What's New in PPM 9.52

This section provides an overview of the features that were introduced or enhanced in PPM 9.52.

Team Management

In agile development practices, work is usually assigned to an agile team instead of a single person. Team leaders then distribute tasks to their team members. PPM 9.52 introduces Team Management to fulfill the requirement.

With Team Management, you, as team manager, can do the following.

Create a team	Creating a team automatically creates a corresponding resource pool with the same name.
Add subteams and resources to a team	A team can include subteams and resources, which builds team hierarchy.
Assign teams to staffing profile positions	You can assign a position to a team and cascade the assignment to its subteams and resources.
View team utilization details	From the team details page, you can see: When and where the team, its direct subteams, and its direct resources are assigned. How much effort is assigned to the team, its direct subteams, and its direct resources. The utilization (assigned effort/capacity) of the team, its direct subteams, and its direct resources for a specific month or for a specified duration.

For details, see Team Management.

Project Management Enhancements

Project Management is enhanced mainly in work plans for better project planning.

Enhancement	Details
Upload work plan from Excel	When the parameter `ENABLE_IMPORT_EXPORT_EXCEL_IN_WORK_PLAN` is set to true, you can upload work plan from Microsoft Excel to PPM. This feature is available in the work plan Quick view only. For details, see Upload work plan from Microsoft Excel.
Add and edit activity in work plan Quick view	You are able to add the Activity column in the work plan Quick view and inline edit the column.
Set default view and columns for work plans	Previously, when you create or view a work plan for the first time, the work plan is opened in the Quick view by default. PPM now adds two parameters for you to specify the work plan default view and default columns in that view when you create or view a work plan for the first time. WORK_PLAN_DEFAULT_VIEW: specifies the default work plan view when you create or view a work plan for the first time. WORK_PLAN_DEFAULT_COLUMNS: specifies the default columns in the view defined by the WORK_PLAN_DEFAULT_VIEW parameter when you create or view a work plan for the first time. For details, see Server parameters.
Add % Work Complete column for summary tasks	PPM adds the % Work Complete column for summary tasks in the work plan Quick view. Different from the existing % Complete column that calculates the progress of summary task based on leaf task's % complete weighed by the task duration, the % Work Complete column calculates the progress of summary task based on leaf task's effort.
Select which tasks of a template are imported to a new work plan	If the parameter `ENABLE_WORKPLAN_TAILOR_FROM_WORKPLAN_TEMPLATE` is set to `true`, when creating a work plan from a template, you can select which tasks in the template are imported to the work plan. For details, see Create a work plan.
Export projects to Excel	The Export to Excel icon is now available in the upper-right corner of the project page. When you click it, the project header information, milestones, issues, risks, and scope changes are exported.
View work plan baseline details	Previously when you create a work plan baseline, clicking the baseline link opens the Change Baseline Properties window. Now, clicking the link opens the work plan baseline details page: You can change display view. You can add columns. All edit buttons are disabled. All tasks are non-editable. For details, see Create a work plan baseline.

Resource Management Enhancements

Enhancement	Details
Add the "<Blank>" value for search resource filters	In the Search Resource page, the value "<Blank>" is added for the filters: Role, Department, Skill, Manager, Org Unit, Location, Security Group, Time Approver, Billling Approver, Title, Resource Pool, and Cost Category. The "Blank" value filters resources that do not define the corresponding attributes.
Add Done button in the View Forecast Demand page	The Done button is added in the Resource Pool > View Forecast Demand page.
Ignore resource pools that only have resource's allocations in the past	When you add a resource as the requested resource of a position, PPM automatically fills the position's attributes based on the resource details. If the resource have allocations in different resource pools in different time periods, PPM used to list all these resource pools for you to select one for the position. Now, if the parameter `IGNORE_POOLS_WITH_ONLY_PAST_RESOURCE_PARTICIPATION` is set to `true`, PPM only lists the resource pools that have the resource's allocations in the future.
Tooltip for staffing profiles in the Resource Load Breakdown-Assignment Details page is available	The tooltip fo a staffing profile in the Resource Load Breakdown-Assignment Details page displays the full name of the staffing profile.
Present the link to modify user information based on your access grant	If you do not have the access grant to open PPM Workbench, the Modify User Information for this Resource (Workbench) link in the Modify Resource > General page is not shown. If you can open User Management Console, the link Modify User Information for this Resource (User Management Console) is available in the Modify Resource > General page. This link directs you to the resource details page in User Management Console.
Allow non-project managers with Project Management license to assign resources to staffing profile positions	If you are resource manager, you can assign resources in a staffing profile to the positions that have the resource pool attribute set to yours, as long as the following requirements are met: You have the access grant "Assign Resources to Unrequested Read-only Positions" and the Project Management license. You can view the staffing profile. This means: You do not have to wait until a project manager requests resources from your resource pool to assign resources. You can assign resources in a staffing profile even when you cannot edit the staffing profile.

Time Management Enhancements

Add project by project number to time sheets

When adding projects to your time sheet, you can search a project by the project number.

Restrict adding milestones to time sheets

When the parameter ALLOW_LOG_TIME_ON_MILESTONES is set to false, time submitters cannot add milestone tasks to their time sheets.

This parameter only prevents time submitters from adding new milestones to their time sheets or to the My Items. For the milestone tasks that are in the Suggested Items or already added to My Items before disabling the parameter, time submitters can still log time on them.

Platform Enhancements

Edit list validation values from Web UI

From the Excel the Edit List Validation Values page, you can download a list validation as Excel, edit the list validation in Excel, and upload the Excel to PPM to do the following:

Edit list validation values.
Add translations for list validation values.
Update existing translations for list validation values.

You should have the config license and the Edit Validation Values access grant to access the page.

For details, see Edit list validation values from web UI.

Secure file upload mechanism

Since PPM 9.52, you should use the parameter DMS_SECURE_FILE_EXTENSIONS_WHITE_LIST to explicitly specify what kind of files can be uploaded to PPM, otherwise, PPM assumes the files you do not specify have potential security risk and thus forbids you to upload them.

Default value of this parameter is: txt,doc,docx,gif,pdf,png,ppt,pptx,pps,ppsx,psd,wav,wmv,xls,xlsx,ico,jpeg,jpg,m4a,mov,mp3,mp4,m4v,mpg,odt,ogg,ogv,3g2,3gp,avi

Show "ongoing" indicator for long search in time sheets

When it takes long to search for a work item to add to a time sheet, a "ongoing" animation is shown to indicate activity.

AWS support

We support installing and running PPM in AWS for production environments.

Integration Enhancements

PPM-Octane request integration supports more field types and value mapping

Fields of the types: drop-down-list, auto-complete-list, and text area are supported for PPM. Correspondingly, fields of the types: reference and memo are supported for ALM Octane.
When both fields in a field mapping are lists of values, value mapping is enabled.

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

PPM-Octane time sheet integration supports SSO access to ALM Octane

When you import time from Octane to PPM time sheets, PPM supports SSO access to ALM Octane.

What-if Analysis Enhancements

Check portfolio strategy data in what-if analysis

In a scenario for a portfolio, the Strategy tab displays charts for all KPIs associated with the portfolio business goals. Every KPI chart shows actual KPI values and KPI impact (that is, forecasted KPI values) of each in-scope portfolio content.

For details, see Strategic planning.

Demand Management Enhancements

Purge unused data

You can run kAdditionalPurgeTool.sh to purge the following data that are not used:

Workflows not used by any request or package;
Step sources not used in any workflow step;
Validations not used;
Security groups not referenced or used by any request type or workflow;
Request statuses not referenced or used by any request type or workflow.

For details, see kAdditionalPurgeTool.sh.

Keep a record of table component field column width per user per request type

If you resize the column width of a table component field in a request, the next time you open any request of the same request type, the column width remains.

PPM keeps the record of table component field column width per user per request type.

Notes history of table component fields includes all changes

Table component field changes including adding new lines, deleting lines, and modifying line cells are all recorded in the request notes.

For details, see Notes section (tab).

Financial Management Enhancements

Order of lines in financial summary snapshot is the same as that in the financial summary when the cost category is the same.

Dashboard Enhancements

Support Stacked Area Chart portlets

We support a new chart type (Stacked Area Chart) as a subtype of Line Chart for dashboard portlets. You can view any existing line chart as a stacked area chart and create a stacked area chart portlet.

For details of creating a stacked area chart portlet, see Stacked area line chart portlet.

Highlight chart portlet items

When you put the mouse over an item in a chart portlet, the item is highlighted.

Release the "Export to Excel" icon from the "more" icon for list portlets

To export a list portlet to Excel, you can directly click the Export to Excel icon in the portlet header, without the need to click the more > Export to Excel icon.

APM Enhancements

Merge APM menus into PPM

APM menus are merged into PPM. To use APM for PPM, you should set the parameter APM_ENABLED to true and deploy the APM bundle. You do not have to deploy the APM bundle if:

You have installed APM bundle before, and
There are no differences in databased between the existing bundle and the new bundle.

Note: As APM for PPM 9.52 made changes to the database, you still need to deploy the bundle.

MLU

We supplement the Arabic translations for labels that are added from 9.42 to 9.52.