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Greetings!
Welcome to the May 2004 edition of AMS News -
keeping you informed regarding the latest
news and developments at AMS, with the AMS
REALTIME product range and associated services.
Our thanks go to all clients who have provided
feedback regarding previous Newsletters. Please keep
it coming in the new year. If you would like to express
any views or opinions regarding AMS News, or would
like to contribute to editorials in future editions, we
would be delighted to hear from you.
| Database enhancements in 6.0 RTRE/RTR |
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The database area has been greatly enhanced in 6.0
with the inclusion of key features such as; Autofilter,
Multi-table access, Parent/Child table access,
Collapse/Expand views and Reporting. These features
are described below...
Autofiltering - In any AMS REALTIME table, you can
switch on Autofiltering and you will then be able to
select filtering criteria on any column or columns on
that table and see the effect of the filter in real-time.
Once a particular set of filters on columns have been
selected, it is also possible to save this filter-set and
give it a name, allowing you to reuse the filter-set later.
Multi-table access and Parent/Child table navigation -
In 6.0, the user can tile a maximum of 4 tables
(vertically or horizontally) and view the tables with the
related records being filtered/highlighted. This is a
powerful feature, and will allow, for example, a user to
select a project, its activities, and the associated
workplan records and actuals. The feature is made
possible by the reference fields defined in the different
tables.
In the Database tab, with the appropriate buttons
toggled, when a record is selected, say in the project
table, the activities of that project, the work
assignments on the project activities and the actuals
reported against those work plans are filtered and
shown in the activity, workplan and actuals tables
respectively. It is also possible to select an activity and
the project that it belongs will be automatically
highlighted in the project table. Users, who have to
review data in tables, will find this a pretty impressive,
productivity enhancing, feature.
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| Multi-platform - Linux and MAC |
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Due to the increase in Linux trial downloads and
interest shown in our product on various Linux
distributions, AMS have increased the amount of time
spent testing our products on the different
distributions, and we are very happy with the way the
products are performing.
We now support seven different distributions (eleven
versions among them, not to mention the variants on
each version), probably the only Enterprise class
software to do so. These are RedHat (7.2, 7.3, AS 2.2,
8.0, 9.0), Mandrake (8.0, 9.0, 9.1), Suse (8.0, 9.0),
Debian (3.0), Conectiva (9.0), Kurumin (2.20) and
Lindows (4.0).
On the MAC front, we have good news. We now
support MAC OS 8.x, 9.x and 10.x (Classic mode), we
will soon also support OSX (10.x) native mode. Again,
we are the only enterprise class software to run on all
these platforms.
The AMS REALTIME products supported on all these
platforms are; AMS REALTIME Projects, Enterprise
Server, Resources Client, Solo and Websolo. Of
particular interest to potential customers is the cost
and resource management capabilities of our products.
On the platforms above there is nothing that can match
the capability of AMS REALTIME.
to read more about platform support and to download a free Linux trial of AMS REALTIME Projects »
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| I didn't know you could do that! |
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AMS REALTIME Project - Continuous Levelling. The
resource levelling features in AMS REALTIME Projects
are very powerful indeed. One little known feature is
the ability to set the system to continuously level your
resources. This means that as you move bars and
introduce resource conflict, as you let go of the bar
with the mouse, RTP will automatically try to resolve
any resource conflicts! In doing this it could move any
bar on the screen.
AMS REALTIME Projects - Restricting levelling. You can
also restrict the automatic levelling to auto-profile
tasks only by selecting Autoprofile only after clicking on
the appropriate button or menu option. An auto-
profiled task is defined by a) assigning a resource using
the Effort-Driven method, and b) in the resultant
dialogue selecting Autoprofile in the Spread column.
AMS REALTIME Projects - Auto-profiled resource
assignments. An Auto-profiled assignment is set up
as described above, but you can also define the
minimum and maximum level-of effort a resource can be
autoprofiled between. So for example, you may only
allow autoprofiling to a minimum of 25% (.25) of a
person-day. Auto-profiling will attempt to use up all
the part day availability for resources by splitting up
and reducing the amount of work being carried out in a
day, but only to the minimum you specify. If there
was .3 of a day available, it would use it, but if there is
only .2 of a day available, it won't.
for help on how to use AMS REALTIME products... »
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| Access Rights in 6.0 RTRE/RTR |
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The access control model has been enriched in the
forthcoming 6.0 release. The functional capabilities of
the AMS REALTIME Enterprise Client and other
applications that access the AMS REALTIME Enterprise
Server have been enhanced, a number of new standard
tables have been added, and the number of potential
user-defined tables has been increased to 64. The
functional capabilities of the system are better
controlled by means of role-based security, addressing
various transactions/features in each function. To
support this, the simple Filter/Update/Define model
dealing with access rights in the current version has
been changed and improved.
Tables (standard and user-defined) follow the same
model as before with Read/Write/Full access to each of
the table areas, viz., the filters, data entry and the
define modes. Access filters and views provide the
restriction of data to users as in earlier releases. Given
the number of tables in the system now, they have
been split into two groups each with its own tab -
standard tables and user-defined tables. The
access definition mechanism for transactions/features
(Project Tab, Portfolio, Resource Manager, Tasklist,
Database Tab, Access Tab, Reports, Calendars,
Librarian, etc.) is completely new. For example, for the
project tab, the permissions range from a simple view
only of the project to complete access to create and
delete activities, links, to manage sub-projects and to
save untitled. Filters and views can still be imposed on
some of the functions to define the data restriction for
the user in the particular function. Other applications,
such as RTRX (the interface from RTP), MSP Enterprise
Link, Python applications, ODBC, etc., can all be
controlled by means of the new access control
mechanism.
Unlike earlier versions, where the access bits, say FFF,
needed to be interpreted or the manual referred to, the
6.0 release provides a simple access dialog popup on
click to show the user exactly what those bits mean.
In short, the access mechanisms in 6.0 are aimed at
increasing flexibility and ease-of-use, and should be a
welcome improvement.
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