March 2021 Product Updates | ClearPoint Strategy

March 2021 Product Updates

The ClearPoint development team is on a roll, and we have even more new features and other product updates to share with you! Check out the notes below for all the details, and catch the live Project Dependencies Webinar at 11am ET on Thursday, April 1st.

Project Dependencies  – Available for Enterprise Plans Only

Are you managing strategic initiatives that include multiple smaller projects like milestones and sub-milestones? Does it take you forever to adjust start and end dates to make sure everything remains in order when one aspect of the project changes? Project Dependencies make it easy to align all project start and end dates in logical and easy-to-manage ways! Check out our two new dependency options below.

Automatically calculate Initiative dates based on Milestone start and end dates

  • Extend milestone dates outside of the initiative timeline and the overall initiative dates will automatically extend to match.
  • Leverage this option when your milestones are running behind and the whole project timeline needs to be extended as a result!
  • Set up notifications for members of the project team when end dates are changed that impact the overall initiative.
  • Note that initiative start and end date menus will be disabled and completely dependent on the earliest and latest milestone dates.

Automatically calculate Milestone dates based on Initiative start dates

  • Adjust the initiative start date by a certain duration of time and the milestones and sub-milestones will follow suit.
  • Create project templates that can be duplicated and initiative dates change to match the new initiative’s timeline – all milestones and sub-milestones will automatically adjust with it!
  • Note that milestones can still move independently of the initiative and the milestone dates can extend beyond the initiative timeline.

Data Loader Improvements

  • The Data Loader is now available for Basic, Professional, and Enterprise-level plans!
    • Basic Plan: Allows for creation of new elements and scorecards.
    • Professional Plan: Allows for the above, as well as updating measure series data, and running on a schedule.
    • Enterprise Plan: Allows for all the above, as well as qualitative field updates, and watches your files for new changes.

  • Email Notifications – You will now receive an email letting you know if your Data Loader upload was successful or failed for any reason.
  • Command Line Interface (CLI) – The Data Loader 2.0 now includes a Command Line Interface (CLI), a powerful tool that allows you to run the imports to ClearPoint without needing to interact with the Data Loader graphical user interface (GUI). This allows it to be simply controlled by Windows Task Scheduler or other scheduling and automation tools.
  • Data Loader API Keys – Remember to enable the API Keys located in the Data Loader tile in Admin Options to login to the Data Loader.

Bug Fixes & System Improvements

  • Aggregate Series Calculation – Selecting to aggregate the child initiative(s) of an initiative now works as expected and sums the values of the children’s matching series values.
  • Adding Fiscal Years – A performance issue was causing newly created fiscal years to take up to 15 minutes to appear. This has been optimized to now appear immediately.
  • Chart Periods – A bug involving the chart periods setting was causing some charts to revert to the default settings. This is resolved.
  • Status Indicators in Excel Exports – Custom status indicators were appearing much larger than the default status icons in Excel exports, but now all statuses are set to the same size.
  • Generating Large Briefing Books – We now have an established limit of 500 pages for briefing books. If it is larger than that, we will email you and recommend breaking it down into separate templates.
  • Scheduling with ‘SSO required’ Enabled— Users that are required to login via Single Sign On (SSO) were previously not able to run schedules, but now they can!
  • Password Character Limit – Users with passwords longer than 30 characters were unable to run schedules. Users are now warned when exceeding 30 characters in their passwords length.
  • Summary Report Improvements – We optimized performance around summary reports, including elements from multiple scorecards and applying filters.
  • User Access Report – User access reports in large accounts are now broken into multiple files to speed up the time to generate.
  • Collaborators on Initiatives – A bug preventing users from adding collaborators to initiatives has been resolved.
  • Data Loader API Keys – Some users were previously unable to add API Keys due to the length of their name.  This issue was resolved.
  • Data Loader Legacy Format – If you are transitioning from Data Loader 1.0 to 2.0 using the JSON files from ClearPoint, the Data Loader 2.0 now recognizes that you are using the legacy format automatically.