The Deltek Cobra 8 new project view takes a huge step forward towards ease of use. The two biggest take-aways from the new project view are:
- You can see multiple resource assignments at one time on the screen (you use to have to run a report).
- You can interact directly with the data through the view.
When you first go into a project in Cobra 8 you’ll notice the difference right away. It looks like an interactive Control Account Plan. You can see the time phased costs in the view (budgets, forecasts, actuals…more about this later). Welcome to the Deltek Cobra 8 new project view.
The Deltek Cobra 8 project view smartly shows you the totals and individual period amounts in columns in the top right section. There is also an indicator line to let you know where the status date falls in the time phasing. The red line in the view above shows the current status date.
The nice thing with the view is it’s easily filtered to show just the data you want to see. For example, if you want to see the Total Currency, you simply select that from the “Data” portion of the new ribbon above the project view and the values on the top right will show you the total currency.
With the “Show Summary” option checked, the values are rolled up from the individual budget assignment to the Work Package and Control Account levels. You can also filter the view to specific classes, so if you want to just see the budget values, simply click the filter triangle on the Class column and select the classes you want the view to show. Once you click the “OK” you will only see the budgets rolled up in the view.
But…being able to quickly filter down to a class means I can see what my current budget is in the view and see all the resources assigned on the same view!
I hadn’t ever really thought about the fact that I couldn’t easily see multiple resources time phased spread in Deltek Cobra without running a report before version 8, but it is really going to be nice.
With the Deltek Cobra 8 new project view expanded down to individual resource assignments I can select one and see the details displayed in the bottom right corner (the old resource assignment tab in 5.1). I can make edits directly in the spread in the bottom right or…you can also make them directly in the view above.
You can even further filter the view down to individual results, like hours. The same place we selected “Total Currency” allows me to select individual results, for example Hours.
In addition to being able to update the traditional Resource Assignment view, like before, and seeing the impact is nice. But even nicer, is the ability to update the data directly in the project view! So I can select the individual cell for a period and input the number I want it to reflect. Finally! You can directly enter the values in a spreadsheet view in Deltek Cobra! When you’re building up a baseline, or a forecast you can enter the data directly into Deltek Cobra. As you enter in the hours, for example, into the top right section of the screen by resource you will see the total column update and the bottom left will show you the individual resource costs.
Continuing down the path of enabling Deltek Cobra to be an easy, interactive tool, you can even add a resource in the project view. Simply right click in an area under the work package (or control account) and select “Assign Resource” and you can add a new resource directly to project.
You can even work in this view directly with Excel (or other spreadsheet app). The copy n’ paste capability allows you to quickly take inputs from your CAMs, for example, that they submitted via Excel and copy and paste into the project. Before you would have to format the file to be imported and then have to setup an integration file. Now you can simply grab what they sent you and stick it into Cobra and Cobra will price it up!
All in all we love the Deltek Cobra 8 new project view. There is definitely a feel that this is the opening shot in an ongoing focus on improvements to come. For example, do I really need to have the resource assignment view always displayed in the bottom right? Seems like valuable real estate for more valuable reporting info down the line (like maybe looking into the cross project usage of the particular resource you selected on, so you have insight into that before you increase their forecast hours?).