We're proud to announce Cora Release 25.2, continuing our quarterly cadence of innovation in 2025. This release includes 100+ enhancements focused on elevating the scheduling experience, strengthening project controls, and advancing project portfolio management capabilities. Each enhancement reflects our commitment to empowering PMOs and project leaders with sophisticated tools that drive operational excellence. 

1. Usability: Modern Scheduling Excellence 

Cora is taking a significant step forward in establishing the industry's most intuitive scheduling experience. Release 25.2 represents a milestone in our ongoing mission to deliver a modern, simplified scheduling interface that project teams actively want to use for planning their most complex initiatives. 

Building on the powerful scheduling capabilities already in Cora, we're enhancing the visual clarity and user experience of our Gantt interface. Key enhancements include: 

• Full Screen Mode: Maximize your scheduling workspace for complex project planning 
• Maintain Row Task Selection: Improved task selection persistence for efficient multi-task operations 
• Goto Capabilities: Quickly navigate to specific tasks within large schedules 
• Simplified Gantt Column Configuration: Streamline your view with easier column management 
• Streamlined Register Use: Enhanced integration between registers and scheduling views 

These improvements make schedule creation, maintenance, and analysis more efficient while reducing the learning curve for new team members. 

Our commitment to scheduling excellence extends beyond this release—we'll continue refining and expanding these capabilities throughout 2025, establishing Cora as the definitive choice for organizations managing sophisticated project portfolios. 

2. Schedule Analysis: Intelligence-Driven Project Insights

For organizations managing complex project portfolios, schedule analysis represents a critical capability gap. Even moderately sized schedules with 100+ activities can become challenging to analyze manually. Release 25.2 introduces powerful analytical tools that provide consistent quality assessment without relying solely on individual expertise. 

Critical Path Excellence 

We're addressing fundamental challenges project managers face in schedule analysis: 

• True Critical Path Methodology: Moving beyond simple critical task identification to implement genuine critical path analysis aligned with industry standards 
• Comprehensive Slack Analysis: Full visibility into free slack and total slack calculations, providing confidence in schedule flexibility and risk assessment 
• Enhanced Schedule Logic: Improved algorithms for identifying true schedule drivers, considering all possible influences on task start dates 

Out of Sequence Logic Detection 

Built-in Schedule Intelligence now automatically identifies and alerts users to out-of-sequence activities—tasks scheduled to start or finish before their predecessors based on dependency relationships. This proactive detection helps maintain schedule integrity and prevents cascading delays. 

Driving Task Intelligence 

This enhancement strengthens the logic used to identify driving tasks, analyzing all possible influences on a task's start date. Project managers gain accurate visibility into which activities truly drive project timelines, enabling focused management attention where it matters most. 

These analytical improvements establish a foundation for future earned value integration while immediately delivering value through more reliable schedule assessment and risk identification. 

3. Schedule Integration: Seamless Connectivity Across Platforms 

Modern project organizations require fluid data exchange between scheduling platforms. Release 25.2 delivers enhanced integration capabilities with two key improvements: 

Enhanced Microsoft Project Import 

• Custom Field Mapping: Import and map Microsoft Project custom fields, including Enterprise Custom Fields, directly to Cora system task fields 
• Task Type Recognition: Full support for Microsoft Project task types, maintaining scheduling logic during import 

Excel Export Capabilities 

• Direct Schedule Export: Export project schedules to Excel for stakeholder review and annotation 
• Copy-Paste Integration: Copy schedule data directly from the inline Gantt view into Excel documents 

These integration enhancements streamline the flow of information between systems, eliminating the need for additional manual manipulation. 

4. Project Controls: Advanced Performance Management  

Release 25.2 introduces three powerful enhancements to project controls, providing executive teams and project managers with sophisticated tools for performance monitoring and variance analysis. 

Enhanced EVM Widget 

The new EVM widget transforms complex earned value data into actionable insights through visual S-curve charts and detailed metric grids. Project controllers can instantly track PV, EV, and AC metrics, providing at-a-glance project health assessment for faster, more informed decision-making. 

EAC Analysis Improvements 

Estimate at Completion analysis now includes advanced filtering capabilities by project, enabling portfolio managers to drill down into specific project performance trends and forecast accuracy across their entire portfolio. 

Intelligent Variance Analysis 

Moving beyond simple threshold monitoring, our variance analysis now intelligently flags issues requiring explanation - even when projects appear on track overall. The system identifies significant variances at component levels that might otherwise go unnoticed: 

• Configurable Rules Engine: Define custom variance thresholds (e.g., flag when costs vary by more than 6%) 
• Proactive Issue Detection: Surface hidden problems before they impact overall project performance 
• Explanation Tracking: Document variance explanations for audit trails and lessons learned 

5. SPM Enhancements: Strategic Portfolio Excellence 

Strategic Portfolio Management capabilities receive an important enhancement in Release 25.2, strengthening executive visibility and long-term planning capabilities. 

Extended Waterline Capabilities 

By connecting waterline functionality to custom fields, organizations gain unprecedented flexibility in financial planning. 

6. Additional Capabilities 

Release 25.2 also includes valuable system enhancements: 

• History of System Jobs & File Imports: Complete audit trails for system processes and data imports 
• Export Rate Matrix to Excel: Streamline rate management and analysis through Excel integration 

Each quarter throughout 2025, we'll continue delivering capabilities that strengthen your project portfolio management foundation. 

The full release notes can be found here.

Cora Data Hub: Platform Extension Now Available 

Cora Data Hub is now available as a platform extension, establishing a scalable foundation for enterprise data strategy and advanced AI initiatives. This powerful extension centralizes historical data from your PPM and internal systems, automates complex enterprise workflows, and delivers AI-ready datasets. 

Key Capabilities 

• Enterprise Analytics: Connect your preferred BI tools (Power BI, Tableau) for secure, high-performance analytics with near real-time reporting 
• Historical Data Analysis: Access insights from archived projects and extensive historical datasets 
• AI-Ready Foundation: Fully prepared datasets with extensive feature engineering enable immediate focus on AI model development 

Built on Azure Databricks and Azure Data Lake infrastructure, Data Hub provides the scalability, security, and performance required for enterprise-grade analytics and AI initiatives. 

Note: Cora Data Hub requires a separate license and is not included in the release notes. For more information, visit corasystems.com/cora-platform/data-hub