IPMR DID Updates from this week’s Deltek Insight Conference in Nashville
A few months ago we published a feature about the new IPMR DID that came into effect on July 1 of this year. This new DID will require changes to most of the project and earned value management software tools out there and naturally I was particularly interested in what all this means for Deltek Cobra.
To speak in very high-level terms, the new Integrated Program Management Report (IPMR) Data Item Description (DID) merges the existing CPR and IMS DIDs. So the old CPR Formats will now be known as IPMR Formats, and there will be a total of 7 formats going forward. IPMR Formats 1 – 5 will be similar to the original CPR formats. IPMR Format 6 will be the IMS report and the new IPMR Format 7 will be an electronic history and forecast report, provided in XML format.
Deltek Insight News
At the Deltek Insight 2012 conference in Nashville this week, my Ten Six colleagues and I were able to meet and talk to the product managers about the changes we can expect to see in the IPMR affected products. Also Kathy Boatwright, Deltek’s Product Director for Cobra gave an excellent presentation entitled ‘New IPMR Requirements and Deltek IPM Products’, which laid out the specifics of the changes to the reporting formats and then provided details about projected release timelines and how these changes effect wInsight, MPM, Cobra 4.7, 5.1 and Open Plan.
Deltek Cobra Projected Release Timeline
For Cobra 5.1 we can be looking out for new IPMR report formats 1, 2, 4 and 5 around the end of October, likely in the month-end Hotfix, with format 3 being released around December. Because IPMR Format 6 is an IMS report, it will only appear in Open Plan. Format 7 is currently scheduled for a February release in all the IPM products and Cobra will support this through the existing XML export in the wInsight Wizard. However, don’t go holding anyone’s feet to the fire on these dates as they are only projections at this point.
Deltek also informed us that they will keep the original CPR reports in the system and add the new IPMR formats to the standard report list. This way customers required to continue reporting in the current formats won’t be affected by changes to the software.
We’ll keep an eye out for the IPMR updates in Deltek Cobra and do a full feature review when the new reports arrive.
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