Hey,

I have been having a bit of a play with OmniPlan on my MBP. Seems to work great, however some collobatoration features would go down well. The ability to have the same file open by 5 workstations would make life so much easier (I work in a senior level 2 support/provisioning position with a team of about fifteen). Perhaps Bonjourno or some other sharing interface could be used ?

Any other thoughts on this ?

Cheers,

Leigh

[Lizard]

Lots of people are requesting this. I'd guess (but obviously can't promise) that this could be a major feature of OmniPlan 2.0. We hoped that in the meantime, you could share read-only copies of the file or post a web page. Obviously, that's limiting, but allowing multiple people to edit a file at the same time and resolving the conflicts in those edits is a rather complex feature.

Another approach (which we're using at Omni) for the time-being might be, if you have a source control repository (cvs, subversion, perforce, etc.), you could store your OmniPlan files in there. Inside the file package, there's just a single XML file (for now), so version-tracking should play nicely with it. If you just edit a single task in the plan file, it'll be a relatively small change in the XML file. Is anyone (besides us) sharing OmniPlan files this way?

[Forrest]

Yeah, I'm one of those people requesting this ability. I think I've said this before; any project that I don't need to collaborate on I can do in my head.

My ideal wish for the OG is that they create a web interface to work with OP, even for just basic stuff. I would be willing to contribute resources to make that happen.

[Lizard]

What actions or features are most needed in such a web interface?
Is it simply a matter of team members updating their progress as percent completed of each task assigned to them?
Will people need to be changing start dates, adjusting priorities, and correcting dependencies through the web interface?

[Forrest]

Originally Posted by Lizard

What actions or features are most needed in such a web interface?
Is it simply a matter of team members updating their progress as percent completed of each task assigned to them?
Will people need to be changing start dates, adjusting priorities, and correcting dependencies through the web interface?

A few features I would need in a web interface:
- Ability to create task with title, description, start/end date, set priority and attach files. Assigning resources would also be nice, but not required.
- Ability to update progress including posting messages and attaching files (communication log.)

I would be fine if the rest was done via OmniPlan. The way we work is to allow clients to create projects with some basic parameters. They use a web-based system so we can all access it anywhere and support issues are nil. It eliminates email so everything stays together and we're all on the same page.

I mentioned this when OmniPlan was first announced but it sounded liked any networking/collaboration was not going to be part of v.1.0. I would gladly discuss my ideas and needs further if/when you plan on adding this functionality.

[Lizard]

(Yeah, it still isn't on the table for 1.0, but I figured I'd start the conversation rolling so when we are ready to implement it, we've got a good idea of what our users are looking for.)

[Jon Saperia]

Yes, all my files are in subversion (gives me an extra warm feeling in case anything bad happens). This works pretty well. Only problem is those without MACs, so the suggestion for a web update percent done is a good one.
This in combination with the feature request I made for 'linked' projects would be very great.

[jscotta]

Originally Posted by Lizard

What actions or features are most needed in such a web interface?
Is it simply a matter of team members updating their progress as percent completed of each task assigned to them?
Will people need to be changing start dates, adjusting priorities, and correcting dependencies through the web interface?

37Signals has a product called Basecamp that is good for a basic web service for project management and a good example for an OmniPlan web interface. I would even support just having integration between OmniPlan and Basecamp – OmniPlan serving as a client to Basecamp or you can view it in the reverse by saying treating Basecamp as the web interface to OmniPlan.

[Jon Saperia]

Two points:

1. I am less concerned about multiple users accessing a single file at one time (which is problematic) than being able to break a project up into several files and link them. This kills two birds with one stone.
2. I am less concerned with web access to functions (though I understand why some would want them) than I am with better export facilities such as the percent discussion earlier in the thread. In addition, better formatting/inclusion of the notes in output/export.