EPM2010!! – Check this out

Wow! the key note was exciting. The product has moved on from strength to strength over the past few versions. And, this new version is AWESOME!

Reference: Project Server 2010 and Project Professional 2010

Here are some of the key features;

1. Demand Management (‘Pipeline and Project Initiation’ as we call it back in UK)
   • Unity of Project Server & Portfolio Server.
   • Top Down Portfolio management and Bottom Up
   • Total work management: SharePoint list/activities, Project Pro, Proposals or incidents.

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   • Flexible project capture and initiation.
   • Powerful portfolio section analytics
2. Project Workgroup Collaboration and Reporting
   • Improved reporting via Excel Services
   • Publish Project schedule directly from Project Professional to WSS site and collaborate with Team Members on Task status. Ideal workgroup collaboration solution with or without Project Server.
3. User configurable Workflows to manage your project lifecycle
   • Enhanced governance through workflow
4. Enhanced Timesheet and Task Statusing (Tied mode included!!)
5. On-line web based project editing/scheduling! How cool is that!
   • Create and manage projects using PWA i.e. without Project Pro
   • Edit even projects created from Project Pro

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   • Assign multiple resources to tasks
   • create simple task/milestone dependencies
   • Multi-level undo on web edits
6. Easier deployment and rollout of client apps.
   • No more ActiveX controls.
   • Backward compatibility. Use Project Pro 2007 with EPM2010!!
   • 32 and 64bit client applications available.
   • Exchange server integration; enabling outlook web access task updates incl via Mobile devices
7. Improved usability of client applications.
   • Ribboned toolbars
   • User Interface (UI) similar to other Office 2007 apps (Excel, Word etc)
   • Grouping of macros
   • Improved copy and paste from Excel! setup your work structure in Excel and simple copy and paste in to Project 2010…and Voila! it retains the hierarchy.
   • Simplified administration; unity of Project Server and Portfolio Server
8. Delegation
   • Delegate your project(s)/responsibilities to another user say when you are on leave.
9. Departmentalisation
   • Manage your business projects, resources and reporting by department/division/unit!
10. Better planning capability in project professional
    • Use Manual/Automatic scheduling of Task. Be in control of how your tasks are scheduled. Setup tasks as manual scheduling to prevent them from being affected by drivers.
    • Task Inspector. 
    • Team planner! Easily resolve resource over allocation allocation on single of multiple projects. 

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    • Timeline view. Easily view high level timeline, with user selected tasks and milestone

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There are many other features and improvements.  Stay tuned for further updates.