Unifier Essentials 24.4

Initial Budget

Project Fact Sheet Custom Print Template

A new custom print template, Project Fact Sheet, is added to the Initial Budget business process and set as the default print for the BP and BP task notifications. It is intended to provide a more comprehensive summary of project information for users involved in the Initial Budget workflow. The PDF print will include details from the Initial Budget record, Initial Budget line items, project details, incremental and cumulative estimated project cash flow by quarter and by month, Activity Sheet Master Schedule activity start and end dates, and the project Risk register.

Image of page 1 of an initial budget project fact sheet, showing project details, request details, initial budget cost breakdown, and estimated cash flow by quarter.

Image of page 2 of an initial budget project fact sheet, showing estimated cash flow by month, and schedule activity sheet information.

Implementation Note: Automatically included in the Configuration Package; no additional changes required.

Contracts

Contract Management Dashboard

A new Contract Management tab has been added to the organization level Project Summary dashboard. The dashboard contains seven blocks. All blocks feature filtered drilldown to record-level data. The blocks are:

Approved Contract Count by Project
Approved Contract vs Payment Application by Project
Change Order Count by Project
Change Order Amount by Reason
Approved Contracts vs Change Orders by Vendor
Change Orders as Percentage of Contract
Payment Applications Approved by Effective Date (Quarterly)

Image of a pair of historgrams on the Contract Management dashboard of the organization home screen, showing approved contract count by project and approved contract vs payment applications by project.

Image of two pie charts, showing change order count by project an dchange order amount by reason.

Image of two histograms, showing approved contracts vs change orders by vendor and change orders as a percentage of contracts.

Image of a histogram, showing payment applications approved by effective date on a quarterly basis.

Implementation Note: a Unifier administrator will need to activate version 4 of the Project Summary dashboard.

Additional Enhancements - Automatic

Vendor Business Process: Added a validation message for special characters in the Vendor Name field.

Vendor Business Process: Two new User Defined Fields are added here. Added a Dynamic Data Set to control line item User Defined Field behavior and added Detailed Description and User Defined Fields to the Line Item log (and picker when selecting a Spec Section line item).

Initial Budget: Removed auto-population for the short description field in the Initial Budget business process line item form.

Implementation Note: Automatically included in the Configuration Package; no additional changes required.

Additional Enhancements - Manual

Project Template Funding Sheet: Updated properties for new Generic Cost business processes; set assignment rules to "Project Level - Manual (Assign by BP Record Total) for all.

Implementation Note: Oracle Project shell template is updated by the Configuration Package. Update the customer Project template funding sheet properties if using the recently added Generic Cost business processes.

Field Management Dashboard: The Submittals by Status block on the project shell Field Management dashboard is updated to show the record number in the drilldown list view.

Implementation Note: the Oracle Project shell template is updated by the Configuration Package Update the dashboard in your Project template.

Integration

Consistent Behavior when Adding Partner Users

When a partner user is added to a project via user data picker, integrations, or the user interface, behavior will be consistent:

Partner user's company will become a member of the project if it isn't already, and
Partner user will be added to the project with the same status as the source.

Oracle Integration Recipe: Activity Sheet

This enhancement provides the ability to invoke an integration between a Unifier Activity Sheet and Oracle Integration. Additional functions include checking the status of the integration and performing a test execution of the Oracle Integration.

Oracle Integration Recipe: Master Rate Sheet

A Unifier Master Rate Sheet can be integrated with Oracle Integration providing you with a Get Data action to retrieve Roles and Resources data from an external system.

API Support for Snapshots in Summary Curves

Create snapshots at the summary curve level using REST API services, allowing you to automate the steps needed to create snapshots across multiple projects.

XLSX Default for UDR Excel Output

An Excel output for a user-defined report is now provided in .xlsx format, rather than the previous .xls format.

There are no changes to the user interface, and this export format is used for saved results as well as documents published to the Document Manager.

Import / Export

Advance Workflows During Record and Line Item Updates via Excel

Execute workflow actions in simple, line item, and generic cost (line item with CBS code) business processes when updating records and line items via Excel.

New columns titled Workflow Name, Current Step, and Workflow Action are added to the Main Form worksheet. The Workflow Action column displays a dropdown list of available actions.

Image of an Excel worksheet, showing a new column titled Workflow Action and an open drop-down menu of choices for the current record's workflow.

Add / Delete Line Items During Bulk Update

Export data from multiple records (upper forms and line items) into a Microsoft Excel document, make changes to the existing data, and import that document back into Unifier – creating a bulk update of records with line items. This functionality includes the ability to add and remove line items from existing records.

Image of a spreadsheet worksheet, with a new column labeled Action having values such as Update, Delete, and Add – representing actions to be taking on line items in multiple records.

Bulk Update of CBS Codes via Excel

Export and import CBS code picker data in line items and main forms of general cost business processes, enabling the bulk update of CBS codes. Email notification from the business process log shows validation of the update process; the audit log records changes as Bulk Update - > Import Data.

Image of an Excel spreadsheet, showing a column titled CBS Code with a drop-down, allowing for changes to each line item's CBS code.

Image of an audit Log, showing changes that were made via bulk update, including the actions, fields that were changed, old values, and new values.

Documents and Attachments

PDFTron as New Document Viewer

Files of the following types can now be opened with PDFTron: pdf, doc, docx, docm, dot, dotx, dotm, xls, xlsx, xlsm, xlt, xltm, ppt, pptx, pptm, pot, potm, pps, jpg, png, jfif, and tif.

Capabilities include adding notes, highlights, and free text shapes, with font and color options.

Attachments include Date/Time of Upload

A new column titled Upload Date is included in the Attachments tabs of a business process log, a business process upper form, a business process detail form, and a Sheets log. This date only shows the latest revised version of the document.

Cash Flow

Cash Flow Calculations Honor Gap Periods for Activity Schedules

When Activity Sheet is selected as a schedule option in Cash Flow curve properties and distribution is auto, Unifier will provide additional options to honor the gap periods when distributing costs among periods.

Exclude Gap Periods
Honor Working Days

The system will honor the gaps between activities when the Exclude Gap Periods option is selected, and the system will distribute costs based on the working days of activities excluding gap periods when Honor Working Days option is selected.

Image of a cash flow properties setup screen, showing details of the baseline curve, with options to handle periods for cost distributions.

Improved Error Messages in Cash Flow

Error messages in cash flow are revised for greater clarity.

Cost Sheet

Schedule Automatic Cost Sheet Snapshots

Create snapshots based on the schedule selected. The cost sheet snapshot creation schedule can be defined in a Shell Template and pushed to shell instances.

Define a snapshot schedule within the Project Cost Sheet so the snapshots are created automatically based on schedule and can update Prior Forecasts.

Image of a cost sheet, with a drop-down menu showing Snapshots and a sub-menu to Create, Open, or Schedule Snapshots.

Image of snapshot schedule options, showing that automatic monthly snapshots are enabled, with fields for start date, end date, and an optino to update prior forecasts.

Configuration Package

Compare BP Designs

View business process design references within configuration packages and compare those designs in two configurations.

Image of a comparison of two configuration packages, focusing on which business packages are present in one or both packages.

Image of a design comparison from two configuration packages.

Cost Business Processes

Enhanced Currency Picker Functionality

The currency picker in cost-type business processes now has Find on Page functionality. The list of currencies can also be sorted by currency name.

Mobile

Support for Geolocation using Mobile Devices

The coordinates of a mobile device can be used to auto-fill latitude and longitude in business processes through a new checkbox option in the business process configuration.

When enabled in the business process configuration, the mobile app won't display the "Autofill With Current Location" text at record creation. Instead, it will fetch your coordinates and input them automatically into the latitude and longitude fields. Otherwise, you can manually trigger the autofill by tapping on the "Autofill With Current Location" option to populate the latitude and longitude fields instantly.

This enhancement applies to both Android and iOS devices.

Image of a form in the mobile app, with clickable text allowing the user to autofill latitude and longitude based on the current location. Image of the business process configuration general tabs Mobile Application block, with a new option to allow auto filling of the latitude and longitude upon record creation.

Block Selected User from Accessing Unifier Mobile

Block selected users or groups from logging in to Unifier Mobile without affecting their ability to access the desktop version.

Image of a user's General properties tab, with a new checkbox labeled Disable Mobile Access.

Mobile Document Upload

Upload various file types directly from a mobile device to the Document Manager, with these restrictions:

Only 1 file can be uploaded at a time; folders cannot be uploaded
Server-imposed file size restrictions and file extension still apply.
The feature is available only in online mode, and user permissions apply.
Duplicate file names will not be allowed; re-naming may manually or automatically occur during upload.

This enhancement applies to both Android and iOS devices.

Image of an iOS device screen, showing the button to upload a document and the selector of four sources gallery, camera, files app, or voice notes.

Image of an iOS device screen, showing file upload options, including file name, document title, revision number, issue date, and a checkbox for automatically revising the filename if there is an existing fi

Shell Properties

Setting Audit Log Permissions in Shell Properties

An administrator may remove the option to view the Audit Log if a user is viewing Shell Details as a View Form.

Tasks

Task Reassignment in Workflow Progress

The Workflow Progress log now indicates whether a task was reassigned using a status indicator labeled Assignee Reassignments?

Image of a workflow progress log with a new label showing that the record has been reassigned at some time.

Document Manager

Auto-Generate Document Manager Formulas and Sequence Values

You can now automatically generate formulas and sequence values in the Document Manager

After importing the Document Structure and Properties, or
After publishing a document from a business process.

Database

Partitioning of Business Process Tables

When the number of rows in a business process table exceeds 500,000, a new log is provided – based on permissions – allowing you to create or edit partitions of that table to improve query performance.

An administrator enables partitioning for specific groups in the Access Control log; a user with appropriate permissions can create and edit table partitions.

Image of the Access Control log with a new Table Partitions node in the Data Structure Setup highlighted. Additional windows show how the company administrators group can be granted permission to partition t

Image of the new Partitions screen, showing five tables, the number of rows in each table, the partition status, and the number of partitions.

User Interface

Visual Indicators while Saving Permissions Changes

When setting permissions in some Unifier objects, the Save button will be enabled only after a change has been made on the screen.

Clicking the Save button will cause a spinning wheel to display and the Save button to be disabled until the saving of permissions is complete.

This change affects permissions in these areas:

Non-workflow business processes
Planning items and the Planning sheet
Worksheets
Single-record business processes, and the Commitment Funding sheet

Behavior Change

Behavior Change in Picker Evaluation through Rest API

If the value of a picker is not sent in an input request or if a null value for picker is sent in an input request then system will ignore picker data and will not auto populate values based on the picker data element.

Removals and Deprecations

All SOAP services are deprecated as of 23.10. (This was reflected in the Integration Guide but not highlighted in the What's New at the time.)

Bug Fixes

For a list of bug fixes made in Primavera Unifier in 2024, see My Oracle Support (2996896.1)

Last Published Monday, December 23, 2024