Help us test elapsed time values! OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac & OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS Public Test

[ains]

Our next two OmniPlan updates - OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac and OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS - are now available for testing! These updates include a include a wide ranging collection of bug fixes and we’d love to hear from users about how these releases fair in the world outside Omni.

OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac can be downloaded here:
http://omnistaging.omnigroup.com/omniplan/

You can sign up to join the OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS TestFlight here:
https://www.omnigroup.com/test/omniplan-ios

The initial test builds of these releases contain the following changes, with more to come! Additional changes will be noted in the in-app release notes.

OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac Pubic Test Release Notes:

• Backwards Compatibility — OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac and OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS contain a lot of “under the hood” changes. If you’re syncing OmniPlan projects between multiple devices, we highly recommend running test builds of this release on all devices. Builds of OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS are available in TestFlight. If you haven’t already signed up for OmniPlan for iOS’s TestFlight, you can do so here.
• Scheduling — Cleaned up and rewrote the code OmniPlan uses to schedule project timelines. This is intended to make project scheduling more accurate by addressing things like rounding errors. As a result, you may notice slight changes in your project’s schedule after installing this update. If you are confused about why your project’s schedule as changed, or feel that it has changed in a way that it shouldn’t have, please contact our Support team!
• Publish/Subscribe — Made substantial updates to code relating to OmniPlan’s publish/subscribe mechanism in order to improve speed and better handle authentication challenges. If you notice abnormal behavior when publishing or updating your project, please let us know!
• Help — The in-app Help is now localized in all languages except for Korean and Brazilian Portuguese.
• Import — Importing .tsv files is now supported.
• AppleScript — AppleScript now properly sets project level custom data values.
• Calendar View — Clicking the green “Customized Work Week” icon now switches to Calendar View to reveal the resource’s work schedule.
• Calendar View — It is once again possible to clear a resource’s customized work schedule.
• Change Tracking — The change tracking sidebar has been disabled in the Styles View as this view does not support change tracking.
• Daylight Savings Time — Daylight Savings Time beginning or ending no longer confuses OmniPlan’s date display.
• Earned Value — ACWP values now calculate correctly when a resource is assigned at less than 100% to a task.
• Export — End constraint brackets are no longer backwards when exporting to PDF.
• Gantt View — Addressed a bug that could cause dependency connection arrows to remain on the Gantt chart after tasks are disconnected.
• Microsoft Project Import — Fixed a variety of bugs that could block Microsoft Project files from importing correctly.
• Network View — The Network View no longer scrolls back to the beginning of the project after a task is deleted.
• Network View — “Add Task” with a child task selected in the Network Diagram now creates task in same group.
• Performance — Setting a start constraint 100 years in the past no longer causes performance issues.
• Publish/Subscribe — OmniPlan now syncs more happily with Server.app.
• Publish/Subscribe — Addressed a bug that could cause pub/sub actions to duplicate. This bug was most commonly encountered when a file with pub/sub actions was also being syncing via OmniPresence.
• Resource View — Resources can once again be assigned by dragging resources from the Resource View outline to tasks in a swim lane.
• Scheduling — Tasks set to “adjust assigned amounts” no longer max resource allocation out at 100% (as a result, resources now accurately indicate that they are overloaded in this scenario)
• Scheduling — Removing all work hours from a project no longer results in tasks with no effort and duration.
• Split Tasks — Split tasks now remain split when the first half of the task is dragged in the Gantt chart.
• Stability — Constraints that result in a scheduling recursion now present a violation instead of causing OmniPlan to crash.
• Stability — The Resource Assignments Touch Bar button no longer triggers a crash when resources have unexpected names.
• Task Completion — Addressed a rounding error that could cause tasks to be > 99% complete instead of 100% complete.

OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS Public Test Release Notes

OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS requires iOS 10.

• Backwards Compatibility — OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac and OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS contain a lot of “under the hood” changes. If you’re syncing OmniPlan projects between multiple devices, we highly recommend running test builds of this release on all devices. Builds of OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac are available here.
• Scheduling — Cleaned up and rewrote the code OmniPlan uses to schedule project timelines. This is intended to make project scheduling more accurate by addressing things like rounding errors. As a result, you may notice slight changes in your project’s schedule after installing this update. If you are confused about why your project’s schedule as changed, or feel that it has changed in a way that it shouldn’t have, please contact our Support team!
• Publish/Subscribe — Made substantial updates to code relating to OmniPlan’s publish/subscribe mechanism in order to improve speed and better handle authentication challenges. If you notice abnormal behavior when publishing or updating your project, please let us know!
• App Lock — It is no longer possible to use keyboard shortcuts when the application is locked.
• App Lock — “Password” placeholder text is now localized.
• Localization — Korean and Brazilian Portuguese localizations no longer use English placeholder text when creating a new task.
• Localization — Dutch localization now exports task and resource HTML reports in the correct language.
• New Tasks — New tasks are once again created immediately below the currently selected task.
• Publish/Subscribe — OmniPlan now syncs more happily with Server.app.
• Publish/Subscribe — Addressed an encoding issue that could cause a 404 error for account names that include an @ symbol.
• Resources — Changing a resource to the “group” type, then switching back, no longer leaves the resource’s units at 0%.
• Stability — Addressed a crash that could occur when some Accessibility options were enabled
• Stability — Setting the date scale to “Day” while viewing all non-working hours no longer causes a crash.

[ains]

Our most recent OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac test builds include new support for a popular feature request - elapsed time values!

Recent Changes in OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac Test Builds:

• Elapsed Duration — OmniPlan now supports elapsed time values for task duration and lead/lag time! By default, OmniPlan calculates task duration and lead/lag time from the project’s work hours, entering an “e” before either value will now convert it to an elapsed time value instead. Need to wait for the paint to dry before you can take the next step in your project? Enter “48eh” in your “Let paint dry” task’s duration field to tell OmniPlan that the next dependent task can begin Monday morning if the paint has started to dry by the end of the day Friday (and assigning additional resources to watch the paint dry won’t help it complete any earlier).
• Menu Bar — The Gantt chart, Task outline, and Resource outline can now be hidden or revealed by options in the View menu in the OmniPlan menu bar.
• Change Tracking — Addressed a typo in the resource assignment change tracking message.
• Inspectors — Fixed a bug that could cause resource assignments to layout incorrectly in the Task Inspector in previous test builds.
• Network View — It is now possible to edit the name of a task in Network View while zoomed out.
• Stability — Fixed a common crash.
• Publish/Subscribe — It is now possible to delete more than one project at a time from the Server Repository window.

Recent Changes in OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS Test Builds:

• Elapsed Duration — This is a work in progress! OmniPlan 3.7 for Mac now supports entering elapsed time values for task durations and lead/lag time. This build of OmniPlan 3.5 for iOS supports reading those values, but does not yet support entering elapsed time values.
• Date Formatting — Lead time in the Task Scheduling Inspector now correctly respects specified duration date formatting.
• Stability — Addressed a crash on launch that could occur in previous TestFlight build.
  Version 3.5 Test - Wednesday, February 8, 2017
• Group Tasks — Fixed a bug that could cause group shading for nested groups to draw incorrectly.
• Publish/Subscribe — It is now possible to delete more than one project at a time from the Server Repository.

[oconnord]

I need a better explanation of what elapsed duration actually does.

Why when you enter 2ew does that value honor the normal work week? Example. If I set a 2ew duration but have a 5 day normal work week then the task goes from T to T+10. When the normal work week is set to 24/7 then 2ew duration goes from T to T+14 as expected. This happens even if the specific resource I have the task assigned to has a 24/7 work week while the normal work week is 5 days. A related question is: do resource work weeks always have to be a subset of the normal work week in order for effort and real duration to work correctly?

I hope I’m not horribly confused about this.

In my work I have long “incubations” that occur 24/7. Plants need to grow for 2 weeks exactly before I can use them. So, I really need a strong connection to actual elapsed time for some of my tasks.

[ains]

@oconnord Thanks for asking about this feature - it’s great to hear what’s tripping people up when a feature is still in development.

It sounds like you’ve got the right idea of how elapsed duration is intended to function, but the behavior is confusing when working with a project that has undetermined dates. Right now, underdetermined dates only count working days. This becomes more obvious if you enable weekends in the Gantt chart (View > Non-Working Time > Weekends in the OmniPlan menu bar). If you enable weekends, you’ll notice that the date header is empty for these days:

Does this screenshot help to illustrate this behavior?

[weijtmans]

Does Omniplan support the elapsed day import from MS Project.

I have a project plan with both edays and days, which is messing up the import. If I remove the normal hours from the Calendar view, the edays and ewks line up , but the rest doesn’t and if I use the normal hours the days and wks work (kind of), but not the edays and ewks.

[ains]

@weijtmans We introduced import/export support for elapsed values in OmniPlan 3.8 for Mac! If you’re running OmniPlan 3.8 or newer and still encountering this issue, could you contact our Support team so that they can look into it with you? They can be reached at omniplan@omnigroup.com. Thanks!