UniPhi 17 - Work Breakdown Structure UniPhi Style.

 

For those of us who haven't consumed the guide to the Project Managers Body of Knowledge published by the US based Project Managers Institute, a Work Breakdown Structure is; "a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. It organizes and defines the total scope of the project." Sounds exciting doesn't it.

If that has got the juices flowing then you'll be ecstatic to hear that UniPhi 17 comes with a new contracts interface that allows you to build that WBS to as many levels as you like. Yep, this new feature will support tracking earned value on every cent or pence you spend on your project. It took 17 years to convince our founder that project managers are that anally retentive but we got there in the end.

Below is a screenshot of this awe inspiring functionality. Funky things include drag and drop re-ordering, drill in to a specific deliverable to create more and commentary at the deliverable level.

All jokes aside, the real power of this change comes from the integration of this functionality with time-sheets, earned value and issues directly related to a deliverable. You can also use this functionality to price up jobs with rates libraries coming from the resources module at the classification or individual level.

This integration means that you can enter this WBS once and use it to quote, track and report. Now that is amazing!

Come back Thursday for the next installment of the UniPhi 17 release series.

UniPhi 14 - Outlook Integration

The outlook plugin has been upgraded to support MS Office 64-bit . The outlook plugin was first released in 2007 and has been a favourite of many users for some time. I know one of our N.Z. colleagues is really going to like the fact that it now supports 64-bit office as his contractors have been asking for it but have been unable to deploy it due to the 32-bit limitation.

The outlook plugin allows you to save emails directly into UniPhi either as an issue for resolution or as a document with all attachments then becoming available for others to download. The communications module is automatically updated with the email accessible by all team members. The correspondence is also logged against the various parties correspondence register as well.

Outlook Plugin "Save as Issue" Form

Communications Tab Filtered for Email

Users Correspondence Log

This is the first in a number of upgrades to the plugin that will be rolled out progressively in the coming year. Next will be drag and drop functionality for your issues and documents along with background processing. We willl be showing off this capability in our October 2018 webinar.

UniPhi 14 - Defects Management

4 years ago, we released our OnSite mobile apps product. The main focus of this product was to assist in the management of defects, as per this blog post at the time.

Since then, the majority of use for these apps has been in site surveillances carried out by independent review engineers on infrastructure projects. The app has supported all sorts of new roads and rail networks. However, it hasn't been used much for its intended purpose. Hopefully, UniPhi 14 will assist in changing this.

The main issue in using it for defects was that the correspondence that was logged as comments in the issues module of UniPhi couldn't be extracted easily to share with non-UniPhi users. We use reporting services for our reports (see this post) and we didn't know how to strip the HTML stored in our database when using this platform. Turns out, there's a setting for that, so we now have the defects management report!

New Defects Log Report - With Comments!

This report puts all image files uploaded into their own column and adds all comments into the report as well. This new capability (that was there and hidden the whole time - Doh!) has opened up issues management to broader than just defects, with RFIs, Safety and other types of issues being able to be shared with non-UniPhi users as a register with all comments, actions, due dates and ratings.

If you want to find out what our other features are, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter - we post all our updates there!

UniPhi 14 - Email Notifications

There's been a lot of expansion to the UniPhi email notifications in version 14. Thanks to considerable feedback from our lovely end users, we've added the following:

1. Notifications on new projects created. This has been added to assist bid teams when new opportunities are logged into UniPhi
2. Notifications on new actions you've been assigned to. This handy feature came about due to the great success of an independent verification deployment. There was so much activity that we had to get more nuanced as to the changes. Now, an engineer will know they've been assigned a new surveillance or review action rather than having to check modified activities/issues to see if that modification affected them.
3. Notifications of documents awaiting your sign off contextualised to the lowest delegated authority. This was hurriedly implemented when a CEO did not like being notified of a document awaiting sign-off before all the underlings had already signed it off. Of course, unbeknown to the CEO was our experience of other CEOs incorrectly signing off contracts and invoices because they blindly relied on the fact that the underlings had already signed off the document. The question here being, what value are they adding signing the document off? With UniPhi presenting all the information they need in one screen, I would imagine a more productive thing would be that if they did sign it off before others then the whole document gets signed off. Alas, a battle for another day.
4. Notifications on signed off documents. This helps external PMs (to a client of construction services) know when instructions have been signed off so they can then send the notice to the contract. The majority of UniPhi clients these days are developers who then engages with their external consultants to use UniPhi to manage their projects. This provides significant productivity savings for all organisations concerned of up to 50% on the activities undertaken in UniPhi.

Notification Email

UniPhi email notifications has always been a bane of contention with our team and our philosophy of providing a platform product for people to collaborate but truth be told, it is crucial to successful deployments. Hopefully these new features will assist in future deployments being even more successful.

To keep up to date on our feature release, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter!

UniPhi 14 - More and expanded template controls

From the day our resident genius +Murray Stiles developed the UniPhi template system way back in 2003, we've been using it to automate project status reports. To be honest, we have had mixed success. However, as the Indian in the Clint Eastwood classic "the Outlaw Josey Wales" once prosaically stated, we must endeavour to persevere. UniPhi 14 has six key new or expanded template controls that will hopefully increase the quantity of PCG reports being produced out of UniPhi.

These new features are split into three categories for the use cases they are looking to support - 1) General improvements applicable to all types of documents, 2) Cost Plan Report changes and 3) PCG report

General Template Improvements

1. Added the ability to auto generate document names using template variables. This is a great feature that can standardise document naming to a common convention....the holy grail!
2. Documents: Changed the line height of list items to match that of paragraphs.
3. Custom CheckList template control now has a four column layout option.
4. Distribution list template control now includes the Position of the relevant contact.
5. Added a classification column to Distribution List template control.
6. Document templates may mandate a minimum number of individuals required to sign off each document, in addition to the signoff roles being met.
7. If a document has both an Autonumber step and a VariationOrder No or EOT No, the Autonumber will now take precedence in the document register.

Cost Plan Report Improvements

1. Benchmark Elements template control that compares approved budget snapshots for a selection of projects.
2. Budget Summary template control shows the level 2 codes plus any random other lines you wish to add into the Budget screen
3. Budget Summary Text template control shows all text entered against the level 2 elements describing any assumptions, constraints etc. Note this data can come from underlying cost estimating tools that we integrate with. Ask us which ones and how to configure - our resident cost management expert Trudi Kirk will be able to assist.
4. Budget template control: when showing the budget for a parent project, includes an option to show the budget breakdown for each child project as well.

PCG Report Improvements

1. Document Register template control shows the metadata for a filtered list of signed off documents including document name and ID, author, date modified, etc.
2. Issue Summary template control will now allow multi-select for projects when used in portfolio mode
3. Issue Summary template control will now include issue custom fields as optional columns.
4. Periodic Issue count template control now allows a subset of categories to be included/excluded from final output.

You can see an example of a PCG report being generated here:

And comparing two cost plans here:

If you liked this post, follow us on LinkedIn to make sure you don't miss the next one!

UniPhi 14 - Task Summary Dashboard

The my work summary upgrade that occurred in UniPhi 13 has been adapted and applied to a portfolio view of all resources in UniPhi 14. This allows project and program managers to filter and sort across their portfolio for issues and actions assigned to people, deliverables due, milestones due and risk actions outstanding.

Tasks dashboard option

New Portfolio Tasks Dashboard

An early 14.1 release (September 2018) will add to this table view with a timeline view. This long asked for visual of work will be used for multiple timeline aspects of UniPhi including conversation threads in issues and milestones  as per below:

New milestone timeline graphic

Keep up to date with our features release by following us on LinkedIn and Twitter!