What you’ll find in this blog
- The top 5 Certinia PS Cloud Winter 2026 features to watch
- How Winter 26 improves project delivery, staffing and forecasting
- New automation and planning capabilities across Gantt and Work Planner
- Why smarter forecasting and resourcing can improve delivery confidence
The Certinia Winter 2026 release is packed with powerful enhancements designed to give Professional Services teams more control, better insight, and less manual effort across delivery, resourcing, time, and forecasting.
Our amazing PSA Consultant Penny has done a deep dive into the Winter 26 release notes so you don’t have to – and these are her top 5 features that customers will feel the impact of straight away.
Let’s jump in 👇
1. Manage Project Tasks Directly in Gantt on the Project Record
Project managers will love the huge upgrade to Gantt task management in Winter 26.
You can now fully manage project tasks directly within Gantt on the Project record, making planning and adjustments far quicker and more intuitive.
Why this matters:
- Drag, drop, indent, and reorder one or multiple tasks directly in Gantt
- Automatic WBS renumbering when tasks move
- Edit key task fields inline, including lookups, picklists, checkboxes, and numeric fields
- New Duration and Hours Remaining fields update dynamically
- Undo and redo buttons make changes safer
- Optional automatic project end‑date recalculation
- Assign resources and synchronise milestones without leaving Gantt
✅ Result: Faster planning, fewer clicks, and far less context‑switching for project managers.
2. Auto‑Staffing Enhancements for Smarter, More Flexible Resourcing
Winter 26 significantly improves auto‑staffing and resource request management, helping teams move from reactive staffing to proactive planning.
Highlights include:
- Ability to automatically match and hold resources using Auto‑Hold
- New improvements to Staffing Preferences to define default behaviour for common request types
- Reuse the same staffing preference across multiple resource requests
- Greater control over skill matching by choosing whether to include aspirational or expired skills
- A redesigned skills and certifications user experience
✅ Result: Better matches, faster staffing decisions, and more consistent outcomes – especially at scale.
3. Work Planner Upgrades: Mass Updates, Percent Allocation & Real‑Time Sync
The Work Planner continues to evolve into a true command centre for resourcing – and Winter 26 delivers some of its biggest upgrades yet.
What’s new:
- Drag‑and‑drop mass updates for assignments and timelines
- Percent Allocation as a scheduling strategy
- Immediate recalculation of future scheduled hours (no waiting for batch jobs)
- Direct actions from the Work Planner (assign, hold, unassign, unhold) – even without a full Salesforce licence
- Automatic schedule synchronisation back to resource requests
- New Average Bill Rate and dynamically calculated Projected Revenue
✅ Result: Resource managers can act faster, trust the data they see, and keep plans aligned in real time.
4. Smart Rescheduling: Data‑Driven Capacity Adjustments
Smart Rescheduling takes a major step forward in Winter 26, helping project managers spot and fix effort misalignment earlier.
Why it’s powerful:
- Uses actual hours already recorded to calculate historical capacity run rate
- Flags when future planned capacity doesn’t align with reality
- Suggests updated future hours automatically
- New Suggested Adjustments panel in the Work Planner with configurable variance time ranges
- Apply adjustments provisionally before committing them
✅ Result: More realistic plans, fewer late surprises, and better control over delivery margins.
5. Services Forecast Variance Analysis for Clearer Financial Insight
Forecasting gets a serious intelligence boost in Winter 26 with enhanced Services Forecasting and Variance Analysis.
Key benefits:
- New Details View in the PSA Services Forecast dashboard
- Quickly explain forecast movements by account, opportunity, project, or manager
- Drill into milestone‑level revenue, cost, and margin variances
- Improved handling of closed periods for more accurate opportunity forecasts
✅ Result: Finance and services leaders can finally see why forecasts are changing – not just that they are.
Experience the Benefits of Certinia PS Cloud Winter 2026
By upgrading to Winter 26, you can:
- Plan and adjust projects faster with fully editable Gantt views
- Staff smarter with enhanced auto‑staffing and preferences
- Reduce manual effort through Work Planner mass actions
- Improve delivery confidence with Smart Rescheduling
- Gain clearer insight into forecast movements and margin risk
Upgrading to Winter 2026
Certinia delivers three major releases per year – Winter, Spring, and Summer. We typically recommend upgrading at least once per year to stay current and minimise technical debt.
While new customers are enrolled in Certinia’s Scheduled Update Program, many existing customers prefer to upgrade on their own timeline.
If you’d like help planning, testing, or understanding which Winter 26 features will deliver the most value for your organisation, just get in touch – we’d love to help.