Recurring Tasks implementation on Omniplan

precision01 · October 22, 2015, 9:45pm

Have recurring tasks been implemented on Omniplan 3.0 release?
Some of us have been waiting this this task type since 2012 (since the old forum is gone, we have no register about it anymore).

yourcabmanager · October 23, 2015, 11:11am

I am also want to ask this question…Please reply…

ianjgrant · October 23, 2015, 6:59pm

Hi I need a set of tasks on one line that repeat / recur but not at a standard interval. Can it be done?
e.g. Our recruitment officer needs to visit multiple schools per week - regular but tasks without specific detail until close to the event.

Currently I’m using 'milestones, but quickly they become visually cumbersome…

Thanks, Ian

ps I’ve seen the thread on recurring events in planning for OmniPlan 2… but lost the thread of that development…

lizard · October 28, 2015, 10:26pm

Recurring tasks have not been implemented in 3.0. We are tracking this feature request to consider for future releases. If you have specific examples of what you want (such as @ianjgrant wanting irregular intervals), it’d be helpful to let us know about those here or preferably by emailing omniplan@omnigroup.com

anon93871420 · February 7, 2016, 8:24pm

Huh. You are tracking the feature “to consider” for future releases. But you stopped short of saying there is an actual plan for this, or even a tentative plan. And you didn’t indicate which “future” release you might “consider” it for. I don’t mean any disrespect; it just sounds like this isn’t really being taken seriously despite requests for it that date back years.

lizard · February 8, 2016, 5:22pm

I agree that my statement was vague. I am not supposed to make forward-looking promises on this forum. And even if I could tell you that this feature is scheduled to be in a certain version, that plan might change.

@MKV I just looked at the bug in our tracking system and don’t see any information from you about how you’d use this feature. So please drop us a line and let us know what your recurring tasks would look like?

anon93871420 · February 8, 2016, 9:21pm

Thanks for the reply. It does make sense that you aren’t able to make promises about future features in a forum like this. Didn’t mean to mean rude. But it’s still the case that people have been making this request for years, and that there’s no sign of it coming soon, so from the customer’s perspective, it’s best not to count on it happening anytime in the near future.

I would use this feature to set up pretty basic recurring tasks, like weekly team meetings, or regular phone calls to check in with certain project partners.

luckylindy · February 10, 2016, 4:33pm

My use case is I have a set of tasks that kick off the first weekday of the month. I have made the five tasks a Group. Total duration of this monthly ‘project’ is three weeks. Two of the tasks are the sending of an email a ertai number of days after the previous task.

I would like to have the ability to set recurrence on this Group ‘monthly’ on ‘the first weekday of the month’. I assume that feature would allow me to set an end date/#of instances for the recurrence (in my case 12).

I would use this feature each year to auto generate the dates I need to send the emails.

Thanks.

ains · February 11, 2016, 6:38pm

@luckylindy @MKV Thanks for letting us know how you’d use this functionality! I’ve attached your notes to our open request to implement repeating tasks in OmniPlan.

That said, the best way to make sure we receive this type of feedback is always by sending an email to our support team (omniplan@omnigroup.com). While we try our best to keep an eye on everything posted in our forums, it is possible for posts to slip past us.

DanT · April 30, 2016, 2:27pm

I need this feature as well. I produce gantt charts for proposals and I simply do not have the vertical room to put four quarterly reports on a separate lines.

ains · May 2, 2016, 11:35pm

@DanT I’m afraid I don’t quite follow how the functionality you’re looking for relates to recurring tasks. If you’d like to email omniplan@omnigroup.com with more information about your desired workflow, our Support Team would be happy to file a feature request for you!

dennisv · May 3, 2016, 8:12am

I have to say that this feature will be far more helpful than I once thought. EVERY government contractor needs this feature, and today I found out, because we lost a bid, that the government can be very strict if you promise to submit a report and other repeat deliverables and then do not have them on your gantt.
It is true that we were a little higher than other bidders, but that failure was stated in the rejection. Better get this in or warn mac users that they will have issues on government grants.
Thanks
D

ains · May 3, 2016, 5:29pm

@dennisv I’ll let the team know that this functionality would be very useful for government contractors - thanks for letting us know!

mkc · May 4, 2016, 2:00am

As a brand new OmniPlan Pro user, and a government contractor, this would be appreciated and is a typical item in Gannt project schedules (e.g. repeating milestones for reports or meetings).

ains · May 4, 2016, 5:19pm

Thanks @mkc, I’ll attach your comments to our open feature request as well!

That said, I did want to to note that the best way to let our team know what features you’d like to see implemented in our apps is by emailing Support directly. We try our best to stay on top of posts in our forums, but it is possible for comments to slip past us.

nickbatchelor · November 18, 2016, 2:25pm

Being able to schedule recurring ‘client’ and team meetings along with the necessary pre-meeting tasks would be extremely useful.

smhol · April 26, 2017, 4:01am

Recurring events typical of any project are:

Meetings of all types;
Generation and distribution of reports;
Contract reviews
Deliverable approval tasks
The UI for this would be the same as the UI for setting up recurring meetings in Calendar, that is:

recur on a particular day each week, month, etc, the 3rd Monday of every month
recur based on some fixed anniversary, say contract execution.
recur on a particular date the 3rd of each month.

This feature has been available in MS Project since the 90’s.

precision01 · April 26, 2017, 3:56pm

Perfect. I agree with you SMHOL.

I haven’t upgraded from Omniplan 2 because the app is still missing this essencial feature that MS Profect has since 90’s, as you said. There’s no new features worth the upgrade from omniplan 2 to version 3.

The reality in every company is that we all have recurring tasks like the list above, and it takes time from human resources. Sometimes from material and equipment too.

So, this feature should be a TOP PRIORITY!

This feature has been available in MS Project since the 90’s, as you said.

Reminder: Recurring tasks request is almost celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. Users from old omniplan forum know that.

A WORD FROM DEVELOPERS would be great!

ains · April 27, 2017, 5:34pm

@smhol @precision01 Thanks for letting us know that repeating tasks would be useful in your OmniPlan workflow! I’ve attached both of your comments to our open feature request. We do know that this is something folks would like to see us implement in OmniPlan, but I’m afraid I don’t have a time frame I can give you as to when we might be able to do so. While number of votes and age of a feature request are only a couple of the factors we take into account when determining what to implement in OmniPlan (and when), I did want to note that we released support for elapsed time values in OmniPlan last week, which was a feature request initially filed with us in 2008!

smhol · April 28, 2017, 5:48am

I appreciate the response. It hadn’t really impacted until this week when I was asked to build an event Calendar for 8 concurrent BAU projects consisting of recurring activities.