PPM Express Digest What’s New in Q4 2024

PPM Express continues to evolve and provide project management teams with new features and enhancements that streamline operations, boost productivity, and simplify workflows. This digest looks at the latest updates and how they can benefit your team’s performance.

Improved Search Functionality

Navigating through PPM Express just got easier with the introduction a new search feature. Now available across all major pages and sections, this functionality allows users to find items quickly without endless scrolling or reconfiguring filters.

• Quick and efficient. The search works alongside existing filters for even faster navigation.
• User-friendly. It’s case-insensitive and searches from the first character, making it easier to locate what you need.
• Column-specific. You can define which columns to search for, ensuring your results are always relevant.
• Hierarchical and flat views. The search function supports flat lists and hierarchical views for structured data.

You can now initiate the search by clicking the search icon in the toolbar. It’s available in the Timeline and Table views, ensuring quick access to your needs, no matter where you are on the platform.

Enhanced Time Tracking Controls

PPM Express has made managing time tracking easier with two new controls in the Time Tracking Settings: Report Time on Unassigned Tasks and Enable Custom Time Entries.

• Report Time on Unassigned Tasks: Now, you can report time on tasks that aren’t specifically assigned to you, promoting better collaboration and time tracking on shared tasks
• Enable Custom Time Entries: This allows users to add custom time entries for non-scheduled activities, giving teams more flexibility to track all their time-related tasks.

Additionally, a new feature for Enterprise Plans allows users to import external time-tracking suggestions via API. This integration ensures that external tasks, whether project-related or administrative, can be seamlessly added to PPM Express, streamlining the time-tracking process.

Restrictions on Task Dependencies

A new rule has been implemented to improve task dependency management. Creating dependencies between parent and child tasks in both directions is no longer possible. This restriction ensures cleaner and more logical task dependency structures, helping users avoid mistakes in project planning.

• No dependencies between parent and child tasks. This eliminates circular dependencies that can cause confusion and errors.
• Interactive error alerts. Users will receive an error message if an invalid dependency is created, ensuring data integrity.

We recommend reviewing and adjusting existing dependencies to ensure they align with the new rules to avoid errors when managing tasks.

Resource and User Linking Enhancements

PPM Express now automatically links users to resources through an invitation or Active Directory synchronization. This seamless connection prevents the accidental deletion or deactivation of resources linked to active users, improving system integrity.

• Automatic resource linking. Users are automatically associated with resources when invited or synced from AD.
• New resource management fields. The Resource dashboard now includes a Linked User field that displays the associated user information, streamlining resource and user management.

These improvements simplify managing resources and users, ensuring consistency across the platform.

Inline Editing for Faster Updates

A major productivity booster is the new inline editing feature, which allows users to quickly update fields directly from the main pages navigating to a detailed page.

Immediate updates allow users to edit fields such as project titles, task objectives, and resource information with a simple click.

Custom views create personalized views to make editing even more efficient, reducing the time spent opening individual items.

Inline editing is available for many entities, including projects, portfolios, programs, and tasks, enabling faster updates and greater flexibility for project teams.

Microsoft 365 Integration for Time Tracking

PPM Express allows users to easily import Microsoft 365 activities, like tasks, events, and other items, into the Timesheets (My Time page) for streamlined time tracking. Simply connect your Microsoft 365 account from the My Time page to get started.

Key Features

• Quick Access: The "Import from M365" option in the My Time page lets you quickly access and import relevant Microsoft 365 activities, organized by day.
• Simplified Navigation: Each activity is labeled with a unique M365 icon for easy identification, with search and filter options to quickly find specific tasks or meetings.
• Automatic & Manual Time Entry: For Outlook events, the time is auto-filled based on event duration, while other activities require manual entry.
• Import & Copy: Imported activities appear as custom tasks in PPM Express, marked with the M365 icon. You can copy them as custom time entries, but the M365 icon remains only on the original entry.

This integration simplifies logging and managing time across your tools, ensuring smoother tracking of daily activities.

New Status Calculation Option in PPM Insights

A new feature in the PPM Insights settings allows users to define status descriptions manually while maintaining automatic status calculations for projects, programs, and portfolios.

Users can now manually override the automatically calculated status and set custom descriptions, with the option to specify the duration for which this manual status will remain before being overridden by the automatic calculation (3, 5, 7, or 10 days).

This provides more flexibility and control over status management while ensuring consistency across your project tracking.

Other Improvements & Fixes

PPM Express team has also released some other minor improvements and fixed several issues.

Improvements

• Revised the Quick Start page videos to offer more straightforward onboarding instructions.
• A new Financial Pack has been introduced on the Report Settings page.
• Introduced the "Set Billing Code" option in bulk actions within the Resource Management module.
• Optimized loading speeds for the "Resources" and "Resource Planning and Utilization" pages.
• Enabled API support for creating subtasks.
• Upgraded the "Extensions" section in Tenant Settings to allow the addition of various extension types across different PPM Express pages and sections.

Fixes

• Addressed an issue preventing the retrieval of ADO teams in certain situations.
• Corrected task display errors on the My Space page.
• Resolved an issue that prevented projects from being published through the Project Publisher due to adding the new 'Date Time' field.
• Resolved the issue with cyclic dependencies between tasks.
• Project Publisher: Fixed an issue where time zone differences impacted the start dates of tasks published from Project Desktop.
• Addressed problems with warnings related to the Project Stage field.
• Resolved a bug where status descriptions weren’t saved right away.
• Resolved a problem where daily and weekly notifications were being sent to inactive users.
• Fixed an issue with cross-project synchronization in the Jira connection.
• Addressed an issue that prevented the creation of extensions on the Quick Start page.
• Fixed a problem where extensions malfunctioned in specific scenarios.
• Fixed an issue where the OData token would become invalid if generated by a user with a mismatched email and UPN.

Conclusion

With these new features and improvements, PPM Express continues to provide powerful tools for project managers and teams. The focus on usability, efficiency, and seamless integration makes it an essential platform for efficiently managing projects, portfolios, and resources.