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UNICOM®
Systems, Inc. has announced the release of Focal
Point version 7.5.3. Focal Point is a comprehensive
portfolio planning solution that
market-driven teams can use to make
collaborative, objective decisions to deliver
products, projects and services, offering the
highest customer and business value. Focal Point
reduces the complexity of managing information
from various sources such as emails, documents
and spreadsheets and provides a collaborative
centralized environment for requirements,
products and project data.
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Focal Point 7.5.3 - What's new in
this release? |
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Focal Point version 7.5.3 introduces a customizable lean portfolio management template along with other key functionality and usability improvements for visualizing and analyzing information.
Take a look at some of the major enhancements in
this release.
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Lean Portfolio Management Template |
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Lean portfolio management is a process where agile and lean principles are applied to align business execution with portfolio strategy with a focus on maximizing customer value. Focal Point version 7.5.3 introduces a new template for Lean Portfolio Management.
This template is provided in addition to the four existing standard templates used for Product Management, Product Portfolio Management, Application Portfolio Management, and IT Portfolio Management. While setting up a workspace, customers have an option to use any of these templates and customize the workspace according to their requirements.
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Filter Groups |
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Usability and speed is key to effective filtering when users drill down for specific information. Focal Point version 7.5.3 enhances the usability of filters by introducing Filter Groups. This feature allows a user to organize filters in a nested hierarchy of Filter Groups. Each group can contain multiple filters related to that Group. |
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Enhanced LDAP Integration
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Focal Point version 7.5.3 improves the automatic access management capability in Focal Point; thus, reducing administration efforts and security risks. Following are the key improvements: |
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LDAP integration automatically creates users in the Focal Point database, if the users are already present in the LDAP directory with specific LDAP groups. These specific LDAP groups can be identified through a pattern specified in the Focal Point setting. |
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Newly created users will be automatically provided access to the set of workspaces identified through a new Focal Point setting. This Focal Point setting will control which workspaces allow newly automatic access to newly created users.
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LDAP integration can also bring the LDAP group information into Focal Point by specifying the proper attribute mapping. LDAP group information of a user can be used to automatically manage the roles and permission of the user through custom business rules.
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Login permission of a Focal Point user can be revoked by replicating the disabled user status in LDAP to the corresponding Focal Point user.
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Criteria Visualization as a Dashboard Widget |
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Criteria based visualization charts help users make value-based decisions. Focal Point version 7.5.3 introduces the ability to display these charts in a management dashboard. This provides executive management more visibility into the value based multiple criteria decision-making process used for ranking products, projects and features.
To support business process workflow, these charts can also be exported into JSON format using the dashboard API and can be used for downstream processing.
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Sort/Filter Link Table |
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A link table provides a multi-module display of information. They are set up on a link/linklist attribute using a view that defines the attributes to be displayed in a matrix format. Focal Point version 7.5.3 enhances the usability of this feature by providing the ability to sort and filter the table based on the attribute values.
This capability enhances the link table to serve as a single place to visualize and edit information coming from multiple modules with fewer mouse clicks.
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New Standard Business Rules |
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Focal Point version 7.5.3 improves customization possibilities by including two new standard business rules. These business rules address the following use cases. |
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SourceAttributeCopy business rule: This business rule promotes copying information from the source element to target element through a linked relationship and keeps the attributes synchronized. |
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SetStateChangedDate business rule: This business rule sets the date based on the change in state of an element. As an example, set the release date to the current date whenever the state of the project is changed to "Released". |
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Miscellaneous Enhancements |
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Focal Point version 7.5.3 provides the following
miscellaneous enhancements: |
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Introduced the ability to throttle REST service calls to reduce the number of concurrent calls originating from a user. |
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Added the ability to export tables in public homepages into Excel sheets similar to the normal homepages. |
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Deletion of elements will now be logged. This logged information can be queried using SQL calls. |
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The feature 'Create element from' functionality is enhanced so that only the links adhering to the link target settings will be copied when the new element is created.
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The usability of editing choice and multi-choice items is greatly improved with the introduction of edit dialog windows. |
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Focal Point, along with System Architect®,
is a key player in the Enterprise Architecture
and Product Portfolio Management domains,
helping customers make strategic decisions at
the enterprise level and provide increased
business value at delivery. Additionally, UNICOM
has the Universal Gateway (UniGW®),
a management dashboard designed to provide
real-time views into operational business
performance that will complement Focal Point.
This approach enables strategic decision making
and correlates the massive amount of data
erupting from new technologies such as big data,
video analysis and IOT.
To request this new release of Focal
Point, please log in or register on the UNICOM
Customer Portal, or email to focalpoint.support@unicomsi.com.
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At UNICOM, our commitment is to ensure that
ongoing research and development continue for
all UNICOM software solutions and to maintain
the highest standards of technical support for
you, our customers.
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