Company-Wide Plan Visibility

Visibility

Scorecards have always offered company-wide visibility, but now you can make company-visible plans too!  Instead of manually giving everyone view access to a plan, just set the Default Visibility from "Confidential" to "Company-Wide" and every PlanBase user at your company will be able to see it!.

New visibility icons appear in the upper-right of every Plan (and Scorecard) page, reminding you of who can see your data.

Company-Internal:    Confidential:

Reporting

Plan Review View now provides a show cumulative link in the gray top navigation which displays QTD and YTD information for scorecard metrics, just like on the Process Review screen.  During a review, when you ask, "I see how we're doing this month, but how are we doing for the quarter/year?" the answer is a single click away!

The Entities view screen now shows just the top 2 levels of entities by default.  The Display Depth drop down makes this screen show as many levels as you like.  Like other screens with a single drop down, pressing the up and down keys scrolls the drop-down and the screen refreshes automatically.

Security

For improved security, you can now monitor your active sessions and close any that you may have left open by accident.  From the My Account screen, click on the blue Active Sessions link in the gray top-bar navigation.  This is a great way to clean up an old "keep me signed in" session you may have forgotten about, even (or especially) if you opened that session on a phone or computer you no longer have access to.  If you used the same password on your PlanBase account as another account that was hacked, this screen also provides a great way to check that no unauthorized sessions have been started, or close any that have!

Release 2014-06-22: Scorecard Permissions

You are now in full control of who can view and edit each entity!

Scorecard Permissions protect against accidental editing and can protect against unauthorized viewing of metric details and tactics. The structure of the entities, functions, and processes are still always visible to everyone, but all metric data, graphs, Pareto charts, and Scorecard-only tactics can be hidden.
You can restrict view access on the top-level entity (and all those below), or leave the upper levels visible company-wide and only limit access to the lower-level entities.

PlanBase Servers Not Affected by Heartbleed Bug

PlanBase investigated the impact of the Heartbleed vulnerability and determined that our servers were not affected at any time. If you use a unique password for your PlanBase account, then no action is required. If you used the same password on any other sites, please change it now.
Please continue to follow good password practices: Use a unique, un-guessable password for each account, store it securely, and never share it with others. PlanBase will never ask for your password for any reason.

Release 2012-11-03: Longer Sessions

• A new Keep me logged in checkbox on the Login page allows you to stay logged in on a trusted device for up to 4 months! Make sure to update your links to point to Main.act (with a capital "M") and you may never see the login screen again! Companies may choose to disallow longer sessions, or decrease the maximum session length.
• The link in the Review Overdue email now goes directly to the My Reviews page where you may already be logged in, thus eliminating the final speed-bump for the most effortless reviews possible.
• PlanBase does not advertise to its clients, or share client information with advertisers. We have always endeavored to keep email to a minimum, consolidating all status updates into the maximum of one email per day. But for users who do not want any email, they can now turn off their email by editing their account. There is no way to turn off the security notification when someone changes your account password, or to prevent yourself from getting a password-reset email.
• Any modification to a user's account now takes effect on their very next click. They do not have to log out and log back in again, though the modified user can refresh their screen (by pressing the F5 key) to ensure they are viewing the latest navigation options available to them.
• Easier date navigation: move backwards and forwards through your history by clicking the tiny blue left and right carets next to the Review Month drop-down in the left-hand navigation.

Easier Password Reset

• Users can now reset their own passwords if they lose them, so long as they have set up a secret question for their account. A new column on the Users screen shows super-users who has and has not set up their secret question.
• The Plan Status screen can show the email address of every owner of every item displayed on that screen. Just click the little blue, show their email addresses link next to the Email link below the Report Settings box.
• A new Reset button on the Users screen allows super-users to unlock a user's account and email them a new randomly-generated password with just two clicks; one on the Reset button next to the person's name and one on the "Are you sure?" dialog that pops up to confirm the email address.
• The Add User screen has been streamlined so that a super-user can supply an email address, check off the necessary permissions, and the rest of the screen fills itself out. When the super-user clicks Submit, the system now emails the new user the necessary login information.
• The system provides a randomly-generated temporary-password suggestion when a super-user changes someone else's password or adds a new user.
• A new Increase User Limits screen allows the application manager to increase their limits without picking up the phone or typing an email.
• If you have not changed your password since February 27th, you will be forced to change it the next time you log into the system. This manual password change is the only way to activate the security benefits of the 2011-02-28: Pareto Analysis release.

Release 2011-02-28: Pareto Analysis

Scorecard Improvements

• Added an optional Pareto analysis and Variance analysis to each process and metric review (on the Process Review screen).
• "Tactic Assigned" and "Review Overdue" messages are now generated for process improvements and corrective actions as well as tactics.
• Now everyone has access to the Load Metric screen (formerly only the Application Manager had access).  It works like the Batch Data Load screen except it only loads one metric at a time and it's designed to be used by cutting and pasting data directly from your spreadsheet into the system.  This makes it even easier for each metric reporter to enter their own data (and historical data too).  Look for the little blue load link next to your favorite (non-batch-loaded) metrics on the Business Unit screen.

Usability Improvements

• Made Metric Subsets stickier - now editing a metric or updating a review leaves you in the subset you were in.  Editing a process or function or clicking something in the left-hand navigation still pops you out of the subset.
• The subset name now appears at very top of the screen, making it more obvious and mirroring the way the Function View works.
• Changed name of "Scorecards" and "Plans" section in left-hand navigation to "My Scorecards" and "My Plans" for clarity.
• (Brief) message on each user's home page announces the new release.

Security Improvements

• We now store each password using multiple rounds of SHA-512 hashing with unique salt for each user, which is currently state-of-the art for making passwords "unrecoverable."
• This increases the maximum password length.  All alphabets of the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) are still supported in both the password and user ID (and every other field in the system).
• We have also improved our password requirements (to encourage people to make better passwords), by adding several popular passwords to the list of reserved words and by prohibiting 4 or more of the same character in a row (e.g. 1111, AaAa, etc.).
• To take advantage of the new storage you must change your password.
• Ninety days after this release, anyone who hasn't changed their password yet will be forced to change it.
• It is still each user's responsibility to use a unique password for every account, to make each password strong, unguessable, compliant with their organization's security guidelines, and to keep each password secret, never sharing it or their account with others for any reason.
• PlanBase is continually looking for ways to improve security, not just password security.  PlanBase encourages people to use good passwords by having password requirements, by making helpful suggestions, and by storing passwords securely.  But even PlanBase cannot protect you against a hacker outright guessing your password (on the first try), or stealing a reused password from another site and using it to access this one.  Only you can choose a unique, unguessable password for each of your accounts and store them securely.  Please do your part to keep your account, your company, and PlanBase applications secure.

Release 2010-12-13: Hoshin/Scorecard Integration

In the works for months, this is a major release with a number of important enhancements.

Tactic Improvements

• Improved visual management of tactics, process improvements, and corrective actions.  Months are now color coded based on progress.  Question-marks, dashes, and colorful symbols show the current status or indicate overdue reviews.
• Tactics can now be shared between strategies in Hoshin plans and processes in scorecards.
• Tactic Assigned and Review Overdue messages now apply to process improvements and corrective actions as well as tactics.
• Monthly reviews for tactics.  All your previous data is saved and can be reviewed monthly.
• The Edit Tactic screen has been completely redesigned to require fewer keystrokes to enter or edit tactics.  Related tactics can be added with a single click.
• The Tactic Complete logic mirrors the Strategy Complete logic, but does not require manager approval.
• Tactics (including process improvements and corrective actions) are now visible until they are complete.

Other Improvements

• Objectives and strategies can now be linked to your entities and functions in Scorecard.  This allows you to jump between your related plans and scorecards with a single click.
• You can still add text "tags" to objectives and strategies, then filter by those tags on the Plan Status screen.
• Users of Hoshin and Scorecard can set a lowest-level strategy to improve a process, allowing you to share tactics and metrics with that process by picking them from a list.  This eliminates time and effort when developing and reviewing plans.
• The Process Review screen functions like a dynamic A3 chart, showing all process improvement tactics and metric corrective action tactics together, even if some of those tactics were originally entered in Hoshin and others in Scorecard.  The new display includes color-colored months, showing the progress of process improvement and corrective action tactics over time.
• Similarly, the Implementation Review screen has been improved to color-code each month of tactic progress.
• Hoshin-only users can now see the Entity and Function screens (minus any targets or actuals).
• The Responsibilities screens for Hoshin and Scorecard have been combined.
• A new Show Me feature adds a collection of short e-learning modules for features of the Hoshin and Scorecard applications.
• The left-hand navigation pages for Hoshin and Scorecard have been combined.  Only the bottom section that shows your plans or scorecards now changes with respect to which product you are viewing.  The link to switch between views is now at the top of that section.
• Mail is addressed differently to make it more likely for the Application Manager to receive returned mail or any replies to application-generated mail.

New Release of PlanBase Hoshin provides Monthly Reviews, Reporting, and Security Enhancements

Monthly Reviews

PlanBase Hoshin now supports monthly reviews as well as quarterly. It takes just 3 clicks to change any existing plan from a quarterly review schedule to a monthly one. You don't have to make up your mind: you can change it from monthly to quarterly and back again as often as you like without loosing any data!

Dashboarding

A reporting dashboard has been added to the Plan Status screen that allows you to filter by status, depth, or function: "Show me what's red!" It is also possible to email all the owners of the strategies in a plan or just the owners that show up in any slice of data you select on this screen.

Language Support

Characters used in most of the world's writing systems are now supported along with the Euro symbol (€). This means you can enter data into the system in Arabic, Armenian, Balinese, Bengali, Bopomofo, Braille, Buginese, Buhid, Cherokee, CJK Unified, Coptic, Cyrillic, Devanagari, English, Ethiopic, Georgian, Glagolitic, Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Han, Hangul Jamo, Hanunoo, Hebrew, Hiragana, Kanbun, Kannada, Katakana, Khmer, Lao, Limbu, Malayalam, Mongolian, Myanmar, NKo, New Tai Lue, Ogham, Oriya, Phags-pa, Runic, Sinhala, Syloti Nagri, Syriac, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tai Le, Tamil, Telugu, Thaana, Thai, Tibetan, Tifinagh, and Yi (partial list).

Security

At PlanBase we are always striving to keep our clients' data as secure as possible. Several new security enhancements were rolled out with this release:

• Accounts are now locked after 13 months of inactivity (a shorter period is available upon request).


• Password expiration is now available upon request.


• PlanBase Hoshin has always picked the strongest encryption a browser/client would support, but now it actually refuses to connect using outdated encryption schemes. Any modern browser and operating system which is still supported by its vendor should continue to work just fine (Windows® 2000 must have all the latest patches applied).

Streamlined Experience

We have worked very hard to make this version even easier to learn and to allow advanced users to perform their work even faster with fewer clicks and less reading. All the new functionality has been added to the online help system which we also make available to our clients as a printed manual.

Find Out More!

If you are interested in learning more about PlanBase Hoshin, please watch our audio/video PlanBase Hoshin Demonstration. You can also Contact Us for more information or to evaluate PlanBase Hoshin for use in your organization.

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