EPM Live WorkEngine

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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 www.pmtoday.co.uk | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 31
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. 32 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 | www.pmtoday.co.uk
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