Release Notes - 2021. 03. 09.

      7 minutes
  Peter Volf / Lead Engineer
  Tags • CO2 emission estimation • Assignment planner • Competence table report

The focus of this development iteration was tagging, airport information and CO2 calculation, a new Assignment Planner component, and last but not least, our first report.

Major new features

Tags

Tags consist of a category and a value. Unlike in legacy Horizon Planner, both category and value are mandatory properties of tags to avoid certain types of user error. Tags, similarly to capabilities and capability groups are global, not organization-specific.

Tag creation and editing happens on Tags view, which requires “Human Resources” or “Project Planner” UI permissions. Tags view consists of three components. The leftmost component is a list of all tag categories in the database. When a tag category is selected, the second component shows all tags that belong to the selected category. When a tag is selected in the second component, the third component on the right side shows a collapsible card for each taggable entity type (currently activity, project, and resource), with the list of tagged entities inside. Clicking on the “+” icon in the bottom right corner of these cards opens a dialog where a set of entities can be selected and tagged with the selected tag in one go.

Resources view was extended with a Tags card for resources, this is where tags can be added to or removed from resources. Project and activity tags can be added and removed on Timeline view in the project and activity editors.

Furthermore, tags are shown in the Inspector for activities, projects, and resources.

Airports and CO2 emission estimation

Resources and activities can have an airport (projects can not). Airports can be set during entity creation, and can later be modified in the corresponding editor dialog.

Airport editing is supported by auto-completion for all airports that have an IATA code. At this time, it is not possible to use airports that do not have an IATA code, but it can be implemented in the future if requested. Airports are primarily used by Horizon Planner for CO2 emission estimation of assignments.

Legacy Horizon Planner relied on 3rd party services to estimate the CO2 emission of assignments. After a thorough examination of the results calculated by other services, we decided to implement our own emission estimator for Horizon Planner. Our initial goal was to devise a calculation method that very closely approximates 3rd party services, providing continuity for legacy Horizon Planner customers while also allowing them to terminate such additional service subscriptions when they migrate to the new system.

The future benefit of this change is that not only will we be able to improve the accuracy of estimates over time, it will also give us the flexibility to implement even customer-specific, very accurate solutions for any transport type if required.

Assignment Planner

In the long term, Assignment Planner is intended to be the replacement for both “Assignments views” of legacy Horizon Planner. It is accessible from the “…” menu of activities in Timeline view’s Gantt chart, through the “Plan Assignments” action.

Assignment Planner consists of a chart and a table of resources. The left sidebar of the chart shows all roles of the activity for which the Assignment Planner was opened. Planned assignments for roles can be added to the plan by right-clicking on the chart area, and they can be deleted from the right-click context menu of assignments. Planned assignments are created without resources - resources can be assigned using drag and drop from the table below, but only if the dragged resource has all the capabilities that are required by the assignment’s role. Planned assignments can be resized and moved by dragging.

The table below the chart lists all resources that can be assigned to at least one of the roles in the chart. Besides resource names, the table shows all capabilities (expiring and expired capabilities are highlighted) and tags of each resource. The airport column shows the resource’s airport (if any). The CO2 estimate column shows the estimated emission cost (in grams of CO2) of the assignment of the corresponding resource to the activity. Emission estimates will be empty if the activity or the resource does not have an airport (0 is shown if the resource and the activity have the same airport). The table can be sorted by name, airport, or CO2.

Unlike in Timeline view’s main chart, assignments planned in Assignment Planner are not immediately added to the database, allowing free planning. They are added only when the dialog is closed using the “Submit” button in the bottom right corner of the dialog.

Reports

Now it is possible to create Excel reports in Horizon Planner. Reports can be accessed on Reports view, which requires the “Reports” UI permission. In contrast to legacy Horizon Planner, reports have a well defined structure, and only require a few input parameters from the user. This means they will not be as customizable by the user, but will be much easier to use.

The first report in the system is the “Competence Table”. It is shown on Reports view in a card that briefly explains what the report does. Clicking the card will open a dialog where the parameters of the report can be set. The first parameter of this report is the organization for which the report is generated. By default the user’s currently selected organization is used, but it is possible to generate a report for a different organization as well (if the user has access to it). As the second parameter, the user can select multiple capabilities. The report will show all resources in the organization with at least one of the selected capabilities, and will include contact data and validity time for each capability (exactly the same way legacy Horizon Planner did in “Resources Overview” report). When the user clicks the “Download” button of the dialog, the Excel report will be downloaded.

Minor features, bug fixes, ongoing issues