OminPlan vs. FastTrack: Convert me
 

Any former fastTrack users here? Convert me.

Being an OmniOutliner, OmniWeb, OmniGraffle, and hopefully, an OmniFocus license holder, it makes sense to stay in the OmniGroup family.

Here is what I like better about FastTrack:

1) integration between Mindmanager and FastTrack. Although it involves importing, it is still a good feature. Although I love OGraffle for many things, I find mindmanager a better tool for brainstorming ideas.

2) FastTrack can publish to .mac or web dav server.

3) FastTrack seemed to have better published reports (ma¥be I don't know how to do it well in Oplan.

OmniPlan clearly has the advantage in the GUI and ease of use.

Thanks for any input.

I'm still evaluating both products. I would appreciate a response from someone.

Does silence mean that fasttrack is a better product?

[QUOTE=steve]Any former fastTrack users here? Convert me.

Being an OmniOutliner, OmniWeb, OmniGraffle, and hopefully, an OmniFocus license holder, it makes sense to stay in the OmniGroup family.

Here is what I like better about FastTrack:

1) integration between Mindmanager and FastTrack. Although it involves importing, it is still a good feature. Although I love OGraffle for many things, I find mindmanager a better tool for brainstorming ideas.

2) FastTrack can publish to .mac or web dav server.

3) FastTrack seemed to have better published reports (ma¥be I don't know how to do it well in Oplan.

OmniPlan clearly has the advantage in the GUI and ease of use.

Thanks for any input.[/QUOTE]

Hi Steve,

I was hoping that a user with a great deal of experience in both applications would jump in, but that never happened. I apologize for keeping you waiting and not responding sooner.

I'm not a former FastTrack user so I wouldn't be the most knowledgeable person to comment on how FastTrack's feature set compares to OmniPlan and why you should switch. The first two points you brought up (MindManager integration/publish to .Mac & Web Dav) are actually feature requests that we're considering for later versions of OmniPlan. I'll add a vote to each request for you to make them more popular in our database.

As for the third point, could you give me some examples of how FastTrack's reports are better, and what type of improvements you would like to see in OmniPlan's reports? If you'd prefer to email your feedback/suggestions, please send your email to [email]omniplan@omnigroup.com[/email] and I'll respond as soon as possible.

Thank Steve!

When it comes down to it, I think I would be happy if you could print a useful document from omniplan. If you want a print out of a chart to take to a meeting, chances are it will be spread over several pages. I haven't seen a feature to change the print direction or scale to fit.

You can change the print orientation by going to 'File' > 'Page Setup'. If you go to 'File' > 'Print' > and select 'OmniPlan' from the drop-down menu, you'll have the option to pick how many pages wide/high you want your printout to be. We're working on revamping the print panel in OmniPlan 1.2 so that all these controls will be on one page.

We know that our printouts don't look as great as they can be right now in OmniPlan 1.1, so this is at the top of our to-do list for OmniPlan 1.2. We'll be doing public betas of OmniPlan 1.2 in the near future, but I'm afraid we won't have any printing improvements ready for your deadline.

Hope this info helps you in your purchasing decision. :-)

This is way late to the conversation, and I'm not an expert at FastTrack at all, but I did make this exact decision (and considered several other options as well).

My main deciding factors in favor of OmniPlan were:

Ease of use -- I just found working with the demo of OmniPlan easier.

Affordable -- I ended up buying it myself, rather than try to talk my boss into buying it.

Doesn't look awful -- all other project management software I saw looks terrible. The bars in the Gantt charts in FastTrack and MS Project look like they were rendered by Windows 2.0.

Reasonable web exports -- several tools do this, so it's more that OmniPlan did a reasonable and simple job of it than that it was superior.

I'm going to post a small improvement to web publishing in a moment here, so look for "improved web publishing"