Quote:
Originally Posted by RussleTop
Firstly, great software, although obviously a v1 in terms of features.
A couple of things I'd love to see in future versions:
- Stronger financial planning, tracking, and reporting capabilities. I find OmniPlan great for controlling the project schedule, not so great for controlling project finances.
- Availability of activity "elements". The ability to assign issues, risks, events, etc. against activities. I find this an extremely useful capability in other products.
- Report writing. Perhaps an interface to allow users to generate custom reports? The current custom report approach is flexible but a little low on the usability front. Also making more fields available for use in custom reports would be great.
Cheers.
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I am a Merlin user, but I use Omnifocus for personal task management. The other day I downloaded Omniplan to check it out, and I must say the interface is incredibly clean, quick and intuitive to learn!
BUT: It is a marvellous scheduling tool more than an A-Z project management tool, lacking financial features as well as having some holes in resource management. Nevertheless, I was stunned at how easy it was to get to know the software, and I would love to see some features in later versions. This is a long reply, but hopefully someone has the time to read it:
1. In Omnioutliner you can set numbers/currency summary for columns/groups/rows. Add that possibility to Omniplan's custom columns + making it possible to create simple arithmetic formulas between columns. Example: <Budget> column minus <Sum planned> column equals your remaining planning overhead - what you have left. Wham. OP would be
the best in class of all Mac OS PM software for financial features. All without cluttering the interface for existing users (you could ship OP with a couple of project templates having financial columns in them, though). Good PM software should not require making external spreadsheets.
2. Some essential resource/task management features are missing:
- Setting predefined lead/lag between activities
- Setting finish-finish and start-start dependencies
- Overtime definitions and costs for working hours
- Setting material units as groups/multiple items
- Ability to log multiple actual working sessions under one task without cluttering the task view (this is so obvious for a PM, but NO software has that feature, instead, you are forced to attach separate time sheets and calculate yourself).
3. Possibility to attach emails, multiple versions of (a) file(s) and multiple notes to each task
4. Event log report where files/emails/notes/work sessions per resource are placed under the task to which they belong as rows, adding columns for debits and credits. This is also something that escapes EVERY maker of PM software:
Once you send your project to accounting, your report needs one row for every single cost/income element. Accountants don't care about what you call your tasks and how you performed them, only numbers count... In the PC world, this is overstated in all the PM software available (impossible to get the nice, visual overlook). In the Mac world, it is understated, hence the reluctance of many companies to allow for the use of Macs. Solution: A simple table report defining every activity as accountable (even if debit/credit is 0)
5. Utilization report. The only concern your boss has (if it is an internal project) is that everyone worked their hours...
Best regards,
Arild
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