New to OmniPlan, off hours question
 

I would like to use OmniPlan to track what would be better described as processes than projects. When I start a process it runs 24 hours a day until it is complete. I need to interact with the process at various times and several processes will interact with each other at different times. I need to see the various processes that are running and add on top of that when I have to interact with each process and when the processes themselves will interact with each other.

Is that possible?

Hard to be certain without a better idea of what sorts of relationships there are between your processes, but it doesn't seem necessarily impossible from what you've said. You would set the project's working hours to be 7x24 (so the processes would run around the clock) and your working hours to be the subset of the week where you are available (this can change on a day-by-day basis). Interactions could be scheduled using Start->Start dependencies and lead times for interactions that take place a fixed amount of time after the process starts, and with Finish->Start dependencies with negative lead times for interactions that take place a fixed amount of time before the process ends.

If you give me a sample scenario, I could try building a project from it for you.

Welcome to the forums! Might need more information about what you're trying to do, but based on the description in your post, I *think* OmniPlan can handle the kind of scheduling you're describing.

I'd take a look at [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart"]this wikipedia article[/URL]; if the kind of charts that it describes would work for your purposes, OmniPlan should be up your alley.

(Slightly more OmniPlan-specifically: you should be able to model the dependencies between the processes just fine. Once you have the processes set up, your interactions with the processes would just be tasks that have you assigned as one of the resources required to complete them.)

[QUOTE=Brian;101027]

(Slightly more OmniPlan-specifically: you should be able to model the dependencies between the processes just fine. Once you have the processes set up, your interactions with the processes would just be tasks that have you assigned as one of the resources required to complete them.)[/QUOTE]

One scenario I wasn't sure how to handle via OmniPlan was the possibility that process A might have some event that happens after X units of time, process B has some event that happens after Y units of time, and those two events need to be synchronized to happen at the same time. Or even simpler, how to set a constraint relative to some other event (for example, this task must start no earlier than 5 hours and no later than 7 hours after milestone XYZ)—lead times can be used for the no earlier part, but how to do the no later part without being forced to put in absolute dates/times?