Important changes of this version:

Integration with spreadsheets from Excel, iWork Numbers and OpenOffice Split tasks and easier manual leveling for resources A more user-friendly interface (outline number, code for resources, automatic selection of resources and predecessors when direct typing) Bug fixes

Starting with this version RationalPlan integrates with spreadsheets from Excel, iWork Numbers or OpenOffice. Users can copy tasks or resources and then paste them in these spreadsheets. In this way they will be able to create custom reports or send certain information from a project to potential stakeholders. This feature is an addition to the free project viewer already available and it will be mostly used for generating some custom privacy reports that can not be generated directly through RationalPlan products. Users will also be able to paste data from spreadsheets into RationalPlan. The application will try to detect the type of data that was copied from the spreadsheet and convert it to actual data. This way the users will have a very efficient way to import their data instead of manually inserting it.

Another strong feature that was added is the possibility to split tasks. Hence users will be able to split a task in several parts in case a certain task work can not be performed in a contiguous time interval. Each of these splitted parts will inherit all the information from the original task but they can be individually managed. The biggest advantage is that managers will be able to have a better control over the work allocation for the resources. As an example the manager will be able to assign a resource only over a certain time period on a task and not for the full duration of that task as this was the only possibility in previous versions of RationalPlan. This is a powerfull feature that comes to complete the resource leveling feature that was added in version 3.10. Now project managers have the full mechanism for doing their manual leveling for resources.

Certain improvements were made to the interface of the application to make users experience easier. One is the outline number that was added for tasks. This way tasks are easier to be identified in a big project structure. Another improvement is the addition of an editable combo box in the predecessors and assignments tables for a task, that will automatically select the desired items when typing. This way the navigation is also improved. Also it must be mentioned the fact that MS Project files (.mpp, .xml, .mpx) can now be openned directly with RationalPlan and there is no need to import them as before.

An important bug fix of this version is related to the import of MS Project .mpp files. Other minor improvements are straightforward for the user and there is no need to fill the list here with them.

RationalPlan suite includes:

• RationalPlan Single Project - project management software for single projects
• RationalPlan Multi Project - project management software for multiple projects, projects that are interconnected through dependencies and share common resource
• RationalPlan Project Viewer - free project management software viewer, the perfect solution for anyone (from project stakeholders to team workers) to view projects details

RationalPlan is designed as an affordable alternative to Microsoft Project with some extra-features like multiproject management and it is covering project management area from WBS construction, project planning and scheduling to critical path management, over allocated resources detection, progress tracking, cost estimation, etc. Gantt chart support as well as various time line reports are also provided. It offers the most important capabilities of a good project management software while being able to operate on various platforms starting with Windows, Mac, Linux and all other Java enabled platforms.

RationalPlan Project Management Software is available at http://www.rationalplan.com . It can be download from http://www.rationalplan.com/download.php .

About Stand By Soft

Stand By Soft was founded in 1997 as a software company specialized in building desktop applications and components.

Contact us:

Ioan Lucian
Aleea Parului, Nr.4A, Craiova, Dolj, 200346, Romania