Clarity PPM 15.3 hit general availability September 8, 2017. We sat down with Sara Garvey, our resident training expert, to get the six things you need to know.
1. Why Upgrade to Clarity PPM 15.3
The majority of development since Clarity PPM 14.4 has focused on the new UX (details below), and Clarity PPM 15.3 is no exception. If your team doesn’t use the new UX, and you’re already on 14.4, the 15.3 release can function like a patch, and you can use it to experiment with the new UX.
That said, all database schemas are being moved to 12c, so the amount of time required for an upgrade is significant, and you’ll want to treat this “point” upgrade like a major release.
Clarity PPM 15.3 gives us improvements in Jaspersoft Reporting, plus Data Warehouse trending for investments and resources, and if you’re an On-Demand customer, you’ll have the ability to use the OData connector to point a BI tool at the Clarity PPM Data Warehouse. This will enable the use of Spotfire, Tableau, Power BI, QlikView, etc.
The release also includes Clarity PPM and Rally Software® (CA Agile Central) Integration Enhancements.
2. Blueprints are the Biggest Clarity PPM 15.3 Addition
The new UX in 15.3 replaces partitions with blueprints. Essentially, a blueprint is a project template, and a unique blueprint can be created for each area of your organization. Blueprints establish the look and feel of project tiles. With the appropriate rights, you can configure the tile layout and associate relevant modules to the blueprint (with OOTB and custom attributes in your Project Details). Project data can also be granted or restricted with security.
While this release allows for configuring OOTB custom fields, the ability to configure sub-objects and update issues, risks, and changes from the new UX are pending a future release.
3. Choose from Seven Modules in the New 15.3 UX
There are seven modules available for use on blueprints: Tasks, Financials, Conversations, Links, Details, Status, and Documents. Pick the ones you need, and they’ll show up as tabs on your project. The first four modules are also displayed on the project tile for faster click-through.
Let's take a look at three of the modules . . . Details, Tasks, and Financials.
Details Module
The Details module is similar to the Project Edit screen in the classic UI, and attributes can be customized from the Blueprint. While there’s not support for subpages or subobjects—and we can’t edit project OBS here—Clarity PPM 15.3 does allow for editing the Project Manager within the new UX.
Tasks Module
The Tasks module now gives us the ability to launch the classic Gantt and the scheduler (MSP or Open Workbench) from within the module. Conversations are available on tasks, and attachments and HTML links can be added to conversations.
There’s also a new Owner field on the Task that shows up both in classic and the new UI. This field displays who is responsible for Summary Tasks, Tasks, and Milestones.
Aside from Gantt and scheduler launching, the other biggest development on Task is the Task Board view. All tasks start in the Incoming column, and you can drag and drop tasks between other columns, such as Waiting to Pull, Planned, In Progress, Accepted, and Archived. Column names can be edited, and each project can create the columns they want to use.
A small note: columns aren’t template capable or blueprint capable and shouldn’t be considered phases or status, though a phase can be added to a task.
Financials Module
The Financials module in Clarity PPM 15.3 allows us to see (not edit) project Cost Plans that are the current plan of record in the classic UI.
There are several views available like "Planned," “Planned to Actuals,” “Planned to Forecast,” and “Actuals.” This module also introduces “Actuals-to-Date” and “To Go Forecast.”
You can personalize your view by filtering data, adjusting column sizing, adjusting column locations, and even pinning columns. To drill into financial transactions, it only takes a single click on the actual cost to pull up the individual transactions.
The new UX doesn’t support Budget and Benefit plans yet, and Cost Plans can’t be exported, but you can easily highlight and paste them into Excel.
4. Staffing View Enhanced in Clarity PPM 15.3
The Staffing View in the new UX has useful additions like enhanced filtering and the ability to update resource Allocation %. Staffing data can be granted or restricted with Security.
5. Data Warehouse Trending Added in Clarity PPM 15.3
Clarity PPM 15.3 introduces a set of 7 tables within the DWH for monthly snapshot trending of key object fields. The data comes from within the DWH and includes trends from the project and resource objects, like investment summary facts, investment monthly and fiscal period facts, resource monthly and fiscal period facts, and investment and resource OBS mapping table and unit tables.
Jobs exist to create, update, and remove trends. The following fields are trended in this release:
- Project: name, manager, status, start, finish, baseline start, baseline finish, status indicator, cost indicator, scope indicator, cost/effort indicator, overall risk #, counts of IRC
- Resource: name, manager, booking manager, role
6. Reports & Jobs are Back in Clarity PPM 15.3
Remember Reports & Jobs? They're back in 15.3, so users don’t have to go into Advanced Reporting and can quickly access and schedule reports.
Clarity PPM 15.3 is an exciting release for the new UX, with lots of nuanced enhancements, including new banner colors for project tiles. For more details about the functional and technical changes or Rego-facilitated upgrades, please contact your Rego account representative or visit regoconsulting.com to get in touch.
Special thanks to Sara Garvey, Ross Hensel, Dan Greer, Navdeep Joshi, Darren Greer, Davey Zywiec, Jair Flores, and Ramesh Rathnam for their work assembling the release data.
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