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Task as Projects to get around multiple projects on one sheet Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Using Task as Projects (so I can see multiple projects on one screen with one set of resources).

I know it has been mentioned as a feature request in some form or another, but what I need is a project manager that puts more focus on projects and resources, rather than every detail of a single project. As a designer and an owner, I don't have time to manage every little phase. I am more concerned with the overall project list, resources, and stages each project is in.

So my plan is to use OmniPlan in such a way that all my projects, about 15 to 30 at a time, are on the same page, use the same resources, and show a company workload overall. To do this, I was thinking of using Task as Projects. Indent within the Task to create separation as well as color changing. Does anyone with experience with OmniPlan see a problem with this idea?

In the future, multiple projects may be allowed on the same page, sharing the same resources, and assets, etc. But until then, I think this may work, just not sure and would hate to dive in, only to waste time.

I like Omni products UI and that alone should save me time and money, but am I making this great app do something it shouldn't?
 
We've actually recommended this approach for several users, to share resources and schedules properly between projects, and have only heard about 2 concerns with this.
1) All your projects are in one big file, so you can't show the file to one customer without them seeing everything about all the other customers' projects too.
We're working on adding some filtering in an upcoming release, so then you'd be able to hide any part of your project temporarily.

2) There is only one file. So only one person can edit it at a time.
If this is a problem, there is a script on our extras page that takes two projects and merges them into one file. So you could have a separate project file for each of your project leads to edit and then merge them all into one file when you want to see the big picture.

I hope that real users will also respond to this thread, as I mostly just theorize about how people can and should use our applications.
 
If you like using "Critical Path", it won't work if you use this trick.

You can "hide" the details of other projects (level-0 tasks) just by clicking the "expand/de-expand" arrow on the task name.

I can't think of a way to hide other tasks completely. Maybe a separate Style that has text color the same as the page (i.e. white text)?
 
Also, if you use this method of scheduling multiple projects, you can't have one that starts at an "arbitrary date" and others that start on specific dates; it's either all one way or all the other.
 
This is a common need for a manager who doesn't have their employees use the PM software as well. I don't need to have every task listed in the PM software, but I do need to have multiple projects, and one big need is to publish that information so others can see the status/priority throughout the company.

I've used FastTrack for years, but it's HTML export is hideous. OmniPlan is better, but it's missing the multi-project functionality. I keep going around and around because the correct tool just doesn't exist, to the point where I am tempted to just create it myself.

I simply want a simple display of all current projects and their status and schedule. This is a good example:

http://www.compuware.com/products/ch...o%20Management

Considering that OmniPlan has the ability to change the HTML templates and is scriptable, was wondering if anyone had written something to summarize the separate project files into one view.
 
I am using this method of “Project as task” too, because I need to spread a pool of resources over several small projects too. And, as michaelatSPG noted it, I can’t specify some projects to start at an unspecified date—at least I now know that this is not something wrong with my knowledge, but only a shortcoming from the software. My hack is to set my unspecified projects on october 1 2007 — the first day I used the software.

Now, I have several kind of project, and I would like to classify them according to their kind. Using grouping is not a option, as it prevents me from using the Gantt diagram in a proper way. I tried with another software, using their otherwise unused (by me) “Alternative title” as a “kind” entry. So, I specify a project to be "rules", "scenario" or "background". When I need to know every “rules”, I sort the Alternative title column to have all “rules” close to each others—even Excel allows this.

Presently, under Omniplan, the closest I could find was using colours, mapping one colour to one kind. This is far from perfect, though. Any idea?
 
 


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