ResourceFirst Release 8.5 – Release Notes

This article contains Release Notes for Release 8.5 of ResourceFirst – Released September 2021

Release 8.5 (September 2021) Release Notes

This article contains release notes for Release 8.5 of ResourceFirst, released September, 2021.

This release brings many new and enhanced features, including the ability to relate projects to configurable events (e.g., Risks, Issues, Change events, Outcomes, and more), multi-currency support, enhanced Partition support, Favorites breadcrumbs, and more! Features and bug fixes for this release are as follows:

New Features:

• Events replaces Risk/Issues – Risks/Issues is now called Events, and is configurable for any type of event you wish to track for projects, including changes, external events, outcomes, facilities, and more. Main features are:
  • Multiple types of events
  • Switching/toggling types events shown on the Events page
  • Global event page to see all events of any type
  • Type selected is remembered the next time you visit the page, even after logoff
  • 15 UDFs you can used to tailor how the form looks for each type of event
  • Custom headers based on type of event
  • Custom forms based on which fields you’d like to see per type (including UDFs)
  • Impact & Probability have 5 levels with colors
  • We’ve added hover to event scores so you can now see what they mean
• Requests can be manually merged. Merge will result in one open request combining all the values, and all other requests in the set rejected. To use this, on the manage request page, select the requests you want to merge values for. After selection and clicking the merge button, the values will be combined to the first selected request row. That first request stays in open state and all others get rejected.
• Last 10 visited pages are listed in the favorites menu. This can serve as breadcrumbs to jump back and forth between multiple visited pages.
• Currency
  • Admin can define currencies and default currency to be used for a country.
  • Currency will be applied to every record with the country (resource/ assignments)
  • Currencies can have different symbols to be used in the grids
  • Cost/Financial data can be converted from local currency to default currency
  • Precision can be defined up to 6 decimal points
• Team members can now edit assignment UDFs on the time sheet view
• Team velocity can now be defined by sprints. In addition to the default velocity, velocity overrides by sprint can be defined.

Enhancements:

• Partitions (enhanced features)
  • Lists can have their items defined as Active and belonging to a Partition
  • Forms & Views can be defined as Active and belonging to a Partition
• PMO->Score Analysis now has the fields in the formula colored in the same colors as their bars in the Scoring Project bar chart
• PMO->Score Analysis allows sorting on score columns
• Administrators can update resources in locked nodes, preventing the need to unlock the node before changes (this also applies to POST/PUT calls from the API when the token is for an administrator)
• Resource Orgs & Project Orgs fields are available in the Edit Views function for users.
• Users with F1 rights can delete financial assignments
• Proficiency list can be defined in Admin->Lists
• Copy actuals from previous timesheet: User can now select rows and click to copy values from the previous timesheet. If the previous period is available, the values will copy to the matching rows.
• Added a system setting to define the minimum right level required for submitting project status
• Filtering now sticks on all grid views
• New Custom Export Web API calls – used to export portfolio data to other systems
• New Snapshot/Baseline Web API
• Resources on teams can be marked inactive
• Teams can be made inactive
• Team can now have up to 5 UDFs that can be defined as text or list fields
• Teams & their resources load based on Get Data Filters
• Phases & Milestones Web API
• The “Initiation->Show Detail->Go Back” feature remembers the form the user was on
• The “Initiation -> Go to Details” feature saves the project form data changes
• Location is available as an extra level in the Rate Matrix
• Columns can be defined as locked/visible and with a specific width when administrators create views
• Enhanced Jira integration (can now import with assigned team, assigned resource, sprint, points, and other general fields)
• Added ID columns to assignment WebApi
• Insert resource assignment dialog is now customizable as a view, using the new “Insert Resource Assignment” view
• Personal forecast now shows active assignments only
• Skill allocation is now taken into account in the Resource Rollup view

Bug Fixes:

• Date fields now format correctly on core fields in Project (Start, Phases, End, and Baseline dates) and Resource (hire, and termination dates) grids
• Importing projects or resources with HTML tags in a field does not break
• Filter on new assignments now works correctly
• Resource “save” bug is now fixed: If the user had two or more resources to save changes to (for example, if the resource name was changed for the first resource and the skill was changed for the second resource, and so on), only the change for the first resource was being applied to all changed records. The system created the query to update based on the first resource -> so only the resource name field would be updated in all the records. Now the system recreates the update statement for each row.
• Fixed issue with multi-combo UDF fields not loading selection correctly. When a field was specified as Multi-Combo and two or more values were selected, the field was not showing the selected values correctly in the dropdown (both in the grid and the form).
• Submit status now captures all project fields (including the UDF 200-210)
• Team assignment allocation updates when team allocation is changed
• Pulse script “modified time” displays correctly
• Manage time period selection now sets the To Date correctly
• Manage Timesheet exports correctly. In the manage time section, the export for the list of timesheets was not working correctly.
• Clearing the value in the Manager field (project manager) now saves correctly in project forms and the Project Data view
• Time->Compliance charts drill down correctly
• User can hide as many columns in the timesheet as they wish, without an error
• Assignments UDFs can now be added to timesheet view without an error
• Project UDFs in timesheet view no longer inadvertently filter non-Project types from the grid. Before, if the user added a project UDF to the timesheet view, the result was that the user did not see the Overhead, Tasks, User Story, and Feature rows in their timesheet (if applicable).
• Clearing hire/termination date on Project Data saves correctly
• Scheduler header in forecast/financial grids lines up correctly with the periods
• Financial assignments import no longer loops indefinitely
• Resource-Skills assignments are updated correctly when importing resources with skill changes
• Financial “load actual” now shows values if there are more financial periods then labor periods. Previously, if there were 4 months in the Get Data filter date range for labor, and four months in the data range for financial, going to Financial assignments and switching from Forecast to Actual would work correctly. But if you changed the Get Data filter to 8 financial periods (still keeping the 4 labor periods) and went to the Financial Assignment page, the forecast would show for 8 periods, but switching to actual would only load 4 periods (the system was using the length of the labor periods, not financial periods, when loading financial actuals).
• Agile Roadmap is again available in the Backlog pages
• The system no longer allows users to specify invalid UDF lookup fields
• Error message now appears during save if assignment node is checked out (by the Portfolio Desktop excel client)
• Location no longer clears when updating rates
• Custom filters with date & number data types now convert correctly
• The total of totals in financials now calculates correctly after posting labor
• If the number of periods and granularity is different between labor and financials, it now loads two sets of currency converters to calculate the different tables correctly (it used to apply the labor currency to financials, resulting in a bad calculation)
• When saving Admin Periods, the date no longer drifts backwards in UK time. Previously, if you were in UTC+0 and made changes to the periods in the Admin->Period section, the periods would add a negative hour component, and, after some periods, would eventually result in the date drifting backwards.
• Resource rollup now shows resource field information correctly