The Omni Group

Hello OmniPlan planners!

We are very excited to release the first public beta of OmniPlan v2.0 today! Since releasing OmniPlan v1.0, we've learned a lot about how people are using OmniPlan to manage their projects and we think that OmniPlan v1.0 grew into an excellent resource for project planning workflow for a single person. However in undertaking OmniPlan v2.0, we knew that people wanted to bring this workflow and user experience to their teams — and so that's what we focused on: collaboration.

Collaboration in OmniPlan v2.0 allows a manager to create and share a project with their team. By syncing over MobileMe, Omni Sync Server or a WebDAV server, teams are able to synchronize their work and stay up to date on the latest changes.

While collaboration is the most exciting new feature, OmniPlan v2.0 also adds scheduling and printing options and improves performance with large projects to add speed and versatility to your workflow.

We know a lot of you have been anxiously waiting for this, so let's jump right into some of the new features we've added in OmniPlan v2.0:

Collaboration: Sync, Publish, Edit, and Track Changes 

Use a WebDAV server to sync your projects between resources. Then, publish your tasks automatically upon saving. Grab new changes automatically via Bonjour or at a specified interval. (You can also publish and update manually, of course.) Publish tasks and pull in updates from a server-based calendar. Export your plan automatically in any supported format. Execute custom AppleScripts from within the app during export.

Use Apple's Calendar Server to pull in free times and busy times for your resources. Import vacation and holiday schedules from a web-hosted calendar.

Keep track of the changes to the project with visual change tracking. See your own edits on a personal project or see the synced changes on a team project. Accept and reject changes on a task-by-task basis or all at once. 

Scheduling

Fiscal years are now supported in addition to calendar years so you can choose whether your tasks are due in Q2 or Spring. Schedule projects backwards from a fixed end date. Create, save, and compare your projects against multiple baselines. Highlight the critical path to individual milestones in the new ‘‘Project: Milestones’’ inspector. Resource schedules now have optional start and end dates. Tasks and Resources Split your tasks to schedule around interruptions. Create hammock tasks that have start and end dates based on prerequisites that you define. Effort and Duration can now be unlinked. Default task and resource attributes can be configured per project or in a template for faster task creation. Color-code tasks based on their resource. Choose independent display formats for duration and effort values.

Filtering

Save multiple, commonly-used filters for quick re-use later. Configure publishing actions to use filters.

Printing

Options Headers and footers are now more flexible. Expand or collapse all notes and task and resource groups. Page margins support mirroring on facing pages. Customize the margin above and below the header and footer.

OmniPlan v2.0 will be available from our store and from the Mac App Store for $199.99 when the final version is released. Folks who purchased OmniPlan v1.0 from the Mac App Store and our online store between January 6, 2011 and the final release date will receive a free upgrade to OmniPlan v2.0. For folks who purchased OmniPlan v1.0 before that date, OmniPlan v2.0 will be available from our online store for $99.99.

We hope that you'll enjoy the new features, improvements and updated user interface. We've been working very hard on this new version and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts about OmniPlan v2.0:  please send any feedback, questions or comments to us at omniplan@omnigroup.com and someone from our team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Without further ado, here's the link to the OmniPlan v2.0 beta download page!