SharedPlan Connect
January 28, 2007
“A kind word can warm three months of winter.”
–Japanese Proverb
- We’re Polishing SharedPlan – thanks to you
- SharedPlan on Your Mobile – status anytime, anywhere
- 1000 Projects in the Repository – again, thanks to you
- A Useful Collaboration Site – more web stuff
Hello all,
We’re having an amazingly tough winter so far here in Boulder, so I have been trying to say kind words to everybody. So far, the Japanese are wrong on that one.
We’re Polishing SharedPlan Pro
We asked, and you answered.
You probably saw an email in late December from Roger asking for your input on the areas where we can add the most value for you. Thank you for your terrific response! Most of your replies addressed a similar set of issues, so these have become our marching orders.
One of the most well-considered, helpful responses came from Jeff Stuck of Stuck Wood Works in Milwaukee. (We gave Jeff and another planner a gift certificate to thank them for their suggestions.) Jeff is a long-time user of SharedPlan Pro, both in his own work and as a teaching tool to project managers in the architectural woodwork industry.
Based on all of your feedback, we have released SharedPlan Pro 3.3 and enhanced web services with these new and improved features:
- Improved the Pro user interface and configuration options, primarily in the Network Diagram.
- SharedPlan Pro now provides notification of issue changes. Pro users can check for changes to issues in their private project server account through the client, rather than exclusively through the web interface.
- Issue history page. Through the web interface, private project server users can see all changes made to an issue.
- Project version history report. Through the web interface, private project server users can see all version comments on project versions.
- Improved printing. General cleanup of the printing function and the ability to fit a print job on a set number of pages.
- For those of you that are RSS fans there is now a feed of the newest and most recently updated projects in the public project server.
We’re not finished yet, but we didn’t want to make you wait to get your hands on the improvements to date. If you are a current ProPlanning license holder, just go to the download page to get a free update. If you have tried SharedPlan Pro in the past but want to give the new features a test drive just download the latest and give it a go - you'll automatically get another trial period!
SharedPlan Web Services on Your Mobile
We have started exploring the usefulness of providing access to SharedPlan from mobile devices. We have implemented a limited set of SharedPlan web services (reporting and issue tracking) for mobile devices. I wouldn’t call this a full-blown feature yet, more a proof of concept that we’re pre-releasing to solicit your feedback on what you think about it, if you’d use it, and what other devices should be support.
Please give it a try (go here and use guest as account name, user name and password) and let me know what you think. This is a good way to check out the private project server web services with or without a mobile device - it works just fine through any browser.
1000 Projects in the Public Project Server
Can you believe it – 1000 project plans in the public project server?! We love that so many people have been willing to share their project plans in exchange for the opportunity to see those of others. The community continues to grow, which means the repository will continue to get more and more useful.
We recognize that many of the plans in there are ‘test plans’ that don’t have any real information in them. But with any public collaborative community there will be lots of chaff mixed in with the wheat. One of the planned improvements for 2007 will address the repository’s ease of use.
In the meantime, we have deleted the advertising from the project summary pages to improve readability and added a “Share this project…” link so that you can easily email the summary page to a friend or colleague. Here’s a sample of the new clean look.
Another Useful Collaboration Site
Finally, I recently stumbled on http://www.kolabora.com/. I think it provides a useful blend of news and commentary on collaboration issues.
Until next time,
Tracy