PLANTA Insights 2021 Intro­du­ces New Features

Usa­bi­li­ty, Inte­gra­ti­on in Third Par­ty Sys­tems, Data Secu­ri­ty, PLANTA Online, SaaS Editions

At the digi­tal event PLANTA Insights on 06/16/21, PLANTA intro­du­ces its new soft­ware func­tions which were imple­men­ted sin­ce the last PLANTA User Forum in 2019. Pro­to­ty­pes for the rele­vant new fea­tures, which will be included in the upco­ming release, were intro­du­ced as well, espe­ci­al­ly the new web cli­ent which is based on the bla­zor tech­no­lo­gy and the resour­ce staf­fing func­tion as an exten­ded resour­ce plan­ning and appr­oval process.

As far as new fea­tures of the PLANTA pro­ject, PLANTA pul­se, and PLANTA port­fo­lio soft­ware, strong empha­sis was pla­ced on usa­bi­li­ty, manage­ment assis­tance and PLANTA soft­ware online. Howe­ver, topics such as inte­grabi­li­ty in third par­ty sys­tems like, e.g., Jira  and SAP as well as data secu­ri­ty were also dis­cus­sed in depth. PLANTA pro­ject can be used as a stand-alo­­ne solu­ti­on or in com­bi­na­ti­on with PLANTA pul­se as a hybrid appli­ca­ti­on via SaaS. The soft­ware packets can also be ope­ra­ted on premises.

Two spe­cia­list pre­sen­ta­ti­ons on the topics of “Hybrid Pro­ject Manage­ment” and “Imple­men­ta­ti­on of the HERMES Plan­ning Method in the PLANTA Soft­ware” were held in the cour­se of PLANTA’s digi­tal event.

Due to the coro­na ordi­nan­ces, the PLANTA user forum, which tra­di­tio­nal­ly takes place in Karls­ru­he, had to be held as a digi­tal event this year. This offer, howe­ver, was lively taken up. More than 90 regis­tered cus­to­mers show­ed keen inte­rest and took advan­ta­ge of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask ques­ti­ons and to dis­cuss the soft­ware. What cus­to­mers par­ti­cu­lar­ly app­re­cia­te about PLANTA events is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to direct­ly exch­an­ge their expe­ri­en­ces with all employees and to network.

Intro­du­ced Fea­tures (Excerpt)

Jira inter­face

• Jira Epi­cs syn­chro­nizable with PLANTA (PLANTA Jira link)
• Trans­fer recor­ded hours work­ed direct­ly from Jira via webhooks
• Hybrid plan­ning model pos­si­ble by con­nec­ting Jira with PLANTA pro­ject (as an alter­na­ti­ve to working hybrid­ly with PLANTA pro­ject and PLANTA pul­se)
• Use tra­di­tio­nal KPIs also for agi­le pro­jects: bud­get, resour­ce uti­liza­ti­on, pro­ject pro­gress, sta­tus reports, and trend analyses

Mobi­le time recor­ding for hybrid pro­ject management

• Exten­ded time recor­ding both on cards and on tasks direct­ly from PLANTA pro­ject
• Revi­sed time recor­ding in PLANTA pul­se

Data Secu­ri­ty

• Ope­­nID-Con­nect Inte­gra­ti­on (PLANTA secu­re)
• SAP inter­face updated to the latest secu­ri­ty fea­tures (PLANTA offers stan­dard inte­gra­ti­ons, a.o. the SAP-RFC interface)

iCal­en­dar interface

• Uni­que links per resour­ce allow for inte­gra­ti­on in the PLANTA pro­ject calendar
• Enables employees to plan their next appoint­ments in i‑Calendar format

Exten­si­ons of web interfaces

PLANTA pul­se fea­tures

• In addi­ti­on to in-app and e‑mail, noti­fi­ca­ti­on is now also pos­si­ble via mes­sa­ging services
• Time recor­ding has been com­ple­te­ly revi­sed for mobi­le devices
• New calen­dar view
• User defi­ned colors
• Available edi­tors: WYSIWYG + Markdown
• User onboar­ding: inter­ac­ti­ve tuto­ri­als for fea­tures in PLANTA pul­se
• Card view struc­tu­red more cle­ar­ly by dif­fe­rent tabs
• Board tem­pla­tes (pre­mi­um fea­ture which comes with PLANTA pul­se ver­si­on in July 2021)

Fea­tures for the next roll­out (Sep­tem­ber 2021)

Resour­ce Staf­fing (exten­ded resour­ce plan­ning and appr­oval processes)

• Out­line plan­ning of the resour­ces: resources/departments are requested
• Spe­ci­fic resour­ces are appro­ved by the depart­ment mana­ger or requests are declined
• Detail­ed plan­ning: after appr­oval, resour­ces can be plan­ned in more detail
• Noti­fi­ca­ti­ons via e‑mail, reports via event frame­work with appr­oval remin­der function

Web cli­ent for PLANTA pro­ject

For the new com­po­nent, a ser­ver based on the bla­zor tech­no­lo­gy is pla­ced in the cloud ins­tead of a desk­top cli­ents. This is meant to aid user-fri­en­d­­li­­ne­ss. The web cli­ent is an inte­res­t­ing tool for manage­ment, a.o. becau­se of a new manage­ment role with gra­phi­cal charts on essen­ti­al KPIs of all pro­jects such as bud­get, date delay, objec­ti­ve con­tri­bu­ti­on, pro­ject esti­ma­te, etc.

• PLANTA Soft­ware the­r­e­fo­re be used fur­ther on via brow­ser on your desk­top, tablet and note­book. Web cli­ent and local cli­ent can be used in parallel.
• Links can be shared or sent via e‑mail for instance.
• The Web client’s design is ori­en­ted towards the PLANTA pul­se design for data secu­ri­ty reasons and for the pur­po­se of invest­ment pro­tec­tion of cus­to­mer customizings.
• 1st Roll­out Sep­tem­ber 2021: Inclu­ding dash­board and fil­ter func­tion for simp­le application
• Data secu­ri­ty: inte­gra­ted user authen­ti­ca­ti­on, Ope­nID con­nect also pos­si­ble for web client

ODATA Report­ing Interface

• At the moment, this tech­no­lo­gy is being inte­gra­ted in PLANTA pro­ject in order to enable both the retrie­val of pro­ject data via this inter­face and its ana­ly­sis in an exter­nal tool like Tableau or Micro­soft Power BI.

Docu­men­ta­ti­on will be migra­ted to Con­fluence

• Bet­ter usa­bi­li­ty thanks to bet­ter navi­ga­ti­on and pro­cess ori­en­ted structure
• Bet­ter readability
• Via F1, cus­to­mers will auto­ma­ti­cal­ly be direc­ted to the modu­le descrip­ti­on of the ver­si­on they use (this func­tion replaces the pre­vious tabs for dif­fe­rent versions)

Some of the pre­sen­ted fea­tures were based on cus­to­mer pro­jects in the cour­se of which requi­re­ments were clo­se­ly coor­di­na­ted with the cus­to­mers and deve­lo­p­ment, test, and inte­gra­ti­on in the stan­dard were suc­cessful­ly realized.