Shidi,

Not yet, they say somewhere in mid September with free upgrade. BTW, long time, no see. So how’s everything?

Shahrol Sabaruddin.

FYI, guys.

Release Notes
Release Objectives and Summary

The 5.0 release will deliver significant advances in existing functionality, as well as introduce new conceptual areas of functionality to extend Primavera’s overall Project Portfolio Management solution.
One hundred percent of the proposed features have been suggested and requested by Primavera customers, and they can be categorized into three areas:
1.Industry Thought Leadership
2.Specific Customer Enhancement Requests
3.Technological Maintenance and Enhancements

The objective of the 5.0 release is to integrate a broader selection of options for planning and managing projects and programs. Version 5.0 will accomplish these objectives with a focus on core project management capabilities, high-level resource planning, and an introduction of new functionality that will provide enhanced alternative methods for the management and resolution of project issues, changes, and risk.

More specifically, the 5.0 release includes improvements to the following areas
1.Project Level Resource Reservations and Planning
2.Issues Management
3.Access Control Lists for Documents and Project Collaboration
4.Improved User Interface
5.Core Security Options
6.Updated and Enhanced Reporting Capabilities
7.Robust Baselining Capabilities
8.Advanced scheduling options

These release notes describe the overall intentions of the release and provide an initial statement of the proposed feature and functionality coverage.

Delivered Functionality by Module
Project Manager Professional (Formerly PM, MM, and PA clients)
Improved Reporting Options
1.The report wizard will allow joining multiple select subject areas. For instance, the wizard will allow the selection of notebook topics as well as activities to display activity data with all related information stored in the notebook fields.

2.All reports defined in PM Professional will be accessible in myPrimavera, allowing users to view and print these reports from a myPrimavera session.
New Activity Type: Summary Activities
Summary activities will allow for the roll-up of information across a specific node of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). In addition to the automatic roll-up to the WBS element, this new activity type will allow for the assignment of resources and the collection of actuals at the WBS level.

Progress Spotlight
Progress spotlight is a usability tool that will allow the project manager to quickly schedule as planned by graphically identifying and selecting activities that should have progressed since the last scheduling period. The feature allows the project manager to step through selected activities, updating them at a more discrete level, as necessary.

EPS Level Activity Codes
Users will have a third option by which to distribute activity and project codes. This new option associates codes at the Enterprise Project Structure (EPS) level. Codes are assigned as accessible from a specific node within the EPS. Activities in that node (and its children) will have access to the identified activity codes.

Baseline Maintenance
Baseline maintenance will now include the option to update portions of a project plan or even select only newly added or deleted items from the last baseline for incremental baseline updates.

Suspend and Resume Activity
Project managers will now have the option to selectively set dates for an activity to indicate that work on the activity has been suspended and will resume on the specified date.

Rates on Roles
The role dictionary will now include a value for rate on each identified role. This will allow for the assignment of roles and a calculated, estimated cost based upon the specified weight for the assigned role.

Past Period Actuals
The system will now store reported period actuals for use in all layouts and reports. Period actuals will be tied to the “Period Closeout” feature, allowing for the storage of reported actuals without the need to collect time reported actuals.

Step Enhancements
Users can now build activity step templates that will allow for the assignment of groups of steps to activities. In addition, the interface will display a graphical indicator when an activity has a step assigned to it.

Unraveling Float Path
This new capability will allow for the identification and mining of critical paths that exist in the schedule and will allow users to incrementally step through all contributing network logic.

Independent Resource Leveling (5.1)
Independent resource leveling will provide an option for leveling that allows activity dates to be calculated based on assigned resources without a prerequisite of consistent availability of every resource assigned to the activity. The activity will be scheduled if at least one resource is available.

Excel Import/Export engine
Users will have the ability to export multiple subject areas to an Excel® spreadsheet. An easy to use wizard allows the user to build export templates and quickly execute the export and import of multiple tables to multiple worksheets within the same Excel workbook.

Undo
A fully functional undo feature will be included in the 5.0 release. The system will track an unlimited number of user actions and provide for the instant reversal of any minor data addition, modification, or deletion. Example of some of the actions that can be undone:

•Rename activity
•Delete activity
•Fill down
•Copy/paste activity

Layout Improvements
To allow project managers to leverage layouts as a robust reporting tool, Primavera will continue to update layout graphic options and capabilities. The 5.0 release will include the following graphical layout improvements:

1.Ability to format weight and color of vertical sight lines
2.Combination of ordinal dates with corresponding weeks on the timescale
3.Introduction of 3rd line for bar chart and histogram timescales
4.Multiple curtains and extended formatting of timescale curtains
5.Customization of bar labels

Multiple Timesheet Approval Periods
The timesheet approval screen will now allow for the selection of multiple reporting periods and graphically indicate when a time period contains timesheets awaiting approval.

Overhead Activity Visibility
The resource assignment view will include reported actual overhead hours entered within the timesheet.

Security Enhancements
To allow greater access control, the security infrastructure will be extended to allow for more discrete assignment of access rights based upon specific area of functionality. These security changes include:

1.New privilege for scheduling, leveling, and applying actuals
2.Separation of calendar privilege into multiple options (e.g., global vs. resource)
3.Node level resource access, restricting users to a specific node of the Resource Breakdown Structure
4.New privilege that will prevent the deletion of any resource that has posted actuals
5.Separate add and edit privileges for resources, activities, and project codes
6.Separate add and edit privileges for user defined fields
7.New privilege for updating the activity ID

myPrimavera (Formerly Primavision)
Enhanced Resource Planning
The 5.0 release will introduce new concepts in resource planning that will significantly enhance the way in which resources are allocated to project work. The new resource planning view in myPrimavera lets users assign both roles and resources directly to a project or an element of the WBS. To simplify high-level resource planning, the interface will include a new worksheet that will enable the automatic or manual spread of resource allocation across quarters, months, or weeks (see figure below).

High-level resource assignments can be identified as committed or reserved. Committed assignments reduce a resource’s total availability across all analysis views in the suite. Reservations identify the potential use of a resource and communicate that potential use to managers when they are performing periodic resource planning and analysis, giving them the ability to mix and match resource alternatives to establish the necessary resource mix.

The project team can be identified and assigned at the project or WBS level, which prescribes a limit of use for that particular project. This allows the project manager to assign and utilize resources against their true availability for their project. Over allocation of a resource against prescribed project limits will be graphically indicated on the project’s resource histogram and analysis views throughout the suite. (see figure below)

Enhanced Issues Infrastructure
Project issues will be enhanced to include a global coding hierarchy. This will allow for the definition of unlimited categorical values that can be assigned to every project issue. All issue views in myPrimavera will provide discrete filtering and multi-level grouping, allowing users to easily manage the issues that have the most relevance to them.

The system will also provide the ability to graphically display issue related information in the form of Stacked bar, Pie, and histogram charts.

Related collaborative functionality will enable users to follow discussion threads regarding specific issues, push notifications out to those responsible for issue resolution, and subscribe to issues of most importance to them.
V5.0 will also provide the ability to configure the issue forms by providing the users with the flexibility to define which data fields are captured when an issue is created. Fields can be designated as mandatory, read /write, or read only. This functionality will allow the users to create and categorize issue templates that more accurately reflect their organizations internal processes.
Interface Improvements for Easier Management of Project Data
Several enhancements will be included to make the entry, manipulation, and reporting of project management data easier. These improvements will include:

•Exposing all data fields on the myPrimavera project pages
•The ability to create baselines from myPrimavera
•Multiple grouping within list views (including activity list and project statistics)
•Column sorting within all list views
•Breadcrumbs for easier navigation

Document Security
The 5.0 release will support the creation of detailed security profiles that can be assigned to users, groups of users, or documents. Access to collaborative documents will be managed against the security profile and corresponding access control lists. Security profiles can be made at high levels and can vary by document. This functionality will allow controlled access of both document folders and individual documents.

System Performance Enhancements
Compression Server
The compression server is new technology that will enhance product performance across the network. By compressing data before sending it to PM Professional, and by better managing the data, performance over local and wide area networks will be significantly improved.

Timestamps and User stamps
The 5.0 release will include added and modified dates as well as capture the user who added and last modified the record. This will improve performance particularly when refreshing the database, summarization and copy/paste projects.