Features
User Defined Fields are now supported for activities. Need to attach custom data to activities? You can now add User Defined Fields and attach any sort of data you want to your activities. You can find the User Defined Field Library in the Info menu and the User Defined Field editor in the View menu or by clicking the toolbar button.
Copy Cells To can be used by right clicking an activity column and selecting a destination cell from the context menu. This can be used to quickly populate information from one column to another and works with the new User Defined Fields columns. Data for all activities selected will be copied so you can bulk transfer data between columns without hassle.
Resource Columns have been added to give you column access to the full set of resource data.
Status on Master scheduling behavior is now configurable. Should the data date push out activities or not? Want to see what the project would look like if you scheduled without actual dates and instead used just the scheduling logic? View the project scheduled without constraints in effect? You now have the ability to configure scheduling to match how you want it to work.
Interruptible Durations are now available as a scheduling option.
UUIDs (universally unique identifiers) are now used for Activities. This allows better tracking of activity history and easier interconnectivity. Comparisons can now be made even if you've renumbered your activities. A UUID column is also now available to view an activity's UUID.
Support bar necking and showing non-work dates on a per activity basis.
Mac OS X only: We've extended the Excel spreadsheet exporting support previously only available to Phoenix Project Manager running on Windows to OS X. OS X users can now export your schedule to an Excel spreadsheet. Just go to Tools > Export > Excel and choose a filename. Both .xls and .xlsx are supported.
Changes
Many of the underlying systems used by Phoenix have been updated to broadly improve stability and performance. OS X in particular should be more stable and have fewer issues.
Detailed List
- Enhancement: Added Critical Path column.
- Enhancement: Hammocks now export as Level of Effort activities in XER files.
- Enhancement: Level of Effort activities now import as Hammocks in XER files.
- Enhancement: Go to greater lengths to repair invalid relationships coming in from P3.
- Enhancement: WBS imported from XER files now match the ordering declared.
- Enhancement: General improvements to the look and feel of Network Diagram.
- Enhancement: Network Diagrams with activity codes now render much faster.
- Enhancement: Import PR_[F/S][F/S]1 relationships in XER imports.
- Enhancement: Added column to show whether an activity's Cost To Date is Calculated or manually specified.
- Enhancement: Use file locking to prevent overwriting changes when a schedule is opened in more than one place simultaneously.
- Changed: Fixed point arithmetic is now used to avoid rounding errors in currency calculations.
- Changed: Excel export now outputs an extra worksheet for each storepoint with one relationship per row for easier data access.
- Changed: Mac OS X now uses larger icons in the toolbar to fit in better with OS X style guidelines.
- Changed: Mac OS X now uses Cocoa instead of Carbon.
- Changed: Mac OS X release is now a 64-bit application.
- Changed: Improved sorting of Activity IDs to be more intuitive (e.g., activity ID 10 now comes before 10-1).
- Changed: Activity IDs are now more flexible in what they can contain.
- Changed: Milestone triangles are now smaller when nodes are hidden in Network Diagram.
- Changed: Milestone descriptions are never truncated.
- Changed: Hammocks are now scheduled in a more rigorous manner.
- Changed: Activity Code Editor now wraps controls to another line instead of using a scroll bar. It is also now dockable on the right and left sides of the screen.
- Changed: Page Layout description text field is now larger for easier editing.
- Changed: Retained Logic now drives only the remaining portion of in-progress activities.
- Changed: Billed has been renamed Cost To Data.
- Changed: Explicit checkbox for Cost To Data in Activity Editor has been renamed Calculated.
- Changed: New default colors for Activity Codes.
- Changed: Drop support for OS X 10.6.
- Changed: Support .txt imports using any of the import formats to ease file extension issues on Mac OS X.
- Fixed: CSV import columns sometimes did not match selected column.
- Fixed: Rename storepoint names with a forward slash (/) and truncate to 31 characters to comply with Excel worksheet naming restriction.
- Fixed: Invalid relationships found while opening a schedule are now ignored.
- Fixed: Currency figures were sometimes larger than they should be by a factor of 1000.
- Fixed: OS X controls were sometimes not properly disabled when the parent window was disabled.
- Fixed: Deleting a cost account with no parent would sometimes cause Phoenix to shutdown.
- Fixed: Filters and Schedule Now toolbar buttons should be disabled in line with the rest of the toolbar buttons.
- Fixed: Shown checkbox for timescale tiers now works as intended again.
- Fixed: Try to use old names for column loading if loading fails.
- Fixed: Finish-to-Finish relationships would sometimes place an activity start date too early if there was an adjacent non-work day.
- Fixed: Lags are now exported correctly in MS XML exports.
- Fixed: Crash upon attempting to print again following a canceled print or PDF print.
- Fixed: Code or WBS selector during XER import now stays atop progress bar window.
- Fixed: Show Non-Driving Relationship and Show Retained Logic Relationships toggle settings now work in Network Diagram.
- Fixed: Finish Milestones would sometimes get pushed through non-working days to the next working day.
- Fixed: P3/Suretrak schedules that are being imported are temporarily copied to a local folder if they are on a network drive to work around issue with Btrieve.
- Fixed: Lag value calculated by Lag To with StartToFinish and FinishToFinish relationships was off by one.
- Fixed: Very slow scheduling Progress Override mode in schedules with a lot of out of sequence work.
- Fixed: MS Project XML import lag dates were not always correct.
- Fixed: XER import negative legs were off by 1 day.
- Fixed: Durations with fractional hours in XER import would come in as 1 day.
Update: We released 4.5.1 to address some minor issues that were discovered shortly after the release of 4.5.0.