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Updates to the New Costpoint Release Methodology for On-Premises Customers

This section provides the latest updates to the new Costpoint Release Methodology for On-Premises customers originally announced with the release of Costpoint 8.2 in June of 2023. The new release methodology allows the Costpoint team to deliver new features faster, while ensuring a higher level of quality and stability.

As a reminder with the launch of Costpoint 8.2 in June of 2023, Deltek has moved to a Quarterly Release methodology. Quarterly Releases (QRs) will include new features, defect fixes, and regulatory updates. Deltek will continue to provide monthly Maintenance Releases (MRs), except for months when a QR is provided, which will include fixes for high severity defects and regulatory updates. Deltek will provide a separate release for the Calendar Year End (CYE) updates.

Costpoint 8.2 is referred to as Deltek's Innovation Release and will adhere to the following Product Lifecycle Phases schedule (see Product Lifecycle Phase Descriptions ). With the release of each Quarterly Release, the previous Quarterly Releases will move into Maintenance Support. Quarterly Releases will remain in Maintenance Release for nine months beyond their release date. After this nine-month period, they will move into Sustaining Support.

Costpoint 8.1 is referred to as Deltek's Long-Term Support release and moved into Maintenance Support (see Support Lifecycle: Deltek Costpoint Product Family) on June 1^st 2023 and will remain in Maintenance Support thru April 1^st 2026. As a reminder, in Maintenance Support, Costpoint 8.1 will not receive any new features while continuing to receive new tax, legal, and regulatory updates and hot fixes for severity 1 issues.

Costpoint 8.2 customers should apply, at a minimum, two QRs each calendar year. This allows for customers to skip a QR when planning their annual upgrade schedule. Following this upgrade schedule ensures customers can request individual hot fixes for critical defects.

This information is also available in KB Article 114963.

Update W-4 Information of Iowa Employees for 2024 Filing

Note: This action is required if you have Iowa employees.

Iowa revised the IA W-4 (Employee Withholding Allowance Certificate), resulting in a change to the way an employee's Iowa withholding credit information is determined. Rather than requesting the number of allowances an employee would like to claim, the Iowa W-4 now requests a dollar amount.

To accommodate the employee setup, Costpoint MR 8.1.28 and MR 8.2.8 were updated as follows:

A new Credit Amount field has been added to the Manage Employee Taxes screen and the Taxes subtask on the Manage Employee Information screen, allowing payroll administrators to enter the Total Allowance amount from Line 6 of the IA-W4.
A new Credit Amount field has been added to the Costpoint Employee Self Service (ESS) State Withholding screen, allowing employees to enter the total allowance amount that they would like to claim.

Upon upgrading to Costpoint MR 8.1.28, MR 8.2.8, or a higher version, Costpoint Payroll customers with Iowa employees should do the following:

Costpoint Employee Self Service (ESS) customers:
- Update the Web Address or Notes field on the Configure State Tax Settings screen with a link to the latest IA W-4.
- Instruct your Iowa employees to review their Iowa W-4 Credit Amount on the State Withholding screen and update as needed using the following steps:
  1. Go to People > Employee Self Service > Payroll and Benefits > State Withholding.
  2. Populate the Credit Amount with the total allowance amount from line 6 of your 2024 IA W-4.
  3. Click Save.
Costpoint customers not using Costpoint ESS:
- Instruct your Iowa employees to file an updated W-4 using the 2024 IA W-4 form.
- Use the completed IA W-4 form to update the employee's tax setup on the Manage Employee Taxes screen or the Taxes subtask on the Manage Employee Information screen.

The Iowa state withholding computation will be updated in Costpoint MR 8.1.29 and MR 8.2.9 so that an employee's credit amount will be based on the Credit Amount field on the Manage Employee Taxes screen, rather than the Number of Credits field. If you upgrade to one of those versions and an Iowa employee has not yet updated their Iowa W-4 information, their credit amount will be 0.00 when payroll is computed and may result in a higher withholding amount than expected.

Costpoint MR Installer Changes

Costpoint versions 8.1.26 and 8.2.5 have made some changes to the Costpoint MR installers. Specifically, we have removed the JDK and WebLogic Stack Patch bundle features from the list of available deployment options. When you go into the installer UI, you will no longer see options to deploy the WebLogic CPU or the JDK Updates. Specifically, this means the MR Secondary Tier option will be removed, so the MR will no longer need to be run on WebLogic Nodes.

Clients will download the DeltekCostpointWebLogic_SPB_JDK_xxxxxx.exe from DSM and execute on both the Admin Server (Primary Tier) and all Nodes (Secondary Tier) to get the latest JDK and WebLogic Stack Patch Bundles. The same DeltekCostpointWebLogic_SPB_JDK_xxxxxx.exe will work for both Costpoint 8.1 and 8.2, and in both cases it will use the DeltekCostpoint82RequirementsINI.exe.

Field Name	Action
JDK	Select this feature to install the latest JDK patch. If you already installed the latest JDK, this feature is cleared by default.
WebLogic Stack Patch Bundle	Select this feature to install the latest WebLogic security patches and updates.

As always, we encourage you to always review the installation / upgrade documentation before performing any deployments, as these are always subject to modifications as we improve the process for our customers.

Changes in Costpoint Release Notes

Costpoint has recently introduced the Pick and Choose functionality for its on-premises customers. This feature allows customers to selectively apply updates or fixes to a single application or several related applications. See KB Article 115418 for more information.

To support this new functionality and provide comprehensive information in releases, the new Costpoint Release Notes now include the following sections:

Cumulative Release Notes: This section includes information about all maintenance releases (MRs), from the initial release up to the present release.
Current Maintenance Release: This section includes information about the latest release.
Next Maintenance or Quarterly Release: This section includes information about the upcoming release.
Previous Maintenance Releases: This section includes the links to the different release notes per maintenance release.

The release notes will include information on the deployed and dependent files associated with a Costpoint update, which will guide you in applying the software changes. Click the following to access the release notes:

The minimum MR version required for deploying individual Pick and Choose hot fixes is MR 8.1.22 for Costpoint 8.1 and MR 8.2.8 for Costpoint 8.2. For more information on downloading and installing the hot fixes, refer to the following documents:

Cognos Analytics with Watson 11.2.4 is Now Available in Costpoint Business Intelligence

Included in Costpoint Business Intelligence 8.1.18 is the latest version of IBM Cognos Analytics 11.2.4. All Costpoint BI 8.1 maintenance releases (MR) from this point forward will be compatible with this new Cognos version.

Now called IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson, version 11.2.4 includes many exciting enhancements including a new User Interface. To learn more about the most important enhancements in Cognos Analytics, see this Quick Reference Guide. Your BI users can also check out how to navigate the new user interface in this video.

To view a more comprehensive list of enhancements, click here to see the IBM "New and Changed Features" listing.

To see the installation guides, click the links below:

While it is not required that you upgrade your Cognos Environment right away, the current version Cognos Analytics 11.1.7 will be going to sustaining support on April 30, 2024, so it is recommended that you upgrade by that date.

Project Role Security Replaces Project Manager Security in Costpoint Business Intelligence

Access to secure project data has been greatly enhanced by Project Roles Security, which expands access to other roles beyond the Project Manager. If the necessary configurations are set, any project role, including project managers, can view project data at their level and in the lower project levels.

In Costpoint Business Intelligence 8.2.9, Project Role Security replaces Project Manager (PM) Security. PM Security is no longer supported and has been removed.

If you use Project Manager Security and will upgrade to version 8.2.9, Project Role Security will be applied seamlessly without performing extra steps. The system will follow the BI settings you had before the upgrade and transfer users in CER__PM_MGR to the CER__ROLE_SEC user group. In addition, you can extend role security to other project roles.

Important : If you have users in the CER__PM_MGR user group but have disabled Project Role Security before upgrading to 8.2.9, the users will be transferred to the CER__ROLE_SEC user group after the upgrade and Project Roles Security will be automatically turned on. It is important that your BI administrator selects No in the Use Project Roles Security field on the Manage BI Settings screen after the upgrade if needed. The Manage BI Settings screen is located in Report & Analytics » BI Controls .

For more details in setting up Project Role Security, see the Project Roles Security Setup section in Deltek Costpoint Business Intelligence 8.2.9 Post Installation and Configuration Guide for On-premises Users. Additional information is also available in KB article #115682 .

This change requires patches 11322 and 11323.

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