[whpalmer4]

Beelox, if you've discovered this (or any other) showstopper within 30 days of buying the app from Omni, you can get your money back. Go to the online storefront on the website and read the details on how to get a refund. As for understanding the ins and outs of the programs, Omni has a very generous trial policy that allows you the full functionality of the software without putting up any cash. It's always disappointing to hear people complaining about what they seem to think are fundamental flaws when they should certainly have been able to discover them during even a cursory trial...

[Beelox]

That's a fair point in regard to my rant of yesterday. I did play with the trial but did not have the time during a busy period to put it to real use, in which case I would have discovered the limitation. The Omni Group has been great in all my dealings with them, and I don't mean to flame them. My frustration still stands with this feature, and also my point that we need to fully understand the ins and outs of the software before buying it based simply on an overall good impression of the company. I think part of my frustration yesterday was in seeing that others have been complaining about this for more than a year, but it hasn't been addressed in any update since then.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Beelox

I think part of my frustration yesterday was in seeing that others have been complaining about this for more than a year, but it hasn't been addressed in any update since then.

Of course, you only see posts from those who don't like how the product works; the people who are busy using it without trouble don't have the motivation to post. That's not to say that what you and the others are asking for wouldn't be a big improvement! I do find most of the time that Lizard's suggestion works well enough for my needs, though it isn't always convenient. It does have the advantage that it more explicitly details the structure and allows for visual analysis and optimization where the automagic version being requested would not.

I can't speak for Omni, but it seems quite plausible to me that providing this functionality requires some substantial retooling of the internals, and it isn't felt to be something that can be prudently done in a 1.x release. They may also have felt that there were other features and/or bug fixes that they wanted to get out in the 1.x releases (before existing customers would have to pony up again for 2.0). Who knows, the internal development builds might have had this functionality for many months!

[ekeller]

I really need the ability to decouple these as well, the percentages and task workarounds make a big mess of what is otherwise a really tidy plan. For now I have been putting in my own column of custom data just to keep track of things but it isn't tied to anything programatically so it is more or less just notes.

Does anyone know if the Effort and Duration columns can be set to different units? If would at least help me out if Effort could be displayed in hours (like 18 hours) and Duration could be in linear time (like 2d 2h).

[skwirl]

Votes added!

Originally Posted by ekeller

Does anyone know if the Effort and Duration columns can be set to different units? If would at least help me out if Effort could be displayed in hours (like 18 hours) and Duration could be in linear time (like 2d 2h).

Can't do this in OmniPlan 1.6.x but it is a feature we're adding in OmniPlan 2.0.

[cydonia]

Originally Posted by akwong

Votes added!

Can't do this in OmniPlan 1.6.x but it is a feature we're adding in OmniPlan 2.0.

Votes my be pointless now in-light of this, but it would have had my vote. I can't use Omniplan now because of this, all of my tasks in a preliminary project scoping phase for my new project require this, and the percentage workaround is not practical.

When is 2.0 coming out?

[skwirl]

We don't have an exact release date but are aiming for late 2009.

[digitalwhite]

Can you add my vote as well please. This really needs to be dealt with properly.

[psilas]

Originally Posted by jpeloquin

The ability to decouple Effort/Duration is absolutely essential for my business as well. Planning/working on multiple projects calls for the ability to say I need to plan 14 hours of work over 4 days, instead of a day and a half.

You can count my vote in for this ability too please ;)

After working on Omniplan for a while now (and despite getting very helpful support from others), I do think this is part of the reason I am finding myself a little frustrated. Due to the nature of where I work we need to plan a few hours of work over a much larger period of time - please add my vote for this important feature.

[gradualist]

Please add my vote to this. I came up with the same work arounds suggested here but neither are entirely satisfactory. Incredible this functionality wasn't in from the get-go.