What's New in PPM 9.50

This section provides an overview of the features that were introduced or enhanced in PPM 9.50.

What-if Analysis

What-if Analysis is a simulation tool to plug in different scenarios to explore and compare various investment plans and schedule alternatives based on changing conditions. PPM introduces this tool for portfolios and programs. It helps portfolio and program mangers better decide what to invest for the coming fiscal period so as to maximize the organization's business value.

For details, see What-if Analysis.

Enterprise Agile Updates

PPM adds new integrations and enhances existing integrations for agile connectors.

Sync PPM requests to agile entities

When a PPM request type is mapped with an entity type such as feature and user story and an agile project in an agile tool:

Creating and moving a request of the request type to a certain workflow step in PPM would automatically create a mapped entity in the mapped project in the agile tool.
Changes in the request or the agile entity are synced between PPM and the agile tool.

Currently the out-of-the-box ALM Octane and JIRA connectors support such an integration.

For details, see Integrate PPM requests with ALM Octane entities and Integrate PPM requests with Jira issues.

Improve ALM Octane and JIRA connectors

To ensure data accuracy and flexibility, more options are added in ALM Octane and JIRA connectors for work plan integration and time sheet integration.

For details, see Integrate PPM tasks with Jira projects and Import effort from JIRA to PPM time sheets.

Control whether to roll up actual effort and actual cost from external tasks

When a project task is linked with another project which then becomes the external task of the linked task, actual effort and actual cost of the external task used to be rolled up to the linked task. Now project manages can choose not to roll up actual effort and actual cost from external tasks to linked tasks.

For details, see Hybrid Project Policy.

Track hybrid project time at task, summary task, or project level

When a project is set as a hybrid project, time can now be tracked at any level (task level, summary task level, or project level) instead of the task level only.

Support logging time against linked tasks

When a hybrid project uses Time Management to track time at the summary task level, linked tasks in the project can be added to time sheets: PPM supports logging time against linked tasks.

Transfer time sheet external data to PPM work items

Transfer time of one external data line to one PPM work item. The external data line is removed from the time sheet, the PPM work item is added to the time sheet, and effort of the external data line is added to the work item.

For details, see Transferring External Data to PPM Work Items

Merge time sheet external data into non-external data

Merge time of multiple external data lines into one non-external data line in a time sheet. The external data lines are removed from the time sheet, and their effort is added to the non-external data line.

For details, see Merging External Data into Non-external Data Line

Portfolio Management Enhancements

Value-driven portfolio management goes one step further to connect a portfolio's value to its contents.

Manage strategic themes

PPM 9.50 introduces strategic themes in the value-driven portfolio management. Strategic themes connect a portfolio vision to the enterprise business strategy and then to the portfolio contents.

For details, see Portfolio Strategy.

Relate a business goal with either a shared KPI or a private KPI

KPIs used to be shared by all portfolio business goals. Now when adding a business goal for a portfolio, the portfolio manager can create a private KPI that is for the business goal use only. Portfolio manager can relate the business goal with a shared KPI or the private KPI.

For details, see Portfolio Strategy.

Add portfolio milestones

Portfolio managers can add milestones for their portfolios in the portfolio Timeline tab.

For details, see Monitor and analyze a portfolio.

Program Management Enhancements

Improve program security check

Program security check now takes program participants into consideration.
Program security settings used to be done in the program Configure Access page. The page is now removed, and program security settings are added as a policy in the Program Settings page.

For details, see Program Security Policy.

Show program cost per fiscal year

The filter View financial information in is now available in the program Cost tab. It allows program managers to filter program cost and program contents cost data by fiscal year.

Project Management Enhancements

Delete work plan with actuals

If the system administrator sets the parameter ALLOW_DELETE_WORK_PLAN_WITH_ACTUALS to true, project managers can delete their project work plans with actuals directly without first manually removing the actuals.

For details, see Deleting a Work Plan.

Calculate task cost by task role

PPM used to use resource role for the cost factor "Role" when calculating the cost of a task. Now if the system admin sets the parameter USE_ROLE_OF_TASK_FOR_WP_COSTS to true, PPM uses task role for the cost factor "Role" unless task role is not defined.

For details, see Cost factor applications.

Resource Management Enhancements

Increase time periods limit from 20 to 40	The Analyze Assignment Load portlet and Analyze Resource Pools portlet used to be able to filter data of the past and future 20 time periods. Now the time periods limit is increased to 40.
Sort task resources alphabetically by name	Resources assigned to a task are now alphabetically sorted by the resource name in the Resources tab of the task details page. It is easier for project managers to find a specific resource on the task.

Demand Management Enhancements

Export request to PDF

To export a request to PDF, in the request details page, click More > PDF.

To turn off this feature, set the parameter ENABLE_REQUEST_EXPORT_TO_PDF to false.

Enlarge text fields in Quick Edit mode Text fields that use the validation "Text Area – 1800" are enlarged in the Quick Edit mode to make request updates in the mode more user-friendly.

User Authentication Enhancements

PPM server used to receive username information only from HTTP header in generic SSO environment. Now it also supports getting username information from HTTP request attribute and REMOTE_USER CGI environment variable, depending on how you set the parameter LOCATION in the sso.conf file.

For details, see Implement generic single sign-on with PPM.

PPM Reporting Enhancements

In Excel reports, Large Data Mode now works on any spreadsheet instead of only the first spreadsheet.

For details, see How to Use Large Data Mode.

REST API Improvements

Interactive REST API Help becomes more powerful because more operations, such as getting activities and getting project types, are exposed.

For details, see Interactive REST API Help.

Help Center Enhancements

The Help menu opens PPM online help if you have external internet access, and opens offline help if you do not.
Context-sensitive help is implemented to more PPM web pages. Clicking Help menu opens the help topic related to the current web page instead of the Help Center home page.
The Help Center now includes advanced site search functionality:
- Intuitive friendly Google-like search
- Search across all ADM help centers
- Filter search results by selected products
- Get results from separate deliverables in one place, such as PDFs and APIs.
Project Management User Guide and Program Management User Guide are restructured.

Platform Certification

PPM 9.50 adds the support for the following.

PPM Server Operating System

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 (both 32- and 64- bit)
Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 7.5 (RHEL Clone)
CentOS 7.5 Server (64-bit)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.3 (both 32- and 64-bit)
IBM AIX version 7.2
Hyper-V in Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
Hyper-V in Microsoft Windows Server 2016

Browser

Mozilla Firefox 52.7.3 ESR
Google Chrome 66