Project Management Central Release 4.0 for SharePoint 2010 was released to Bamboo storefront this week with many new improved features along with many resolved bugs. Please see the release announcement blog post our Product Manager of PM Central for more details. Patches for the following products were also released at the same time: List Search Simple Web Part, Calendar Plus Web Part, List Rollup Web Part, Chart Plus Web Part, Site Creation Plus, List Print, and User Manager for Sites. Please see more details on all of the changes can be found below, along with new features, bug fixes and known issues related to additional products.
SA12 Project Management Central for SharePoint 2010 Release 4.0
New Features:
Task and Schedule Management:
• 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.
• Microsoft Project 2010 Additional Integration Features – Map Resource Names from Microsoft Project to either the Resource field or the Assigned To field. Support for Forms-Based Authentication (FBA).
• Task, Issue and Risk’s Phase Status – Application hides tasks, issues and risks and excludes them from project schedule and reports when their phase status is Inactive.
• Task, Issue and Risk’s Project Status – Application hides tasks, issues and risks from reports and portfolio display when their project status is not active.
• 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.
• Baseline – 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.
• 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 only values such as project cost.
Cost and Resource Management:
• 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) – Drop-down displays resources in alphabetical order.
Reports:
• Additional Reports – Assignments Department, Resource Department.
• Additional Settings for Reports – Allows users the flexibility to show grid above the chart, or chart at the top of the report. Show chart using stacked bar in addition to bar and line.
• Resource Allocation per Month – Allows users to show the resource allocation per month or per week.
Customization:
• “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.
Best Practices & Process Management:
• 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.
Administration, Usability & User Experience:
• Site Creation Area – Site Collection Administrators can activate the “Site Creation Area” feature to allow the “Create New Site” option and “Create New Site” area for portfolio site or standalone project site creation.
• Shortcut to Site Creation – Users can now create the project site or the department site from the shortcut on the portfolio site.
• Display different column names in the data view – Your organizations 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.
• Department Directories – For the three tiers (portfolio, department, and project), the All Department Sites Web Part that shows the departments and their paths to the sites can now be modified, e.g., to display or hide columns.
• 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.
Includes updated versions of the following components:
◦HW03 Tree View Web Part R1.7.83
◦HW05 Alert Plus R3.2.115
◦HW11A List Search Simple Web Part R2.1.135
◦HW11B List Search Advanced Web Part R1.8.84
◦HW14 Group Email Web Part R1.7.43
◦HW20 Calendar Plus Web Part R4.1.143
◦HW24 List Rollup Web Part R6.0.64
◦HW27 Chart Plus Web Part R3.5.106
◦HW28 Site Creation Plus R1.4.66
◦HW37 Data-Viewer Web Part R3.5.64
◦HW41J KPI Column R1.3.62
◦HW41D Visual Indicator Column R1.3.59
◦HW45 Task Master R3.5.117
◦HW50 List Print R1.4.31
◦HW55 Navigators R1.3.47
◦SA35 Project Portfolio Dashboard R1.8.58
Resolved Customer-Reported Bugs and Known Issues/Limitations:
• Add more than one resource to a project at the same time.
• When accessing the Resource allocation and Capacity Planning tab if the Assigned To account contains special characters, users receive the error message: “The given key was not present in the dictionary”.
• When a project site is saved as a template and is reused for another project, the Scheduled Task Baseline Web Part holds old configurations such as allowing Group B to have permission to capture baseline when Group B does not exist in the new site.
• Support for the Microsoft Project Add-in to provide the option to authenticate and connect using Form-Based Authentication (FBA).
• Show PM Central Site columns in PM Central sites only to ensure users cannot use them in non-PM Central sites.
• PM Central site templates are available on the Web App where PM Central is not deployed. The fix is that site templates are now only available under the PM Central Portfolio sites and only available if the Site Collection Administrator activates the Site Collection Feature for the PM Central templates.
• Provide the ability to enter values for the Assignment Units during new item creation.
• When importing tasks using the Microsoft Project Add-In’s import function, error is displayed when the predecessor task contains a semicolon.
• In Task Master when task scheduling is set to be based on Start Date and Duration, and the date is in European format, the Duration does not display correctly, e.g. displays as 100; 0,30 d instead of 30d.
• The Scheduled Task Baseline Web Part does not allow users with full control permission to capture Baseline or update Cost and Schedule.
• Cannot change the name of a SharePoint group in the Site Creation Plus Web Part Settings to create groups other than the defaults (Members, Visitors and Owners) when creating a site, e.g. Cannot change [Title] Members to [Title] Managers where [Title] = Project Name to create Managers instead of Members.
• Provide utility to add resources from ERP in bulk to a project site.
• Assign the same task details to another resource.
• For the three tiers (portfolio, department, and project), provide the ability to modify displaying or hiding the columns for the All Department Sites Web Part that shows the departments and their paths to the sites.
• Modify the text for the Auto Update field for the Site Creation Plus Web Part with better explanation.
• Adding a new resource in a task item will remove any new information entered or updated in other task fields before adding the resource.
• The User Profile Import Utility in the Resources tab cannot import users from SQL or Active Directory membership providers.
• A JavaScript error occurs when a new resource is added to the project Contacts list if the resource is not selected from the Enterprise Resource Pool.
Known Issues:
• Resource Assignments (Gantt chart and Performance) – If there are a lot of resource assignments and projects and therefore a large volume of data to update, information will not be update immediately even after clicking Run Now with the Bamboo Gantt Chart Timer Job. See the troubleshooting section for the Resource Assignment not showing data online documentation for more information.
• Resource Availability report – If user selects to view the Resource Availability with date range span across 2 years such as 12/1/2012 to 1/15/2013, the capacity for the first year will display as 0 instead of 8 hours for 1 day or 160 hours for 1 month.
• When PM Central tasks are merged with Microsoft Project tasks using Microsoft Project Add-In and with Microsoft Add-In is set using the Auto Schedule option, if the tasks in SharePoint have a Start Date different than the Start Date of the project and tasks in Microsoft Project after merge, the tasks will show up with the wrong Start Date and may result in breaking the parent-child relationship.
• Reporting Timer Job – To improve reporting performance, the timer job in R4.0 is now changed to Bamboo Reporting Calculation Timer Job V4 and scheduled to run once a day. Users must select Remove All and Install twice instead of the Upgrade/Repair Existing and Install New for this timer job to change name and change the schedule.
• Resource Allocation and Capacity Planning at the portfolio site might result in request timed out in cases where there are 500 items or more in the Tasks list per project, with 40 or more project sites, assigned to 20 or more resources, and the time period spans over 2 years.
• If you merge tasks between PM Central and Microsoft Project using the Microsoft Project Add-in, and the tasks have the same name with different Work Breakdown Structure, after the merge the tasks will show the wrong parent-child relationship and the wrong work breakdown structure.
• When using the Request New PMC Project Site workflow, the title is missing in the breadcrumb in the form for Start Workflow.
• When customizing any site page in SharePoint Designer, you must check out the page first. When you are finished editing in SharePoint Designer, save the page and check it in.
• If you export tasks to Microsoft Project using the Bamboo Microsoft Project Add-in and then move a task in Microsoft Project, the task will be incorrectly be displayed as a child task if you export the PM Central Tasks list again using the “Merge” option.
• When exporting the Resource Task Timeline report to Excel, the Gantt bar does not show an accurate time span.
• In User Profiles Import search results, the contents of the About Me field includes HTML markup.
• When upgrading PM Central, you must restart the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service before upgrading PM Central sites in Central Administration.
• The User Profiles Import utility displays a maximum of 1000 results.
• If a User Profiles Import search matches a large number of records, the request may time out and returns a server error.
• If you change an existing selection for the Project Department or Project fields in a report, the Resource field does not update with the choices that match the new Project Department and Project combination.
• If a resource has tasks that span multiple years (e.g., 2009-2012), data cannot be displayed in the Resource Assignment Gantt chart on the portfolio site Resources page.
• When Microsoft Project synchronizes task updates to a connected PM Central Tasks list, “Constraint Date” values of “NA” in Microsoft Project—which indicates a constraint type of “As Soon as Possible”—may be set to today’s date when synchronized to the PM Central Tasks list. This does not impact the project schedule.
• Project Schedule and Scheduled Tasks baselines cannot be created if the project or tasks span three years or more.
• When browsing a PM Central site in HTTPS, chart images exported from the Reporting Web Part to Microsoft Excel are displayed as a red “X” in the Excel workbook.
• The “Quick Launch” feature is not visible when upgrading sites that were created in PM Central R1.8. Sites upgraded from R2.0 or higher correctly display the Quick Launch menu.
• If a project site has unique permissions and its users do not have access to the portfolio site, data from the Enterprise Resource Pool in the portfolio site is still visible in the project site Contacts list.
• In the Gantt View of Active Projects on the portfolio site Schedules tab, special characters in the Project Manager field are expanded to their corresponding numeric value. For example, “D’Angelo” will be displayed as “D’Angelo”.
• After upgrading PM Central, the Project Portfolio Dashboard does not display data on the portfolio site’s Schedules tab or in the Portfolio Dashboard List after clicking Refresh for the first time. To resolve this issue, restart the SharePoint 2010 Timer service. See KB.12641 for more information.
• Anonymous users are prompted for a user name and password to access some PM Central pages.
Limitations:
• Lite project site template cannot be saved as a site template to be used later to create another project site template.
• When using the Microsoft Project Add-In, if users modify the Outline level field in Microsoft Project without adjusting the WBS field, they will see an error during the merge between PM Central Tasks and Microsoft Project tasks, e.g. Outline Level field is 1 and WBS is 1.1.
• Addin – New/Merge/Append to Microsoft Project – If the Cost and Actual Cost fields for the tasks and parent tasks are populated using Cost (Enter) and Actual Cost (Enter), when exporting to Microsoft Project for new/merge/append, the Cost and Actual fields in the Microsoft Project will not match what is in PM Central’s SharePoint tasks list.
• If creating a Portfolio site that is the child of a Team site, the Bamboo Project Central Content Types feature must be activated before create them.
• The Resource Assignments Gantt chart on the portfolio site may time out if more than 10,000 items are aggregated.
• In Web applications configured for Forms-Based Authentication (FBA) with anonymous access, an error is displayed in the Resource column when viewing tasks or resources.
• In Web applications configured for Forms-Based Authentication (FBA) with anonymous access, charts are not displayed in all views of My Projects in portfolio and department sites.
• When tasks are exported to Microsoft Project using the “Merge” option with the Bamboo Microsoft Project Add-in, child tasks may be merged to the wrong summary task if multiple summary tasks have the same name.
• When importing tasks from Microsoft Project to a SharePoint Tasks list using the Bamboo Microsoft Project Add-in, the Constraint Date field cannot be updated if the Constraint Date in Microsoft Project is equal to “NA”.
• Addin – Export to MS Project – Show Duration in MS Project don’t like Duration in SharePoint Task list with use case working mode between MS project and Task Master different. => WAD
• The User Profile Import Utility can only map User Profile properties with a privacy setting of “Everyone”.
• If data displayed using the Data-Viewer Web Part is grouped and a group of data spans multiple pages, all data for the same group may not be displayed continuously on the next page. For example, page 2 may start with a different data group instead of continuing the list of items from page 1.
• Clicking “Add new item” in the Discussion tab does not display the New Item pop-up form.
• After exporting a PM Central Tasks list using the “Connect to Microsoft Project” feature, new tasks created in Microsoft Project with a blank Start Date and Due Date will be incorrectly updated when the task is synchronized to PM Central with the “Synchronize” feature. The Start Date will be set to the Project Start Date from Microsoft Project, and the Due Date will be the next day.
• When Microsoft Project synchronizes task updates to a connected PM Central Tasks lists, the “Assigned To” field value is not copied if it was updated in Microsoft Project to a resource name that does not exist in Active Directory.
• If a Calculated column type is displayed in SharePoint Task Master, the calculated value is not updated when the user clicks Recalculate. To view the updated values for Calculated columns, refresh the browser using Control + F5.
• Users cannot delete resources from the Enterprise Resource Pool in the department site if the department site is the root of the site collection. Users must go to the portfolio site to delete resources.
• When users create a new Web Part Page in the portfolio site and try to make this page the default page updating the URL in /_Layouts/AreaWelcomePage.aspx, they will receive the following error: “The site is not valid. The ‘Pages’ document library is missing.” This is a SharePoint limitation.
• Users logged into the portfolio site with a site collection administrator account will not see rolled-up data in the following tabs: My Summary, Resources, Schedules, Issues and Reporting. This is a SharePoint limitation. To change the limits, go to Central Administration > Manage Web Applications. Select the desired site collection, and then select General Settings > Resource Throttling from the ribbon to change the values.
• In the “Tasks” tab of the project site under Tracking View, the headers for “Cost”, “Actual Cost” and “% Complete” are not aligned to the left like in other fields.
HW11A List Search Simple Web Part for SharePoint 2010 (Release 2.1.140)
Bug Fixes:
• Partial Search does not work correctly for of Calculated fields.
• Email addresses longer than 35 characters are not shown as hyperlinks.
No new Known Issues or Limitations
HW20 Calendar Plus Web Part for SharePoint 2010 Release 4.1.143
Bug Fixes:
• User denied access to a page that contains a Calendar Plus Web Part connected to a SharePoint List or Library for which the user does not have access.
• Unable to color or icon code based on Content Type column.
• Color code fails to display values that contain a comma if column is type People and Group.
No new Known Issues and Limitations
HW24 List Rollup Web Part for SharePoint 2010 Release 6.0.64
Bug Fixes:
• Grid view shows root web app URL when clicking on “Person and Group” column.
• List Rollup for Tasks list justifies columns incorrectly.
No new Known Issues or Limitations
HW27 Chart Plus Web Part for SharePoint 2010 Release 3.5.106
Bug Fixes:
• Long wait times (>10 seconds) for Web Part to render data.
No new Known Issues or Limitations
HW28 Site Creation Plus for SharePoint 2010 Release 1.4.66
Internal bug fixes to support PMC SA12 v. 4.0
No New Known Issues or Limitations
HW50 List Print for SharePoint 2010 Release 1.4.31
Bug Fixes:
• Date format is not shown correctly in German regional settings.
No new Known Issues or Limitations
HW59 User Manager for Sites for SharePoint 2010 Release 1.3.46
Bug Fixes:
• User gets the error “Access is denied (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))” on the Web Part when logs in using the Claims-Based Authentication method with SQL Membership Provider Forms-Based Authentication.
No new Known Issues and Limitations
