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Useless for Short & Intense Projects (i.e. wedding planning) Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I purchased OmniPlan believing that its ability to handle hours and minutes in its effort & duration calculations would make it the right product for my fiancee and I to use while planning our wedding day. I'm very sad to say that after entering in 100 tasks, OmniPlan is a huge disappointment. If you can help solve our problems, we would be grateful.

First of all, the scale for viewing and printing the Gantt chart is too small. We need to be able to view our "project" on an hour-by-hour basis. For example, the eight-minute task of the "Bride & Father Dance" looks like a 1 pixel wide sliver, which is ultimately useless. If tasks can be assigned in the order of minutes (and even seconds), then the Gantt chart view should allow us to view the project with a scale of hours. (We have some 1-hour periods of our wedding where 8 or more resources are all performing separate, overlapping, and simultaneous tasks, so of course we need to look at a project with a finer scale.)

Next, it looks like a hellish mess when we print it out. MS Project and other apps provide a nice, neat, precise printout. Given my past successes with OmniGraffle, I expected so much more, and I received so much less that what would be acceptable. Additionally, there is no method for adjusting the margins of the printout.

Finally, the inability to define specific start and end dates for the ENTIRE project that are not variable sinks this product. For a wedding, the timeframe is set--I do not want the app to think for me because we know when all of the scheduled planning and preparation must begin, and we know when the entire event ends. Having a floating project end is a nice option, but a set project end is more realistic. Constraints should be user-defined first for the entire project, and then for the individual tasks, with the scale for viewing the Gantt chart based on the constraints of the whole project.

If you have solutions or workarounds for us, we would appreciate your help. Otherwise, we're left to believe that OmniPlan is all dressed up with no place to go, and that we need to request a refund for an app that fails to deliver an acceptable level of performance.
 
Hi zealousagenda,

I apologize for the frustration you're experiencing with OmniPlan. We may or may not have a version that solves the problems you mentioned in time for your wedding (I'm assuming your wedding is coming up sooner rather than later), but we're definitely aware of these issues/feature requests and are actively working on them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by zealousagenda

First of all, the scale for viewing and printing the Gantt chart is too small. We need to be able to view our "project" on an hour-by-hour basis. For example, the eight-minute task of the "Bride & Father Dance" looks like a 1 pixel wide sliver, which is ultimately useless. If tasks can be assigned in the order of minutes (and even seconds), then the Gantt chart view should allow us to view the project with a scale of hours. (We have some 1-hour periods of our wedding where 8 or more resources are all performing separate, overlapping, and simultaneous tasks, so of course we need to look at a project with a finer scale.)
This is a popular request among our users. The "support for smaller time scales" feature has been approved, and will be implemented in a later version of OmniPlan.

Quote:
Next, it looks like a hellish mess when we print it out. MS Project and other apps provide a nice, neat, precise printout. Given my past successes with OmniGraffle, I expected so much more, and I received so much less that what would be acceptable. Additionally, there is no method for adjusting the margins of the printout.
To adjust the margins of the printout, you need to go to 'File' > 'Print' and select 'OmniPlan' from the print settings drop-down menu. You can also adjust the header/footer, dimensions and content settings here too. We know of some printing issues in OmniPlan 1.1 and are trying to address them in OmniPlan 1.2. I'm interested in hearing more about the specific issues you've encountered, if you wouldn't mind emailing them to omniplan@omnigroup.com that would be very helpful.

Quote:
Finally, the inability to define specific start and end dates for the ENTIRE project that are not variable sinks this product. For a wedding, the timeframe is set--I do not want the app to think for me because we know when all of the scheduled planning and preparation must begin, and we know when the entire event ends. Having a floating project end is a nice option, but a set project end is more realistic. Constraints should be user-defined first for the entire project, and then for the individual tasks, with the scale for viewing the Gantt chart based on the constraints of the whole project.
I will file a feature request for a way to set a project end date along with your comments. Currently, the end date of the project is based on the end date of the last item in the project. What you could do is create a milestone named "End of Event" and set an end constraint for it. Then, have all the top level tasks in your project connected to the milestone with a finish to start dependency connection.

Does this info help? If you would like to request a refund, please let me know at omniplan@omnigroup.com and I will start the refund process ASAP. :-)
 
Beyond weddings, it's pretty common to need to build a project "backwards" from a fixed end-date, such as a trade show, end-of-quarter presentation, etc. Supporting this as a variable (rather than having to put in constraints for every item) would be really great. I'm pretty sure this has been mentioned before.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ajrichardson
Beyond weddings, it's pretty common to need to build a project "backwards" from a fixed end-date, such as a trade show, end-of-quarter presentation, etc. Supporting this as a variable (rather than having to put in constraints for every item) would be really great. I'm pretty sure this has been mentioned before.
I'll add another vote to our database along with your comments.
 
add a vote for me also please .. projects due by a pre-defined deadline are very common . covey called it "begin with the end in mind " and my bosses seem to do that a lot .
 
I also ran into this recently. We have a project that has a fixed release date, and having the ability to plan against is something that to be honest I expected to be in the product. Nevertheless, please add my vote for this!

We have just recently purchased the software, and aside from that and maybe one or two other things, have found it to be relatively easy to use and once a couple of learning curves have been bridged, intuitive. Nice work Omni Group.
 
Planning backwards from a specific date is HUGE!

Thanks!

Steven
 
ext555, cvandyck, sjtryon:

Votes added for everyone! :-)

cvandyck:

You mentioned that there were "one or two other things" about OmniPlan, could you tell me what they are? ;-)

If you prefer, you can email me at omniplan@omnigroup.com with your feedback. Thanks!
 
Note my vote, too. I'd be using (and owning) OP if it could help with shorter time-frame projects. It know it's not a scheduler, but I have more small projects than I do massive projects and starting with a target completion date would make organizing the project for straightforward.

Thanks.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by pjb
Note my vote, too. I'd be using (and owning) OP if it could help with shorter time-frame projects. It know it's not a scheduler, but I have more small projects than I do massive projects and starting with a target completion date would make organizing the project for straightforward.

Thanks.
Vote added. :-)
 
 


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