Chris Vandersluis, the president of HMS Software will be speaking about Microsoft Project Server Timesheet options at the Microsoft Project Users Group in Toronto scheduled to coincide with the end of ProjectWorld Toronto on May 15th at 6:00pm at the Toronto Convention Center. For more information, go to www.mpug.org.
All posts by chris.vandersluis
Our president is speaking at ProjectWorld Toronto on Monday
Chris Vandersluis, the president of HMS will be speaking at ProjectWorld Toronto on Monday, May 14th. The subject is “getting more resource capacity without spending more money” and focuses on how timesheet practices can help find resource capacity you didn’t even know you had. ProjectWorld runs on May 14th and 15th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (South Building) and Mr. Vandersluis’s talk will be at 3:45 on May 14th.
For more information, visit ProjectWorld’s website at www.projectworldcanada.com.
HMS is going to London… Ontario that is
Are you going to the PMI Southwest Ontario Symposium? Us too! HMS will be exhibiting at the SWOC PMI Chapter’s Symposium event on April 27th. The event is being held at the
Lamplighter Inn & Conference Centre at: 591 Wellington Road, London, Ontario.
If you are interested in meeting HMS staff in person or talking to us about TimeControl or other HMS Services and are in the area, then please let us know. If you are attending the symposium and would like to make sure we organize an appointment with you, please email info@hmssoftware.ca or give us a call at 514-695-8122.
For more information on the symposium, go to: www.pmiswoc.org
Our president is in Vegas speaking at Collaborate12
Chris Vandersluis, the president of HMS Software is in Las Vegas next week to speak at the Oracle Application Users Group meeting; Collaborate12. The topic of his talk is “Using Best Timesheet Practices to increase your Resource Capacity”. The talk is scheduled on April 24th at 10:45am to 11:45am in Conference Room: “Breakers J”
If you are attending Collaborate 12 and wish to meet Mr. Vandersluis, please let us know at info@hmssoftware.ca. For more information on the conference, go to collaborate.oaug.org.
Our president is speaking in Ann Arbor on Monday
Chris Vandersluis, the president of HMS will be speaking at the PMI Huron Valley Chapter in Ann Arbor, Michigan on Monday, April 16th. The subject is: “Increasing your project resource capacity without increasing your project resource costs” and focuses on how timesheet practices can help find resource capacity you didn’t even know you had. The event starts at 5:30 and is located at the Holiday Inn Ann Arbor located at: 3600 Plymouth Rd, Ann Arbor, MI 48105.
For more information, visit the Huron Valley PMI chapter site at: www.pmi-hvc.org.
New white paper: The Timesheet Approvals Challenge
We’ve done a rewrite of our core white paper; the document that describes how TimeControl became one of the world’s most popular timesheet systems. “The Timesheet Approvals Challenge” shows why so many organizations end up implementing more than one timesheet system.
We know that no one wakes up one day and says “I’ve got a great idea. Let’s deploy as many timesheet systems as we can find,”
The problem is that different aspects of the organization are trying to solve different problems and even if they find a powerful timesheet, where it breaks down is in the concept of approvals and that is most challenging in a matrix organization.
When an organization needs a timesheet for only time and attendance, timesheet approvals are fairly straightforward. We have the supervisor approve the timesheet in its entirety along with any time off that was recorded. There are timesheets that cater to this need.
When it needs a timesheet for only project tracking, again timesheet approvals are fairly simple. We have project managers approve the time allocated to each task. There are timesheets that cater to this need.
When the organization needs a timesheet for only HR Tracking, timesheet approvals are again quite basic. HR supervisors will ensure that the timesheet does not exceed entitlements for vacation, sick leave or personal time off. There are timesheets that cater to this need.
When a timesheet is implemented for billing, it is the account manager and the billing clerk who will review the time and ensure it meets the billable criteria and has the appropriate rate.
But, what do you do when you have more than one of these requirements? It is to this environment that “The Timesheet Approvals Challenge” white paper was created. The paper outlines the timesheet selection and implementation difficulties that are most prevalent in industry and outlines how organizations try to overcome them.
The paper lays out key criteria for deploying a multi-purpose timesheet with the approvals functionality required to allow a single timesheet interface to collect and approve the timesheets for multiple requirements.
Access to the white paper is free and can be found on the Matrix Approvals Solution portal of HMS Software’s TimeControl website at timecontrol.com/solutions/matrixapprovals.
An all new and improved Primavera Solution Portal
We have many clients who use TimeControl with their Oracle-Primavera system. Perhaps it’s no surprise. TimeControl has integrated with Primavera since 1997 with P3 and we’ve maintained that link all the way up to the most recent P6r8 release even once Primavera was purchased by Oracle. Primavera clients who need a single timesheet to update not only the task progress in Primavera but also Payroll, Billing, Finance, Job Costing or HR have looked to TimeControl to provide multi-purpose timesheet functionality that will allow a single point of timesheet entry and multiple back-end uses.
Our relationship with Primavera goes back to 1997 and our relationship with Oracle separately 
also goes back to 1997 when TimeControl was first able to store its data in either SQL Server or Oracle (We now also support MySQL which is coincidentally also owned by Oracle). So the relationship has many facets and runs deep.
We’ve done a little work to remake our TimeControl and Primavera Solution Portal with a range of new materials that we hope you’ll find useful. Aside from a remake of the portal itself, we’ve got new factsheets, slide presentations, white papers and an all-new on-demand webcast that shoes TimeControl 6 and Primavera’s P6 interacting back and forth.
The integration options between TimeControl and Primavera are extensive. Not only can you bring into TimeControl Primavera tasks, resources, steps and assignments, you also have abilities on how to match employees to generic skills and Primavera codes to TimeControl user defined fields. Updating your Primavera project data with TimeControl timesheets is incredibly flexible. You can update hours and costs, Primavera Step progress, ETC, Financial periods and more.
The new and improved TimeControl / Primavera Solution Portal covers some of the benefits of integrating these two world-class tools including:
- Automated Business Validation Rules
- Extensive Rate Management
- Management of Vacation, Sick Leave, Personal time banks
- Management of Banked Overtime
- Included integration with P6 and other project systems
- TimeControl Mobile interface for tablets and smartphones
- Missing timesheet management
- The Matrix Approval Process for Labor Actuals™
Access to the portal and its resources is free. Find out more at www.timecontrol.com/solutions/primavera.
Exporting / Printing long notes
If you have timesheet notes that are longer than 255 characters, you may have found it difficult to print those notes in a regular TimeControl report. This is thanks to the Formula1 module that has been used in TimeControl for a very long time to product and view reports. In an upcoming version of TimeControl we’ll have some additional reporting functionality but for the moment, there is another easy way to get a report that includes notes up to 4,000 characters.
Just export them to Excel. Here are the basic steps
1. Make a new Table Export based on PSDetails 
2. Select fields that may interest you such as Charge Codes and Descriptions from the Posted Charge Revision table and Hours and Date work performed from the PS Detail table 
3. Now select the Posted Detail/Line table and select Posted Notes. These are the notes that are attached to each line in the timesheet. (For the notes that are attached to the entire timesheet header, select the Posted Line Header table and select Posted Header Note) 
The resulting CSV file will export the notes which should be readable into Excel.
TimeControl 5 Supports 64bit installations
There are a number of clients who have happy TimeControl 5.x installations and for one reason or another aren’t ready to move up to the TimeControl 6 family. While there are numerous great reasons to go to TimeControl 6, we understand that upgrading right away isn’t for everyone.
We’re happy to report that while we are not putting new functionality into TimeControl 5, improvements in its infrastructure continue. We’ve found with the help of a couple of clients who were determined not to say no, how TimeControl 5 can be successfully installed into Windows 2008 R2 (yes, R2, the 64bit version!)
We’ll make sure we include these steps in future TimeControl 5 Installation documentation but for those who want to try this sooner, here are the steps required. First, do your installation as normal in your Windows 2008R2 64bit server environment. We have only tested this 64bit installation technique on that version of Windows Server using IIS7. Next:
1. Create an application pool and in *Basic Settings* make sure you set the *Managed Pipeline* to *Classic* (Click on the image at right to see the full-sized screen)
2. The under *Advanced Settings* set the *Enable 32-Bit Applications* setting to *True*
3. Then set the web site to this application pool by going into the *Basic Settings* and select the *Application Pool* to the new application pool that was just created. 
4. Now restart the Application Pool and the Web Site to make sure the new settings are accepted and voila, you should be good to go.
TimeControl 6.4.1 delivers native IE9 support
When IE9 was first launched, we were certain we’d have no native support problems for it at all with TimeControl 6 After all, TimeControl now supports numerous browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari (yes, even on your Mac and iPad) so we were sure that IE9 support would be pretty much automatic.
Sadly that wasn’t the case and, while TimeControl 6 has worked just fine in IE9 compatibility mode, we have been working on completing our work with IE9 native (non-compatibility-mode) support. We’re delighted to say that we’ve completed that work. It wasn’t quite ready in time for the recent TimeControl 6.4 launch so it has been put into TimeControl 6.4.1 which has just been released. If you’ve already configured all the PCs in your organization to use TimeControl 6 in compatibility mode, then don’t worry. TimeControl 6.4.1 will recognize both IE9 in native and compatibility modes.
While we were at it, we added functionality to the new Project Manager Validation view to allow it to show all timesheet lines even if they’re not linked to a project management system or even to a resource and did some small fixes to other features.
The new version is available to all TimeControl clients with current support agreements at timecontrol.com/support/updates.