The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniPlan > OmniPlan General
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
What happend to your brilliance and creativity Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I have posted this as many places as I could as I am interested in the feedback.

Considering the creativity of this company and the magnitude of the core apps this one app is SAD.**

The icon is the only thing that was good.* I understand this is not made for a personal Project planner but more for extreme projects that take some amount of time, money, resources and of course people.* With that said lets start their.**

People make the project come together, thus I would make an app that would allow me to note with a icon the type of person on each and every job of the project rather than just a name such as the following; Lazy Bob, Brilliant Susan, Extreme Mike. Idiot Mickey, slowpoke mary. Annal Andy. Superstar Ted and Genius Allan.* This is the reality of what goes on when creating a project and names just do not cut it. So when I see a job going bad and taking to long I can access the Superstars, the Brilliant one and the genius in seconds when looking at a rather large staff of people all i have to do is see the icon , so having an icon to represent each type of person would be a HUGE plus not just a stinking name.

*Second every project should have a place for pictures so as to see a visual result, the picture dose not have to be big ,and their should be a small picture* for each job being done within a project. This alone would be a breakthrough in this type of Project planner. The next break-though would be each and every job would have a countdown timer based on how long I believe each and every project should take before I evaluate the job, this would get rid of the silly sliding Gantt bars used today . Each digital clock would have a color based on if it was years, months, weeks , days, hours, min, that would allow me to see in an instant how many jobs are being finished this week or in the next couple of minutes, and of course each clock would have a simple alarm or even email that would be fine. I like the countdown better than a date as the countdown seems to put more pressure on those working on the jobs and of course they should see the clock on their end, very nice .*

**I also hate having to resize the fonts on the software, so to make it simple I would preset it for the size screen you are using, this is a better way to go, or you just constantly find yourself resizing windows and that is slow and gets tedious. Each Personal Icon that I use should have a place for Notes and Personal Info,* 9 times out of 10 the most important aspect of the project are the people.

**If the app was done right anyone should be able to use the app even a single college kid who pastes a picture of his very first car that he wants to buy. * Label the project, paste the picture write down the task, events, outside and inside ideas that could make it happen, including cool questions that could jog your mind into taking action,* such as what could I do today to make this a reality in the future,* answer collect some credit cards make timely payment* and build some credit. and of course start the countdown timer. I have a lot more ideas , anyone want to buy my program I would call it the OMNI PERSONAL ICON PROJECT PLANNER, getting anything done is about people including yourself and don’t* let anyone tell you different its has always been about people and people are much more than a name..

Feel free to take some of my creativity and brilliance as I have plenty. :)

coal akida
President of Tactical Command
 
I think YOU should be fired. This is the first tool I've been able to use to visualize timelines and resources where I didn't feel like there was a semester of school that I missed about "how to spend all day entering three tasks into MS Project".

Get a grip.
 
I agree (at least about the icon, that's great).
 
Icons for people? If you need icons and adjectives to remind you of members of your staff, you shouldn't be wasting your time with project management... you should be spending more time getting to know your staff. Names DO 'cut it', that is what we all have names for - to identify ourselves. THAT is the reality.
 
I just taped pictures of things on the screen to make faux icons. It doesn't look great when I scroll horizontally, but I'm getting used to it.

Come on guys ... this beta hasn't even been out long enough for all the features to be tested yet. If you need more and more and more fanciness (except the icon, of course), I hear Microsoft has a product for you that has the same price point, level of customer support and overall company coolness factor (though I'm not sure if their cat was named after a spreadsheet app).

As far as being able to paste pictures in the app, PS & Quark do just fine with that. ;)
 
This some of the dumbest feedback I've seen on the Omni Forums. I'd expect this kind of trash on VersionTracker, but I'm a little surprised to see it here.

All I can say is, I'm glad that none of the "creativity and brilliance" of the "President of Tactical Command" was incorporated in this, or any of Omni's other programs.
 
I didn't much like the delivery either, guys, but there's some (i.e. a 'little'!) validity to coalxman's comments; being able to visualise, or otherwise 'take-in all the factors' is an important part of getting anything 'complex' done, and Omni apps do tend to embody this philosophy.

In fact OmniPlan isn't too bad in this regard, given that the outline view seems to be pretty closely modelled on OmniOutliner; with the Style Attribute mechanism you can customise the Task and Gantt lists quite a lot (e.g. colouring overdue tasks, alternate background colours/images for Completed, Task Groups etc.), along with Group Shading in the chart etc.

The suggestion to aide recognising individuals isn't a bad one, and indeed there's some support for that in OP (better than most I've seen, but still with a bit of work to do); select each resource, and change it's font colour, and the assignment labels on the Gantt chart will be colour-coded appropriately. Admittedly background colour and image settings seem to be followed intermittently in the Gantt chart, but the foundations for what you're after are there.

Likewise, a countdown can be a more direct way to communicate deadlines than a more abstract 'future date', but this is something that can be incorporated fairly easily -- I'd agree that it's well worth boiling things down to their 'essential' elements, often 'management apps' can be overly analytical in their focus, and forget small human issues, like that.

...but I trust that the OmniGuys tend to be pretty good in that way. :)

All-in-all I'd say that OmniPlan seems to be a fairly solid first offering... but perhaps a little steeply priced for it's current maturity.

Last edited by marc; 2006-07-27 at 04:47 PM..
 
I agree I was to harsh, never really been good a sugar coating and software manners need work BUT:

I did not criticize the new app I just felt that maybe I could present some new ideas so that a new format will be presented one day and they wont always take the safe approach, which is what they did this time, and yes they did it well but that is what I thought was sad, as they had an incredible opportunity to change the way we do things , and they brought nothing new to the table.:(

I am glad some of the ideas are being talked about, that is all I really wanted, the poll was just for fun, but interesting none the less.

Did not Omni use a Countdown Timer for thier release of the Program. hmmm! I hate to say it but , no I wont say it. :cool:
 
I don't tend to sugar coat things either, so I know what you mean. That said, there's a difference between sugar coating things and being insulting.

Think of it this way - you pour months (guessing) of time, effort, heart, soul... into a project and one of the first responses is a poll on who should be fired over it.

Easiest job in the world is a critic. To your credit, you did provide suggestions on how the product could be improved. Though, the impact of that was probably lessened because of the apparently sarcastic remarks at the opening.

I too am disappointed with this product, but I realize I'm a demanding customer so when my needs don't get met, I'm not surprised.
 
You may have some legitimate dissappointments, but this is beyond "not sugar-coating it". My assessment is that it fits pretty well so far. I love OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, and this feels similar with a lot of potential for really nice integration between the apps now and down the road.

What I like about the idea of OmniPlan is this integration, as well as the momentum the OmniGroup consistently produces. We have seen both OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle (especially the Pro versions) really beef up over time. These guys get iterative product development. I also am betting that scriptability through AppleScript will be much better down the road than with any other planner app. This app is usable in its beta form, and given that MSProject import/export tests well (I've noticed some possible initial problems) this app is one that meets my needs now, is comfortable to work in, and has great potential in future revs.

But it does have a ways to go. To me it is already better than MSProject and FastTrack. Moving tasks around and filling in a project went rather smooth. I did feel that linking task dependencies was a bit haphazzard in whether the app decided to change duration or add a link. I liked the auto leveling, which worked as I expected. Resource assignment fit pretty well. I didn't think date selection was as fluent as I'd like. I'd like a small calendar popup next to the date fields.

Bottom line is that this app did leave me with a good feeling, but not the awesome feeling I got from OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle. It doesn't seem worth jumping from Merlin for, however, I'm not writing it off yet.

Vince
President of Enterprise Frameworks, Inc.
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 08:29 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.