Dear Colleague

Welcome to the October edition of the PROJECT in a box newsletter.  In this edition we are bringing you the release of PROJECT in a box version 2.3 and plans for 2.4.

We will also be bringing you up to date with the latest in methodology developments from OGC and plans for Community Edition.

Malcolm West, Managing Director

Version 2.3 Available Now

Version 2.3 was released last week and has enabled our existing customers to take advantage of loads of new features:

• Project attribute visibility - Each project has lots of meta data/attributes stored against it, some in a fixed format and others that you can specify.  You can now select items from this meta data to see alongside your select project lists.  You can choose project status, PM name or something specific to your organisation like region, customer code etc. When using the Status option this will also show the appropriate Project status as a RAG symbol giving you an immediate warning of projects requiring further action.

• Email Groups and Project Rolls - When communicating with other users (sending files, setting up meetings, creating notifications) you can pick from preset named email groups, by allocated Project Roll or from the list of individual users.  This helps bring consistency to communications across project, programme and organisation activities.

• Customisable version numbering - now you can choose and manage your own version number approach for project documents.  You can decide now many levels of numbering you want and the type (numeric, upper and lower case alpha or roman) e.g. 4.1.a.ii.  Users checking in files can decide at which level to increment.  These numbers can also be included in the file naming convention and be automatically updated in your Word documents for perfect sync between electronic and hard copies.

• Multi project views - users can now review their activity, manage checked out files and check back in from email across all projects they have permissions for at the same time.  This provides a one stop shop further reducing the time and effort of keeping up with your activities across multiple projects.

• Other items - As usual the new release also included all patches released and a range of other minor enhancements including the ability to custom specify some reporting data sources, scalable admin forms etc.

As usual version 2.3 has been available as a free upgrade to customers with existing support and upgrades accounts and uptake has been good.

If you are an existing customer wanting to renew your support contract to obtain this release contact us at support@projectinabox.org.uk.

Version 2.4 Announced

Plans are already well developed for version 2.4 which will include major extensions to the Enterprise Hub including:

• allowing users to view documents by process or alphabetic index
• allowing read-write and higher users to check files out and in or add new files
• allowing modify users to generate live dashboards and to publish these for other users

Since we included Enterprise Hub as standard in the Server and Personal installers it has been well embraced by users who find it easy to use and flexible in giving them access from a wider range of places and platforms.  These extensions will give each user a real choice of using either the .NET client or the browser interface for most of the day to day interactions with PROJECT in a box enabling Enterprise Hub users to work from any computer with a browser including MAC and Linux Operating systems or even from a Smartphone.

If you have any requests for any other new features you would like to see in version 2.4, just let us know and we will see what we can do.  If this invigorates you to thinking about how you use PROJECT in a box in your organisation get in touch and we will be happy to provide advice or come in and discuss.

Methodology Developments

The new versions 2.3 of PROJECT in a box and 1.5 of Community Edition now include the official OGC PRINCE2 2005 template pack which we originally authored and have now been adopted as the official pack by OGC.

After over a year work is nearing completion on the PRINCE2 refresh and OGC are planning to have the new materials available in spring 2009.  You can find more news about how this is progressing at our PRINCE2 Primer site but as a headline message this is being simplified and more care being given to thinking about how to apply to less complex and risky projects.  We aren't surprised as this is one of the key reasons users have been coming to PROJECT in a box for years.  We will be releasing a new set of method templates to support the refreshed method once the materials are available and our licence has been granted.  Our intention will be to make both sets of method templates available alongside each other during a transition period to supports users who have trained on one version or the other.

The new P3O (Project, Programme and Portfolio Offices) guidance from OGC is due to be released later this month.  This is aimed at people setting up PSOs to help them think about how these can be structured, which processes to use, how much resource they might need, how strategy could be set etc.   We know that these are the sort of issues that many of our customers grapple with and use PROJECT in a box to help address.  We will be posting new information to the PRINCE2 Primer as it becomes available and will be investigating releasing a set of tools ourselves based on P3O to help our users in setting up their PSO.

Moving away from OGC led methods, we have been noting with interest the steady rise in use of Agile methods, in particular in the software development environment.  We have been approached by quite a number of users asking about whether we can provide a Method Template for Agile and this is something we are now investigating.

Community Edition News

As the number of Community Edition users closes on 30,000 and the countries where it is being used exceeds 130 we thought it was time to update you on the plans for Community Edition.

We have just released version 1.5.0 of Community Edition on CD which has the latest OGC template pack and has Vista install improvements, this has been the download version for a few months already.  Other than these sort of platform and template changes Community Edition has remained essentially the same since launch in early 2005 so it is time to think about a refresh and we would like to hear from you the users what you would like to see in the new Community Edition 2.0.

We will be taking your thoughts and feedback over the  coming months and will look to launch the new version in spring 2009 to coincide with the PRINCE2 refresh material.

Send us your feedback and have your say in how Community Edition develops.

Project Management Event Diary