Bringing Textile Markers to SharePoint Text Fields

We recently put in a color splash into our IntelliGantt Web Part so that customers could start introducing their own custom fields and have them perform as key performance indicators. What you do is tell the IntelliGantt Web Part which custom field you want to key off of and then provide the colors to use. Typically this is a choice field and the color series matches the choice values.

Another customer of ours wanted to ability to highlight tasks within the web part. I thought 'hey, the new color splashes would be cool.' But what they really wanted was a bit more text formatting. Something like making the title bold, or in italics or underlined. I first started thinking about HTML markup around the text fields, naturally, but how to store that in SharePoint and still have it be readable? Not going to happen.

Then I remembered something we had on the drawing board as a result of our experience creating products for Basecamp. They use a simple Textile markup that can both instruct programs how to change text decorations and maintain readability for normal humans. So we applied the bold, italic and underline markers to all our text fields and the results look good:

What we've done is added a bit of processing to SharePoint text field resolution such that

• If text begins and ends with *, then it is bold
• If text begins and ends with _, then it is italics
• If text begins and ends with +, then it is underlined

Any text field can contain these textile markings. We do have one issue with Summary Tasks because they do not accept * characters. I suppose we can offer a SharePoint errata to the Textile specification, but for now summary tasks can italicized or underlined

Limiting the Number of Tasks in a SharePoint Task List

Is it really possible to have too much of a good thing? If we are talking about tasks in a SharePoint list, or really tasks in multiple SharePoint lists, then the answer can be 'yes'. Sure, the IntelliGantt Web Part can scale to tens of thousands of task items in one view, but there is the simple matter of loading all that data. Even on a gigabit network, it can take time to pull everything into view.

So we put our heads together with a few of our customers and came up with a setting we call 'Depth Level'. In a nutshell it limits the number of tasks the IntelliGantt Web Part will acquire from SharePoint by putting a limit on the number of times it digs into a Summary Task (or folder in SharePoint 2007). As a result, even though your selection of SharePoint tasks may number in the millions, you quickly retrieve a minimum amount of data (the top level of items) to show useful summary information (start dates, end dates and percent complete).

Let's take a look at how it works. Below is a screenshot of a SharePoint site containing two task lists with considerably less than one million tasks. However, notice that there are summary tasks containing child tasks.

We can configure the IntelliGantt Web Part so that it gets just the top level summary tasks by setting the Depth Level. To do so, we shall edit the web part properties. Inside the 'IntelliGantt' category, we see the 'Depth Level' field.

You may wonder what Collapse Level is right above Depth Level. Collapse Level is different in that it sets how deeply to open the hierarchy initially, but will not affect the actual volume of data retrieved from SharePoint. Collapse Level is the right choice when you want a summary view, but also would like to burrow into all the details. The Depth Level is for a summary view that can load Right Now.

Let's set the Depth Level to 1...

... and see what we end up with.

The only thing the image doesn't convey is just how fast it popped up.

Working with Master Projects

We just posted a new video showing the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 working not only with individual projects but with a master project as well. Basically a single MPP file is connected to a SharePoint task list. Then a second MPP file is connected to a second SharePoint task list. Finally, the two MPP files are added as subprojects to a master project. The master is then sent to a third SharePoint task list. Better yet, the IntelliGantt Web Part is used to display both projects, their hierarchy and task dependencies in a single view.

The cool thing about this video that doesn't come across (because I didn't want it to take tooooo long) is that all the connection information is self-contained. Each MPP file will remember its connection information, and the master project will remember it's SharePoint connection information. Why is this so great? Because it means the project managers can focus on their mpp plans, someone else can create a master using the two (or three, or four... there is no limit) and no data will be overwritten-- everyone can carry one oblivous to how many times an mpp file may be shared and where it goes.

This has immediate ramifications for projects that have 'backup' project managers that take over when a primary project manager goes on vacation. They simply check the mpp file out from SharePoint and continue on as normal. The IntelliGantt Add In will remember the connection information and they just need to click 'Refresh' once in a while. Or, better yet, they can turn on the auto-synchronization feature.

The key is the IntelliGantt Add In can adjust which text field it is using to store this SharePoint connection data. By default it's set to use Text11, however you can use any of the 30 available custom text fields. When you choose a custom text field to use, the settings files defined for the new Active Data Field are loaded into you dropdown list. Each active data field can have its own list of settings files-- basically whole new silos of sharing information and possibilities.

Just remember to be a bit parsimonius with who gets to update a tasks hyperlinks property. After all, there's only one of those!

First Peek at IntelliEvent for SharePoint Calendars

A client liked our Gantt chart solution for SharePoint Task and Project lists they asked if we could do the same thing for SharePoint Calendar lists. With the IntelliGantt Web Part we could actually configure it just so by tweaking this setting and adjusting that knob that we could basically show a calendar. Now we've gone the rest of the way and created a new package expressly for calendars and events.

Here is what it looks like:

The IntelliEvent Web Part will find all the Calendar lists in a SharePoint site and display them on the adjustable timeline. You can include calendars from other sites as well to create rollup calendar views. Of course everything is still editable by either clicking in a cell or dragging on the chart.

We've also changed a few other things to make the IntelliEvent Web Part calendar friendlier like solid colors for the timeline, calendar specific information in the popups and a default 'calendar centric' view.

Displaying Fields in the Gantt Chart

We love to hear feedback from our customers. Big or small, short or tall, everyone has an interesting perspective. What has percolated up, with the substantial aid of one of the largest organizations on the planet, is the ability to select what piece of data to show next to tasks on the gantt chart. This makes it easier to keep track of what task is on what row as you look at data in the task list grid since the task title can be right next to the pretty task image. Here's a look at the first fruits of our labor enhancing the IntelliGantt Web Part. We designed it so once field at a time can be shown by the task. However, you will be able to pick any field from the SharePoint list to display. For example, below I have selected the title:

In this image I have added the assigned resources:

Here are the due dates:

And finally the percent completes for all the tasks:

You'll notice that the data is well formatted for human readability. We actually look at the type of field we are working with by using the corresponding SharePoint column and adjust the display according. You'll also notice that while the text usually appears to the right of a task, we do see if a better fit is to the left and adjust accordingly. Though you can't tell with the picture, the scrolling action is great and with the text smoothly scooting across the screen. This feature (and a few more) will be available next week.

One MS Project Plan to Many SharePoint Sites

Generally speaking, it makes sense to send one MS Project plan to a single SharePoint task list within a single site. However, real-life MS Project plans can get very large, easily passing one-thousand tasks items. When this happens there are often multiple groups involved that may or may not benefit from see the entire project plan.

For this reason we are introducing the ability to share any summary task within an MS Project plan to a SharePoint task list. Furthermore, the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 even lets you share any summary task to any SharePoint site (and one of its Task Lists).

This means you can have a single large MS Project plan and 'carve' it up up collaboratively (and metaphorically) so that your planners might see tasks within a 'Planning' SharePoint site or Task list while your engineering team might see tasks under a 'Executing' SharePoint site or Task list.

First up is sharing multiple summary tasks to multiple SharePoint task lists within the same site:




Next is sharing multiple summary tasks to multiple SharePoint sites:




Which configuration you choose is up to you. In one case it may make sense to use multiple tasks lists within the same SharePoint site if you project has well-defined phases, like a scrum for example.

For other projects, where perhaps you are working with a 3rd party vendor, you may wish to share a summary task with an external SharePoint site and other summary tasks with internal groups.

However you wish to share your project, and with whomever you choose, the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 will be flexibile enough to meet your needs.

Connect Project Resources with SharePoint Members

One of the significant issues we've seen with MS Project + SharePoint synchronization is matching MS Project resources with SharePoint members. A resource may be spelled one way in MS Project but exists as a member in SharePoint completely differently. As a result, connecting the two was a point of emphasis for the new IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010.

In this video we try to show how simple it is now:



The key takeway is we've brought the task of aligning resources and members front and center now right on the ribbon. In fact, we feel this is a great example of a complicated action you can accomplished right on the ribbon that required a dialog box back in the days of menus.

Now, given any shared project, just select the MS Project resource in the bottom dropdown and the corresponding SharePoint member in the top dropdown and click 'Connect'.

Some would say it's actually intuitive now.