From schoflist at dakim.com Mon Jul 31 19:22:02 2006 From: schoflist at dakim.com (John Schofield) Date: Mon Jul 31 19:22:06 2006 Subject: Some projects are more chaotic than your assumptions... Message-ID: <12B71791-EDB7-4058-A2E0-7209BC3CF0D5@dakim.com> Many of our tasks are done piece by piece. Many tasks are done at varying degrees of completion. Since these tasks are not dependencies on each other, this should be fine. But OmniPlan insists on leveling tasks so that a 75% completed task takes up the full 100% space in the gantt chart. As I read this I can tell it's not very clear. Let me include a screen-grab. Task 10 should be auto-leveled so that the UNCOMPLETED portion starts when task 9 ends. It's bad in planning if two tasks overlap, but in practice if the task is completed there's no harm in it. In order to get an accurate picture of how much time is left in the schedule, I need to manually move tasks around so that the uncompleted portion begins where the previous task ended. Is there another way of doing this? John From kc at omnigroup.com Fri Aug 4 10:49:57 2006 From: kc at omnigroup.com (Ken Case) Date: Fri Aug 4 10:50:09 2006 Subject: Some projects are more chaotic than your assumptions... In-Reply-To: <12B71791-EDB7-4058-A2E0-7209BC3CF0D5@dakim.com> References: <12B71791-EDB7-4058-A2E0-7209BC3CF0D5@dakim.com> Message-ID: <844A3BD2-DCE7-49B3-B5A8-68EB635608AD@omnigroup.com> John, Sorry for the delay in responding to your message, we've had an overwhelming amount of feedback from the OmniPlan public beta--which is great!--and we're still trying to get caught up. On Jul 31, 2006, at 19:22, John Schofield wrote: > Many of our tasks are done piece by piece. Many tasks are done at > varying degrees of completion. Since these tasks are not > dependencies on each other, this should be fine. Have you thought about splitting your resources across tasks? If you have two tasks and assign a 50% of a resource to each of them, they can proceed in parallel at half speed (so if each is scheduled to take a week of effort you'll see both of them end after two weeks). Does that help? Ken From nmeersschaert at mac.com Tue Aug 15 16:19:56 2006 From: nmeersschaert at mac.com (Niels Meersschaert) Date: Tue Aug 15 16:20:03 2006 Subject: HTML Output Message-ID: <41F112E4-292D-45C7-81F1-241D43A00239@mac.com> Is there any documentation on how to customize the html templates? Looking at what is automatically generated it seems my options for adding fields is limited in the resource view page. I'd really like the ability to include completion % and show some indication of which tasks have been completed as I can directly in OmniPlan. Thanks, Niels From lizard at omnigroup.com Tue Aug 15 18:30:01 2006 From: lizard at omnigroup.com (Liz Marley) Date: Tue Aug 15 18:30:04 2006 Subject: HTML Output In-Reply-To: <41F112E4-292D-45C7-81F1-241D43A00239@mac.com> References: <41F112E4-292D-45C7-81F1-241D43A00239@mac.com> Message-ID: <8A11E8CC-9B2F-4A26-AFAA-419F45EA1AB9@omnigroup.com> There isn't really documentation on this feature yet. We plan to add some as we get closer to final release. Unfortunately, you're correct -- the resource view isn't as customizable as the task view. This was more of an oversight than a design choice. Hopefully we'll be able to add more flexibility soon. On 15 Aug 2006, at 16:19, Niels Meersschaert wrote: > Is there any documentation on how to customize the html templates? > Looking at what is automatically generated it seems my options for > adding fields is limited in the resource view page. I'd really like > the ability to include completion % and show some indication of > which tasks have been completed as I can directly in OmniPlan. > > Thanks, > > Niels > _______________________________________________ > OmniPlan-Users mailing list > OmniPlan-Users@omnigroup.com > http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/omniplan-users > From nmeersschaert at mac.com Tue Aug 15 22:20:10 2006 From: nmeersschaert at mac.com (Niels Meersschaert) Date: Tue Aug 15 22:18:22 2006 Subject: HTML Output In-Reply-To: <8A11E8CC-9B2F-4A26-AFAA-419F45EA1AB9@omnigroup.com> References: <41F112E4-292D-45C7-81F1-241D43A00239@mac.com> <8A11E8CC-9B2F-4A26-AFAA-419F45EA1AB9@omnigroup.com> Message-ID: <7B83757D-F819-4A79-9A2F-68479E747B4C@mac.com> Liz, thanks for your reply. It's nice to know it is simply an oversite. In my organization most of the developers are on Macs, while people who need info on projects are on PCs, but aren't running Microsoft Project as they aren't project managers. The html output is ideal for us since it gives a great overview & is platform agnostic. The ability to customize the templates is great since there are some formatting distinctions I'd like to alter. What would be great for us is the ability to add a URL to the info box like OmniOutliner & have that output in the html templates. Since we do a lot of web development, links to other elements or documents for a task is important. Overall, I'm very pleased with the direction OmniPlan is going. While there are some rough spots in OmniPlan & some features in Merlin 2.0 that are appealing but missing in OP, I think I prefer the design direction of OP. I actually bought a license for Merlin 1.0, but found it so difficult to use that it was rarely used... defeating the point. I'd resorted to laying out projects in OmniOutliner, so OmniPlan is a natural migration. On Aug 15, 2006, at 9:30 PM, Liz Marley wrote: > There isn't really documentation on this feature yet. We plan to > add some as we get closer to final release. Unfortunately, you're > correct -- the resource view isn't as customizable as the task > view. This was more of an oversight than a design choice. Hopefully > we'll be able to add more flexibility soon. > > On 15 Aug 2006, at 16:19, Niels Meersschaert wrote: > >> Is there any documentation on how to customize the html >> templates? Looking at what is automatically generated it seems my >> options for adding fields is limited in the resource view page. >> I'd really like the ability to include completion % and show some >> indication of which tasks have been completed as I can directly in >> OmniPlan. >> >> Thanks, >> >> Niels From kc at omnigroup.com Thu Aug 24 20:10:17 2006 From: kc at omnigroup.com (Ken Case) Date: Thu Aug 24 20:10:25 2006 Subject: OmniPlan 1.0 beta 6 is now available Message-ID: <6FE9BC0B-240E-421C-9465-D3C61CED2F6E@omnigroup.com> Today we released OmniPlan 1.0 beta 6: Release notes follow. Enjoy! Ken -- OmniPlan 1.0 beta 6 Released Thursday, August 24th, 2006. Major Fixes * Many menu item keyboard shortcuts remapped to make more sense. And some menu items rearranged in the menus. * Project Style inspector reworked to make editing text and gantt bar styles more straightforward. This made the appearance inspector group obsolete, and it is now gone. * There were several nasty bugs with specific work schedule exceptions (for instance, vacation days) resulting in the wrong scheduling and task durations. These are all fixed. * In the calendar view you can now Option-drag a time block to subtract work times. This is quite useful for defining vacation days. * Excel will now correctly open our CSV export files. * Resource leveling no longer moves tasks back into the past, which was undoing things like reschedule operations. * Unindenting after indenting a task now turns the group that was created back into a normal task again. MS Project support * Many more project files import correctly. * OmniPlan now supports flat numbering of rows in addition to the previous legal / work breakdown structure form. MS Project files are now opened in this style by default, since that is the form of numbering which MS Project uses. The numbering style can be changed back and forth with an item in the View menu. * MS Project unique ids are now kept as a custom data column on tasks and resources, and can optionally be viewed in the outline in OmniPlan. Writing back out in an MS Project format preserves these unique ids. * Better defaults for visible columns, splitter positions, and other window appearance settings when opening MS Project files. Minor Fixes * Made the default behavior for the tab key be to switch between fields instead of indenting the selected task. This can be modified via preferences. * The column sizes and positions in the default template now fit. * Resizing the window no longer moves the split view bar. * The column mapping panel on import from OmniOutliner and CSV formats is now resizable and allows the ability to add custom data columns. * Export filters have been prettified. The date within X days/weeks filters now give the correct results. Filtering by completion now correctly accepts percentages as values. * Violation and overdue badges are now more distinct and prettier. * The resource allocation graph is now flat for easier readability. Also added a Show/Hide item in the View menu for it to make this feature's existence more obvious. * The mini calendar in the calendar view now has a much better selection of the selected week. It also now shows off-days in gray numerals and different-than-standard days in orange. * Printing HTML reports no longer prints an extra page. * Better visual cursor feedback when manipulating gantt bars with the mouse. * Mousing over the gantt view used to end up displaying editability handles on more than one bar at a time - this is now fixed. * Changed the wording on Send Feedback panel to be more clear. * Fixed crash when double-clicking on IM column in resource view. * Cost headings in the report pages were confusing. Labeled them better. * "Send instant message" added to the advanced actions menu in Resource Info inspector. * Many undo/redo action names improved. * Unindenting multiple nested tasks at once wasn't working correctly. Now performs exactly the same as OmniOutliner for this operation. * Copying and pasting groups of already leveled tasks would result in bizarre behavior if resource leveling was used again. Now fixed. * Web Export now correctly produces iCal to do lists instead of two copies of the resource's calendar. From wolfgang.keller.nospam at gmx.de Thu Aug 31 05:45:13 2006 From: wolfgang.keller.nospam at gmx.de (Wolfgang Keller) Date: Thu Aug 31 05:45:16 2006 Subject: Connecting Omnioutliner/Omniplan/Omnigraffle to a database? Message-ID: <0001HW.C11CA67900E676C4F0180390@mail.gmx.net> Hello, is there any chance for an "enterprise edition" of Omnioutliner/Omnigraffle/Omniplan, with the possibility to connect them transparently to a (client-server) database? Such that modifications (from other applications) in this database are immediately reflected in the Omni* applications and vice-versa? TIA, Sincerely, Wolfgang Keller -- My email-address is correct. Do NOT remove ".nospam" to reply. From jon.saperia at ambientcorp.com Wed Sep 27 07:26:56 2006 From: jon.saperia at ambientcorp.com (Jon Saperia) Date: Wed Sep 27 07:27:03 2006 Subject: Mailing list archive Message-ID: I just went through the archive and found a fairly small number of entries. In addition, it does not seem to have been updated since the end of August. Have I missed something? Thanks /jon From jon.saperia at ambientcorp.com Wed Sep 27 07:31:39 2006 From: jon.saperia at ambientcorp.com (Jon Saperia) Date: Wed Sep 27 07:31:43 2006 Subject: Beta 1.0 6b Message-ID: I first started using OP Beta 1.0 6 about 2 ? 3 weeks ago. I was surprised that there had been no reports of files that got corrupted as this happened to me a couple time. One file I sent in was repaired (thanks) but with a major section missing. The problem in this area seems to be once the project gets fairly large over 100 or so tasks and you begin moving items around that have durations and resources. I did not see any reports of fixes in this area for 1.0 6b and wanted to know if there was anything so I do not invest a lot of time in this again and loose a lot of work. I would like to use this tool because it is way better than anything else I have available. /jon From kc at omnigroup.com Wed Sep 27 09:25:14 2006 From: kc at omnigroup.com (Ken Case) Date: Wed Sep 27 09:25:22 2006 Subject: Mailing list archive In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <89DAD4EC-F201-470F-8F97-4E100E17EF52@omnigroup.com> On Sep 27, 2006, at 07:26 , Jon Saperia wrote: > I just went through the archive and found a fairly small number of > entries. In addition, it does not seem to have been updated since > the end of August. Have I missed something? The archives are up to date (they now contain your two messages from today, for example), but there hasn't been much traffic on this mailing list. You'll find that the OmniPlan web forum is much more active: . Hope this helps, Ken From kc at omnigroup.com Wed Sep 27 09:25:16 2006 From: kc at omnigroup.com (Ken Case) Date: Wed Sep 27 09:25:46 2006 Subject: Beta 1.0 6b In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sep 27, 2006, at 07:31 , Jon Saperia wrote: > I did not see any reports of fixes in this area for 1.0 6b and > wanted to know if there was anything so I do not invest a lot of > time in this again and loose a lot of work. I would like to use > this tool because it is way better than anything else I have > available. I'm glad you're enjoying OmniPlan, but definitely do bear in mind that it's still in beta! Beta 6b didn't have any bug fixes, its only change was to extend the expiration date. We'll be releasing beta 7 (which has quite a few changes) very soon, and I'd recommend waiting for it if you were having problems with beta 6b. Ken From jon.saperia at ambientcorp.com Wed Sep 27 09:33:34 2006 From: jon.saperia at ambientcorp.com (Jon Saperia) Date: Wed Sep 27 09:33:41 2006 Subject: Beta 1.0 6b In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks very much. Yup I do recognize the early nature of the software. I did run into a number of issues, so I will take your advice and hold off on anything major until beta 7. I assume that is this Friday the 29th. /jon On 9/27/06 12:25 PM, "Ken Case" wrote: > On Sep 27, 2006, at 07:31 , Jon Saperia wrote: >> I did not see any reports of fixes in this area for 1.0 6b and >> wanted to know if there was anything so I do not invest a lot of >> time in this again and loose a lot of work. I would like to use >> this tool because it is way better than anything else I have >> available. > > I'm glad you're enjoying OmniPlan, but definitely do bear in mind that > it's still in beta! > > Beta 6b didn't have any bug fixes, its only change was to extend the > expiration date. We'll be releasing beta 7 (which has quite a few > changes) very soon, and I'd recommend waiting for it if you were > having problems with beta 6b. > > Ken > From kc at omnigroup.com Wed Sep 27 16:50:23 2006 From: kc at omnigroup.com (Ken Case) Date: Wed Sep 27 16:50:26 2006 Subject: OmniPlan 1.0 beta 7 is now available Message-ID: <11768091-069A-4C0B-B058-13AE4478BDA0@omnigroup.com> We've released OmniPlan 1.0 beta 7: Release notes follow. Enjoy! Ken -- OmniPlan 1.0 beta 7 Released Wednesday, September 27th, 2006. New Features * Tasks have a priority setting which assists in leveling * Behavior of the enter key is now user configurable * Notes from OmniPlan can now be exported to iCal and included in HTML exports * Mini-Manual now available through the Help menu * The Show Overview command in the View menu provides an abstract view of all top-level tasks and groups in the project * Showing dates on milestones in the Gantt chart is now a separate View Options setting from showing assigned resources on tasks * When you drag tasks, they now snap to time units based on the zoom level * Duration and Effort totals added to the list of things that appear when left clicking at the bottom of the main window Major Fixes * Importing * We've fixed a number of issues related to importing and exporting MS Project files. While we have fixed some problems, we know we still have more work to do, so please keep sending us bug reports! * Leveling * New leveling algorithm * The new leveling algorithm is faster, produces fewer hangs and behaves more predictably. * The details are: 1. Order tasks by priority then by position in the outline 2. From lowest priority up, position any tasks with absolute end limits (meaning they are locked or have an end constraint or are a prerequisite to another task which is locked or has an end constraint) as _late_ as it is possible for them to fit, so as to reserve worst-case space. 3. From highest priority down, position tasks as early as allowable and will fit. This includes all the tasks in step 2 as well, which may be moved earlier because of this. If any tasks fail to fit at all, save them for later. 4. With only remaining 'failed' tasks, from highest priority down, perform the same operation as in step 3. Some may fit now because a lower priority task with a reserved position in step 2 may have moved during its part of step 3. While any tasks are able to be positioned, repeat step 4 again with remaining failed tasks. * Calendar * Moving time blocks in the work schedule no longer misbehaves * Fixed crash when pushing arrow keys in Calendar Mode * Modifying time blocks no longer causes them to disappear * AppleScript Dates * The OmniPlan AppleScript library now handles NSDates correctly * Inspecting Multiple Tasks * It is now possible to edit multiple tasks at the same time * HTML Templates * Standardized and cleaned up the HTML in exported projects * Exporting resource information is more configurable * CSS for our exported HTML has been moved to a separate file * HTML exports are more compatible with Firefox and IE * Overhauled print options * OmniPlan's print settings now accept 2-digit months Minor Fixes * Option-clicking a group in the Gantt view will now expand all hidden children * Resources no longer disappear from calendar view if you make the window tiny and resize it up again * A group's completion percentage now updates immediately when adjusting a subtask * Grouping tasks will now renumber properly * Assignment pane of the Task inspector now shows all resources * Users can now convert between task, group, and milestone from the contextual/action menu From lizard at omnigroup.com Wed Oct 18 16:12:45 2006 From: lizard at omnigroup.com (Liz Marley) Date: Wed Oct 18 16:12:48 2006 Subject: Take beta 8 out for a spin Message-ID: <8E671AB9-D2E2-4E88-BE62-D3503894C0BF@omnigroup.com> We've just posted beta 8, and would appreciate it if you'd download it, try it out for a bit, and send us some feedback. Beta 7 licenses expire this weekend, so grab beta 8 to keep using OmniPlan through November 20th. Here's a list of some of the new features we've added recently. Added Total Cost, Total Uses, Total Hours to the Resource Info inspector, and as optional columns to the resource outline. Rounded durations are now shown with indicators of how they were rounded. For instance, typing 5 minutes ("5m") while hours are the smallest value displayed will result in ">0h" while 55 minutes will display as "<1h". Full precision is shown while editing. Sort submenu added under Structure for sorting tasks by any outline column value. Mini Pop-Up Calendar added when choosing dates in the outline (not added yet for dates in the inspectors and sheets). When "Show Off-Hours" is chosen in View Options, off-hours are now displayed in gray in the gantt chart. (The color is configurable in the Project Colors inspector.) The resource timeline view now supports multiple selection via command-click. Added controls to the Calendar View for clearing calendar customizations and restoring a custom calendar to the defaults. New outline columns can show which resources have customized calendars and which do not. Currency format is now arbitrary. Added a preference for whether the Return key should create a new row or not. Added View menu option for folding multi-line text in the outlines or not. Added embedded versioning scheme for Web/HTML templates, so that when we change the tags for substitution into these formats we can warn users that their custom templates may be out of date and require updating. Added new controls for image export formats to allow export of gantt or outline or both. Added leveling options to allow leveling only the selection and to optionally keep tasks from being rescheduled before a given date. Added option to display/hide date constraints on the Gantt chart. Allow adding resource assignments to milestones, since MS Project allows this. Import/export them correctly to MS Project formats. Headers and Footers for printing. Currently the header defaults to the document name but can be changed in the printing controls. The footer just shows the page number. From as_studio at mac.com Thu Oct 19 15:34:30 2006 From: as_studio at mac.com (Art.C) Date: Thu Oct 19 15:34:38 2006 Subject: (no subject) Message-ID: <6DEEBA51-6287-4498-98F3-98B76CBEE1B2@mac.com> Dear ~ I have some suggestion about omniplan beta 7. When I export my project tasks and milestones into iCal . The Milestone will be an all-day event but tasks not. I hope the tasks will be an all-day event in iCal, and I can view my tasks as event bars across several days on my iCal (month view). It will show me what is my plan in this month quicker than before. After all it's the best project program I have tried up to now, cheers for you~ Art From uplink.team at gmail.com Mon Oct 23 06:06:55 2006 From: uplink.team at gmail.com (uplink team) Date: Mon Oct 23 06:22:32 2006 Subject: durations for group headers wrong Message-ID: I have something like 1) huge task 4h 1) tiny sub task 4h 2) tiny sub task 2 1h 3) tiny sub task 3 0.25h 4) tiny sub task 4 1.5h why is the time sum of those subtasks just 4h instead of 6,75h ?? using 1.0-beta8 From kc at omnigroup.com Mon Oct 23 08:29:19 2006 From: kc at omnigroup.com (Ken Case) Date: Mon Oct 23 08:39:40 2006 Subject: durations for group headers wrong In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 23, 2006, at 6:06 AM, uplink team wrote: > 1) huge task 4h > 1) tiny sub task 4h > 2) tiny sub task 2 1h > 3) tiny sub task 3 0.25h > 4) tiny sub task 4 1.5h > > why is the time sum of those subtasks just 4h instead of 6,75h ?? It sounds like those sub tasks are all scheduled to run in parallel rather than in sequence, so the duration of the huge task is the maximum of the durations of the sub tasks. (Imagine painting rooms in a house, and having different painters working on each room: the whole task will take as long as the longest room.) If those tasks actually depend on each other (i.e., you're painting different coats of paint in the same room), you can add dependencies between the tasks by dragging dependency lines between them on the Gantt chart or by selecting them all and clicking the "Connection" button in the toolbar. If they don't depend on each other but you only have one person working on the tasks (i.e., you've only hired one painter), you can add a person to your project (in the Resource view) and assign all the tasks to that person (by using the "Assignment" button in the toolbar or by dragging tasks onto that person's schedule in the Resource view). You can then click on the "Level" button on the toolbar to reschedule the tasks so the person doesn't try to work on more than one thing at a time. If the tasks can proceed in parallel and you just wanted to see the total effort (i.e., how many hours those painters would bill you for, or 6.75h), you can display the total effort (or person-hours) by selecting View Options from the View menu (or right-clicking on the column headers) and clicking on the Effort checkbox. I hope this helps! Ken