Dear colleague,

I trust you all had a good break over Christmas and the new year and are feeling positive about the year ahead.

This edition of the newsletter brings you the latest news on new features in PROJECT in a box as well as the opening of our always popular year end sale. 

Malcolm West, Managing Director

New Version 2.2 announced

• Extended check-in options - saving you time when bringing back in updated documents from email or after local modification.
• Support for Drag and Drop - add new files including email messages to your project, just drag on to the document you want them to be placed in.
• Extended Project level administration - watches and document permissions can be set up in profiles across the various documents in a project from a single form enabling you to set up your new projects much more quickly.
• Portfolio report extension - Version 2.1 let you include your own properties and project meta data structure for each project method template.  Now the Portfolio report lets you extract this data and perform your own analysis and presentation in excel (see example right).

• Report selection options - when running reports across a portfolio of projects you can now filter which projects will be included based on their meta data enabling you to categorise your projects and perform more sophisticated analysis.

Version 2.2 is scheduled for release in April and as usual will be available as a free upgrade to users with an active support and upgrades account.

Version 2.1 further information 

New Report Manager Module

Reporting has always been a major capability of PROJECT in a box, in particular the ability for users to create project reports which draws upon data automatically generated from their standard logs and plans.  Until now these reports and the source information for them have been in largely fixed formats which has enabled quick deployment and operation with professional and consistent outputs suiting most of our customers very well.

Report Manager enables users who want to go further to do so and provides the ability to fully customise your reporting experience and automate report production and distribution.  You will be able to build up your own library of report content elements drawing on data from the following sources:

• Your own custom spreadsheets
• Your own .mpp project plans or Project server instance
• Your own word documents 
• Standard PIAB logs (Risk, Issue, Quality, Lessons Learned, Finances, Sales Funnel Data)
• PIAB Project and Stage Commentary and status fields
• User Activity data and other audit trail information
• Project, Stage and process meta data you defined for each Method Template (project type)

You will be able to identify precisely which parts of the source information you want to use and how it should be presented or rolled up if being summarised across a group of projects.  Drawing on your library of report elements you will then be able to construct and publish your own standard reports which users can operate from their normal PROJECT in a box client interface.   This capability gives unpresidented control of how you choose to report on your project and programme information which you can define yourself and then apply consistently across your organisation.

The Report Manager module will also let you define a schedule for report production and then produce your reports for you, distributing them by email as you have decided

Report Manager will be available as a separate module priced at £1,000.  Several of our larger customers are already actively involved in development, if you would like to join at this stage or be interested in beta testing then let us know.

Year End Offer

Year end is always a difficult time with lots of work to finish and budgets to set for the new year.  But it is also an excellent time to think about investing in PROJECT in a box as we launch our Year End Offer.

If you are facing the 'spend it or lose it' dilemma in February and March and have been glad to assist as we can deliver and invoice quickly and you can be up and running on your software the same day as a purchase is made or the order is processed.

This year we are giving the choice of three offers:

1. Spend over £1,000 on Project in a box software and services and get 10% extra software free.
2. Save 30% on  a Corporate package - National licence just £13,300.
3. Get an Enterprise Hub for £1,000 (50% off)

All offers apply to orders received before the 31st March 2007 quoting the Offer code YE2008.  If you would like a quotation confirming this against which to place an order just contact us by email.  If you choose to purchase through the on-line store, your order exceeds £1,000 and includes the Offer code we will contact you to arrange which additional licences you would prefer.

Project Challenge

This year the annual curtain raiser of the Project Management year, the Project Challenge Spring show, moves across the road to the NEC.

This move underlines the importance organisations are placing on having the right Project Management capabilities and the steadily increasing attendance levels at the shows over the last five years.

The PROJECT in a box stand is always busy giving our thousands of users a great chance to see first hand the  latest capabilities of the products.  This year will be no exception, visit to get the new Community Edition CD or to see version 2.2 and the Report Manager prior to release.