ResourceFirst Release 8 – Release Notes

This article contains Release Notes for Release 8 of ResourceFirst – Released Q3 2020. Â

Release 8 Notes (3Q 2020)

This release of ResourceFirst brings many new features, improved performance, and an updated User Interface. Enhancements and New Features are as follows:

Enhancements

• Main menus now appear as hover dropdowns, where you can go directly to a function. For example, if you hover over the Resources icon, you’ll see a dropdown showing the Resource Data, Capacity, Utilization, Assignments, and Skills Analysis menu items.
  • Note: You can only have one page open at once.
• Greatly Improved performance for large data sets.
• The Global Get Data (Funnel) Filter now includes:
  • Text search for Project and Resource OBS drop downs
  • Labor and Financial Date Range Parameters
  • Checkbox options to load:
    • Resource Assignments (load only if checked)
    • Skill Assignments (load only if checked)
    • Picklist Projects Only (see new Picklist feature below)
    • Projects with Assignments Only
  • Share Settings  (A designated group Partition Administrator can share global filter settings as the default for all members of the group “aka partition”) See new Partition feature below.
• All grid-style Pages that allow filtering now have a Clear Filters icon to clear all row filters
• User settings on views, such as sort, filter, columns, etc. are now sticky so you don’t need to recreate them after leaving and returning to the page during a session.
• Enhanced audit capabilities
• Enhanced Excel export/import
• Enhanced search capabilities, including searches on project and resource names, searches in OBS dialogues, and searches in user right administration.
• Status History enhanced highlighting – each row highlights anything that changed from the previous status.

New Features:

• User Partitions – Users can now be designated as part of a partition (i.e., group). Those designated as Partition Administrators will be able to share content (such as group views, scenarios, and default global funnel settings) with all those in their partition.
  • Private custom views – private views can now be created. Authorized users can share custom views with a group via the new Partitions feature.
• Allocation Data Settings: A new Data Settings dialog can be opened from the new Options icon on the main (blue) icon bar.
• Allocation Options section: If the Show Allocation Colors checkbox is NOT checked, optimization calculation is disabled and all optimization colors are cleared on Assignments, Project Demand, and Resource Utilization pages.
• Allocation State Filter section: Defines how assignment states are used in the allocation calculation.
• The Loaded Scenarios section enables activation / deactivation of any of the scenarios that were loaded in the current session (see new Create Scenarios feature below).
• Set and use Financial and FTE Targets – including the ability to enter target headcount and financial values for any level of the OBS hierarchy, and view performance against those targets.
• Scenarios – Create named scenarios with copies of existing projects, with or without sub-projects and with or without assignments.
• Add or delete assignments in the scenario, move or modify demand values and modify project attributes
• Include/exclude selected scenarios from demand and optimization calculation
• Apply selected scenarios to the current forecast
• Manage saved scenarios
  • Edit scenario name, status, version, description, private/public state
  • Share with selected users
  • Load, remove, include, exclude, delete scenarios
• Enhanced What-If Features – The What-If functionality has been enhanced to work with scenarios and targets.
• Assign Project Pick Lists – Allows users with a configurable resource right level to specify which projects users in their organization can select from when entering assignments. The picklist defines the list of projects that appear in the project dropdown in the Assignment dialog.
• Baselines/Snapshots – There are now three types of baselines, Private, Public, and Official.
  • Official baselines capture assignment field attributes as part of a snapshot in addition to the forecast values being captured in the baseline.
  • A private baseline can be captured at any point, independent of what is shared publicly.
  • A public baseline may or may not be official.
• Configurable Allocation Prioritization Rules – By default, the system’s allocation prioritization engine allocates higher priority projects first. Now, an administrator can configure complex business rules that determine the hierarchy by which assignments are allocated to projects.
• Configurable Actuals Rules – including granularity by resource org; no actuals for inactive resources.
• Expanded User Defined Fields – There are now more than 200 project UDFs available.
• User Rights Enhancements – You can now copy a user’s rights to one or more users (or select all within a node). You can also filter the user list by Resource OBS node and search by user name. You can also create Pick List project rights to limit the list of projects available for users when creating assignments.
• Delegate Rights – A user can delegate their rights to another user if they will be away from work. The maximum amount of delegation time is configurable.
• Assign Rights – Managers can be configured to have an Assign Rights function to assign rights for their staff, without having to be administrators.
  • New Unique ID Fields – Unique ID for resources, projects and assignments are exposed in views.
• Enhanced Column Filters – Columns (fields) can now be filtered either by text or by a multi-value list. This can be set up on the Column Headings page in the administration module.
• Copy Project Enhancements – You can now copy a project to a new project or an existing project. All labor and financial assignments and all project fields are copied to the destination project.
• List Management in Assignments – A new Assignments option constrains list values to those possessed by a resource in the resource node on the assignment. For example, if you have a Country column, only the countries of resource in the assignment resource node will appear in the dropdown.
• New Administration Configuration Options – New features in Administration have been added, including:
  • OBS fields: Key, Area, and Locked. Locked prevents change to resources and assignments for that node.
  • Users with specified rights can set the node Lock state as well as administrators.
  • Server Settings allows for multiple feature options, including:
    • Prioritization allocation algorithm rules
    • Expanded access level control to PMO features
    • Enable Actual Edit on Assignment Views
    • Control over how much granularity to show in the Node path column
    • Minimum org level for assignments
    • Lock financial labor assignment manual entry
    • Force Project Pick List Filter for assignments
    • Allow managers to assign right to their users
    • Policy links for privacy and cookie policy
  • Ability to define columns as External Read Only (i.e., if data is imported from another system), and define Tool Tips for columns
  • Ability to define Financial Views
  • Administering Lists now allows for text search and alpha sort
  • Greatly enhanced configurability and functionality of forms.
• APIs for OBS and rights – APIs now exist for OBS and Rights.
• Configure organization of Qlik reports – Ability to configure how Qlik Reports are organized.
• Negative Capacity – Ability to have negative capacity for a resource
• Labor Cost Auto-Calculation – Automatic calculation of headcount (labor) demand cost base on the rate table
• Logo replacement (& company appearance) – Organizations can now put their logo on the application, and change how ResourceFirst appears. They can also post security policies.