Release notes for Rational Focal Point, Version 6.5

This document contains information about new features, system requirements, installation, and known issues about IBM® Rational® Focal Point™, Version 6.5. It also provides information about contacting IBM Rational Software Support.

Contents

Description

Rational Focal Point is a comprehensive portfolio planning solution for market driven teams that focuses on making collaborative, objective decisions in order to deliver market, customer, and business value. Teams can use Rational Focal Point to identify priorities, and then deliver products and projects with the highest business and customer value. Rational Focal Point reduces the chaos of managing information in emails, documents and spreadsheets by providing a collaborative environment for centralizing requirements, products and project data. You can ensure that the right balance is maintained between resources, budgets, time to market, and business value.

System requirements

For a list of hardware and software requirements, see System requirements in the information center.

Installing Rational Focal Point, Version 6.5

For installation instructions, see Installing and upgrading Rational Focal Point in the information center.

New features and enhancements

This release of Rational Focal Point includes the following new features and enhancements:
  • Charts in statistics: You can display charts in attribute statistics and can choose to view the statistics charts in the home page.
  • Rational Focal Point and Collaborative Lifecycle Management: Because Rational Focal Point supports the OSLC change management specification, you can integrate Rational Focal Point with a Collaborative Lifecycle Management system. You can configure Rational Focal Point to work with Open Services Lifecycle Collaboration - Change Management (OSLC-CM) providers.
  • Dynamic tables: You can display elements in a dynamic table where you can edit most attributes, edit multiple attributes simultaneously, display complex attributes, allow nested sorting, and reorder columns.
  • Embedded Rational Publishing Engine for report generation: You can generate IBM Rational Publishing Engine reports in Rational Focal Point without configuring a separate Rational Publishing Engine server. You must have a Rational Publishing Engine license to use this feature.
  • Time grid enhancements: You can now aggregate time grids into one new time grid. You can display an overview in the attribute list and on the home page. You can display time grid data in a Gantt chart. Also, the business rules for time grids are enhanced.
  • Investment analysis of time grid attributes: In the new investment analysis mode, you can create models of estimated financial value and risk. You can configure a time grid attribute to contain cost and benefit estimates that are specified as random variables that are composed of high, likely, and low estimates. A Random Variable Calculator performs calculations that are based on random variables to produce high, likely, and low estimates. Those random variables also serve as documentation for the source of the estimates.
  • Thresholds: You can define thresholds that can be used in visualization chart and gantt charts by entering a threshold value in a criterion or by selecting a threshold supplier in a gantt histogram. The threshold values are plotted as a line against the values in visualization chart and gantt histogram.
  • Views in view definitions: You can use a view to create view rules when you define a view or a filter. You can create a view to create view rules for link, linklist, and incoming link attributes.
  • Workspace templates: Rational Focal Point now includes three pre-configured workspace templates: IT portfolio management, product management, and product portfolio management. You can use these workspaces as a starting point to manage products, IT portfolios, and product portfolios and customize them according to your requirements.
IBM Rational Focal Point Version 6.5 is translated in the following languages: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Czech.

Known problems

Known problems are documented in the form of individual technotes in the Support Knowledge Base at http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/focalpoint/support/. As problems are discovered and resolved, the knowledge base is updated and maintained with new information. By searching the knowledge base, you can quickly find workarounds or solutions to problems.

The following links run customized queries of the live Support Knowledge Base:

Contacting IBM Rational Software Support

IBM Rational Software Support provides you with technical assistance.

For contact information and guidelines or reference materials that you need when you require support, read the IBM Software Support Handbook at http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/guides/handbook.html.

For FAQs, lists of known problems and fixes, and other support information, visit the product support page for Rational Focal Point Software at http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/focalpoint/support/.

For product news, events, and other information, visit the product home page for Rational Focal Point Software at http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/focalpoint/index.html.

Before you contact IBM Rational Software Support, gather the background information that you need to describe your problem. When describing a problem to an IBM software support specialist, be as specific as possible and include all relevant background information so that the specialist can help you solve the problem efficiently. To save time, know the answers to these questions:

Notices

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