Customer Spotlight
Aquarion Water Selects Impress
SoftwareImpress Software has
been selected by Aquarion Water
Company to integrate its SAP and ESRI systems.
Aquarion will implement Impress Software’s Impress
for GIS, a solution that enables businesses to relate
asset information between SAP and ESRI and
streamline business processes that span both
systems.
Learn
MoreBig
Happenings at BP Lingen
In an effort to meet statutory provisions for
inspecting the site at BP’s Lingen facility, a
transitional shutdown was required for 2006. With a
lead time of
more than 3 years, this project (called “TAR 2006”)
represents the first complete shutdown in the last 50
years at BP Lingen. The $60
Million project is currently underway and involves
2,100 external contractors and 300 BP employees. It
is expected to run for approximately 6
weeks. Using Impress for EPM for
synchronization of
project data between SAP and Primavera, BP Lingen
expects to achieve significant operational benefits.
Stay tuned to the Impress website for a case study
detailing the results of this long-awaited project!
Upcoming Events
Impress will be participating in the following
events.
We hope to see you there!
October
2006
2006 Electric and Gas User Group
Albuquerque, NM
October 9-12
ASUG Enterprise Asset Management
Symposium
Baltimore, MD
October 19-20
Join Impress customer New Brunswick Power
as they present:
“Execution of Maintenance Activities and Planned
Outages; Lessons Learned” October 20, 2006
9:10 am – 10:10 am
Attend the ASUG EAM Symposium and learn how to
evolve SAP Plant Maintenance to gain greater value
with SAP Enterprise Asset Management and
exchange ideas on how to manage capital
expenditures, reduce operating costs, and improve
asset utilization.
WEFTEC
Dallas, TX
October 21-25
November
2006
European
ESRI Conference
Athens, Greece
November 6-8
DPMO
Meeting
Inteco Office
Landshut, Germany
November 9
TA Cook: Shutdown and Turnaround Congress
Birmingham, UK
November 13-15
Mastering
SAP PM
Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
November 20-22
December
2006
Primavera 23rd Annual User
Conference
San Diego, CA
December 3-6
Webinars
Save the Date!
Understanding the Need for SAP ESRI ArcGIS
Integration
October 18, 2006
11:00 am eastern
Space is limited, reserve
your seat now!
Save the Date!
Shell: Integrating Primavera and SAP for efficient
Plant Maintenance
October 25, 2006
10:00 am eastern
Space is limited, reserve your seat now!
Quick Links
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Greetings!
We are proud to bring you the fourth issue of the
Impress Update, complete with recent product news,
customer highlights and a few new tips and tricks to
make you more productive and efficient using
Impress Products. As always we are interested in
hearing from you, so don’t hesitate to send us your
feedback.
Enjoy!
Impress Software
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Partner Spotlight
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Impress for EPM to Support MS Project 2007
Microsoft will soon be releasing MS Office 2007,
which includes several major enhancements to
Microsoft’s Enterprise Project Management (EPM)
solution. These enhancements will allow project
stakeholders to more effectively manage and
prioritize projects and resources across an
organization.
As a member of Microsoft’s “First to Market” program,
Impress is one of a select few software vendors to
be given an opportunity to collaborate regularly with
Microsoft Project 2007 product teams to learn the ins
and outs of the release. The program has provided us
with key insights needed to ensure Impress for EPM
optimally supports Microsoft’s next release.
If you are considering a move to MS Project 2007,
you can rest assured that Impress for EPM will be
ready to support your project integration
requirements with SAP.
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Product News
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Impress for EPM 3.1
October will mark the release of the next version of
Impress for EPM. With improvements in Usability, Data
Synchronizations, and Capital Project Processes,
Impress for EPM 3.1 has much to offer Impress
customers. New built-in processes have been added
to support:
Project accounting best practices, allowing
project managers to monitor on-going costs against
planned budgets from the project management
system.
Error reporting and data validation to better
the management of synchronizations.
New capabilities within the synchronization
process itself to dramatically enhance
performance.
The new release also includes several enhancements
to keep pace with advancements made by SAP,
Microsoft and Primavera.
Whether you’re using Impress for EPM to optimally
manage IT or Capital projects, Turnarounds, or
Routine Maintenance, you’ll benefit from many of the
new features available in Impress for EPM 3.1.
A recent webinar offered a sneak peek into
the various feature enhancements that will be
available. Take a moment to review the webinar and find out
how this new release will make your projects more
efficient and cost effective.
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We Want To Hear From You!
The Impress Product Management team is always
looking for new product features that will improve our
customers' business processes, increase their
reliability and accountability, and improve employee
effectiveness. Features like the ones included in the
Maintenance & Operations Module of the Impress for
GIS product or the upcoming Capital Project
improvements in the next release of Impress for EPM
were developed as a result of customer feedback and
suggestions.
We are proud to offer you solutions that provide
best-of-breed features and best practices for various
strategic initiatives, such as plant turnarounds and
routine maintenance. To that end, we invite you to
actively participate in our requirements gathering by
emailing us
product feedback as well as new feature ideas
and suggestions.
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Industry News
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Integration Keeps Turnarounds and Daily
Maintenance On Time & On Budget
Global petrochemicals producer Huntsman produces
products for a variety of end-use applications. With
11,300 employees, Huntsman companies operate in
22 countries, generating annual revenues of
approximately $15 billion.
To learn more about how Huntsman keeps their plant
turnarounds and daily maintenance on
schedule and on budget, view the full story.
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Tips and Tricks
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Impress Minimum Version Requirements for Upgrading
to SAP ECC 6.0.
If you have recently upgraded to SAP ECC 6.0 and
are now receiving errors upon running a synch, you
may need a patch to address the issue.
To determine if the patch will solve your issue:
- Open the logfile “Machine name_date of
synch_041218_956.log”.
- Review the file for the following error message:
“Update orders in PM failed due to insufficient
OBJECTKEY values in iePrjPMSaveScope
(BAPI_ALM_ORDER_MAINTAIN).”
"Operation xyz to be changed was not
found".
This error results when the mentioned field is
currently populated with value = "order Id". However
BAPI in SAP ECC 6.0 requires "order Id" + "operation
Id".
The Solution:
If you have a version of Impress for EPM below
3.0.0.2, please contact Impress support
so that they may guide you through the
application of a service patch.
Version 3.0.0.2 or higher includes the functionality
contained in the patch.
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Best Practices for Primavera P3e 4.1 Activity Codes
and Synch Performance Optimization
Primavera recently announced that the previous limit
of 128 code assignments during a batch create or
update of activities, resources, and projects has
been removed. In order to address any synch issues
that you may be experiencing, it is recommended
that you apply Primavera API 4.1 SP4. This service
pack offers additional batch functionality and will
likely resolve any performance issues.
As well, Primavera recently released API 4.1 SP5
which includes performance improvements for loading
and updating code assignments, checking project
access, and loading business objects by ObjectId
array.
Please contact your Impress support representative
should you have any questions.
Note: These fixes are included in the Primavera P3e
5.0 product.
Note: The improvement you may
notice is dependent on the amount of activities,
activity code and amount of data in you database.
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