Quebec features for Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

[Miguel Donayre]

**UPDATE**

Quebec is now LIVE and available 

the Version Delta slides were just released in the wild, by a colleague of mine, Scott Wallace. These slides will make it easier to show your management or client(s) the new features and changes. here is the link to the slides- ITBM Delta Decks

The first new version of the year has come to ServiceNow - Quebec! It's time to start learning what new features, enhancements, and changes are coming to the ServiceNow PPM world. While there aren't that many new features versus the Paris release, there are a lot of new enhancements that make up for it.  The Quebec release is already available on the developer instance (PDI), so feel free to explore all these new features.
This post will provide an overview of some of those new features, enhancements, and changes for the Quebec release. 
The complete list can be found here.

Here are the Highlights for the Quebec release

• Manage and track demands in your functional currency, project currency, or a local currency using the Multicurrency feature in Demand Management.
• Use scenarios to plan the execution of the demands and projects in your portfolio based on your resource capacity for a single year or for multiple years.
• Set the rate of resources in the locally used currency, and then track the corresponding resource costs for your project or demands in the project or demand currency.
• Identify the resource plans and resources created with specific member preferences in the Allocation Workbench.
• Integrate ServiceNow® GRC Risk and GRC Audit with Project Management to create engagement projects and to manage your project risks.

 

New Features and Major Enhancements

Demand Management :

We FINALLY get the multicurrency feature in Demand!! 

• View, manage and track your demand costs and benefits in your functional currency or a local currency. You can enable the Demand Currency view in order to track the costs and benefits and to post your actuals. For more information, see Multicurrency in Demand Management. 
• • If you want to use multiple currencies to manage your demands, then activate the PPM Standard Multicurrency (com.snc.ppm_multicurrency) plugin. You must make the following changes:
    • Specify your currency preference by navigating to Project Administration > Settings > Preferences-Project. For more information, see Select demand currency preference.
    • Run the Upgrade demand currency fields for active demands scheduled job to convert the costs and benefit values of your existing active demands into the currency of your choice.
    • Run the Upgrade demand currency fields for inactive demands scheduled job to convert the costs and benefit values of your existing inactive demands into the currency of your choice.

 

Project Management

• Use status color indicators to identify project tasks that are past the due date or are due soon. The project task color is calculated from the planned end dates. On the Planning Console and on the Status field of the Project Task form, the project task color remains green if the task is not past the due date. The color changes to red if the task is past the due date.

• Train Similarity Definition for ideas, demands, and projects using guided templates for Predictive Intelligence use cases. These template-based use cases help you to augment your existing workflows.

Resource Management

• Set the rate of resources in the locally used currency, and then track the resource costs for your project or demands in the project or demand currency. You can accurately understand and report on resource financials. For more information, see Create a rate line.
• Identify the resource plans and the resources created with specific member preferences in the Allocation Workbench. You can view an icon next to the resource plans or resources with specific member preference. For more information, see Allocation Workbench.
• View resource plans which have an extension in the Allocation Workbench. You can quickly allocate resources for the extended period. For more information, see Allocation Workbench.
• Hide cancelled or completed resource plans in the Project Resource Workbench to better manage your resources by reducing the non-essential data available in the workbench.
• View the FTE (Full Time Equivalent) value in resource aggregate reports to present more meaningful information to the senior management.

Scenario Planning for PPM (ServiceNow Store App.)

I really like this app and highly recommend it!

Use the Scenario Planning for PPM application to plan your portfolio by using scenarios with different combinations of projects and demands for execution. The Scenario Planning for PPM application version 2.0.1 supports the Quebec release.

• Plan your portfolio based on your resource capacity for a single year or for multiple years. For more information, see Annual and multi-year resource capacity-based planning.
• Create scenarios to plan for a single portfolio or for all portfolios in your organization.
• Manage your multiple-year portfolio planning by using smaller planning windows for continuous tracking and for planning adjustments. For more information, see Configure the scenario planning type and scope.
• Allocate the budget to demands and projects in your portfolio based on the target derived from Investment Funding.
• View demands and projects with over-allocated resources.
• Use pagination and filters to refine your list and to better manage a large number of demands and projects.

The application can be found here on the ServiceNow Store.

 

PPM Collaboration (ServiceNow Store App.)

Use the PPM Collaboration application to collaborate with your team on your project-specific Slack channel and to facilitate active and timely communication about your project. The project manager, users, and any other stakeholders who are added to the project channel can easily stay up to date with the project status and can chat with other members.

The application can be found here on the ServiceNow Store.

Virtual Agent for PPM (ServiceNow Store App.)

Finally, PPM has been included in Virtual Agent!!

View project information quickly by interacting with a virtual agent rather than having to navigate through various lists in the application.

The application can be found here on the ServiceNow Store.

Idea Manager dashboard (ServiceNow Store App.)

Use the Idea Manager Dashboard to view idea metrics and trends, such as ideas in different states, the age of ideas, and ideas converted to different work entities.

You have to download the Dashboard from the ServiceNow store -here

GRC Audit Engagement and Project Integration

Create an engagement project for your audit engagements. Use advanced resource and financial planning capabilities, such as adding resource plans and cost plans to the engagement.

The application can be found here on the ServiceNow Store.

Quick start tests for Project Portfolio Management

There are now 47 tests that have been added to the baseline!!!

This is great for regression testing, and show help reduce the time used for testing. 

After upgrades and deployments of new applications or integrations, run quick start tests to verify that Project Portfolio Management still works. If you customized Project Portfolio Management, copy the quick start tests and configure them for your customizations.

 

Changed in this release

Demand Management

• In the Demand form, the Project Calculation field is automatically set to Automatic when a demand is converted to a project.
• The Project Currency field has been moved from the Preferences tab to the Financials tab of the Demand form.
• You can view a financial summary of cost and benefit plans and compare financial baselines of a demand in multiple currencies.
• The Risk owner field has been added to the Risk form.
• You can use Predictive Intelligence to view similar ideas, demands, and projects. Similar items are found based on the Description, Name, and Title fields. For more information, see Machine learning solutions for IT Business Management.

Project Management

• The Risk owner field has been added to the Risk form.

• You can close or cancel a subproject. By closing the top project, you close all the associated subprojects.
• You can manage your project risks with the integration of GRC and Project Portfolio Management. You can help your organization's risk administrators, projects managers, and risk owners to manage the complete project risk life cycle. The life cycle includes project risk identification, project risk assessment, project risk mitigation, and project risk monitoring.

Resource Management

• Clear the resource rate from resource plans when the Rate override check box is cleared for accurate reporting.
• View actual hours on the Allocation Details report.
• Search resource plans by tasks in the upper section of the Allocation Workbench without having to scroll through a list of projects or demands.
• In the Allocation Details report, a message is displayed when the actual hours are greater than allocated hours. The corresponding cell for actual hours is highlighted.
• While posting your time, the operational resource plan associated with a task is automatically filled out in the time card. If multiple operational resource plans are associated with a task for that time period, you can select a different resource plan in the Resource plan field. For more information, see Create a time card.
• Resource Management runs an API to retrieve capacity and availability details when you select a capacity or availability column in the Resource Finder in Allocation Workbench, or in the Allocation and Allocation Details reports.
  • Resource Availability and Resource Capacity grids are displayed when you select a capacity or availability column.
  • You can view the user and resource allocation details in a pop-up window when you select the User and Allocated Hours columns respectively in the Resource Availability grid.
  • The allocated values are displayed in the Hours, FTE, or Person Days fields based on the selection made in the Allocation Workbench.
• View the resources booked by resource managers in the Resource Plan form.
• The Rate in the functional currency field has been added to the Create Rate Line form.
• A warning is displayed when you create a resource plan for a closed project or demand.
• The resource aggregate daily values are no longer generated.

Deprecations

• The Project Currency field has been removed from the Demand form default view. Use the Project Currency field under the Financials tab by switching to the Demand Currency view.