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Phoenix Project Manager Changelog

What's new in Phoenix Project Manager 4.8.10.0

Jul 2, 2019
  • Features:
  • The scheduler has been recreated from the ground up to be significantly faster and more correct in unusual situations
  • Support for selecting which calendar to use for lag calculations
  • The Timescaled Graph Builder now supports displaying maximums for resource graphs
  • Several improvements to MPX and Microsoft Project XML importing
  • You can now configure whether or not to show sightlines and non-working days in the timescaled graph region
  • Significant speed ups while saving and loading projects
  • Added Resources column with Fill Cell and sorting support
  • Added Clear Cells to the right click menu for columns where it would make sense
  • Activity Codes can now be moved up and down in the Code Library
  • Fixes:
  • Toggling visibility of an Activity Code when only one was displayed wouldn’t take effect
  • Use comparison match setting (Id or UUID) for variance columns
  • Fixed loading of Microsoft Project XML files with non-number WBSLevel
  • Fixed issue with Start to Start scheduling across differing calendars
  • Fixed an issue with the scheduling of Interruptible activities
  • Fixed problem with the rendering of Finish to Finish relationships on zero duration activities
  • Fixed jump to start of schedule when using On Schedule
  • Prevent users from typing in very big, obviously wrong durations which would cause dates outside the supported date range (1400 AD to 9999 AD)
  • Correct column sizing in predecessor/successor window on high DPI displays
  • Delete left over lock files on crash (MacOS only issue)
  • Hours Per Day text box wasn’t disabled when editing a non-hourly resource
  • Better handling of Code Values with duplicate descriptions when importing and merging a multi-project XER file
  • Fixed crash when importing Microsoft Project XML with empty outline name
  • Fixed a clearing Fill Cell command for Constraint Type
  • Truncate a few XER fields that don’t support unlimited length while exporting
  • Fixed crash when pressing Move Up/Down in Format Columns if no column item was selected
  • Tweaks and improvements:
  • Predecessor and successor windows now remember columns sizes
  • Improved lump sum resource generation/importing
  • New progress dialog created to avoid issues with windows popping up behind other windows and other issues.
  • Much faster updating of Activity Editor (improves overall workflow).
  • Allow users with Btrieve to use conversion server and make use of conversion server on by default (avoids crash in Btrieve database some users would experience trying to do a local conversion)
  • Broke up Timescaled Graph creator dialog so that it fits on smaller displays.
  • Hammocks are now updated more completing during scheduling (actuals and remaining duration are set automatically now)
  • Made Renumber dialog preview significantly faster
  • Endpoints now use completed bar color when endpoint is actual
  • Outline of non-working days are darker by default for new projects to improve visibility
  • Added Open Anyway option to the File Locked dialog box
  • Significantly reduced the memory usage while saving a project
  • Handle for stretching columns is now easier to grab

New in Phoenix Project Manager 4.8.5.3 (Apr 13, 2017)

  • Phoenix 4.8.5.3 is a hotfix that addresses an issue with some users seeing a “Missing Product Key” dialog box. Only users experiencing this issue need to update from 4.8.5.1. There are no other changes from 4.8.5.1.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 4.8.3.0 (Jul 14, 2016)

  • Better support for super high resolution displays.
  • Remaining Duration and Original Duration linking behavior for unstarted activities is now configurable in the Calculations dialog.
  • You can now configure whether or not some footer information is shown in printouts
  • Other miscellaneous bug fixes and performance enhancements.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 4.5.8.3 (Jul 22, 2015)

  • Features:
  • An As Late As Possible constraint type has been added. As Late As Possible constraints will push any activity out as far as it can go without affecting its successors.
  • Cost To Complete column has been added.
  • Send Feedback has been added to the Help menu to make it easy to send your questions, ideas, or issues about Phoenix. You can send application logs and schedules along with your message.
  • Detailed List:
  • Enhancement: Both Activity Codes and WBS are imported from XER files instead of just one or the other.
  • Enhancement: Opening a project is now faster and uses less memory.
  • Fixed: Sporadic crash when changing Page Layout or Page Setup from within the Print Preview screen.
  • Fixed: Properly draw timescale on multipage width printouts.
  • Fixed: A problem that prevented Phoenix from staying activated in some rare situations.
  • Fixed: Ignore empty Activity Code values.
  • Fixed: Percents in User Defined Fields were displayed as 100 times larger than they should be in the columns.
  • Fixed: Rare crashes that could occur with schedules imported from XER files.
  • Fixed: WBS assignments from P3/Suretrak imports now use the full WBS chain rather than just the final WBS node.
  • Fixed: Internet Activations can still occur even if an ISP has amended the HTTP response from the Activation Server in-flight (very rare).
  • Fixed: Application logs now always use the process name in the filename.
  • Fixed: Better logging of project save failures.
  • Fixed: Better logging of activation failures.
  • Fixed: Recreate activation data if a problem is detected.
  • Fixed: Better handle calendars with no name or duplicate names during P3/Suretrak import.
  • Fixed: Ignore relationships to non-existent activities in MPX and MSXML imports.
  • Fixed (Mac OS X only): Page Setup and Page Layout now work as expected from the Print Preview.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 4.5.7.0 (Apr 7, 2015)

  • Features:
  • Renumber is now much more powerful. Choose to either renumber all activities or just the selected activities. Enter a template id to base the renumbering upon allowing you to quickly add or change prefixes and suffixes to your ids.
  • Activity Code XER Import/Export is now fully implemented.
  • Detailed List:
  • Enhancement: Reorganized Format Columns to better fit low resolution displays.
  • Enhancement: Group By Activity Codes auto-layout for Network Diagram now generates more compact, useful layouts.
  • Enhancement: Import/Export Physical Percent Complete in XER files.
  • Enhancement: Added a tip to Code Library to explain where you can reorder the code display order.
  • Enhancement: Added example Lookahead filter to the default filters added to new schedules.
  • Enhancement: Don’t mark Hammocks as critical.
  • Fixed: Showing hundreds of years on the timescale could cause Phoenix to shut down.
  • Fixed: Update checks were not functioning properly in 4.5.6.
  • Fixed: Don’t set hammock actual dates automatically when remaining duration is zero.
  • Fixed: Network line labels were sometimes not properly aligned.
  • Fixed: Resource allocations would sometimes be made smaller during a save/open cycle.
  • Fixed: Show error message when XER file cannot be written to.
  • Fixed: Ensure activity is visible when selecting next activity.
  • Fixed: Strip hours from imported data dates.
  • Fixed: Use empty fields for XER export when late dates haven’t been calculated.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 4.5.6.0 (Feb 20, 2015)

  • Enhancement: Better tolerance of bad activity code numbers from P3/Suretrak imports.
  • Enhancement: Increased drawing speed for columns and activity diagram.
  • Enhancement: Better color select button (Mac OS X only).
  • Enhancement: Faster logging.
  • Enhancement: Various stability improvements.
  • Enhancement: More accurate rendering at the pixel level.
  • Enhancement: Improved rendering of right-aligned column text.
  • Enhancement: Toggle buttons look nicer (OS X only).
  • Fixed: Sort Dialog was not showing current sort.
  • Fixed: Update URL is now properly formatted (Mac OS X only).
  • Fixed: /PRODUCTID= installation option now works on systems that have never had Phoenix installed before (Windows only).
  • Fixed: Improved stability of User Defined Fields editor.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 4.5.0.0 (Aug 9, 2014)

  • 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.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 4.2.0.0 (Oct 21, 2013)

  • Features:
  • You 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.
  • Buttons for Schedule Now and Filters have been added to the toolbar for easier access.
  • Changes:
  • Phoenix will now try to automatically restart the third-party Btrieve engine used by SureTrak and P3 when it occasionally freezes up while importing a schedule into Phoenix. Prior to this users had to restart it themselves.
  • The backward scheduling pass (float calculations) has been optimized and now runs more quickly.
  • Non-driving Retained Logic relationships are no longer drawn.
  • Fixes:
  • Status-on-Master no longer uses retained logic relationships.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 4.0.1.2 (Apr 16, 2013)

  • Features:
  • You can now quickly filter the schedule to only show Critical (by Total Float or Longest Path) activities from the View menu.
  • You can also hide completed activities from the View menu (this replaces the Work Remaining Mode option found in Schedule Options).
  • Changes:
  • Phoenix now installs for all users on Windows. When using the silent installer command line option (/S) Phoenix 3 is left installed.
  • For users who wish to remove Phoenix 3 when upgrading, a new installer command line option was added (/UNINSTALL3) which will automatically uninstall Phoenix 3 when you install Phoenix 4 in silent mode.
  • Fixes:
  • A problem with the behavior of progress override and retained logic has been corrected.
  • CSV exports would sometimes use odd characters for activity IDs.
  • Phoenix would shut down unexpectedly if Renumber Activities was run while in Work Remaining Mode.
  • Only the first column of a column type could have its display name and size changed.
  • The user manual and license text was not being located for users that had upgraded from Phoenix 3.
  • Footer logos were not saved with the schedule after reopening a schedule.
  • Miscellaneous changes to printer handling to address program instability while printing or print previewing.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 3.6.0.3 (Oct 30, 2012)

  • Prior to this version an activity’s Actual Duration reflected the number of working days between an activity’s start and finish. For unstarted activities the name Actual Duration can be confusing. To resolve this we’ve added a new column: Duration At Completion. This column has the same meaning that Actual Duration previously had. Actual Duration has been redefined to mean Duration At Completion minus Remaining Duration which reflects how much work has actually been performed on an activity.
  • For Phoenix 3.6 we’ve changed Percent Complete to base its calculation off of Duration At Completion. Many schedulers still prefer calculating Percent Complete using Original Duration so we’ve added a new column, Original Percent Complete, which does just that. You can use these to quickly see the progress against both the original plan and the current estimate.
  • You can now display Today and Project Finish sightlines on your schedule and we’ve added more formatting options for all sightlines. You configure them in the Sightlines dialog found the Format menu.
  • We’ve been busy making Phoenix faster than ever. Scheduling is faster (particularly with schedules which have calendars that make heavy use of holidays), importing XER files is nearly twice as fast, and both Gantt and Network Diagram views draw your schedule many times more quickly. This means the user interface is more responsive and updates with changes faster than ever.
  • Changes:
  • Because not many people used the feature, we’ve removed the option to flag an activity’s start or finish as Estimated. This allowed us to simplify the interface for setting dates as Actual.
  • Fixes:
  • Importing schedules from SureTrak is now tolerant of invalid relationships (no predecessor or successor specified) that SureTrak schedules sometimes have).
  • Fields taking up multiple lines in MPX files are now imported.
  • Project Start and Data Date from a P3 import is now correct.
  • SDEF export more aggressively includes non-working calendar days for the schedule time frame.
  • The float of Finish constrained Finish Milestones has been fixed (it was off by one day).
  • Changing the ID of an activity which has been assigned to Activity Codes no longer causes the program to sometimes prematurely shut down.

New in Phoenix Project Manager 2.0.0.4 (Mar 17, 2010)

  • Addition of Resources
  • P6 XER Import/Export
  • Template-Based Report System
  • Improved Graphics Rendering