Documentation ENGLISH VERSION

Transcription

1 xplan 3.8 for Mac Project management with Gantt charts Documentation ENGLISH VERSION

2 PRESENTTION With xplan, creating, tracking and managing your projects will be much easier than ever! xplan is designed to keep track of tasks and calculate a project's cost. If you're not a professional project manager, you probably want something that's easy to learn and inexpensive. Of course, it's got to pump out a professional project management plan too. If you are a professional project manager, you might be tired of trying to train your team to use an expensive and complicated tool. Maybe they just want a simple tool they can use to provide initial requirements and to view your full-featured plans. In either case, we've got you covered. xplan makes it easy to specify requirements, tasks, resources, and obstacles, and to generate a full Gantt schedule, including task dependencies. The Gantt Chart gives you a graphical representation of your projects including tasks, resources, start and end dates, milestones and completion. You will be successfully managing even the most complex projects in a fraction of the time it would take you with other similar products. Just compare our software to that of any of our competitors and you will experience the difference! xplan delivers beautiful, concise graphics that are sure to impress customers and colleagues and help you efficiently complete all your projects. REQUIREMENTS xplan requires OS X 10.8, OS X 10.9, OS X or OS X and a Mac with 64-Bit capabilities. xplan is available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese.

3 TUTORIL 1. Launch the application 2. Create a new project. The main window will open on project settings. B C D E F. Enter a name for your project NOTE : this name can be different from the file name B. Choose a date for the start and a date for the end C. Enter the default currency and a budget (optional) D. Select working days E. Select the week format. US or European format. NOTE : this is how the week numbers are displayed on the calendar. Based on your choice, week 1 will not be the same. F. Select when the week begins.

4 3. Let s discover the main views : Like itunes or major Mac apps, you can browse the content of your project from the left menu. Simple and efficient for quick navigation.. Settings of the current project K B. List of days off for the current project C. Innovative calendar view Tasks are displayed in front of each resource. B D. Calendar view with a Gantt chart E. List of tasks in the current project C D F. List of resources in the current project G. To-do tasks related to the current project E F These items are not displayed on the calendar. G H. Events H Special type of task always displayed at the top I of the calendar. I. ttached documents J J. Reports view (see the total of costs) L K. Level of progress of the project L. Resizable zone You can always resize the width of the menu zone by dragging the small line. If you hide it at 100%, you can activate it again from the view menu of the application.

5 B 4. Now, switch to the Gantt view. H I G F C D E. Toolbar with main functions You can create tasks, milestones, processes (group of tasks), events and to dos. B. View mode You can browse the calendar by days, weeks, months, years or see the full project. C. List of items The tasks, processes and milestones are displayed in a spreadsheet view. Each line is editable and columns are resizable. You can disable each column in preferences. D. Handle. You can resize the width of the list of items or even hide it. E. Calendar view The Gantt chart is displayed in this zone. ll items can be moved with the mouse and you even draw tasks directly on the calendar with your mouse. Simple and powerful. F. Zoom level When you are on the full project mode (B), the zoom slider allow you to adjust the calendar view to your screen. G. Full screen mode When you click on the two arrows icon, the screen is filled by the main view. To escape, move your cursor to the right and top or use the escape key of your keyboard. H. Search field I. Calendar. With version 3.7, you can now click on a timeframe to switch views.

6 Below, you can see an example of tasks, milestones and processes (group of tasks) displayed on the Gantt view. D C F B E From the list of tasks, you can move the task () to another process (B) by a simple drag and drop. You can see the hierarchy of items (C) and close an arrow to build a simpler view of a process. You can change the order of the display with these buttons (D). Try to move a process (E) with your mouse to the right or the left. You will see that tasks that are inside a process will automatically follow! Magical and very powerful. When you select a task or a process on the calendar view, you can resize the duration with your mouse. Milestones are displayed in a different way (F) than tasks. Tip : Processes can also be used to handle multiple projects inside the same document. Each process can be a project. This way, you can keep an eye on multiple projects on the same document. You can download an example made with xplan at this address: Tip : when you create a new task while a process is selected, the new task will use the same color.

7 5. Creating dependancies (smart links) between tasks. Select the first task. You will see two rounded circles appearing. B. Click on a circle and drag your mouse cursor to the second task. C. That s all, your link is created! Now, when you move the first task, the linked tasks will automatically follow. For each link, you can setup the type, the color and style. Double click on a link or use the edit button. NOTE : To erase a link, select it with the mouse and click on the delete button or the delete key of your keyboard.

8 6. Events The events () are always displayed on the first line. Events are useful to register meetings or appointments related to a project at a certain date. For each event, you can setup a duration or an ending date, select a color. You can even add notes.

9 7. Tasks D B C E For each task, you can define a name, a color (), a begin date, a duration or a date for the end (B). You can setup a cost (C) that is fixed for this particular task or computed by used hours or used resources. You can setup a completion level (D) that will be displayed on the calendar. The completion level will also update the main dashboard on the left and top of the window. t the bottom of the inspector (E), you can assign resources to a task, attach documents or write notes related to it. NOTE : added files are copied inside the document. They are not accessible on the ios version of xplan. Double click on a document to open it.

10 8. Resources For each project, you can assign resources to tasks. Go to the list of resources. C B Click on the + button () to add resources for your project. You can move them inside groups (B). resource can be human or material. You can also setup a default cost for each resource based on working hours, working days or fixed. You can import / export resources (C). To import a resource from pple Contacts application, drag and drop a Vcard () to any field of the resource Inspector. NOTE : Since OS X 10.8, you also need to give xplan the authorisation to access to your contacts. It s in OS X security preferences (B). B

11 8. Calendar and Resources view The innovating calendar view with resources is very useful to see assigned tasks. You cannot see dependancies on this view. 9. Report view The report view allows you to see the state of the project and all details of the cost.

12 10. Sync projects with ios version of xplan or another Mac With version 3.7, it s more easy and reliable to sync documents between your devices.. Using icloud Drive sync service icloud Drive sync requires a Mac with at least OS X Yosemite or any mobile device with ios 8. We removed the support of the old icloud version because it s not technically possible to support both versions for an app. If you use older versions of OS X, you can use Dropbox service (see case B) Read the FQs section of our support website for more details and a tutorial. NOTE : you need to enable icloud Drive service in OS X preferences

13 B. Using Dropbox sync service We added the sync service of Dropbox to the Mac and ios versions. On the Mac, the dropbox option is available from the File menu. To use this service, you just need to create a free account at dropbox.com When you save a file to dropbox, it s automatically sent to.zip format. It s because dropbox do not support some OS X file format. When you open a file from dropbox, it s automatically unzipped by xplan. Important : on your Mac, do not use drag and drop to your Dropbox folder. lways use the menu Open from Dropbox and Save option from xplan. Tip : Dropbox is the best solution to sync a document between multiple users. You can create one dropbox account for all users of a team.

14 11. Microsoft Project documents xplan is compatible with most Microsoft Project documents. You can export to this format (XML only) and import any document (XML only). We do not support other format that requires a license. Only XML is open to developers. Because xplan is more simple than MS project, all features are not imported / exported. Only the main settings and related items (tasks, milestones, processes). If you have an issue with an XML document, send it to support@. We are committed to improve the support. 12. Sharing to internet Our free sharing service named xview is included in xplan. It allows you to share the gantt or resources view automatically to internet as an image. It s simple to work with it. Just export your schedule to xview online service (). You can delete published files from the file menu (B). nybody can see the published file with a simple web browser on any device. B

15 13. Keyboard shortcuts FEEDBCK / SUPPORT We are always interested about your feedback on our products. Use this address for questions and bug reports: apps./support t this address, you can also browse a lot of answers from frequently asked questions. Join the community section to send feature request.