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There are many more things than that broken when importing from OmniOutliner to OmniPlan. I love Outliner, and am doing heavy evaluation of Plan this week. Some more problems:

OO->OP IMPORT ISSUES
(very partial)

1. NO DATA IMPORTED IN CUSTOM COLUMNS --
Importing custom columns simply does not work. For example, I have a column in OO called "System Integration" with a combobox list: MAS-90, mail server, ADP Payroll, etc. Upon import I select the choice to import custom data, and OP creates the column but NO DATA IS IMPORTED.


2. OP JUST MAKES UP NUMBERS FOR BLANK CELLS --
There is no "effort" column type in OO so I set up my hourly estimates (this is a software project tool for me, if that was not obvious already) as a Duration column type. However I do not wish the cell values in that column to be multiplied by the number of persons I asssign in OP so I targeted the Estimates column at the Effort (not Duration) column in OP.

There were numerous tasks in OO that I cannot yet estimate for my project, so I left the Estimate (again, of type Duration) column blank and added a checkbox column called "Not Estimated" which is checked on rows with no estimate. In the Effort column in OP into which the Estimate was imported, any cell that was blank in the Estimate column in OO was populated wtih "8h" in OP. Of course many of my actual rows did have an estimate of 8h in OO, so in order to fix up OP's version I need to manually compare the task lists in OO and OP side by side on my screen to delete the cell values in OP that should actually be blank. This is not acceptable and has pretty much ruined any chance I can use OP (also has made me much much less likely to spend this much time evaluating OP in the future).

3. NO WAY TO EMBED WORK DONE IN OO INTO OP --
I find it amazing that OO was not made into a data server for OP. I do a very significant piece of work in OO and then have to go through contortions to correct & tweak the results of an import, and then if I make changes in OO **I NEED ALSO TO MAKE THEM IN OP**. Again, a total show-stopper.

4. COLUMN TYPES DO NOT CONFORM BETWEEN THE TWO APPS (and another import issue) --
I created checkbox columns & combo-box columns in OO, only to discover that OP does not handle these two formats. Perhaps because of this disparity, OP populated every cell in my "Not Estimated" checkbox column with the number 1!! I could see if my checkboxes were translated into a binary 0-for-unchecked, 1-for-checked, but *EVERY* cell is a 1. Even more odd, the summary row for the Not Estimate column in OP displays a zero even though its children each has a one in that column. How do 3 ones total zero??

...

I was so excited to discover OmniOutliner, which makes it so easy for me to think through how to organize my software project, including the ability to make a checkbox column called "Batch Process", for instance, or a Work Type combobox column with values like "Research", "Fix", "Enh", "Docs".

And then I was so disappointed to discover that although OP claims to import OO there is such poor integration between these tools that one might as well say:

"THERE IS NO INTEGRATION BETWEEN OMNIOUTLINER AND OMNIPLAN"

I would basically have to double-maintain everything in OP that I put into OO, which calls into question why I should not just get Merlin2??

It is rare for me to feel this strongly about poor product-direction decision making.

There you have it.

kazar
http://www.datatude.net

Last edited by Brian; 2007-06-01 at 10:28 AM..