Click on the version number to download the installer:
- THIS IS A BETA RELEASE, so these features will be more fully polished and documented before the next normal release.
- Introduces the ability to customize how half-step schedules are calculated. The customizations are:
- You can choose how remaining duration changes are applied.
- You can choose how actual date changes are applied.
- You can choose whether delays on deleted activities are handled.
- The progress analysis and related reports have been augmented to support the new half-step calculation modes. For example, if the user chooses to include all actual date changes to the half-step, including adjustments to past actual dates, all progress analysis views will now report on "Past Actual Adjustments."
- Exported .xers now remove all activity Expected Finish constraints. Previously, these could lead to misleading remaining durations once the exported schedule is imported into P6 and rescheduled.
- Fixes a bug that caused analysis to fail when the schedule has a very large negative lag
- Support for importing .xer files containing calendars that do not specify their time periods (hours per day/week/month/year); in this case, default values of 8.0, 40.0, 172.0, and 2000.0 are used.
- Fixed a crash that can occur when the panes in the Gantt view are resized so that the Gantt rendering is too narrow.
- Project Finish overview chart: you can now choose between classic and sawtooth rendering for the series line.
- Project Finish overview chart: you can now choose between no x-axis labels, period number labels, and date tick labels.
- Text boxes in the Selected Activity / WBS and Schedule Info tabs in the Gantt view can now be copied to the clipboard by right-clicking and choosing "Copy".
- Forward-looking Validation. The new At Complete Duration columns make it easy to compare the activity's ACD in the current period to its most recent value, and navigate to the places in the dataset that the ACD changes.
- Support for "Check all" and "Uncheck all" snapshots in the Open Dataset dialog; right-click to access the commands.
- Substantial improvements to the exported Excel report: more help content, better navigation (if macros are enabled), better formatting, etc.
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- Full support for international character sets.
- Support for making an international character set the new default character set.
- lock filter/sort/group button in gantt
- revamped revision export tables in Excel
- new At Complete Durations columns added to (with navigation)
- Fixed a bug that led to re-analysis on every load for some datasets.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the last day of progress from being credited to out-of-sequence activities in some scenarios.
- Fixes bug that causes crash in Gantt view when activity with more than three relationships to the same activity is selected
- Fixes bug that sometimes causes half-step date to be misreported when loading a previously analyzed schedule
- Improves progress analysis of scenarios where an activity driven by FF or SF relationships makes all of its progress out-of-sequence
- Activity type and activity calendar now shown in Selected Activity Details pane.
- Exported .XER catalogs now show activity names for each selected milestone ID.
- Exported Excel report has new link-based navigation scheme that works in both consolidated and separate workbook modes.
- Report Progress Table now has entries for SDA->P6 and P6->SDA mode transitions, if either causes an impact.
- Report Period Details screen now gives more information on period progress/revisions/overall impacts.
- Exported Excel report now gives more information on period progress and revisions impacts.
- Exported Excel report now has an XER Discrepancies worksheet that details any detected mismatches between activity dates that SDA calculates and what is reported in the .xer file.
- Bug fixed that caused certain Gantt filters to not be remembered across sessions.
Version 0.37.0, (16-Nov-2023)
Internal Release
- Excel export: schedule revisions are now included.
- Excel export: new hyperlink-based navigation sidebar.
- Beefed up .xer validation (WIP).
- Fixes hang at 99% analysis on first run.
- Fixes multiple analysis hangs.
- Added diagnostic capabilities for troubleshooting.
- Additional fix to support .xers that format durations using a comma as the decimal separator.
- Adds the ability to export the schedule to Excel at the currently selected Timeline entry.
- Supports .xer files with format durations using a comma as the decimal separator.
- Fixes bug causing export to Excel to fail when longest paths are empty (when
analysis target does not yet exist).
- Fixes bug causing an analysis hang for schedules with negative lags that drive
dates earlier than the project start date.
- fixed bug causing export to Excel to fail in certain circumstances.
- Fixes bug that can cause incorrect analysis results when activities have constraints with
dates before the Project Start date.
- Fixes bug that can cause incorrect analysis results when completed activities have external
early start dates in the future.
- Fixes bug that prevented xer validation warnings from showing up when Analysis Target was set to something other than Project Finish
- Fixes bug that can cause incorrect analysis results when the Analysis Target is set to an activity that does not exist for at least one analysis period
- Adds support for .xer files exported by older versions of P6 (7.0+)
- Fixes an issue that was causing a crash when a schedule had an LOE activity with external successors
- Fixes an issue that was causing an inaccurate analysis when there were multiple calendars with the same name (one a global calendar, one a project calendar).
Version 0.34.1, (06-Jun-2023)
Internal Release
- Fixed an analysis crash that occurs when an activity has an External Early Start date earlier than the project's Planned Start.
Version 0.34.0, (02-Jun-2023)
Internal Release
- Fixes export bug that was causing many exports to fail for two customers.
- Enhancements and bug fixes for the .xer catalog report
New Features
- You can now create an ".xer catalog" (available from the Open Dataset dialog) that reports metadata like project name, activity count, last activity, and key milestone dates for every .xer file in a given directory.
- You can now select activities by clicking on rows in the Gantt table or nodes in the Network view. A bottom pane will show detailed status information, as well as predecessor/successor lists that can be traced through as in P6.
- In the excel export, the Project Overview worksheet now gives longest path information.
Bug fixes
- A number of analysis crashes and .xer parser errors have been fixed.ߜ
Version 0.31.0, (31-Mar-2023)
Internal Release
- Fixed a crash when exporting period start schedules to .xer
- removed resource assignments from all exported .xers, as P6 prioritizes resource assignment status over activity remaining duration; resource assignments will be re-introduced to exported schedules in a future version.
- The datasets list on the Open Dataset dialog can now be searched by name
Version 0.30.0, (20-Mar-2023)
Internal Release
- Experimental support for XER export.
- Fixes for bugs encountered during QA.
- Support for Progress Override schedules, including tracking changes to that setting.
- Support for the
Calculate start-to-start lag from Actual Start feature, including tracking changes to that setting.
- Support for schedules that have external dates/relationships, including tracking revisions to said dates/relationships.
- While
Resource Dependent activities are not yet supported, Delay Analyzer can now automatically convert such activities to Task Dependent if you opt to do so.
- Delay Analyzer now detects activities that have actuals or durations that are not hour-aligned, and will allow rounding them to the nearest hour. This can substantially speed up analysis on large data sets.
- Performance of exporting to Excel has substantially improved, and there is a new option to export one workbook per period.
- Numerous small improvements to the layout, organization, and rendering of the per-period Longest Paths worksheet in the Excel export.
Version 0.28.0, (13-Mar-2023)
Internal Release
- Fixes for bugs encountered during QA.
Version 0.27.0, (09-Mar-2023)
Internal Release
- Support for MSI installation.
- Support for remote installation of license keys.
Version 0.26.0, (27-Feb-2023)
Internal Release
- enhancement to address import issue
- Same as 0.25.0, but signed with the new code signing certificate
- New tooltips have been added to the column headers of the recently redone progress table in the report view.
- In the longest paths report in the Excel output, longest paths will be labeled in a way that recognizes when the same paths return.
Version 0.24.0, (25-Jan-2023)
Internal Release
- Changes to the low-level engine to be more correct with
float/longest path calculations in certain scenarios
- New filters to express the concept of "on any longest path"
- Better user experience for export file path selection
- New option to toggle exception lines on gantt activity lanes
- Better Excel longest path descriptions in some scenarios
Version 0.23.1, (16-Jan-2023)
Internal Release
- Fixes a caching bug where longest path excel output
would be garbled if the dataset was loaded from cache.
Version 0.23.0, (15-Jan-2023)
Internal Release
- Excel output now has a progress table that matches SDA
proper, and a much improved Longest Path(s) tab.
Version 0.22.0, (14-Jan-2023)
Internal Release
Bug fix
- Cached datasets could load (in certain scenarios) with data corruption.
Changes
Version 0.21.0, (12-Jan-2023)
Internal Release
- The delay analysis algorithm now credits out of sequence progress to an activity up front, similar to how regular progress is handled.
- (Preview) A substantial amount of the report view can be exported to Excel. A new report that shows how the longest path changes through the course of each period is also included. More data will be added to the export in upcoming versions.
- The Gantt chart now supports filtering and sorting. Of chief importance is the ability to filter to the current longest path(s), as well as all activities that are on a longest path
at some point in time.
- The Gantt table now has a right-click context menu that has expand all WBS and collapse all WBS actions.
- Longest path(s) are now depicted in the Gantt: activities on a LP have a thick black border, and relationships on a LP are thick black lines. The LP(s) also roll up into the WBS bars: thick black outlines represent intervals occupied by LP activities that live under that WBS.
- Relationship rendering in the Gantt has been redone: dotted lines now represent non-driving relationships, solid lines represent driving relationships, and thick solid lines
represent (driving) relationships on a longest path.
- It is now possible to hide WBS rows in the Gantt table.
- The slider for changing near critical thresholds in the
network diagram was removed.
Bug fix:
- Analysis will no longer hang in certain scenarios where activities have actuals in the future.
Bug fix:
- SDA now considers the Project Planned Start date optional. This also means that SDA no longer considers the Data Date optional. Before, it was using the Planned Start date if the Data Date was not present.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug in the analysis engine that was causing the tool to produce (and warn about) an invalid analysis in certain scenarios
- Fixed a bug that caused the application to crash or behave strangely after removing schedule snapshots from a dataset that had already been analyzed
New features:
- added new columns to the Gantt view table (remaining duration, remaining early dates, total float, etc.)
- columns in the Gantt view table can now be resized by dragging the edges
- columns in the Gantt view table can now be reordered by dragging with the mouse
- zoom in/out buttons have been added to the top of the Gantt view, although [CTRL + mouse wheel] is still the recommended means of zooming in the Gantt
- added a (collapsible) legend to the Gantt view that covers all major visual features and controls
Bug fixes:
- fixed bug in Gantt where "successor not shown" indicator was not appearing
- fixed bug that caused spurious "WBS node added" schedule revisions
Other changes:
- Certain duration quantities (remaining duration, total float, etc.) used to be expressed in units of days (d), where 1 day = 24 hrs. This is counter-intuitive for users used to seeing such quantities expressed only in working days (wd). As a result, such quantities are now expressed either in hours (h) or working days (wd). In particular, the Near-Critical threshold is now specified in units of hours.
- When setting the data date, either by dragging the line or using [Shift + click] in the Gantt, or using the left/right arrow keys, holding down Ctrl will now allow setting the data date to the nearest hour. (This behavior used to be bound to the Alt key.)
- The sizes of resizable elements in the interface (like the Gantt table and its constituent columns) are now saved across sessions.
- Internal release, not published.
- When activities are removed from the network, the forensic engine
will now treat those activities as executing according to schedule in
the period during which they are removed. This prevents such activities
from causing progress delay right before being removed, which can
interfere with the detection of more meaningful progress delay/recovery
among the remaining activities.
- Added a target finish date impact chart to the period progress detail tables.
The chart is horizontally synchronized with the timeline diagrams for the individual
activity rows, making it easy to tie individual impacts to specific activity delay events.
- Fixed multiple scheduling and forensic engine bugs.
Forensic Engine
- A number of bugs in the forensic engine were fixed that should resolve discrepancies in analysis
results for many datasets
Project Overview Report
- Fixed bug where Target Finish Date chart in Project Overview would be blank if the line was completely horizontal
Period Detail Screen
- Added new In-Progress columns (Exec, Delay, Wait)
- Added extensive informational tooltips to the column headers
- Changed the units in the Delay columns to working days, and added unit annotations to all values in the table
- Made minor changes to how the timeline diagrams are rendered, and also changed some of the terminology in the legend
- Clicking on activity ids or names now horizontally centers the Gantt view around the Period in question, in addition to locating the activity
- Added a summary section for schedule revisions; clicking the link will go to the corresponding revision entries in the Gantt timeline
Gantt View
- Holding down shift and then clicking/dragging with the left mouse button will set the data date directly
- The activity timeline diagrams from the Period detail table are now incorporated into the rendering of the activity bars; some of these new indicators will roll up into the WBS bars
- Added an options button to the top of the activities list; for now, the only option is to toggle on/off the new activity indicators
- For the "future" part of the schedule (everything to the right of the data date), the locations of critical and near-critical activities now roll up into the WBS, making it easy to track the current critical path through the WBS; dark regions that go from the top of the bar to the bottom show the location of critical activities, and dark regions that stop halfway down the bar show the location of near-critical activities
Gantt Timeline
- Added Schedule Revision entries for snapshots that give actual dates that are in the future (a previously overlooked scenario); these entries go under the "Actual Starts Revised Inappropriately" and "Actual Finishes Revised Inappropriately" categories
- When clicking on activity names in the details pane for progress interval timeline entries, the view will be centered horizontally around the corresponding interval
- Grid pane added to Gantt view (currently only showing activity code and name)
- Rows added to Gantt view for WBS entries
- WBS elements can be expanded/collapsed by using the + and - buttons next to their names
- Many colors and styles in the Gantt view have been changed; in particular, a critical activity is now rendered as a black bar
- Near-critical activities are now distinguishable in the Gantt view; they are rendered as a half-black, half-green bar
- The addition and removal of WBS elements are now recorded and shown under their own category of schedule edit in the Timeline panel
- Activity and WBS element rows in the Gantt are grayed out when the corresponding activity or WBS element does not exist at that point in the timeline
- Attempting to Find an activity in the Gantt when that activity does not exist at that point in the timeline will now scroll to the proper row, centered about the data date
- The Gantt now contains multiple rows for each activity: one for each WBS element that the activity belongs to during the course of the project. The row that's "active" at a particular point in the timeline is rendered normally, while the inactive rows are rendered semi-transparently.
- The data date can now be incremented/decremented by one day using buttons next to the data date display at the bottom of the screen, or using the left/right arrow keys. The unit of increment/decrement can be changed to hours by holding down the control key.
- Annotations added back to network view
- Caching is now being applied to all time-consuming work, such that the second
time you load/perform an analysis (including changing the analysis
target/near-critical definition), the process should complete within a few seconds.
- Analysis target and near-critical definition now persists across sessions.
- Report View (new)
- Legend added to period detail tables in Report view
- Typo and numeric precision glitches fixed in details panel
- CTRL+wheel in Gantt is now manual zoom instead of animated, which should work
better with a wider range of mice
- CTRL+up/down in Gantt triggers the old animated zoom in/out
- Bug fix to condition which caused crash on startup in rare cases
- The "launch SDA" checkbox in the installer should now work
- The app should no longer display a "you need to install .NET" dialog on startup
- Fixed bug that caused SDA to crash the first time a key was installed.
- Minor license key dialog fixes: error messages now wrap, etc.
- CTRL+L to open license dialog after initial entry.
- Note: existing users of SDA and AP6 will have to re-install their trial keys, as they were using a simpler license file format.
- This version exposes the latest version of the Steelray AppFramework, which
brings over all the legacy licensing functionality, and adds the new auto-renewal
functionality. This is an experimental internal release, as it has not been fully
tested against the live services on steelray.com.
- Fixed bug where every activity in the timeline details list or search box was shown as a milestone
- Fixed bug where hovering over an activity removed in the current schedule edit (as shown in a dotted red outline) would crash SDA.
- Fixed several bugs that caused SDA to crash whenever a dataset contains a schedule inversion.
- Fixed bug that caused SDA to crash whenever a dataset contains an LOE or WBS Summary activity.
- The network view now starts centered on the FIN milestone.
Fixes/tweaks:
- The network diagram was showing circles instead of diamonds for milestones.
- Fixed bug that was causing no lines to be drawn between certain sink activities and the FIN
milestone in one of our test datasets.
- Fixed longstanding issue where hovering a node would show predecessor and successor relationships
that were not created yet or had already been removed.
- Fixed an issue where picking an activity analysis target was causing the network rendering to
behave abnormally.
New features:
- The network diagram now has a color overlay for activity constraints.
- Based on feedback: Added another hue for start/finish colors and tweaked the selection so that any
duplicate hues occur at the beginning of the project, where it's less likely to matter.
- Based on feedback: Colors/legend pane in network view can now be collapsed/expanded
- Fixed bug where the names of added activities/relationships were not showing in the details pane
(for Structure Edited events), or the various selection lists (like the Find list).
- As a follow-on, the names of activities that are not currently existing in the schedule are grayed out in
the various selection lists.
- Fixed bug where an "Actual Start Corrupted"/"Actual Finish Corrupted" pair could leave a milestone in
a partially-complete state.
- Fixed bug where an improper actual finish would generate an inappropriate "Forecast Duration Changed" event.
Before, an actual start/finish with the exact instant of the previous snapshot's Data Date would count as an
improper actual start/finish.
- In network view, no longer display callout annotations for added/removed relationships that are part of a fragnet.
The idea is that it's rather redundant to point out the two activities that were added, and also point out
the relationship connecting the two, as well as the n relationships that connect the two to the rest of the
schedule. Not showing these frees up a lot of real estate for other annotations.
- Removed the "Delay Set" timeline partition mode, as there is at least one crash-causing bug.
Fixes/tweaks:
- The timeline and timeline details panes are now resizable (although this does not yet persist).
- The network view only draws non-tree edges when the schedule is under a certain size threshold. This speeds up the
rendering to near-tolerable levels when working with large datasets.
- The XER parser does a better job with external relationships. It doesn't just error out when they are detected,
but reports the number of externals per activity and allows the library client to make the decision about whether
to proceed.
New features:
- New synthetic event added: Activity Name Edited. This event will never affect the target finish date,
but can still be very useful for understanding the evolution of the schedule. Selecting the event will update the
name wherever it is displayed.
- New synthetic event added: WBS Node Name Edited. This event will never affect the target finish date, but can
still be very useful for understanding the evolution of the schedule. Selecting the event will update the name
wherever it is displayed (say, in the Colors > WBS tree).
- New synthetic events added: Actual Start Corrupted and Actual Finish Corrupted. These events appear whenever the
actual start/finish dates change in a nonsensical way from one snapshot to the next. There are three distinct
cases (overwrite, removal, and start/finish in past), and the details pane will give specific guidance for
each. These events absolutely affect the target finish date, and have high relevance for schedule quality
(we'll probably do even more with these later).
- Timeline hierarchy. The timeline now has a tree structure. By default, synthetic events (schedule edits) in
sufficient numbers are grouped in categories, which are in turn grouped under a root "Schedule Edits" node.
This cleans up the timeline and encourages the user to consider the delay/accel. of schedule edits as a group,
since their individual effects are often driven merely by their (arbitrary) order of playback. Reporting periods
have been promoted to full-fledged timeline entries, which implies expand/collapse ability as well as a gauge
showing rolled up delay/acceleration.
- Grouping nodes in the timeline can be expanded and collapsed. Holding CTRL will apply the expand/collapse to
the entire subtree. Holding SHIFT will apply the expand/collapse to the clicked node and all of its siblings
(used to expand/collapse all category nodes in a specific reporting period). Holding ALT will apply the
expand/collapse to the clicked node and all other nodes on the same level -- a superset of the node's siblings
(used to expand/collapse all reporting periods/Schedule Edit nodes/category nodes in the entire timeline).
- This is the first version published for the Early Access Program.
