IMPRESS UPDATE
March 2008
In This Issue
 
Customer Milestones

New Impress Customers

Auckland Regional Council (ARC)

PacifiCorp

Customer Go Lives

Shell EP, Phillippines

SWB

Upcoming Webinars

Improving Plant Maintenance with Impress Express PM
Wednesday, March 6
11:00 am eastern

Come join our webinar to learn about Impress Express PM, an affordable, turnkey solution for the rapid integration of SAP PM and project scheduling systems.

REGISTER NOW!


California Department of Water Resources
 Online Webinar
Wednesday, March 26
11:00 am eastern
8:00 am pacific
Save the Date!

Upcoming Events

Impress will be participating in the following events. We hope to see you there!

March

SUGMENA
Dubai, UAE
March 4-6

ESRI Business Partner Conference
Palm Springs, CA
March 15-18

SAP Centric EAM
Austin, TX
March 30 - April 2

Impress customers will be highlighted in two sessions at SAP Centric EAM. If you are planning to attend, be sure to sit in on these sessions.

Best Practices for Effective Capital Project Execution Presenter: Nick Cutsumbis, FirstEnergy
Monday - 10:45 -11:45

This case study presentation will address challenges First Energy encountered prior to integrating their SAP and Primavera systems and the benefits realized afterwards. Focus will be on real world application of best practices and lessons learned as it relates to other companies looking to maximize their SAP investment.

Realizing the Value of an SAP-GIS Integration
Presenters: Mark Fois, Aquarion Water Company & John Lucas, Impress Software
Monday 2:00 - 3:00

This presentation will provide insight into this integration project, focusing on individual implementation points and how these brought improvements to the various departments within AWC. Particular attention will be paid to how the GIS footprint was increased within the company and what values this brought to supervisors, managers, and executive officers.
April

Collaborate
Denver, CO
April 13-17

Impress will be presenting in two sessions at Collaborate. If you are planning to attend, be sure to sit in on these sessions.

Program Management with E-Business Suite Projects Integration to Microsoft Project Server and Primavera Presenters: Colleen Baumbach, Oracle Corporation
Wednesday, April 16, 4:30 - 5:30
Room 104

Running a successful project management office requires both strategic management and tactical scheduling. Learn how Oracle and Impress Software are simplifying this challenge by integrating Oracle E-Business Suite Projects with Microsoft Project Server for project scheduling. Regardless of your industry, if you have wondered how to reconcile executives' demands for analysis and project managers' need for detail, make time to attend this presentation.

Program Management with PeopleSoft ESA Integration to Microsoft Project Server and Primavera
Presenters: Mark Rosenberg, Oracle & Stefan Frank, Impress Software
Thursday, April 17, 9:45 - 10:45
Room: 502

A successful project management office requires both strategic management and tactical scheduling. Learn how Oracle and Impress Software simplify this challenge by integrating PeopleSoft Enterprise Service Automation with Microsoft Project Server.

  • Link your project scheduling tools to PeopleSoft ESA for more efficient project execution and control

  • See how the integration can increase project visibility and enhance decision-making quality

  • Discuss scenarios for controlling how much/little, projects and resources data can be integrated

    • Facts and Fun...

    If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.



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    Product News

    Name Change!

    Impress for EPM has been renamed Impress for Projects. While the name was changed, its purpose of delivering integration best practices at the lowest TCO has remained the same.

    Impress Introduces Turnkey Integration Solution for Plants Running SAP PM

    Waltham, MA --Impress Software, the leading provider of packaged integration applications, today announced the introduction of Impress Express PM, an affordable, turnkey solution for streamlining routine maintenance and plant turnarounds through the integration of SAP Plant Maintenance (PM) with project scheduling tools such as Microsoft Project and Primavera.

    Full Story

    Now Available - Impress for GIS 2.2

    Impress for GIS 2.2 offers several new features to help asset-intensive companies further reduce maintenance costs while improving operational efficiency and customer service.
    New Features of Impress for GIS 2.2 include:

    • Web-front end with the ability to view asset information, create SAP Work Orders (WO) and SAP Notifications (NO) and view historical information
    • WO and NO can be represented as features with unique locations on the map
    • Expanded support for IS-U CCS
    • Enhanced reporting and analysis
    Learn More about Impress for GIS 2.2


    Customer Spotlight

    Auckland Regional Council and Auckland Regional Transport Authority Select Impress

    Impress Software, a leading provider of packaged integration applications, today announced that it has been selected by the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) in New Zealand to integrate their SAP and ESRI systems.

    Read Full Article


    Partner Spotlight

    Impress Software and Edmonton Consulting Group form strategic partnership to further expand their business in the Middle East

    Waltham, Ma. and Dubai, UAE - February 20, 2007 - Impress Software, a leading provider of packaged integration applications and Edmonton Consulting Group, an international management consulting firm, today announced a strategic partnership deliver Impress integration solutions to project- and asset-intensive organizations in the Middle East.

    Read Full Article


    Tips & Tricks

    End User hints for successful project synching of SAP\P3e

    We have compiled some hints that might help your Impress users more successfully synchronize their projects between SAP and P3e. These hints have been categorized into things they should or should not do in Impress, P3e and SAP. You may want to add some of your own, especially if Impress has been customized for you.

    Feel free to send us your hints. We plan on putting together a guide for each of our product offerings so don't limit your suggestions to just SAP\P3e.

    Impress

    1. Do not change the name of the workspace.
    P3e
    1. Do not cut and paste in P3e.
    2. Do not change the p3e project name
    3. Do not manually move activities in P3e from one project to another project.
    4. Do not change the EPS ID.
    5. Do not import a new version from another database to your existing project if you have already synchronized it with SAP. The object IDs will change and the workspace will no longer work.
    Changing Resource ID. If you want to change the Resource ID back and forth to be different or the same as the Activity Code "OP Level Work Center" there are two ways to do it.

    The wrong way to do it
    As in the figure below you can change the Resource ID in the column displayed in the Activity View. Clicking into the Resource ID column pulls up the Dialog "Assign Resources". In this case you can only change the Resource ID by assigning a new Resource ID and deleting the previous assigned Resource ID.

    The deletion of Resource Assignments is not allowed when using P3e in combination with Impress Impress for Projects. In this example, even though you have the same Resource ID and Activity Code "OP Level Work Center" displayed in the P3e screen, the values are not the same because of the deletion. As a consequences, you will keep on getting the Impress for Projects warning "Resource assignment will be skipped due to the work center transfer logic". The SAP PM user field "USR03" will have the value " I". The only way to clear out this warning is, by closing out the operation and create a new operation for this task. Changing the Resource ID by clicking into the column brings up this Dialog.

    Wrong way screenshot

    The right way to do it
    The right way to change the Resource ID without adding one and deleting the previous is to select the Activity and in the Activity detail view choose the Resources tab. If you click into the Resource ID column at this screen you get the Dialog "Select Resources". Double click on one of the displayed Resource IDs will change the current Resource ID without any deletion. In this case the Synchronization will not give any problems and the Resource ID will always be recognized as displayed in the P3e screen.

    Right way Screenshot

    SAP

    1. Do not change the SAP project name.
    2. In SAP PS/PM: Do not change the name of a work center in SAP. Impress for Projects uses the 8-character work center name as the resource name in P3e/MSP, and also as part of the Impress IDs
    3. SAP PS/PM: Do not use more than one mandatory constraint.
    4. In SAP PS: Do not change the WBS element ID in SAP or configure Impress for Projects to use the GUID instead4.
    5. SAP PS: Do not use the same description for several WBS elements. (The description is normally mapped onto the WBS name in P3e. The WBS name must be unique in P3e.