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Originally Posted by wpitman
Hello,
I could use some help. Long ago I used to use Project and currently (rarely use) FastTrack Schedule due to it's complex non-mac feel. Here are my questions:
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3. Why did you select one over the other?
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Merlin's export to XML has been a constant source of issues for me.
Its AppleScript support seems very sub-par (as always with Applescript, YMMV, and it could be my obtuseness or the lack of documentation or truly incomplete AS support which did me in there).
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4. My simple view is that Merlin2 may be better (more features) but harder to use than OmniPlan (less features) -- both are easier and more mac-like than FastTrack Schedule.
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I agree that both are a huge step "up" in intuitiveness and "niceness" from FastTrack. FTS may have a key niche they play well in, but that software never worked well in our environment here. We gave up on it about two years back. I then purchased Merlin to work with, and it was a breath of fresh air, but still had some issues with stability and citizenship ("plays well with others"). Several of my colleagues chose OmniPlan when it came out, and a few others chose to run MS Project on top of Parallels. After 2.5 didn't address any of my concerns, I tried both MS Project on Parallels (ick!) and OmniPlan.
OmniPlan is my keeper.
I do miss the unrealized potential to make fancy reports ("unrealized" because Merlin's reporting engine is completely undocumented and impenetrable, and they've been promising documentation on it since 2.0 came out!). However, being able to AppleScript up an export to PDF, HTML, and XML (which always imports perfectly into Project 2007 for those colleagues and incidentally my boss) makes up for it.
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5. Do either sync with OmniFocus and OmniOutline? -- a huge plus for me.
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"Sync" is hard, as everyone who ever works on it knows, and OmniPlan doesn't do any syncing here for you. However, if you have a workable system and a decent AppleScript acumen, throwing together a quick "sync" which works in your particular situation isn't out of the question.
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6. Which gives the most flexibility and great printout hard copy options?
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Merlin, in theory. Neither, in practice. If you like the canned reports (and Merlin offers more of them for whatever that's worth) then that's one thing. If you need to do something more fundamental than putting your company logo at the top of the exported pages, though, good luck!