recorded.
A list of issues can be displayed (and filtered) and issues can
be edited via this list. A ‘List’ tab carries links to the risk log
(dealt with in much the same way as issues but containing
risk-specific data such as probability, impact and cost). Other
lists feature changes, actions, contacts, links, meetings,
status report and project team.
The ‘Changes’ list allows you to enter a change’s details, set
its priority, estimate the impact of not making it and record
other information, including its impact on your schedule.
Changes can be routed through an approval workflow.
The ‘Actions’ list is used to capture activities that need to be
recorded but don’t form part of your work schedule, such
as arranging meetings.
The application incorporates a library that can contain the
documentation for every project held. The actual document
is stored but you can also create links to external documents.
Documents can be stored in folders that can be organised
as you wish. Single or multiple documents can be uploaded
at a time. Document sets can be built into templates so that
they’re available to projects from the outset.
Links to library documents can be e-mailed to other people.
Version control can be implemented for individual projects
or on a system-wide basis. Documents can be set to be
checked out and back in, with the original locked during
checkout.
Project Manager Today Software Review 219
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The Resource Assignment screen
approve or reject the progress. If approved,
it will be posted to the project. Going to the
Gantt you can adjust the progress there.
You can also do this if you’ve rejected the
progress. The baseline is shown on the Gantt
as a grey bar below each task bar.
The plan, showing progress to date, may
then be published.
Project Manager Today Software Review 219
A team discussion board can be established and discussions
can be threaded.
The ‘Project Reports’ view lists more than sixty preconfigured
reports. Some list the data in tabular format but there are
also graphical and dashboard reports available. They can
all be edited, configured and saved as new reports. You
can also build new reports from scratch using SharePoint
Designer. These are on-screen reports which, although they
could be printed (via screen grabs), aren’t designed for that
purpose.
Another out-of-the-box set of reports available, found
under the ‘Reporting Services’ tab is built using the SQL
Server Reporting Services tool. This set contains ten reports
which carry similar information but are formatted differently
and can be printed and exported to Excel and Word and as
PDF TIFF, CSV, XML and MHTML files.
Returning to the project managers’ Home Page, the
‘Projects Centre’ tab displays a list of the projects that you
have permission to see, with some status information. You
can drill into a list entry to open a project.
Going to the ‘My Work’ view, the project manager will see
the assignments organised according to their due date. This
view gives information about each task, including its priority
(high priority is marked with a red exclamation mark) and
start and due dates.
Team members get the same view listing their tasks.
A red flag can be set against each task but it’s unclear what
it does. Searching for ‘flag’ in the help system produced
no results and it was only by experimentation that it was
discovered that it’s for users to set, meaning whatever they
want. It enables the flagged items to be grouped in the
listing. The help system should explain this.
From here you can report progress on tasks and edit the
percentage complete. The status field is automatically
updated in line with the percentage entered and, if you
change the status, the percentage complete is updated.
To the left of each list entry is a red square. Click this and
the task’s marked complete. A spreadsheet icon beside this
square must be clicked to open the data row for editing.
Project managers can also enter progress via the Gantt
chart and there’s a Gantt view that displays progress. When
opening this view you’re told if there’s any progress awaiting
posting to the project. By clicking ‘Progress Updates’ you
can see the progress awaiting posting, task by task, and can
If the project is to be created in MS Project,
when setting it up in WorkEngine you select
a preconfigured template that automatically links with MS
Project. Thereafter, any planning or scheduling work request
causes MS Project to open, as does clicking WorkEngine’s
‘Edit Project’ button.
An additional function is added to MS Project which allows
progress entered in WorkEngine to be reviewed and posted
into MS Project and for MS Project plans to be published
into WorkEngine.
In both systems you’re able to send an e-mail to individuals,
requesting that they update their progress.
Where custom fields are inserted into project information,
as long as they’re raised and given exactly the same name
in both MS Project and WorkEngine, they’ll be automatically
matched during data exchange.
When resources are created in WorkEngine, they’re held
in WorkEngine’s central pool and, when resourcing in MS
Project, it’s an easy matter to pull the resource names across.
If resources are created in MS Project, then these must also
be created in WorkEngine before the project’s published.
Entering WorkEngine’s ‘Resource Centre’ ‘Assignments’
page, you see a list of the resources you have on the system.
From here you can, using a filter, find specific resources
by name, project or role. You can specify whether you’re
looking for a generic resource or a specific person. To search
by skills, you’d need to add additional fields but there may
be problems coping with varied skill sets.
Once you’ve selected your set of resources, hit ‘Review
Resource Plan’ and you’re presented with a list of the
assignments of all the system’s resources. This is shown
as a Gantt chart, listing the resources with bars illustrating
their assignments. Below that, a histogram shows the total
workload with overloads highlighted in red.
A series of checkboxes allows you to select an individual or
group of individuals and see the loading of that person or
group.
This chart shows details of the work (including issues,
changes, tasks and non-project work) that each individual’s
doing. Assignment bars can be dragged back and forth,
moving work to create what-if scenarios. Should you create
a scenario that you prefer to your original plan, you’d need
to save it as a new plan, display both plans simultaneously
(or print them out), compare them and manually update the
original plan.
The ‘Portfolio Report Centre’ contains more than a hundred
Another out-ofthe-box
set of
reports available,
found under the
‘Reporting Services’
tab is built using
the SQL Server
Reporting Services
tool.
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eports that display high-level portfolio information.
Some reports can export their data to Excel for further
manipulation. These can be tailored, on-the-fly, to include or
exclude data fields and filters can be applied. The graphical
format of these reports can also be changed on-the-fly.
As for financial data, budgetary figures can be entered at
each stage and actuals can be collected as the projects
progress. There are reports available that will compare
budgets with actuals at each level. Similar reports can be
produced comparing budgeted and actual work.
Portfolio-based issue, risk and change reports can also be
produced.
Timesheets may be used and organisations can define their
own timesheet periods and the data included. Non-working
time can be recorded on timesheets.
The system can be set to automatically include all entries
(tasks, risks, issues etc.) of a certain type or any item in the
system can be flagged to be tracked in this way. Once flagged,
their appearance is automatic and driven by assignment
dates and they disappear once marked complete. A percent
work spent bar compares your budgeted hours with your
actuals and turns red if you spend more than your budgeted
hours on a task. Completed sheets can automatically be
sent for approval by either or both the department manager
and project manager.
Enhancements to the resource management functionality
of the product, including some significant changes in this
area should be seen in the new WorkEngine release, due
this summer.
How much does it cost?
The price of WorkEngine varies according to the number of
users. The price per user decreases as more user licenses are
purchased but, for example, a 25-user license costs about
£3250 for WE 25 users on-premise. For online pricing, visit
http://epmlive.com.
Right to reply
Thank you, Steve, for an accurate and comprehensive review.
There’s little that we want to add except to mention that EPM
Live WorkEngine provides users with the ability to convert
issues to tasks or to change requests, automatically, using a
built-in SharePoint workflow.
Michael Stelmakh
EPM Live Europe
Software Review 219
EPM Live Europe • 180 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9HF. Tel:0207 9171749
Email: mstelmakh@EPM Live.co.uk • Web: www.EPM Live.co.uk
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www.pmtoday.co.uk | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 33