Coming Soon: PM Central for SharePoint 2013

As organizations migrate from either SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013, project management remains a key process for them. We want to ensure that PM Central for SharePoint 2013 will be available to accommodate your project management for cross-organizational readiness projects from concept to release. For early adopters of SharePoint 2013, I’m pleased to announce that PM Central for SharePoint 2013 will soon be available from Bamboo, and with the same range of powerful features that are currently available in PM Central 4.0 for SharePoint 2010:

Feature

Description

Site Templates

Includes portfolio and project site templates for providing summary portfolio information at the portfolio site and controlling how project information is collected at the individual project sites.

“Lite” and “Standalone” Site Templates

Includes standalone project, lite portfolio, and lite project site templates for loosely structured organizations and/or those which otherwise don’t have a need to track or manage certain areas that PM specialists are required to manage, such as resource management, time management, and budget and cost management. The “lite” sites can be turned into “full” sites through feature activation.

Customization

Retain your customizations in future upgrades via “nested” master pages and “nested” CSS files. New master pages for additional skins.

Flexible Reports

Gantt views, Pie charts, Visual Progress Indicators, and List reports for active projects, issues, tasks, resource management, and more. Includes list and ad-hoc reporting for resource planning and availability. Print reports and export them to Microsoft Excel.

Additional Reports

Additional reports to compare actual work and cost data with project estimates when PM Central is integrated with Time Tracking and Management (sold separately). Assignments Department, Resource Department.

Risk Bubble Charts

Risk bubble charts at both the project and portfolio level help keep track of risks and projects that are at risk.

Resource Allocation per Month

Allows users to show the resource allocation per month or per week.

Project Summaries

My Tasks, All Tasks, Issues, and Milestones are displayed via charts and include status information.

Portfolio & Department Summaries

View data at the department level, in addition to the portfolio and project sites, for multi-level tracking and reporting.

KPI (Key Performance Indicators)

Visually shows project health and progress, including Budget Cost and Budget Work KPIs at the project site.

Task Interdependency

PM Central seamlessly and automatically handles interdependencies between predecessor and successor tasks. Changing the date of a predecessor task affects the dates of the successor tasks as well – a feature SharePoint does not offer out-of-the-box. PM Central can also display tasks in a tree view with collapse/expand capabilities. Assign multiple predecessors to a successor task.

Task Assignments and Resources

Assign multiple resources to the same task. Provide the option to exclude lunchtime. Additional conditions for Adjusting Task Schedule: Change task’s duration, total work, or due date when resource assignments are changed based on task conditions, e.g., keep duration constant, keep total work constant, but increase or decrease the hours that resources work per day.

Task Management

From the project site, view all tasks, overdue tasks, my tasks, and late tasks, as well as a cost view, a tracking view, and a scheduling view. View schedule status from the portfolio site project as well as at the task level. Exclude weekends and holidays from task scheduling.

Microsoft Project 2013 Integration – Additional Features

Use the Bamboo Microsoft Project Add-in to export tasks to a new project, or append or merge tasks with an existing Microsoft Project file. Sync task updates from Microsoft Project 2013 to the PM Central Tasks list. Map Resource Names from Microsoft Project to either the Resource field or the Assigned To field. Supports Forms-Based Authentication (FBA).

Associate Issues and Risks to Tasks

Tasks can be delayed due to issues and risks. You can now associate risks and issues with related tasks.

Resource Allocation

Allocate a percentage of a resource’s time to work on a task or project, to more accurately determine resource commitment and availability.

Flexible Task Creation

Create tasks based on Start Date and variables such as Due Date, Work, or Duration.

Show Critical Path

Clearly identify tasks in a project that are on the critical pathtasks that cannot be delayed without delaying the projectso you can accurately assess the impact of schedule changes.

Inserting Tasks & Inline Editing

Edit items directly within the Web Part interface. Insert a task between tasks from within the task grid.

Optimized Performance

View a schedule with a large list of items in a single view without impacting performance.

Baseline

Baseline the task, project, and project cost for improved schedule management. Automatically gives users with full control permission the ability to baseline, and provides the option to add groups that can baseline via the Web Part Settings.

Update Progress

Update the project’s Actual Start Date and Actual Due Date based on the % Complete progress.

Additional Tools for Tasks and Schedule Management

Provides quick buttons to Update All (Project schedule, project cost, actual progress, project’s overall cost and work) or update specific values such as project cost).

Resource Management

Plan project work and budget at the resource level with data on resource capacity planning, availability, and work across all projects and tasks.

Find Resources

Resource or project managers can now find the available resources based on name, department, or role of the resource.

Copy Resources

Resource or project managers can now copy multiple resources all at once from the Enterprise Resource Pool to the project’s resource pool.

Assignments Department

Displays resources and their assignments, grouped department.

Enterprise Resource Pool (ERP)

Assign tasks to resources from a resource pool. Import resources from the User Profile database. Drop-down displays resources in alphabetical order.

Monthly Cost & Work Allocation

View monthly resource cost and work allocation in a simple line graph. Save the data to a list for future reference.

Cost Tracking

Keep track of your project costs at the project and portfolio levels.

Budget Tracking

Set the project’s Budget Work and Budget Cost in the Project Health List. Configurable KPIs for Budget Work and Budget Cost help you monitor overruns.

Team Notifications

Enable announcements, events, or reports to the entire project team at once, directly from PM Central.

Alerts

Allows users to set up customizable alerts, reminding team members of their issues or tasks, when tasks are coming due or are past due, or when a status has changed on a task or issue. Alert conditions are customizable.

Change Management

Allows project stakeholders to submit change requests, such as new requirements, design changes, or schedule updates to the project manager or other authorized approver. Automate change management approval with Bamboo’s Workflow Conductor (sold separately).

Project Site Creation Request

Allows project stakeholders to submit requests for new project sites. Automate the request approval process with Bamboo’s Workflow Conductor (sold separately).

Change Management

Allows project stakeholders to submit change requests, such as new requirements, design changes, or schedule updates to the project manager or other authorized approver. Automate change management approval with Bamboo’s Workflow Conductor (sold separately).

Lessons Learned

As part of project management best practices, PM Central now allows you to log lessons learned as part of project close-out or end of a phase.

Simple Resource Creation

Add new resources to the project using the Enterprise Resource Pool or an existing SharePoint account. Add resources to a project during task creation.

Display different column names in the data view

Your organization may refer to certain tracking information in a certain way, such as Work Effort instead of Work. In R4.0, we provide this flexibility for the data view. Display columns different names when the data is displayed using Data-Viewer Web Part.

Show or Hide columns of list forms

Provides the flexibility to show or hide columns in new form, edit form, view form, and in list settings for the Tasks list and the Project Health list. This allows you to not show unnecessary fields to your team members.

Archive tool

Provides the ability for you to archive tasks, issues, risks lists, and their items. This provides you the flexibility to continue using the projects and the lists and, at the same time, keep history data.

Security and Access Control

New PM Central Control Panel where tools, resource center, and reports are located, and which only users with full control can access.

Health Check

Use the Health Check report to view which PM Central components were not installed.

Navigation

Provides user-friendly navigation via tab strips and drop-down lists so that everyone—executives, team members, and project members—can quickly get to the information they need.

Tooltips & Descriptions

PM Central features tooltips and descriptions for sections, lists, and fields, enabling users to better understand the components and fields that comprise PM Central.

Some screenshots:

Stay tuned to our storefront for updates regarding the availability of PM Central for SharePoint 2013.