What's coming in CMap summer 2020?

The new CMap Summer 2020 release is rapidly approaching, so we thought we'd give you a quick overview of what's coming your way...

The theme of CMap Summer 2020 is Communication & Collaboration, featuring functionality designed to help you work effectively together no matter whether your team members are in the office or working remotely.

Over the coming weeks, we'll go in-depth in each functional area with movies and guides to help you prepare for launch so you can take full advantage of the new functionality.

In the meantime, here's a quick overview of what CMap Summer 2020 has in store for you!

New CMap navigation bar design + In-App announcements tool

When CMap Summer 2020 is released, the first thing you'll notice is that we've updated the interface with a new, fresh navigation bar.

The idea with this is to (a) better organise your CMap modules to ease navigation and (b) take up less room on the screen so there's more room for your CMap content and functionality.

The new Navigation Bar will also include a nice In-App Announcements tool, so we can keep you and your users informed of the latest CMap updates and also provide links to tutorials and guides on how to get the best out of CMap.

Microsoft Teams integration phase 1

CMap Summer 2020 includes both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of our Microsoft Teams integration.

Phase 1 will enable you to automatically create Teams & Channels in MS Teams directly from your projects in CMap.

You'll set how you want to structure things in Teams (Team per Project or Team per Client containing Project Channels) and then CMap will create them automatically either when you create a new project or later with a single click whenever you like.

At any point, you'll be able to jump directly into the relevant Team/Channel directly from the Project Details page in CMap.

Microsoft Teams Integration Phase 2

Phase 2 of our MS Teams integration is all about Documents.

This integration combines the power of the CMap Documents module with the Files area inside your Teams Channels (which is essentially SharePoint).

Here's what you'll be able to do:

• When you create/upload documents in CMap Documents, they'll actually be stored in Teams
• Similarly, if you upload a document into a project Channel in Teams, it will automatically appear in the Documents area of your CMap project
• You can open and live-edit documents inside CMap Documents and it will be exactly the same as editing them in Teams
• You and your colleagues can work on documents either via CMap Documents or via Teams and it all works seamlessly
• You can set up Folder Templates in CMap and link them to your Project Types. When you create a new Channel from CMap, your folders will be created automatically based on the project's Project Type
• You can use CMap's Create New Document functionality to create documents based on your own templates and auto-insert CMap data directly into them e.g. Client Name, Fee Estimator Costing Table. Again, these documents will be stored and available automatically in Teams

We think the combination of the CMap Documents module with Microsoft Teams is a massive step forward for creating, managing and collaborating on your project documents. Exciting!

A huge upgrade to CMap Activities

We're really excited for this one!

We'll get into a lot more detail in upcoming articles & movies, but suffice to say you're going to be able to manage all of your project tasks (or any other process tasks) inside CMap and assign those to your team members, no matter whether they're in the office or working remotely.

You'll be able to create Activity Templates for all sorts of things, from project task lists, to new staff on-boarding tasks and even debt chasing!

The Activities interface is being completely re-worked and you'll be able to view activities in a Grid View, a Gantt View and even a Calendar View and your team members will have a great new dashboard box.

We're including a variety tools, dashboards and automated emails for managing your activities efficiently, and we think this new functionality will really help you to manage project delivery no matter where your team members are located.

CMap for Outlook - official launch

We've had CMap for Outlook in beta for absolutely ages. Well, the good news is it's now going to be released for everyone!

If you've not seen CMap for Outlook, check out the link below.

Read more about CMap for Outlook

Push Dashboards from Admin

You can already set up dashboards in CMap for your security groups, so you can have one dashboard for Project Workers and a completely different dashboard for your Directors.

However, right now these dashboards are only applied when a CMap user account is first created. You can't push them out to people later on and, if you update the dashboard, you can't push those updates out, either.

Well, from Summer 2020 you can!

We're also including a security option so you can set whether your users can edit their own dashboards or not.

Dashboard Logo Box

Ever fancied having your company logo on the CMap dashboard? Well, with this box that's exactly what you'll be able to do (and you'll be able to push it out to everybody using the Push Dashboards feature described above!)

Auto-Update Project Start & End Dates

All CMap projects have a Start and End Date, and these dates influence various things in CMap, from forecast reporting to the date range of tools like Revenue Scheduling.

However, you can get more granular about dates elsewhere in your projects (e.g. setting Stage Dates) but so far these settings haven't automatically updated the main project Start and End Dates.

Well, now they will.

Preparing for Launch

CMap Summer 2020 will be available in beta from the end of June 2020 and will go live for all users mid-July 2020.

Over the coming weeks, we'll be sharing lots of movies and guides so you can delve into how the new functionality will work and plan how you're going to take full advantage of it in your company.

What's more, our Customer Success team will be on hand to provide any help you might need as you're figuring things out.

In the meantime, if you have any questions don't hesitate to get in touch!

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