As a Box Reseller, CBA is excited to announce that Gartner has named Box a leader in the new Content Collaboration Platforms Magic Quadrant (MQ) report. Gartner Magic Quadrants evaluate vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and their ability to execute on that vision. Box was evaluated among 14 vendors in the market and was recognized as a leader in the strength of its vision for managing content.

The Content Collaboration Platforms MQ has evolved out of the Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) MQ, which Box has been a leader in for the past 3 years.

Gartner evaluates Content Collaboration Platforms on numerous points. In particular, Box has consistently been recognized for usability, mobile enablement, internal and external collaboration, and blending those with security, data protection and integrations.

CBA has been been a Box partner for years and glad to see the product we’ve known to be best in class is finally getting recognized by Gartner. For more information on Box please visit our website. You can also view the full article by Joely Urton on Box’ blog.

When big projects come in, everyone is ramping up on getting organized, but then it hits!  Great skills on hand, but not enough hands to cover all of the workload. That is when you need additional man-power, but not necessarily full-time staff. Sometimes your need requires full-time staff, as well, but you are too busy to find, interview and qualify candidates.

This is where finding a partner who can provide you with uniquely qualified candidates right when you need them becomes your project game changer. Perhaps you need a scheduler, or maybe a 4D/BIM expert. Maybe you need a Project Manager or Assistant Project Manager, Site Personnel, Engineers or Cost Analyst. Let CBA know because this is our specialty! CBA, as many of our customers are aware, has had a great amount of success helping our customers by having candidates available for a variety of project tasks to help them fill that “hands needed” problem.

Your specialty is completing projects on time and within budget.  We can help you get there by quickly providing pre-qualified candidates with your unique required skill set. Learn how we provided The Ruhlin Company with a key project controls resource or how we helped ensure the success of future capital projects at Greater Cincinnati Water Works.

Contact us for more information or to request staffing help

If you’re part of the Primavera Community you know what the bane of most user’s existence is. It’s, of course, Java.  Java, that once heralded Sun developed software that enabled developers to deploy code on almost any platform, has had it’s issues lately to say the least.  In Primavera software, Java is most common in the applets that run within P6 and is the cause for most of the support calls relating to stability and performance.  Users have been waiting patiently for Oracle to clear the decks of Java applets within P6.  As of version 17.7, which will be released the week of July 17, 2o17 they will have made significant inroads into delivering on that promise.

In this new release most Java applets will be replaced with HTML5 views and those few that remain can be disabled.  The new HTML5 views in 17.7 are:

The Java Applets that remain and can be “switched off” include:

There are many other refinements and new features in Primavera P6 included in the release that we’ll discuss at a later date.  But for most users the ability to cut down on your Java intake is a great reason to look at upgrading to the new release.  We’d be glad to help you evaluate your current P6 environment with our P6 Health Check and recommend how you can chart your best path forward.

In a perfect world, when awarded a project, you’d be allotted a full week of gloating, “Hoo-hahs!” and chest bumps followed by a full 30 days to submit a preliminary 90 day baseline schedule and another 60 days to submit the complete construction schedule for the full project. Of course, you’d not only have the non-partisan support and participation of the Owner for feedback along the way, you’d also have all your subs identified and ready to go. They’d all come filing into the first weekly project meeting with a fully detailed Primavera project schedule, smiles and a box of donuts to share!

Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in. In most instances, notification of the award signifies “Go time!” Immediately all parties involved begin the frenzy to get the ball rolling. It seems that everyone from the owner, to the Project Manager, to the subs (if even known) is frantically moving at warp speed to get the project off the ground. While the effort is admirable, it is not always effective. Everyone is working in their own silo and there is often not enough team collaboration from the beginning, especially as it relates to the project schedule.

Even if you have the luxury of 60 days to submit the final construction schedule for baseline approval, the real work on the schedule often begins far too late into that time frame. Everyone is not working together to plan the work accurately, to reflect the real world, intended progression of the project. The Owner will nit-pick about adherence to the schedule specs, the subs will complain that they don’t need a schedule because they have been doing this for years, and the Project Manager will want to strangle them all because he just wants to make things happen, get home in time for dinner at least once this month, and not get sued down the road!

CBA is often utilized as a third party schedule consultant to not only develop the project schedule, but to act as an objective team participant to facilitate the collaboration process among all parties involved. We know scheduling and project management. We understand scheduling specs and best practices. We have no private agenda and our advice can be trusted.

Far too often, we are brought into a project only after major issues with the project schedule have been identified. Certainly we can help in these situations, but issues like these, and the meetings surrounding them, are adversarial, ugly and definitely confection deprived.

Whether you are the Owner or the General Contractor, save yourself the agony. Contact us at the beginning of your project to be a “second set of eyes” for the development of your project schedule and then use us as a reliable resource throughout the life of the project to be sure your scheduling effort is still on track. We all know that the project schedule can be your best friend, or your worst enemy. Bring us aboard and let us make the introduction to your new BFF…we’ll even bring the donuts!

On October 15th, Java released a critical patch update to Java Runtime Environment (JRE) release – 1.7.0_45. If upgrading the JRE to this release, the Primavera P6 Web Access module of the P6 EPPM product line, which utilizes LiveConnect applets in the browser, will start generating errors.

If you are experiencing any issues

Contact Us!  We are here to help!!

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Alert Applies to:

Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management – Version 7.0 and later

Information in this document applies to any platform.

Description

On October 15th, Java released a critical patch update (CPU) which will require download and upgrade to the following Java Runtime Environment (JRE) release – 1.7.0_45.  If upgrading the JRE to this release, the P6 module (also known as Web Access) of the P6 EPPM product line, which utilizes LiveConnect applets in the browser, will start generating one or both of the following prompts:

• “Security Warning – Allow access to the following application from this web site?”

• Available Options: ‘Allow’ & ‘Do Not Allow’.

Screen Capture Example:

• “Security Warning – This web site is requesting access and control of the Java application shown above.  Allow access only if you trust the web site and know that the application is intended to run on this site.  Allow access to the following application from this web site.”

• Available Options:  ‘Yes’ & ‘No’ & ‘Help’

Screen Capture Example:

Occurrence

This will occur for every P6 EPPM release, P6 (also known as Web Access) module.

Symptoms

See the description field above for symptoms when loading applets in P6 using JRE 1.7.0_45

Workaround

To remediate these prompts for the P6 EPPM P6 module, Oracle Primavera will be releasing fixpacks (see patches section below for further patch detail).  Until fixpacks become available and are applied to your P6 EPPM release, you can use the following workaround to suppress these prompts:

• Select the ‘Allow’ Prompt or ‘Yes’ prompt for successful loading of applets.  Note:  This prompt will occur for each applet.

If you have previously select the ‘Do Not Allow’ prompt or ‘No’ prompt and the applets fail to load, refer to the following instruction to clear your java cache for allowing selection to the ‘Allow’ or ‘Yes’ prompts:  http://www.java.com/en/download/help/plugin_cache.xml

…if the Finish Date Variance is trending in a negative path, the activity may soon have negative float.

As many times as I have conducted Primavera P6 training, I am always surprised by the under use of one of the basic P6 tools.

A Scheduler painstakingly builds a schedule to reflect reality and then after the project starts, neglects to take advantage of the opportunity to be proactive in managing negative float and variance trends.  The tool is the P6 Baseline.  Sure, most Schedulers create a baseline at the onset of a project and, if following best practices, assign it to the Project Baseline to make it globally available for all users to view.  Assigning to the Project Baseline ensures that any P6 User comparing the “BL Columns and Gantt Bars” is viewing data from the original Baseline.

But how about Updated Baselines for trend analysis?

With all the focus on managing negative float within a schedule, the Finish Date variance trends sometimes get lost in the shuffle.  It is extremely important to understand that, even when an activity has positive float, if the Finish Date Variance is trending in a negative path, the activity may soon have negative float. The ability to see the negative trend and adjustment the schedule accordingly can prevent the activity from ever having negative float.

Consider the following:

Utilizing data in the table below, at what point would you recognize that the Foundation activity had a negative float issue?  CYCLE 5??

If you were capturing updated baselines each cycle and monitoring the negative Finish Date Variance trends, it is likely that you noticed a potential problem on Cycle 3. Being the proactive person you are, you take action to mitigate the negative trend activity from ever getting into negative float territory.

So what is the suggested best practice?

• Capture a baseline each time you update the schedule and assign it to the Primary Baseline
• Use variance analysis layouts to monitor trends using Activity Table columns such as BL1 Finish Date and BL1 Project Finish Date Variance.
• Consider capturing past period Finish Date Variances in User Defined Fields to watch for trends occurring over multiple Update cycles.
• Design P6 Report Writer reports to use color coded conditionally formatted cells to highlight negative float/negative finish date trends as red and positive float/negative finish date trends as yellow.
• Take action on the scenario where positive float activities have multiple Update Cycles with negative Finish Date Variances.

The risk of data loss to sources outside of the company’s walls is a huge concern to executives and IT professionals alike.  Controlling security is a full time job in and of itself.  Firewalls, spam filters, open ports, closed ports so many things to be concerned with. Elevate your career to new heights with Private Jet Pilot Jobs.

But what about documents that must be shared with customers and partners outside of your corporate walls?   What about the burden of large confidential documents being sent via unsecured email as attachments – not only from an upload/download and storage perspective, but what about from a security perspective?!

Good news!! Now you can safely share documents and save your IT team from pulling their hair out because they can’t keep up with all of the demands put on them.  CBA, Inc. offers a secure, cloud based solution to share and collaborate on documents internally or externally.  Concerned about attachment send/receive limits??  No worries there either – they are sent as a link to the document rather than sending an actual document.  How cool is that?  Oh, and with an enterprise package, the sky’s the limit for storage space!! For more cloud-based solutions that meet your budget, you can take a look at other options such as EDR;.

Best of all, you can control who sees what, manage who opens what and you can integrate it with other applications – out of the BOX!!

Our partner company is growing extremely fast and their solution is being used by some pretty impressive companies on an enterprise and global level. Additionally impressive is that the price points make it attractive and accessible to all size organizations!

Just ask us!  We are a “Choice Re-seller” Partner of  BOX and we have already been doing installations for our customers who recognize a great thing when we show it to them!!

Call me and I can show you how to give your executives and IT professionals a good night’s sleep by protecting your documents while improving corporate collaboration – safely!

Donna McLean
Account Executive
CBA, Inc.
dmclean@cbainc.com
567-202-9280