IntelliGantt

Working with Master Projects

2012-01-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-12T00:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

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.

IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 Intro Videos

2011-10-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

More videos are on the way of course, but here are the first two. They show how you connect and send an MS Project plan to SharePoint, and how you connect and receive a project plan.

How to connect and send:

How to connect and receive:

We'll be making many videos over the next few days to show off all the features.

One bonus is it also shows how well the IntelliGantt Web Part supports the story.

IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010

2011-10-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

We are finally ready to start the beta testing of our new IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project 2010. This is a major upgrade from the current version and features new design philosophies reflecting the feedback we've received from users over the past 5 years. Yes, we've been working with SharePoint and MS Project for 5+ years now and we're tremendously excited with this new version as it includes:

Rich Ribbon Integration within MS Project 2010
Self-Contained mpp files (this means you can place the mpp file anywhere and it will know what SharePoint server and Task List to talk to)
Multi-user support (because the mpp files are now self-contained, you can give them to colleagues and IntelliGantt will know what to do)
Auto Synchronization configuration from 1 minute to 20 minute intervals
Directional Data Flow (you choose which data fields go to the SharePoint server and/or come from the SharePoint server)
Crazy Simple MS Project Resource to SharePoint Member mapping
Tethering!!!

A word (or two) about tethering. Since it looks like this Internet thing is going to catch on, we've made the transition to design the IntelliGantt Add In assuming that your computer is in fact always connected to the network. This let's us do something really cool-- immediately send your changes in MS Project to the task list in SharePoint.

Why is this a good thing? Consider the common 'sync on demand' scenario and the dreaded 'who's data wins?' connundrum. With tethering, this problem goes away because, since the changes are immediate, it's just like you've edited the SharePoint Task List itself.

Tethering also lets us take advantage of a more efficient auto-sync scenario. In fact, when combined with our Directional Data Flow, we believe the time-sink bane of project managers everywhere can be related to the dustbin. Of course I'm talking about change approvals.

In the coming days we will post examples of these exciting features, and even a few we haven't mentioned yet.

By the way, if you have a huge, hairy, nasty mpp file that can't possibly be sent to a SharePoint Task List, feel free to send it to us. We'll be happy to make sure it works.

More Fun with Colors

2011-09-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

The other day a customer let us know that the marketing group had a problem with adopting the IntelliGantt Web Part. The top calendar and bottom navigation controls were the wrong color. This was an instance where design (and color) matters and thankfully, because we had put in color support for tasks, we were able to quickly turn around an update that supports calendar and navigation color too. In fact, we provided an update within a week.

Here's how it works. Below is our default color palette.

I think it looks pretty good but obviously folks in marketing disagree. No problem, let's modify the 'IntelliGantt Colors' property.

We'll put in my second favorite color scheme. Note that the web part asks for two colors for both the calendar and navigation regions. We do this because a gradient looks much nicer than a solid block of color. You can enter any two colors in and IntelliGantt will show resulting blend of colors.

And the finished product:

Don't forget you can also change the branding text at the bottom right of the control as well. This will also aid in branding and keep even more folks happy.

Creating Virtual Folders from Group By Fields

2011-09-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

SharePoint lists come with a bevy of options for how to display, filter, sort and group information. In SharePoint 2010, for example, a basic Task List has 11 options right out of the box.

With so many levers to pull SharePoint encourages users to make many views and tailor them to their needs. What we like to do with the IntelliGantt Web Part is run right along with the views you create and provide richer visualizations.

Let's take this list for instance. It's a basic task list with a couple folders and a task item at the top level. Though it's not obvious, each folder contains a few task items as well.

Let me point out two interesting choice fields we have created-- Region and State. These are basic choice columns we created that house 4 region values (North, East, West and South) and 50 state values. Given all the view options available, a natural organization would be to group them by Region and State. This can be done via the web browser by editing a particular view.

The result is the data will now be grouped by first Region and then State, which matches how might people naturally group data across a country. Here's what the result looks like in SharePoint:

Even across the internet I can sense the underwhelm-ment. There are a number of problems with the native Group By feature when you have a hierarchy of data:

1. Even though folders have a Region and State value, their original purpose-- containing sub items-- is not necessary in the view since we want to see the items. In other words, the folders here are cluttering the important data.

2. Where is all the data? Admittedly this is our mantra-- showing you all the data in a list-- but it's certainly not clear that you have to click into each folder to gets its children in order to see there grouping.

3. Though it shows that Region and State are the grouping fields, it duplicates unecessarily by showing both Region and Region: East.

Here's how the IntelliGantt Web Part handles it. When this web part uses a view that contains Group By settings, it will re-orient itself to create virtual folders based on each items values for those settings. As a result, the hierarchy reflects the values for each field, which is a more natural way to understand what you're looking at:

Adding and Linking Documents to Tasks - Part III

2011-08-25T23:48:00.000-07:00

We've been exporing the new IntelliGantt Web Part feature that let's you add documents to a Shared Documents list via dragging and dropping from your computer onto a task item. In Part I we showed how to set up the lookup column to enable this feature then dragged a local file and dropped it onto a task. In Part II we showed how you can link tasks to existing documents in your document lists via in-place editing with auto-completion boxes. In Part III we will show how documents linked to tasks work with templates.

We left off with two documents associated to two tasks. With better naming, one could imagine that Folder2 is really a reusable template containing two steps we must do again and again. Furthermore, if the goal is to build a portable typewriter, then the associated document is valuable for every new portable typewriter we build.

With the IntelliGantt Web Part any task or summary task can become a template. First we need to open the tool window so we can get to the pencil.

We select the folder we wish to turn into a template and click the pencil image to write information to you local computer.

When we click on the pencil, a 'Save As' dialog appears that lets us name the file and save it to disk.

This template file with the '.igantt' extension can be used by dragging and dropping onto lists or folders in any IntelliGantt Web Part. Here, though the image doesn't show the mouse cursor, you can see the 'drop arrow' is pointing to the 'Testing' task list.

Once the template is dropped, the IntelliGantt Web Part creates the same group of tasks that seeded the template-- including their assignments and linked documents.

With this feature you can create a library of reusable project fragments that can be dropped onto any IntelliGantt Web Part list or summary task. Common tasks can be templatized such that they also contain starter documents detailing how to perform the work needed. One or more users can be pre-assigned to tasks to reduce the amount of housekeeping work in the day-to-day of a project manager. You can even store these '.igantt' template files on a file server so multiple project managers can all work with the same templates.

Adding and Linking Documents to Tasks - Part II

2011-08-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

In Part I of this series we showed how you can connect a SharePoint Task List to a SharePoint Shared Documents List with the IntelliGantt Web Part. This covered both setting up the 'Documents' lookup column in the Task List and adding one or more documents via drag and drop onto the task item. Today we will show how you can manage task/document links and work with documents already in your Shared Documents List.

Here is where we left off yesterday. The image file 'igwebpart_128_blue.png' had been dropped onto the 'Item' task in the IntelliGantt Web Part (IGWP). IGWP both uploaded the file to the Shared Documents List, added the cell entry with the document name and created the 'has documents' icon at the far left of the grid.

When you move the mouse into the 'Documents' cell you will see '+' and '-' icons appear around the document. These let you add and remove document links. For example, here we will remove the document link:

The cell entry disappears and the helpful icon indicator does too. But while this removed the visible link in IGWP, the document is in fact still in the Shared Documents List.

We can actually re-link the same document with the same task again by using the '+' icon to add this link:

IGWP will scan the Shared Documents List and provide an auto-complete box for you. This way you easily find the document you with to link by name:

Now the document has been re-linked with the task. It's visible within the 'Documents' column and has the helpful 'has documents' icon once more.

Tomorrow we will look at using this same linking concept with templates in Part III.

Adding and Linking Documents and Tasks - Part I

2011-08-15T21:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a quiet month on the blog which can only mean one thing-- new feature time!

We introduced a great way to add local files as attachments to tasks by using one of the most familiar gestures: drag and drop. Not long after customers began asking us if we could also use drag and drop to add files to a Shared Library and have it link to the task. The benefit here is then, unlike attachments, documents associated with tasks could support versioning, permissions and other advanced features.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

We're happy to say we heard you and are proud to introduce the simplest way to 1) add one or more files to a Shared Documents list by drag and drop and 2) automatically link them to the task you dropped them on.

Here's how it works. Below is the IntelliGantt Web Part visualizing a simple SharePoint Task List. You'll note this SharePoint site actually has multiple task lists, but we used the explorer feature to select as single task list.

Also in this SharePoint site is the common Shared Document list. As you can see we have a folder and a couple documents within the list.

Here is the one plumbing step required for things to work. What we need to do is add a Lookup Column to a Task List and associate it with the Shared Documents list. Here is the lookup column we created. And yes, it does need to be named 'Documents' for the IntelliGantt Web Part to recognize it:

Now we can open Windows Explorer on our local PC, find a file and drag/drop it onto a task. Notice the 'upload arrow' that appears to help identify the task drop target:

Once the file has been dropped the IntelliGantt Web Part will detect if a 'Documents' column pointing to a Shared Documents library is in the task list view. If a 'Documents' column exists then IntelliGantt Web Part will upload the dropped file or files to the defined Shared Documents list. As a result, first you see the document associated with the task visually:

And we can also see the document has in fact been uploaded to the Shared Documents physically:

Since it's in a document list we can checkout, edit and version the file for a more complicated work item. Back in the IntelliGantt Web Part, because the file is linked to the task, you can always mouse over the attachment to quickly navigate to documents. First point...

... then click.

In Part II we will see how IntelliGantt Templates take advantage of these linked documents to create reusable components that can automatically link with existing documents.

TeamDirection Outlook Basecamp Integration-- TOBI

2011-07-20T02:45:00.000-07:00

A quick note to let everyone know a new product has been introduced to the TeamDirection stable-- TOBI. As you might surmise from the title, TOBI connects MS Outlook 2007 & 2010 to Basecamp.

You give TOBI the URL to your Basecamp dashboard and TOBI let's you select which projects to bring into Outlook. Once selected, all the Milestones, Todo Items, Comments and Attachments will be visible within Outlook.

Of course, we didn't stop there. TOBI supports both instant updates and automatic synchronization. Instant updates happen when you make a change to a connected Outlook item. For example, if you mark a task as complete in Outlook, then the corresponding Basecamp item will be marked completed as well-- immediately.

Conversely, if you update an item in Basecamp via your web browser, TOBI periodically checks for changes in Basecamp. The interval is configurable but the default is every 15 minutes. When a change is spotted, then the Outlook task is updated.

There are many more features like enhanced data and 'smart' collision resolution that we will be covering in the days ahead. In the meantime, if you'd like to check TOBI out here is a 'Getting Started' page and the install page.

Heads Up! How to Combine Tasks with Announcments

2011-06-28T01:17:00.000-07:00

One sign of a well engineered product is when customers call you and thank you for creating a feature that really helps them out. The other sign is when it never occurred to you the product could actually perform said feature. Invariably when this happens, the use case turns out to be a really good idea. So I thought I'd pass it along.

As you know, we created the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint to look for Task Lists by default. Of course we also wanted to be able to include custom lists, specialized lists and heretofore unknown lists created by IT departments that could also serve as task lists.

But it never occurred to us to add the Announcements List into the mix. Thankfully it did to one customer.

They added an announcements list to the IntelliGantt Web Part so that folks could have an easy 'heads up' to the most important things of the day pertaining to a project. Our goal as always been to minimize the context switches as users work with the data. Including the announcements within the IntelliGantt Web Part is right inline with this philosophy.

Here's what it looks like:

As you can see the announcements list can be positioned right at the top. Also, the intrinsic nature of this list lends itself well to the day-to-day of projects as announcements are only visible for a specific amount of time. Once the announcement goes 'stale', it drops off the list and new announcements appear. The end result is the project manager has just increased the odds that team members will see important communications in context.

If you'd like to experiment with this a bit, you just need to know the server template id for the SharePoint Announcements List-- 104. Plug this value into our 'Include Template ID' property as shown below:

Finally, this same technique will work just as well with any SharePoint list. But we thought it was so neat to use a 'lowly' announcements list to accomplish something quite useful-- telling people the importing news of the day right within their project.

The Five Year Zoom

2011-06-28T00:55:00.001-07:00

Well, that's what we called our increased timescale miniaturization internally. The exact amount of time you'll see on the Gantt will depend on the width of your monitor-- we can compress time but we cannot change the laws of physics :).

For instance, if you have a 23-inch monitor and you go to 'Full Screen' mode then you should be able to see a five span for the Gantt chart. We received this request from construction companies and governments (which surely can't be a coincidence) who often manage projects spanning many years. So as of version 1.0.107 these customers will be able to see the even bigger picture.

We did update the presentation just a bit as well to handle the new zoom factor. For example, here is a project in the default zoom:

As you can see this projects extends well past the timeframe for this view. However, if we slide the 'zoom thumb' all the way to the left, we see the project easily fits within the display:

Notice that at the highest level, the 'major calendar' section shows the year and the 'minor calendar' section shows the half year. We shortened this to H1 for the first six months and H2 for the second six months.

Everything is vector-based of course so there is no perfomance penalty for any zoom magnification level you may choose. And naturally the larger the monitor and the greater the number of pixels the more time we can fit on a page. So, if you really need to see a decade worth of project tasks in a Gantt Chart, you have the justification needed to request that super-thin LED 46-inch monitor.

Or just let us know if you need the 'Decade Zoom'. Either way, we're happy to help.

Mapping Start and Due Dates to Estimates

2011-05-13T12:53:00.000-07:00

We have a new feature in the IntelliGantt Web Part, the ability to map start and due dates, that I'd like to highlight with an actual use case. A few customers have asked if its possible for one task list within SharePoint to contain both current and estimate start/due dates and do a comparison between the two.

Let's go to an example. Here is a task list with the standard Start Date and Due Date columns defined. To this we also added EstStart and EstDue, short for Estimated Start Date and Estimated Due Date.

All the data we need is there, but it can be difficult to spot delta's between current and estimate values in this view. So what we've done is create a single SharePoint page with two IntelliGantt Web Parts added to it. The top one shows the current Start Date and Due Date and the bottom one shows the EstStart and EstDue dates.

Even though you see two IntelliGantt Web Parts, the underlying data is coming from the same task list. What we did was configure the second IntelliGantt Web Part to use the estimated start/due date columns and specify which view to use-- the 'Estimates' view. Doing so ensures that when anyone visits this page, this will be the initial presentation they see.

The mapping is done by going into the web part editor and opening the 'IntelliGantt Mapping' category:

The other adjustment we did was to set the initial view on the bottom IntelliGantt Web Part:

By doing so we can craft the columns to display so that the estimates show up. This is possible because the IntelliGantt Web Part adapts its task list display to match the viewable columns defined in your SharePoint list view.

This result is you can view two complete charts of the same data and quickly identify discrepancies-- like all the tasks within the 'Extra' folder taking an extra bit of time.

Now Supporting SharePoint Online in Office 365

2011-05-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note that we have validated our IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint Online in Office 365. The folks at Microsoft we're kind enough to let us work with the beta and, after a couple hops and a skip (but no jumps!) we had the sandbox version up and going.

We could even put the web part into the Project Management category, which we are excited about:

And here it is running within our teamdirection.sharepoint.com site, which is 100% fully SharePoint Online within Office 365.

The really cool thing is you get complete web part editor backpage support so configuring the IntelliGantt Web Part is a snap. And for consultants setting up Office 365 sites for their clients, don't forget about our branding features.

SharePoint Task and Discussion List Integration

2011-04-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

Plenty of statistics abound highlighting the importance of communication within projects. So much so that in addition to tasks, SharePoint also includes a Discussion List with which to share thoughts and ideas. However, because tasks and discussions are in two different lists it's not immediately obvious how best to discuss a specific task, or to find discussions about tasks 3, 4 and 5. On top of that, there is a significant transition required to move from a task you just scrolled into view, to a topic somewhere in the discussion list and back to the same position in the task list.

Naturally we couldn't let another day go by without addressing this situation so we've enhanced our IntelliGantt Web Part to integrate with SharePoint's out-of-the-box Discussion List. The goal was to provide an easily found anchor point to a topic (a task), eliminate the need for a dreaded context switch and encourage more participation in general. Here's what we came up with.

In the 'tool window' to the left of the task list, when you move the mouse into it a set of actionable icons appear for the current row. If you have one or more Discussion Lists in your SharePoint site, IntelliGantt will find it and present the 'Discuss' icon. Single click on it to create a new topic:

A popup dialog appears with the title of the task as the new topic name and a text box to type your message in:

This creates the new topic within the Discussion List. To solve the context switch issue, we also created a new column in our Task List called 'Discussions'. This is a standard Lookup Column that links to the Discussion List. The IntelliGantt Web Part will add a link for you into this task field so that the discussion is linked with the task.

Now that this information is available, when you view the Discussions column in the task list and mouse over an entry, the IntelliGantt Web Part will show you the entire discussion thread:

Of course, there's only the initial message in this discussion. So we made it really easy to respond to messages right inline by providing a 'Reply' button.

This both solves the context switch problem and encourages participation by making it easy to view and respond.

The actual data is stored within a Discussion List of course, which makes it available for searching and for backup procedures.

We have a more detailed walkthrough on our website and additional information to help set up the option lookup columns for cross-linking tasks and discussions.

SharePoint Task and Calendar List Integration

2011-04-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

SharePoint is a great way to share task and calendar information online with your colleagues, has the capability to richly integrate task and calendar lists but out of the box it's lists are basically rooms of information under the same roof-- a SharePoint site. Showing folks how to view a task list in calendar format is one of our most popular blog posts. However, this option shows everything in a Calendar and you lose the inherent goodness of a task list the the specificity of important events.

The IntelliGantt Web Part integrates your task list and calendar list so that they can work together. It provides two important capabilities:

1) The ability to selectively choose which tasks to 'surface' in a SharePoint calendar.
2) The ability to see this relationship in context with the task.

For example, in a project of several hundred tasks not everything requires an event-- even if you're an event planner. Only a subset requires placement on a calendar, and it should be dynamic enough that as things change events linked with tasks can be removed and new ones easily added.

With the IntelliGantt Web Part you can use our new tool window to quickly identify the task information you'd like to link an event with by using your mouse:

The information from the task is then applied to the new event. Task start and due dates become event start and end dates. The task comments become the event comments.

Furthermore, if you provide a lookup column in the task and calendar list IntelliGantt will use them to cross-link the task and calendar event. The result is you can swiftly move from event to task and back again. Or, within IntelliGantt, you can view a task and hover over it's linked events to quickly see the very latest important information without leaving the context of your project:

Less clicking means fewer context changes which means you can stay focused on the task at hand.

We have a page dedicated to this feature showing more detail. Better yet, you can try out the IntelliGantt Web Part and start working in tasks and calendars today.

iPad Using SharePoint Web Services

2011-04-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

If you searched for 'iPad SharePoint lists.asmx", 'iPad SharePoint UpdateList' or something of that ilk chances are you arrived at this blog. This is interesting if for no other reason than there is no help available for consuming SharePoint web services from an iPad that I can find as of this blog's posting.

Anyone from Microsoft willing to help me connect an iPad to SharePoint via web services?

Grouping Items by their Modified Date and Time

2011-04-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

A quick post to let you know of a new feature we recently added to the IntelliGantt Web Part- a built-in view to group items by their modified value.

You can sort of achieve this by editing a SharePoint view so that the sort is performed on the Modified field. However, that just changes the display order of the items. We went a step further and created a series of 'temporal folders' to contain items modifed within the last 15 minutes, within the last hour, within the last day and so on. Here's what it looks like:

You can also combine this with the filters, of course, to see who has changed what recently as well. For instance, if you're waiting for a colleague to finish an important task, you can filter on their name and see if they've changed anything in the last 15 minutes.

Or a project manager could use this to see if anyone has updated any of their assigned tasks before a big team meeting.

Using Drag and Drop to Create Task Templates

2011-04-13T23:59:00.001-07:00

We're very proud of the fact that the same IntelliGantt Web Part UI can work with both SharePoint and Basecamp. One of the best tests of any product is how well it works with multiple data sources. It forces us to examine and implement features that are valuable for project management in general. One such feature is the ability to create templates.

As you know, the IntelliGantt Web Part, whether running as a desktop application or as a Web Part embedded within a SharePoint page, supports file drag and drop. By default these files are saved as attachments to the task item you dropped them on. Now we've taken things a step futher-- we've implemented the ability for the IntelliGantt Web Part to serialize tasks to an 'igantt' so they can be used as a template. (OK, it's really an XML file, but we use the igantt extension to identify these templates).

You can then drag one or more of these igantt files onto a project or summary task and it will create the tasks stored in the igantt file as children of your drop target. If that description didn't grab you, here is a walkthrough with screen captures.

Here we see the IntelliGantt Web Part within a SharePoint page. We've already expanded the task manipulation pane by clicking on the little blue button in the upper left corner.

When we move the mouse into the 'empty' manipulation pane, icons appear in the row under the mouse. These icons show what you can do with this task item.

For example, we see the 'Summary' row as the following:

1) Write to File (the pencil)
2) Make Discussion (the caption -- creates a topic in a Discussion List)
3) Make Event (the calendar -- creates an event in a Calendar list)
4) Add a Sub Task or Sub Summary (the plus)
5) Remove the item (the minus)

Since we're focusing on task templates this post, imaging you just clicked the pencil. What you'll see is a 'Save As' dialog:

Here you will name the file that will store the task information. We really wanted to seed the filename with the name of the task, but we have to wait for Silverlight 5 to come out. After the file name 'Summary1' has been typed, the Summary task and its children are then saved to file 'Summary1.igantt'.

Now you can view this file with Windows Explorer and, better yet, drag it over any project or summary task in the IntelliGantt Web Part:

Notice the helpful blue 'upload' arrow that shows which row this igantt file will be applied to. Here we are targetting the 'Tasks' project with a drop of our Summary1.igantt file.

Once we drop the file, you will see the task group we had saved magically reappear in the new list:

If your igantt'd tasks have assignements, then IntelliGantt will try to match the user from the old source with the same user in the new source and make the assignment. Also, if the group of tasks in the igantt file have self-contained dependencies, these will be reproduced as well.

Finally, if you happen to be one of those folks using both SharePoint and Basecamp, you can copy from one and drag/drop to the other.

We did tie this feature to a privilege that can be turned on or off. By default it actually is off in the IntelliGantt Web Part (unless you are running on the desktop or are an administrator).

Here is a link showing how to enable the 'Writing Task Blocks' privilege in SharePoint.

The Big Kahuna of SharePoint Gantt Charts

2011-04-12T01:10:00.000-07:00

Navigation is a good thing when you're trying to find something. The common structure for burrowing into sites and lists within SharePoint is often called the 'chrome'. This may consist of the site links across the top of a page, or the quicklinks to the side. But how useful are they once you've arrived at your destination?

For example, you may have heard we make a really great gantt chart for SharePoint lists. You probably also have a really great monitor (or two) with lots and lots of available pixels. One of the things our Silverlight gantt chart can do is make use of 'full screen' mode, whereby every inch of real-estate can be devoted to your project plan. We thought this to be so useful, we made it a single click away.

Here's a shot of the IntelliGantt Web Part running within Internet Explorer sited within a SharePoint 2010 page.

Notice two things:

1) There's an abundant amount of blue desktop we can fill with our SharePoint view.
2) The IntelliGantt Web Part resides within the SharePoint navigation chrome-- even in IE9, which made a point of maximizing the viewing experience.

We decided to maxmize it all the way. As of the 1.0.83 release you will see an orange-ish 'expander' arrow pointing to the upper left.

When you click it, the IntelliGantt Web Part will go into full screen mode and devote every available pixel to showing your task list and timeline.

Now you can see the really big picture of your project-- and have good reason to get an absolutely gigantic monitor.

Passing URL Querystring to IntelliGantt Web Part

2011-03-07T08:26:00.000-08:00

One of our design goals for the IntelliGantt Web Part was to make it easy for users AND for system integrators. For instance, we know how important a brand is so we reserve an area of the gantt chart to display a customizable name with a url link. Additional configuration options like colors, zooms, custom list IDs and more are available via the web part editor or passing parameters via the initParams string (our control being a good Silverlight citizen).

Then someone asked us 'can I pass configuration parameters with the url querystring?'

What a simple and powerful idea! Last Wednesday we said 'no', but today we can say YES!

We have created a table of all the parameters IntelliGantt recognizes. You can use these parameters via the initParams property if you've configured a 'Site Only' instance of the IntelliGantt Web Part, or you can pass these parameters to the SharePoint page housing the IntelliGantt Web Part via the url querystring and make things really dynamic.

The best example of this new capability is how you can now select a task list and view by placing information in the url querystring. Let's say I have a SharePoint site with two task lists: Tasks and Big Project. By default, the IntelliGantt Web Part finds all the task lists in your site and displays them:

Yes, we can either use the 'Exporer' to select just one project, or we can use the web part editor page to select a single project. But what if we could determine the list to show before-hand and construct a url with selected project and view information? Then we can actually plug the web part into a multi-step workflow process.

First, let's add a SelectListIDs value to the url so that just one project is selected. You can find a task list id value by first navigating to the task list:

and then going to the List Settings:

Once in the List Settings, notice that the url string in your web browser contains a querystring parameter of List=:

We can use this exact same list idea value in the querystring of the url of the IntelliGantt Web Part page. Rather than just 'List', we use 'SelectedListIDs' because we think it's clearer and we support multiple lists in the view. There, we create an url like so:

Finally, you can add multiple paramteters to the querystring just as you'd expect-- by concatenating them with the '&'. So, now that we've selected the right list, we can also select the view to use via the query string by appending the view name:

And voila, the task list and view for the IntelliGantt Web Part have been determined by the values in the querystring. What if the same parameter is defined in the web part editor? Then the web part editor value will take precedence. In order use the querystring parameter, make sure the corresponding field in the web part editor is blank.

As we add more configuration options to the IntelliGantt Web Part, we will make sure they can be set via the web part editor, the initParams or the querystring. This will ensure our design goal of making our web part as flexible for system integrators as possible.

Selecting a Single Basecamp Project

2011-03-05T13:06:00.000-08:00

Build 1.0.72 of the IntelliIGantt Web Part for Basecamp has a new feature we hope 'power users' will appreciate: the ability to identify a single Basecamp project in the url string.

I was online with a customer who wanted to view a specific project, but we had to wait for all projects to load before we could select a single project. This doesn't sound too bad, until you consider they had 100 projects. Kudos to 37 Signals for handling so many with aplomb. Now it was our turn to step up to the plate.

We took a look at the url used after clicking on a project from the initial dashboard. It looked something like this:

We thought 'we can use that'. So, if you copy the same url and place it into the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp like so:

The IntelliGantt Web Part will then match that project and show that single project in its view.

You can still access any of the other projects by clicking on the Explorer (pith helmet). This will show you all projects with the current, single project selected for you:

Select any of the other projects and they will appear in your current view as well.

IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint 2010 Sandbox

2011-02-19T22:39:00.000-08:00

SharePoint 2010 introduces a 'Sandbox' mode that limits the scope of what a web part is able to do on the server. This is something of a curious feature for a Sliverlight-based web part such as the IntelliGantt Web Part because it doesn't do anything on the server-- it's only downloaded from the server and then runs on the client. In fact, here is the source code in its entirety for the IntelliGantt Web Part when built for sandbox mode:

public class IntelliGanttWebPartInstance : WebPart
{
protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
base.CreateChildControls();
}
}

That's it. The only difference between the IntelliGantt Web Part in sandbox mode and the 'normal' IntelliGantt Web Part is the latter is able to plug into the web part editor forms to make it easy to configure all the IntelliGantt Web Part options. In sandbox mode, you'll have to supply all the options yourself in the 'Custom Initialization Parameters' field.

However, we realize that sometimes policy will dicate that the IntelliGantt Web Part is deployed to the SharePoint 2010 sandbox. Here's how to do it.

Filtering SharePoint Task Lists by People and Choices

2011-02-18T09:48:00.001-08:00

In the previous blog post we looked about how the IntelliGantt Web Part can dynamically build pie charts when the user selects a choice field. IntelliGantt finds all the choice values and cross references them against every users task assignments. The result is a nice display of everyone's status (for example) across all their assigned tasks, across all the projects you have selected.

Something like this:

Wouldn't it be grand if you could select a user's pie chart and have the task list filtered so that only that user's tasks are shown?

We thought so too, so yes, you can select one or more users and the task list and gantt chart will filtered so that only those users tasks are displayed.

What about the choice values? It'd be nice if you could select those and have the task list filtered so you can quickly see everything that is 'Not Started' or 'In Progress'.

We agree, and you can. Click on any of the choice values and IntelliGantt will immediately filter the tasks.

Finally, the Pièce de résistance, what if you could mix and match the choices and the people so you could see all of Joe and Mary's tasks that are 'Not Started'.

Yes, you can absolutely do that too!

Charting SharePoint Choice Columns

2011-02-17T14:25:00.000-08:00

Choice columns are a great feature in SharePoint in that they let the administrator constrain the 'anything is possible as long as its text' textbox to a predefined list of acceptable values. For a SharePoint task list, the 'status' choice column is a perfect example. Rather than let users type in 'Getting Close' or 'I think I just about got it', users must select from 'Not Started', 'In Progress', 'Completed', 'Deferred' and 'Waiting for someone else'. Of course, more values can be added to a choice column at any time by a site owner.

Here's how the IntelliGantt Web Part works with the choice columns defined in the list settings. As mentioned earlier, 'status' is a powerful choice field for relaying the basic state of a task. IntelliGantt works with the built in status choices to build pie charts for each person (comprised of that person's task assignments) and builds a pie slice for each choice value present.

The choice columns available in this section are controlled by the current view in use. In this example, the 'All Tasks' default view has both 'Status' and 'Priority' choice columns in its list, so these choice columns are available to select. (Note: the 'People' option is something the IntelliGantt Web Part adds if you just want to see people and not pie charts).

The choice columns themselves are defined in the list settings for the task list (or any list, for that matter).

IntelliGantt is completely dynamic in its presentation and pulls column information from SharePoint for its display. So let's add another choice column and see how it appears in IntelliGantt. After clicking on the 'create column' link in the list settings we can name and type our new column:

Next we will provide the values and add some formatting information:

Note that made 'North' the default choice and added this column to the default view. When we return to the IntelliGantt Web Part, once it has refreshed, we will see this choice available.

The 'Region' column is now available in the charting pane and has been added to the Task Grid as well. When we select the 'Region' column in the charting pane its values populate below it. Notice that North is in bold. This is because North is the default value.

The pie charts themselves are not very exciting at this point because, since this is a new choice column, none of the tasks have any region values. Let's add some.

Of course, choices aren't set in stone. Sometimes they need to be updated. Because IntelliGantt is so dynamic it handles this case as well. Let's go back to the region column definition in our list settings and add the most important region of all-- Northwest!

When IntelliGantt refreshes it will recognize the new value and add it to the option list for the 'Region' choice.

Thus, when we update a task with this new value, the other visuals will be updated as well.

The pie slices use IntelliGantt's default color palette, which starts out with similar colors so the Gantt chart doesn't look like a Christmas tree. You can change the default color palette, or you can designate a specific choice field to use a custom palette. How to change colors is covered in detail in our forum.

How to set the Initial Timescale of the Gantt Chart

2011-02-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

A customer requested that the IntelliGantt Web Part's initial timescale be adjustable when it first appears. It's just a bit of math to generate the time scale so we were happy to oblige. We introduce the 'Zoom Factor'.

It's the ultimate in precision, especially for you engineering types, as it literally is the zoom factor being used to display the Gantt Chart. By default, the zoom factor is 1.0. If you moved the slider, it will range between 0.075 and 1.925. (the range wasn't always so wide-- another user requested we make it wider, so we did).

Now when you set the zoom factor the gantt will compress or expand time appropriately (what a feature!), and the slider will change to the correct position.

More Gantt and Task Status Color Options

2011-02-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

We updated the custom color system for the IntelliGantt Web Part to help our users in three ways:

1) An easy way to change Status specific colors.
2) A way to define your own custom palette.
3) A way to define a custom palette to be used with a Choice field of your choosing.

Here's a shot of the custom colors in action with the KPI pie charts:

Here is our forum post with all the details.

Filter Basecamp Todo Items by Person and by Status

2011-02-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

As of build 1.0.70 the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp offers an easy way to quickly filter your Basecamp Todo Items by who is assigned and its current status. This also means we've introduced a 'Status' field to Basecamp Todo Items with the following choices: Not Started, In Progress, Completed, Deferred and Waiting for someone else.

I know when I first start explaining this feature to folks it run a little dry. Thankfully, 37 Signals provided an extra bit of data to make it fun. Every Basecamp user has information about themselves they can provide, including an avatar url. We thought this such a great idea we incorporated it into the product:

At the bottom of the picture is our new 'People' pane. You can see that three people have actual photos in their avatar uri and two people do not, so they get the general stock image. Because 'Unassigned' is much more a concept than a person, it gets a special generic, non-descript bulbous person icon.

The idea here is not only to show who is involved with what project, but also to enable quick filtering of a persons tasks. How to do this? Click on the person (or the 'Unassigned). The task grid and gantt instantly filter the list so that only tasks assigned to the selected person are displayed. You can select addition people and their assigned tasks will pop into view as well. Unselect everyone to return to the full list.

The other thing to notice in this pane is the dropdown control at the left. This let's you select either the default view of people (with pictures) or two additional fields: Status and Priority.

When you select Status or Priority, the pane changes a bit. Instead of people with the number of tasks assigned to them, you will see a pie chart reflecting a breakdown of that persons Status or Priority choices for all their assigned tasks:

Similar to selecting people, when you select one of the choices in the list (like 'Not Started'), the task list and gantt chart immediately update so that only items matching the choice selection are in the view. You can select multiple choices (ie. 'Not Started' and 'In Progress') to apply at once. Futhermore, you can still select a person or two by clicking on a pie chart to get really granular. As before, simply unselect everything to go back to the default view.

We have detailed examples of these steps for filtering by people and by choices on our site. Better yet, we have a fully functional 15 evaluation available so you can try our IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp today.

One Challenge for SharePoint? Inadequate Interfaces

2011-02-13T23:08:00.000-08:00

CMSWire recently posted an interesting article about SharePoint adoption and the five biggest challenges to further growth. The first interesting nugget is SharePoint 2010 deployment is roughly equal to SharePoint 2007 deployment. As a someone building solutions for SharePoint 2010 and 2007, a growing market is a good thing.

More directly important for us, however, is one of the issues facing SharePoint (as cited by the article):

76% of those surveyed said that the interfaces were only adequate or even inadequate for their needs

.

We firmly believe one of those areas is Project Management and specifically the Task List. So it's not too surprising that the response to our IntelliGantt Web Part technology for SharePoint has been particularly strong. We've taken many years of experience, volumes of customer feedback and the latest technology and distilled these ingredients into a Gantt chart that at least 76% of SharePoint users will appreciate.

Things like:

Two Clicks to install the product
Feedback from every clickable image
Clickable arrows that bring off-the-screen tasks quickly into view
Native Drag and Drop for attaching files to tasks
Changing the Gantt timescale with a simple slider
Dynamic refreshing for up to the minute data
One click Item or Summary task creation and removal
Rich printing with user defined start and end dates
Explorers for combining multiple task lists into one view

and even more features to be available this week!

I can't see we knew exactly how many folks would benefit from our improved interfaces when we started down the SharePoint road. It's nice to see there's more than a few.

Key Performance Indicators - People and Choices

2011-02-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Folks have been asking about Key Performance Indicator (KPI) enhancements within the IntelliGantt Web Part since its inception and we're happy to report it's almost here.

Here's a 'thousand word picture':

Basically we are introducing an expandable region at the bottom of the Task Grid and Gantt Chart that shows choice fields and people. What task you select determines the list of choices and people you see.

For example, if you select the topmost 'task', which can contain multiple projects, you see all the people across all the projects. This is a nice way to see a global rollup.

If you select a particular project, then the number of visible people is narrowed to just those within the project. This can be helpful if you want to drill down on a single project.

Similarly, the available choices change depending on your task selection. At the broadest selection only Status and Priority are available. However, when you click on a task or summary task within a project, then all the choice fields from the current view become available.

As you can see, all that information can then be distilled into useful pie charts reflecting each persons allocation choice values (ie. Not Started, In Progress or Completed for the Status choice).

The coolest part? Watching the pie charts dynamically refresh as new data automatically is retrieved.

Lot's more information coming. We're so excited we just had to share a peek.

Viewing SharePoint Data Lists in a Gantt Chart

2011-01-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

It's great when tools can work with well-structured data in well-defined lists like Tasks, Events and Discussions. But what about the other 99% of the data out there? You know, the stuff that started in Excel and was then uploaded to a SharePoint Custom List. It would have been nice to clean the data up and put it into a task list, but that's more work than people should be required to do.

Rather, in a perfect world, a tool should be able to work with the hodge-podge of data that reflects our daily routine and aid in making sense of it.

We couldn't agree more.

Therefore, we designed the IntelliGantt Web Part to work not only with SharePoint Task and Project Lists, but with just about any list, including the least structured of all-- Custom Lists. This gives you the ability to work with the unruly but critical data already in use today and adds a dash of structure to help you organize a collaborative effort so you can finish tomorrow.

Take, for instance, this basic Custom List called 'Raw Data'. It probably came from a spreadsheet somewhere long forgotten.

That 'Client Notified' field indicates there's probaly some work behind updating these rows of data. It'd be great if we could lay it out in a real task oriented tool like the IntelliGantt Web Part.

Ideally, we would like to place the 'Raw Data' right into the task list as an additional project to view:

Happily, you can do just that!

First, we need to inform the IntelliGantt Web Part of the new list type we want to use. Every SharePoint list has a template id. In the Web Page Editor, the IntelliGantt Web Part has a text field you can add one or more template ids into.

The template id for a Custom List is "100", which makes me think it might have been the first list the SharePoint team ever created. We will add "100" to the field.

Click 'OK' to save your changes and when the IntelliGantt Web Part refreshes, lo and behold!

First, IntelliGantt Web Part found the 'Raw Data' because it matched the template id. Then it adapted to the data and view on that list and updated the column headers of the task list to match.

But we're not done yet. It's time to add our dash of structure to the mix. What we will do is add a few more fields and start whipping this data into shape.

First, let's go back to the 'Raw Data' list and open the List Settings.

Scroll down to the 'Columns' section in the List Settings. Here is where we can either add new columns or use columns already defined by SharePoint.

Why reinvent the wheel, right? Therefore let's go to the 'Add from existing site columns' and see what we find.

Looks like '% Complete' is at the top of the list. We can use that. And we will look for 'Start Date' and 'Due Date' as well.

Click 'OK' to add them and, upon return to the List Settings page, you should see these columns are now available in the 'Raw Data' Custom List.

While they where automatically added to the default view, let's change the order of the columns so we see the Start Date, Due Date and % Complete columns first.

OK, that wasn't too bad. Let's see what our IntelliGantt Web Part looks like now.

Excellent! Since this is a 'task aware' tool, we can quickly add a bit more structure to really help organize our data. For example, we can flesh out the Start and Due dates.

There, we've quickly applied a little bit of project management discipline to a formerly unstructured mess. Better yet, we did not have to examine and update each row of data in order to shoehorn it into an inflexible system. Instead, we brought a flexible (IntelliGantt!) system to the data and solved the problem.

By the way, everything is being stored in SharePoint and the simple updates we did to the Start and Due dates were saved in the 'Raw Data' Custom List.

If you have an unruly SharePoint dataset needing a bit of order, give the IntelliGantt Web Part a try today.

Trimming a Full Hierarchy with a Collapse Level

2011-01-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

Because one of our design goals is being able to show you the whole picture, the IntelliGantt Web Part by default will show you all the tasks in any SharePoint Task List. All the summary tasks and their subtasks will be added to the current view in a beautifully full project hierarchy. Want to see all the subtasks of a folder 5 levels deep? No problem.

But what if you just want to see the first level of folders in order to get a quick sense of how long things in general are taking? And to get a quick view of the current progress and status? If you have multiple, fleshed out projects in the view together, collapsing the higher level summary tasks can be a useful way to see the 'bigger picture' before diving into all the details.

Since more than a few customers have requested this fature, we're happy to introduce the Collapse Level. Basically, you tell IntelliGantt how many levels to show in the hierarchy before summary tasks are 'collapsed' (i.e., do not show their sub tasks).

For example, here is a very simple project that contains a couple summary tasks with sub tasks.

Note that Food Group 1 and Food Group 2 are 'expanded'. You can change this be setting the Collapse Level via the web part editor page:

We will put in the number '3' which will expand things down to the first level of summary tasks. If you want to see more subtasks before collapsing summary tasks, use a larger number. If you don't even want to see the top-level summary tasks, use a smaller number.

When you click 'OK' and the IntelliGantt Web Part is refreshed, now the first level of folders will still appear but they not expanded.

The subtasks are still there of course. Just click on the expand/collapse indicator to the left of the folder to start burrowing.

Quickly Adding and Removing SharePoint Tasks

2011-01-11T12:25:00.000-08:00

Raise your hand if you like filling out SharePoint Task List forms (or any form, for that matter).

While SharePoint item forms are powerful and flexible, they also require one click to bring up the form dialog, at least one typed character for every required field and a second click to save the form item. Additionally, if you wish to add an item to a folder, you need to click on the folder to establish a new view and then do the pre-requisites above. If you are working with an actual project hierarchy, filling an outline of all the levels quickly becomes burdensome.

Or you can use your mouse and our IntelliGantt Web Part. Because the web part shows you the complete hierarchy, there are no context switches. Simply move the mouse over the row you want to add tasks or summary tasks to and click the '+' sign. If you want to remove a task or summary task, click the '-' sign.

Here's how it works in pictures.

Below is an empty SharePoint Task List presented in the IntelliGantt Web Part.

If you have sufficient privileges (ie. you are an Administrator or the 'Edit Schedule' setting is enabled), when you move the mouse over the left side of the task list a special column will appear. It's similar to the 'Add Attachment' column that appears when you drag and drop files. Only this time instead of the upload arrow, you see a '+' sign and/or a '-' sign, depending on what row your mouse is over.

Here we only have the option to add because the mouse is over the actual Task List row. You can click on the '+' sign to add a task:

Or you can hold down the SHIFT key and click to add a folder:

When you move the mouse over a summary task, you have the option to add subtasks or remove the folder. You can add multiple tasks quickly by clicking multiple times:

Finally, you can remove tasks or summary tasks by clicking on the '-' sign.

Again, you can click multiple times to remove multiple tasks (or you could remove the summary task, which in turn removes all its subtasks). Once your mouse is no longer over an item that can be added to or removed, the 'no can do' symbol appears:

We believe this makes it much easier to quickly add and remove tasks and summary tasks to your SharePoint Task List as efficiently as possible, which helps you be more productive.

Basecamp Todo Items with Hours and Cost Information

2010-12-28T22:51:00.000-08:00

The IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp lets you keep additional fields associated with specific Todo Items. Two such fields are Hours and Cost. Because they are numbers, the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp will do basic rollup calculations. Both of these fields can contain decimal numbers.

Below is the initial view you may see for a Basecamp project.

If you scroll the task grid all the way to the right, you will see these two additional fields: Hours and Cost. They will not be available in the Basecamp UI, but their data is stored in Basecamp so every other user of the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp will see the same data values.

Here we enter a few Hour values. Notice that the Todo List container the Todo Items rolls up the hours. Likewise, notice that the top level project rolls up the hours as well. This gives you a high level view of the hours in your project.

Similarly, the IntelliGantt Web Part will work the same for the Cost field.

Drag and Drop Local FIles onto Basecamp Todos and Milestones

2010-12-27T13:23:00.000-08:00

We showed how dragging and dropping works with our IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint product, now let's see how you can drag and drop files from your computer onto Basecamp Todo Items and Milestones. This makes it easy to add multiple files to Basecamp using an elegant UI gesture everyone is familiar with and provide important context for why these files are in the project.

First, you need the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp and a File Explorer. Here we show the Windows version.

Select one or more files, hold down the button to start dragging and move the mouse over your Todo Item or Milestone.

When your drag cursor is over an acceptable drop target (a Todo Item or Milestone), the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp shows you an 'upload' arrow on the same row.

Once you drop the file, a dialog pops up for you to add a comment to (the files will be attached to this comment).

After typing in your comment, the files are added to Basecamp and associated with the Todo Item or Milestone.

If you mouse over the paperclip you will see a listing of all the files attach to the Todo Item or Milestone. You can click on any of these individual file lists and open up the target file.

If you are an administrator, you will see a '-' symbol. You can remove a comment (and the associated attachments) by clicking on the '-'.

When you mouse over the task in the Gantt Chart, you will see the full comment you added.

Finally, the comment containing files attached to you Todo Item or Milestone is stored in Basecamp and accessible via the web browser as you would expect.

Editing Basecamp Todo Item Schedules

2010-12-23T16:11:00.000-08:00

With the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp you have the ability to not only change Due Dates for Todo Items and Milestones, but also to give Todo Items a Duration by establishing a Start date as well. Furthermore, you can link any two Todo Items in a typical task dependency relationship by dragging from the predecessor Todo Item's Endpoint to the successor Todo Item's Startpoint.

We created a detailed forum entry to show you how it's down. For example, here is an image describing the task dependency feature:

Also, the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp supports a 'Read Only' mode that may be useful when you wish to share project information but don't want folks to change things.

Read Only information is also covered in the forum.

Grouping SharePoint Tasks by Assigned To

2010-12-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

It's important to have an online location like a SharePoint Task List to share task information with your team. It's also very helpful to have multiple views you can apply to task lists in order to organize task data for you team members. SharePoint views handle the great majority of cases, but we found one particular view we could add value to-- By Assigned To.

This is an important view for both team members and project managers because it allows you to organize by person first and then task-- the opposite of the default task first and then additional meta data, of which Assigned To is one column.

For example, here is the default task list view in SharePoint:

This particular list also contains summary tasks (called 'Folder 1') containing sub tasks. SharePoint doesn't show a full hierarchy so you have to click on 'Folder 1' to see its sub tasks in a separate page:

If we return to the topmost part of the task list, we can apply the 'By Assigned To' view that comes with SharePoint out of the box:

Select the view --

And see it applied --

While the data is there, it's not very effective. There are two main problems. First of all, the orientation is still Task first, then Assigned To as one of many data columns. Second, the view is only applied to your page context-- remember those sub tasks under Folder 1? You can't see them.

The IntelliGantt Web Part solves both of these issues. First, by default we show you the full hierarchy of your task list (including that predecessor task dependency):

Next, we created a 'Resource' view that puts the people first! That is to say, we group all the tasks under a new 'Person' item, which we think provides a more intuitive display for folks to understand.

Select the 'Resources' --

And see it applied --

This let's you see all the tasks from the hierarchy in one view, organized by grouping them under people. Much better.

By the way, you can click on a 'Person' image and your web browser will open up SharePoint's information page for that person.

Viewing All Basecamp Milestones, Todo Lists and Todo Items Across All Projects

2010-12-21T02:10:00.000-08:00

We've just enhanced the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp to support viewing all the milestones, todo lists and todo items from the projects of your choice. You can select a single project, multiple projects or all projects. We've tested the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp with thousands of items and it scales very well, providing you a great user experience now and in the future as your projects grow.

Furthermore, we've created several ways to view your Basecamp items--

1) A Default view that shows everything
2) A My Todos view that shows only todo items assign to you
3) A Milestones view that shows only milestones
4) A Resources view that groups all milestones and todo items by assignments.

And, of course, this is all done across as many Basecamp projects as you'd like.

Here's a screenshot of the Resources view.

You can try it yourself today and see what you think.

Attach Files to Task with Drag and Drop

2010-12-20T10:21:00.001-08:00

One of the best reasons to use a Silverlight control on a SharePoint web page is you get rich features everyone expects. Perhaps the simplest, most intuitive one is dragging and dropping a file. It also happens to be one of the most powerful and we're happy to make it possible in our IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint. Now you can drag a file from your computer, drop it onto a SharePoint tasks and have it saved as an attachment.

This is a natural extension of how tasks are performed as often there is some digital output that can be associated with the task. While it was possible to add attachments before, the user experience was clunky and did not leverage the well-ingrained drag and drop metaphor.

Here is our forum page detailing how it works.

And here is what it looks like.

What's more, we also made it interactive. This means we popup supporting information when you mouse over the paperclip image. A popup list box will appear containing the names of each file attached to the task. You can select any name and the attachment will appear in a new browser window for you.

Finally, as easy as we made it to add files, we allow you to remove them individually as well. Simply click on the '-' symbol to the right of the file name to remove that attachment from the task.

And if this is just a bit too much power for you, you can disable this feature so that you can view and select attachments, but not add or remove them.

You can check out this web part today, either as a full-fledged WSP to install, or as a simple, quick desktop client demonstration.

Reading Predecessors from SharePoint

2010-11-11T23:20:00.000-08:00

We've received many requests for this feature and we're happy to say 'it is here!' What is the feature, you ask? The ability to receive Predecessor information from a SharePoint task list and update the task dependencies in IntelliGantt and MS Project. Basically, with a click in the 'From SharePoint' column, a project manager can enable users to create predecessors in SharePoint and have them show up in their local tool.

Here it is in action. First let's create a very simple MS Project plan.

After we publish it to a SharePoint task list using the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project, here is our data in SharePoint.

In SharePoint 2010 there is a 'Predecessors' column that let's you add task dependencies. While not available out of the box in SharePoint 2007, you can actually create the same 'Predecessors' column by creating a Lookup column based on task titles. As long as you name the column 'Predecessors', IntelliGantt will recognize it and happily work with it.

So, let's create some predecessors via SharePoint, like so:

Hmm... looks like we created a circular task dependency. I hope things turn out ok.

Before we perform the update with IntelliGantt, we need to make sure it knows about the Predecessors column. We open the 'Workspace Settings' screen by choosing IntelliGantt->Project->Settings. In this case, we will mark both the 'To SharePoint' and 'From SharePoint' columns as active. This means IntelliGantt will do a bi-directional sync on the Predecessors column.

Perform the sync by choosing IntelliGantt->Update and the task dependencies will be created on the desktop too:

And look, IntelliGantt noticed the circular dependency and it didn't cause any trouble. As it processed the SharePoint data it checked to make sure each dependency was acceptable. Having Task 3 dependent on Task 2 was not, so the dependency wasn't created.

Wouldn't it be smart if IntelliGantt updated the SharePoint task list so that it didn't have the circular dependencies anymore? We thought so too. Here's what the SharePoint task list looks like after the IntelliGantt sync:

SharePoint Forms Based Authentication Support

2010-11-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to mention that the latest IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint (version 1.0.35) supports forms based authentication when running 'out of browser'.

Basically, the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint can be installed on your PC or Mac(!) desktop as an 'Out of Browser Application'. Or 'Rich Internet Application'. It's literally a right-mouse click away-- no downloading setup.exe or MSI installation packages.

In fact, you can try it out right now by going to our IntelliGantt Web Part Demo page and right-clicking anywhere within the application.

Clicking on 'Install IntelliGantt Web Part onto this computer...' will, just as you suspected, install it on your computer. Note, if you'd like to remove it, start the IntelliGantt Web Part application on your computer and then right-click on it. Then the menu option will be 'Remove this application...'. When an 'Out of Browser' application is removed nothing is left behind.

Once running the IntelliGantt Web Part from your computer, a new icon appears on the top row for configuration:

Click the 'configuration' icon to throw a wrench in... er... open a panel that let's you set the URL of the SharePoint site:

And set the username and password to use. Be sure the 'Use Forms Based Authentication' checkbox has the check. Then IntelliGantt will use FBA when it communicates with your SharePoint server.

Simple Scheduling with SharePoint Tasks

2010-11-08T11:56:00.000-08:00

We're going to have to come up with a signature line like 'New Feature Monday' or 'Feature of the Week' as we roll along enhancing the IntelliGantt Web Part. Today we will take a look at scheduling and how a project manager can grant or revoke scheduling privileges.

With 'Edit Schedule' set to true, as shown here via the standard web part editor tool, IntelliGantt will respond to left-mouse clicks over the schedule endpoints.

When you move the mouse over an endpoint it will turn dark gray.

If its a milestone, which looks like a single dot because the start and finish dates are one and the same, when you drag it will remain a point in time. If you'd like to turn a milestone into a task with distinct start and finish dates, hold down the 'shift' key and drag to the right (into the future!). The task body will appear, filling the space as you drag the finish date.

If you wish to turn a task into a milestone, simply drag the finish point over the start point.

You can change a task's start and finish date by clicking its body and moving forward and backward in time. You can change multiple tasks by moving a Summary Task containing sub tasks forward and backward in time.

Finally, you can link any two tasks together by hovering the mouse over an endpoint, left-click down and drag to a target task. Once you move out of the source task's row a line appears showing you are in 'link mode'. The result is a task dependency that shows both in the IntelliGantt Web Part:

And in SharePoint:

Finally, the IntelliGantt Web Part can both show you the list of task dependencies when you hover over a task endpoint, or navigate to task dependencies when you click on a predecessor or successor task of your choice. To see this in action please check out the screencast which shows the nifty animation accompanying the action.

These images were pulled from the screencast and show our SharePoint connectivity. Everything you see in this demo can also be done when the IntelliGantt Web Part is working with Basecamp as well.

IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp

2010-11-04T22:55:00.000-07:00

We just posted an update to our IntelliGantt Web Part and have some exciting news-- we are introducing Basecamp support!

There are still two major features we will be putting into the product to better support Basecamp-- views and ad hoc searching-- but the basic connectivity is in place. As of today you can:

- View one or more of your Basecamp projects together in one tool in a hierarchy.
- Give your Basecamp Todo Items a Start and Due date.
- Link two Basecamp Todo Items together as dependencies
- Reschedule a Todo Item, Todo List or entire project by drag and drop
- Print

Perhaps the most exciting feature, because we've been getting asked this a lot, is that it runs on a Mac as well as a Windows PC.

There are two requirements: 1) You must install Silverlight and 2) You must install the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp as an 'Out of Browser' application.

Don't worry, it's as simple as right-clicking the mouse (or simulating a right-click for those Mac users :) on the web part. We provide all the steps in our forum.

Once the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp is up and going, you have a constantly updated view of your Basecamp projects. Every team member using the web part will see the same data, such as those dependencies and start/finish dates.

Let us know what you think. We're excited to bring the next generation of tools to Basecamp and look forward to your feedback.

Including Custom SharePoint Task Lists

2010-10-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

By default the IntelliGantt Web Part includes the standard, 'out of the box' task lists that ship with SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010. It will also find the task lists described in the 'Fabulous Forty' templates for SharePoint 2007. When found, IntelliGantt can then display the task list in its rich interface.

But what about custom lists you may have created in house and are based on a standard task list? How can IntelliGantt know about those too?

With our new Include/Exclude Template ID feature.

Out of the box the IntelliGantt Web Part will look for lists with the following server template IDs:

107 (the basic task list)
150 Project Tasks
1104 Deliverables task list customization
7142 Budgeting task list customization
7143 Budgeting Milestones task list customization

This can be extended by adding more list template IDs to the IncludeListTemplateIDs parameter in either the Web Part Editor backpage or via the initParams section for the Silverlight control.

Furthermore, if you want to make sure people use a specific task list (like one of your custom ones) you can exclude any or all of the built in IDs above with the ExcludeListTemplateIDs parameter.

Detailed syntax for developer folks is in our forum.

We hope this will make it easier to package the IntelliGantt Web Part with custom solutions developed by system integrators or in-house developers.

Automatically Selecting the SharePoint Task List and View

2010-10-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

System integrators, SharePoint admins and project managers have been asking for more ability to seed the IntelliGantt Web Part with task list and view information (and more). We just posted release 1.0.33 which has the following features:

Select the initial task list
Select the initial task list view
Apply keywords
Include SharePoint List Template IDs
Exclude SharePoint List Template IDs
Preset the 'Explored' Selections

And more. We will be providing more technical information in our forums (as linked above). Because the Task List and View selection has been so often requested, though, I'd like to introduce it here.

If you don't have IntelliGantt preset to anything and just drop it in a SharePoint site, when a user first views the control IntelliGantt will find all the task lists within the site and, by default, select the site and 'Default' to display initially.

However, if you would like to control what Task List and View is selected, then invoke the 'Edit Web Part' command (assuming you have the privilege) and go to the 'IntelliGantt Initialization' category.

In this mini-example we will seed the IntelliGantt Web Part to select the 'Tasks' list and use the 'My Tasks' view. Let's make sure the current user is assigned to a few tasks first so the result isn't underwhelming.

For this example I'm logged in as Administrator, but I could be anybody who has privileges to edit the web part.

Next, we will fill out the 'Selected List Path' and 'Selected View Name' fields. Our forum contains more detailed information on how to populate these fields.

For example, here we have filled out the Selected List Path and Selected View Name.

Once we hit the 'OK' button, anytime the IntelliGantt Web Part is rendered for the first time it will use these supplied values. As a result, when I (the Administrator) now view the control, the first thing I see will be:

The 'Tasks' row selected and the 'My Tasks' view applied so that I immediately see what's on my plate.

Changing Colors in Gantt Chart

2010-10-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

[17 February 2011 Update - Build 1.0.70 adds even more color options with a default palette and the ability to create a palette for a specific Choice field.]

We're already receiving many new feature requests from customers for our IntelliGantt Web Part. With an update just posted, we're happy to have fulfilled a common one: the ability to change the task colors in the Gantt chart.

Here's how it works. Below is our default color scheme.

I think it's brilliant, but as we all know, one size (or color) does not fit all.

If you would like to change the default colors in the Gantt chart, put the web part into edit mode. In the IntelliGantt section, you now see the following options:

You'll notice the four properties named:

1) Not Started Color
2) In Progress Color
3) Behind Color
4) Completed Color

These properties align with the Task Status values within SharePoint:

1) Not Started
2) In Progress
3) OK, not a direct SharePoint mapping. But we thought seeing a 'Behind' task-- a task In Progress but not far enough along given its 'Percent Complete' value-- would be very useful.
4) Completed.

Let's go through each one and see how things look.

Some folks might want 'Not Started' tasks to really pop out. In this case, Magenta may be a good color.

Note that the color value is represented as Hexadecimal RGB. Hopefully this isn't too inconvenient. Just google 'RGB to Hexidecimal color converter' and there's lots of resources on the web to get just the color you need in hex format.

Tasks that are In Progress always make people feel calm, serene and on top of things, so Dark Turquoise is the obvious choice:

For tasks that are marked as In Progress in SharePoint but are in actuality Behind, it will be important to make them stand out. Nothing stands out more than Hot Pink:

Finally, we have the Completed tasks that anchor the project on its march toward completion. A good Navy Blue provides the weight we need:

And the fully realized color scheme:

On another note, we also received a question in this blog asking if the IntelliGantt Web Part could show color next to the SharePoint status values as well. The answer is now 'Yes'. We provide a bit of color splash next to the Status to help you see which tasks are Hot Pink, ... er, Behind at a glance. Here's a shot of colors in the Status field with our new palette.

You know, maybe that is a better color scheme. Let me know if we should make these the default colors for the IntelliGantt Web Part :).

SharePoint 2007, Silverlight and the IntelliGantt Web Part

2010-10-11T15:22:00.001-07:00

We just entered a support note I wanted to raise awareness of because there are so many SharePoint 2007 users out there. Our detailed write-up and solution is in our forum, but in a nutshell, if you use our IntelliGantt2007.WSP solution on an out-of-the-box SharePoint 2007 configuration on an out-of-the-box Windows Server 2003 configuration, then the IntelliGantt.xap Silverlight package will not be served by IIS.

The solution is to add .xap file extensions to the list of approved MIME Types for IIS.

Thankfully, SharePoint 2010 and Windows Server 2008 recognize .xap files by default so this is not an issue for newer infrastructure.

Nor is this an issue when using the SharePoint 2007 Rich Content Web Part to view .xap files. It's only with the 2007 specific WSP solution.

IntelliGantt Localization

2010-10-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

We just posted an update to the IntelliGantt Web Part that supports localization. Specifically, it now supports English, Deutsch, Française, Español, Italiano and 日本語.

Just to be clear, because Silverlight applications (like our IntelliGantt Web Part) actually run on the client, IntelliGantt will use the client settings to display the localized language.

This means if you happen to have the SharePoint language display auf Deutsch but your client OS is using English, then the SharePoint 'chrome' will display in Deutsch while the IntelliGantt Web Part will display English.

For example, here we see the web part in a Deutsche SharePoint page, but my Windows client is English.

Note that the web part editing is completely in Deutsch. Note also there seem to be new editable fields in the admin section, which will be introduced in another post.

So what parts change when SharePoint is presenting the display language of your choice? First of all, your views are available in the native language:

Next, when a view is selected the IntelliGantt updates the Task List column headers to the column headers selected in the SharePoint view, including the display names. Also, the localized choice lists are retrieved as well:

Finally, we look for areas where we can use the SharePoint display language you select in other parts of the IntelliGantt application, like the popup help:

Again, if my Windows client was in Deutsch, you'd see additional changes like the Gantt calendar presenting a bit differently, data/time formats localized and tooltips all in the language of your PC.

Aber habe ich die Deutsch Sprache fast alles vergessen. So I leave it up to the native speakers to see the rest. Just head to our IntelliGantt Web Part page to try it out.

Coming Soon to a Locale Near You

2010-10-01T15:30:00.001-07:00

One thing we learned from our IntelliGantt Rich Client and IntelliGantt Add In products is this-- there are a lot of people on the internet and they don't all speak English.

So we designed the IntelliGantt Web Part to be as easily localizable as possible, for all of our benefit. The result, we think, is a clean and simple UI that, in addition to being uncluttered with words, is very quick to localize. In fact, right now we only have 21 strings to translate in the UI. Since SharePoint column and view names come from SharePoint and are already localized, we just had to do a few things like 'Explore' and 'Search'.

If you would like to see the IntelliGantt Web Part localized for your language, here is the list of strings to translate. Either send your list of localized strings to support [at] teamdirection [dot] com or reply with your list in our forum. We will be happy to get your localized strings in as soon as we can to help you and your users.

It's good to be a world citizen.

SharePoint Task Assignments and Permissions

2010-09-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

SharePoint Lists are highly configurable, which is great. The reason they are so flexibile is that Microsoft wanted to apply them to any business problem that might come up, which is also great. But wouldn't it be nice to have a few configurations options available based on the type of list being used-- like a Task or Project List?

For example, a SharePoint Task List adheres to the basic permissions model which lets anyone with Contributor privileges or above edit a list item. As a result, this usually means anyone can edit any task in your list. So what about the 'Assigned To' field? It makes sense to be there because this is a Task List after all. But in addition to conveying basic information we think it should also signal who is able to update the task. That way the project manager can know that if the task has been updated, it was updated by a person assigned to it.

We're happy to introduce exactly this feature with our IntelliGantt Web Part. It's something we call 'Enforce Assignments'.

This is an optional setting the IntelliGantt Web Part provides that spares the project manager from mucking with permissions again and again for every task list they work with.

Here's how it works. Let's say you drop in the IntelliGantt Web Part into a site page.

We see there are no assignments in this task list. But, because the current user is at least a Contributor, they have edit options available-- like the little thumbs on each task for percent complete information.

Which means the current user can change lots of percent complete information.

Which may be fine for your needs. However, if you'd prefer that only folks assigned to a task can update it, then we can flip a single switch. First, put the web part into edit mode.

The IntelliGantt Web Part introduces its own section in the web part settings page. There are a couple others properties we can set (and more coming in the future), but we're focusing on 'Enforce Assignments'.

By default this is 'off' so that we match SharePoint's default behavior. However, if we click it 'on', then users must be assigned to a task in order to update it.

Back on the Gantt chart, the most obvious indicator is the percent complete thumb again-- it's no longer available.

In this case, nobody can update anything as there are no task assignments. The thumbs in the task are gone and in-place editing is disabled for all tasks. So let's give the administrator something to do.

Notice that the thumb has returned for the administrator's newly assigned task. He or she can now update this task, but no others.

With this feature, IntelliGantt enhances your task list so that not only can it communicate the current state of a project, it can do so with confidence.

Finally, this feature is a simple checkbox in the web part editor page if you choose to install the IntelliGantt.wsp solution. If you are working with the IntelliGantt.xap file, then you will need to edit the initParams value like so:

<param name="initParams" value="MS.SP.url=<your server url>,EnforceAssignments=true" />

It Gets Worse

2010-09-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

Ah, the Karma Gods were in fact enjoying my plight and had one more twist for me. After I had thrown up my hands and said out loud 'I give up', I put my right hand back on the mouse to click the cancel button that, having finally came to terms with, would never turn into an 'OK' button no matter how much I wished for it to happen.

A dialog box popped up saying (and I should've taken the picture) 'The installer will finish installing the current package and then exit'. Great!, I thought, that's just what I want! It's on the last package so this magical backdoor has provided for me.

Er... not quite:

Notice it's still on step 14-- still the very last step. Only now the cancel button is greyed out, as is the 'Exit Window' button at the upper right.

I wonder what will happen if I try to kill the process? Dare I?

The Agony of the Installer That Can't Quite Finish

2010-09-24T10:45:00.001-07:00

So I'm installing the new Windows Mobile 7 SDK looking forward to seeing what it can do. I waited until the 'final' release so that most of the issues would be worked out. The first time I tried to install it, it got stuck on step 10.

So I tried it again.

This time it went through 14 steps, and it looks like its almost there. I'm just waiting for that Cancel button to turn into an OK button I can click. It just looks sooooo cloooose:

So far I've been waiting for two hours. I'm hoping that the act of posting this blog entry piques the karma gods so that the install completes.

UPDATE - Nope, even posting to the internet couldn't get the attention of the Karma Gods today. They must be too busy.

SharePoint Gantt Chart Showing Multiple Predecessors

2010-09-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

The IntelliGantt Web Part can show all the tasks in your hierarchy AND multiple predecessors. We had a couple users ask about this and I'm happy to reply unequivocally 'Yes'.

The IntelliGantt Web Part uses a SharePoint LookupMulti column, parses through the values, resolves the values to actual predecessor items and then computes the visible line drawing. It looks like this:

If your predecessor SharePoint column only holds a single value ('Lookup'), IntelliGantt handles that just fine.

Same thing for Assigned To and any other Lookup or LookupMulti columns in your SharePoint list.

Keep the questions coming, we're happy to answer them.

Publish MS Project 2010 Tasks to SharePoint 2007

2010-09-23T14:51:00.001-07:00

Continuing on in our feature matrix, now we'd like to show how the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project can publish tasks from MS Project 2010 to SharePoint 2007 task lists-- or to SharePoint 2010 task lists for that matter.

As you know, MS Project 2010 Professional now has the ability to synchronize project columns with SharePoint 2010 columns. But what about SharePoint 2007? Not supported. But we're happy to let you know that our IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2007 works just fine with MS Project 2010, Standard or Professional, which means you can still use those ancient SharePoint 2007 sites everyone has bookmarked in their web browsers.

You can install the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2007 or for MS Project 2010. You can even start with MS Project 2007, install our Add In and then migrate to MS Project 2010 and still be connected to your SharePoint 2007 servers.

Let's see it in action.

First we will create a project with our 'compass' theme, this time focusing on the South.

When you install add ins with MS Project 2010, you get an 'Add-Ins' tab on the ribbon. The IntelliGantt Add In can be found here.

Just as you normally would, you use the 'Share Wizard' to select a SharePoint site and a task list.

This particlar task list is from one of the 'Fabulous Forty' templates that were available with SharePoint 2007 and contains tons of great features. (Note: I'm not sure if SharePoint 2010 has a Fabulous Forty as well. It seems like it should.) As you would expect, the tasks are in the Gantt view of this templates task list.

Of course, this view is still just as restrictive as all the SharePoint task views in that it doesn't really show you a full hierarchy and its dependencies. For that, we've created the IntelliGantt Web Part, which displays the full hierarchy and task predecessor links. This time, though, I'm going to show another feature-- our Explorer capability. Just click on the pith helmet and you'll see: Our SharePoint Explorer.

In this scenario we have a parent site called 'Demo' and four subsites named North, East, West and South. We've placed the IntelliGantt Web Part within the 'Demo' site, which is the parent site of both 'North' and 'South', in order to get a bigger view of the world. The SharePoint Explorer begins at the 'Demo' site, discovers all the sub sites with task lists and presents them. We simply mark the checkboxes we wish to see in our view, click 'OK' and...

... see the North and South united together. Talk about a powerful feature!

Publish MS Project 2007 Tasks to SharePoint 2010

2010-09-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

Continuing to illustrate the combinations available to IntelliGantt, Microsoft Project and SharePoint users, today we will focus on publishing the full task hierarchy of a Microsoft Project 2007 plan to a SharePoint 2010 server. This is accomplished by the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project, which actually works with both MS Project 2007 and MS Project 2010 (32-bit) versions and with SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010. But in the interest of a shorter, more concise post we will focus on MS Project 2007, SharePoint 2010's improved task list and the powerful IntelliGantt Web Part.

First off is a simple project focusing on a few Eastern tasks created in MS Project 2007.

This is very similar to the 'North' project of the previous post in IntelliGantt, but we did add a new twist. Notice that in addition to predecessor links within a grouping we also have predecessor links spanning groups. For example, Trumbull is a predecessor of Boston. (Yes, I know this is not historically accurate. Boston was founded in 1630 and Trumbull was founded in 1797. Its just for demonstration purposes).

Next up we perform the standard IntelliGantt->Share steps to send our tasks in MS Project to a selected SharePoint list. As before, we will change the projects Workspace Settings to take advantage of new features in IntelliGantt and in SharePoint.

When we demonstrated IntelliGantt working with SharePoint 2007 we mentioned that IntelliGantt, during the Share operation, would create the 'Predecessors' column. With SharePoint 2010, this column is available to you out of the box and IntelliGantt will integrate with it. We also make sure to change the filter to 'Full Hierarchy', as before.

After IntelliGantt has sent the tasks to SharePoint, we see tasks in the improved gantt chart that comes with SharePoint 2010.

Here it is a little easier to distinguish the summary tasks from normal tasks because the visuals are a little better. However, you will still need to dive into each summary task to see its sub tasks, just as with SharePoint 2007.

Again, the task visuals have improved a bit as you can see the predecessors when both tasks are in the same group. However, remember the predecessors that spanned groups? For example, Trumbull being a predecessor to Boston? It's not viewable with the SharePoint 2010 task list.

This is where the IntelliGantt Web Part shines as it provides a full hierarchical view, which of course means it shows all predecessor links. The IntelliGantt Web Part brings all your project pieces into view.

Rest assured that this is just tip of the iceberg for what the IntelliGantt Web Part can do. Other features, such as the ability to add additional SharePoint task lists to the view will be demonstrated in a very near future blog post.

Publishing Project Task Hierarchies to SharePoint

2010-09-15T23:20:00.000-07:00

Two questions for you:

1) How can you publish full project hierarchy to a SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010 Task List?

2) How can you view a full project heirarchy in a SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010 Task List?

The answers to question number 1 are:

IntelliGantt
Microsoft Project 2007 (Standard or Professional) with the IntelliGantt Add In
Microsoft Project 2010 Professional

The answer to question number 2 is:

The IntelliGantt Web Part

TeamDirection has created the next generation of SharePoint integrated Gantt Charts using Silverlight to bring you automatic updates, high-fidelity printing, dynamic timescale changes, future Windows Mobile 7 support and....

the ability to view a full project hierarchy in either SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010.

Over the next few blog posts I will take you through the permutations of publishing projects to SharePoint and using the IntelliGantt Web Part to view them in their entirety.

First up is our IntelliGantt rich client application.

Here we have a four projects spanning the compass and are currently working on 'North'. Within North we have three northern states as summary tasks, three cities within each state and a few predecessor links. (Does this mean Ann Arbor precedes Detroit? Only in the alphabetical sense for this post-- people from Michigan, I mean you no harm :) ).

IntelliGantt has a very powerful 'Workspace Settings' screen that lets you configure all sorts of things. As of build 173 there are two significant features:

1) The new 'Full Hierarchy' task filter. This filter tells IntelliGantt to send the entire project, including the parent/child relationships between summary tasks and sub tasks, to any SharePoint task list of your choice.

2) The 'Predecessors' field, which has been upgraded to use a SharePoint lookup column in order to enhance usability and match MS Project 2010 SharePoint support.

Note that neither of these features are 'on' by default. This is because many folks are used to the flat listing of tasks in SharePoint and because, in order to dynamically create the Predecessors field (for SharePoint 2007), the IntelliGantt user will need at least 'Designer' permissions.

If you would like to see all the steps to publish a project with IntelliGantt, here is a screencast for you.

Once the project has been published, we can see the results in SharePoint:

OK, its a little underwhelming in the native, out-of-the-box SharePoint Gantt View. Believe it or not, the three 'state' tasks are indeed summary tasks containing sub tasks-- you'd just never know it in this UI. For example, you can click on 'Michigan' down at the bottom to see its contents:

However, you lose the context of the project-- notice that Wisconsin and Minnesota have disappeared? Also, remember that we created two predecessor links among the tasks? The task list in SharePoint 2007 does not show them.

How about a task list that shows the entire project? Like the IntelliGantt Web Part. For example, if I drop the IntelliGantt xap file into this SharePoint site I can get a great view of everything:

Here we see the entire project hierarchy with visual distinction among site, list and task item elements. Basic Red/Green colors show what is behind versus what is on track. Simple scrolling takes you up and down ALL your tasks (and we've tested with 10,000+). Predecessor links between tasks. And of course many more features that we will be showcasing.

The last thing I want to point out is, because the IntelliGantt Web Part is in fact a Silverlight application, you don't need to install it as a web part. You can in fact drop it into any SharePoint site, be it on a server down the hall, a 3rd party hosting provider or even Microsoft's BPOS solutions. Because of this flexibility you can use IntelliGantt's rich features for your project in any SharePoint hosting scenario.

We have detailed instructions written up for you for both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint WSP Files for 2007 and 2010 Available

2010-08-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

Beta 2 is looking good. We managed to squeeze that last feature in (enforcing task assignments so only folks assigned to a task can update it) and are in the final weeks of testing now. We have a couple nits beta testers have let us know about and vertical scrolling could still be a little faster, but overall we are very pleased and look forward to even more feedback.

We have identified three installation scenarios to support--

Installation on a Microsoft BPOS or 3rd party hosting solution
Installation on WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007
Installation on SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010

Because we are making the underlying IntelliGantt Web Part xap file available, you can install it on any SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010 server anywhere! This will make it easy to 'kick the tires' or deploy the IntelliGantt Web Part for your immediate needs. Full instructions for installing the xap file are here.

If you do have administrative access to your SharePoint server, then installing the IntelliGantt Web Part makes sense as it will show up in the web part gallery in the 'Project Management' category.

Here is more information and the download link for the WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 WSP file.

Here is more information and the download the link for the SharePoint Foundation/SharePoint Server 2010 WSP file.

Beta 2 of IntelliGantt Web Part Available

2010-08-02T02:20:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note that we posted BETA 2 of the IntelliGantt Web Part tonight. Expect a WSP installer by Aug.4 and an additional search feature.

The high-value improvements in this beta are:

1. Navigation explorer to help you choose which sites/task lists to view (click on the pith helmet)
2. Helpful icons by each task that take you to the SharePoint item in your web browser when you click on it
3. Additional column types supported for search
4. Quick help on the search screen
5. Column width persistence for each SharePoint column

As you can see the pith helmet has replaced the arrow from Beta 1. This signifies the ability to explore your SharePoint site as opposed to pulling in everything. And yes, your selections will persist!

Using SharePoint Views to do a Simple Workflow

2010-06-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

We just posted a couple screencasts to show how IntelliGantt can take advantage of two things:

1) The ability to work with any SharePoint view
2) Applying views to automatic refreshes

That's a little abstract so let me run through the scenario because the result is quite useful.

SharePoint 2010 introduces a new column in the task list called 'Predecessor'. (SharePoint 2007 doesn't have this by default, but IntelliGantt can add it for you). The idea here is to capture more schedule information in SharePoint. But other than drawing a pretty line from the finish date of one task to the start of the next, what is done with this data?

Well, IntelliGantt makes use of it to flip the Status of a task when its predecessor is marked as 'Completed'. Turns out computers are very adept at traversing dependencies and updating them when things change. So, IntelliGantt finds all the successors of a completed task and changes their status to 'In Progress'.

This in and of itself is interesting, but combined with a new SharePoint view and IntelliGantt's refresh logic the feature becomes dynamic.

That is to say, we create a view called 'My Tasks In Progress'. A SharePoint team member can then select this view in IntelliGantt and remove their hands from the keyboard and mouse. When predecessors to their tasks are completed, their own tasks will pop into view automatically. Team members don't have to click 'Refresh' constantly to see the latest. IntelliGantt keeps them up to date.

The result is the handoff between dependent tasks becomes that much more efficient. Even better, the team members don't have to change a thing-- IntelliGantt will do the handoff from one task to the next for them.

This is quite a bit to explain so please do see the 'SharePoint View' and 'Workflow Tasks' screencasts.

Searching SharePoint Task Lists

2010-06-02T00:28:00.000-07:00

It's one thing to be able to view all your tasks in one spot, it's another to find the tasks most important to you. Given that SharePoint 2010 can now support millions of potential tasks at every level of a task hierarchy, a robust search solution is now critical to help users make sense of it all.

The IntelliGantt Web Part was designed with this exact scenario in mind. We just posted a new screencast highlighting the new 'Search' feature within the web part and, even after developing it, the coolness factor is at eleven!

Basically, it uses the one tried and true search metaphor the world has come to love-- a text box. OK, that in itself may seem underwhelming, but another design goal for the IntelliGantt Web Part was to make it as accessible as possible. Since everyone knows how to add keywords to a text box and search, it seemed like a natural.

Text based keywords, dates and date ranges are all supported. The date fields are parsed according to the locale on your system so folks in the US and folks in the EU both get their date formats exactly as they want them.

Searches are done using generated CAML queries so IntelliGantt never inundates the network with a huge volume of web services data just to iterate over all the SharePoint list items locally.

The coolest thing, though? After seeing the screencast, I think its the ability to 'splice' the search with a selected list view on the fly. For example, you can easily combine a 'My Tasks' view with a keyword value of 'In Progress', 'Behind' or a date range. This makes it easy for SharePoint users to create specific views for their needs, and a deviously clever way for users to add the extra bits they need to personalize things for them.

We're just begun with our search text box and look forward to adding more features and cleverness.

TeamDirection Site Updated for Web Part

2010-06-01T05:02:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to mention we have a landing page, screencast and demo page available that loads the IntelliGantt Web Part in your web browser for you to get look at.

An Out of Browser Experience

2010-05-27T01:07:00.000-07:00

Our new IntelliGantt Silverlight control takes advantage of a feature that let's you 'install' it on your desktop. This let's you use an icon on your desktop or start menu to launch the control-- basically as a 'super shortcut' to access your SharePoint data instead of going to the browser and navigating to the site (though yes, you could make the IntelliGantt web page a 'favorite' in your browser).

The other thing you get to do may actually be more important-- use your entire screen to view the IntelliGantt chart. Yes, maximizing the web browser gets you most of the way there, but as a 'desktop' application, you can actually use all the real estate on your monitor to get the biggest gantt chart possible. Which, if you have a large project plan, can be very helpful.

Here's what it looks like:

1. Start by navigating to the aspx page containing the IntelliGantt web part.

2. Next, right click anywhere within the IntelliGantt control. A two-item popup menu appears. The second item, whose full name is 'Install IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint onto this computer', is the one to select. This will not only install the control on your computer, it will also save the connection information so that the installed control automatically goes to this SharePoint site when its started.

3. After clicking on the menu option, a simple 'where do you want to put it?' dialog appears. The start menu is selected by default, but I prefer the desktop for my high value SharePoint sites.

4. Here is the final result. There is an 'IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint' icon that can be renamed to convey information as to what SharePoint site it came from. The title of the running app gives you a clue at least by providing the SharePoint server name.

Getting the task data from the SharePoint site was automatic as, during the process of installing on your desktop, IntelliGantt remembered where it came from and how to communicate with the SharePoint server in the future.

Also, you can install multiple controls from multiple sites and have them all run concurrently-- perhaps filling all the pixels on your multiple screens.

Finally, it's just as easy to uninstall is install. Whenever you want to remove it, go to your Control Panel. It will be listed as an application you can uninstall.

Installing the Silverlight Control on SharePoint 2010 and 2007

2010-05-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

We just posted to our forum detailed steps how to install the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint on both 2010 and 2007. Yes, we have the full matrix: Foundation, Standard and Enterprise 2010 are supported, as are WSS 3.0, MOSS Standard and MOSS Enterprise.

The idea here is a user will be able to drop the IntelliGantt control into a SharePoint server and evaluate how well it works for them without having to bug IT. But yes, we will have an actual package to install on SharePoint servers properly as well.

In the meantime, though, this is the method. It's straightforward on SharePoint 2010, but SharePoint 2007 makes you go through a particular hoop (which we've labelled as 'Step 13').

Finally, we encourage you to join our moderated forum, where we look forward to answering your questions and providing more in-depth information.

Microsoft BPOS and General SharePoint Hosting Support

2010-05-24T10:28:00.000-07:00

I met with a local BPOS partner in town last week to show off the new IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint. For those who don't know what BPOS stands for, its a program from Microsoft for its partners to provide businesses productivity solutions through hosted services. There's a range of offerings from hosted Exchange to online Outlook. But of course we are most interested in the hosted SharePoint online services and the value we can bring to running projects online with SharePoint.

So when she asked me if the IntelliGantt web part runs on BPOS, first I had to ask what BPOS was myself, then I told her everything I knew, which amounted to 'I think so'. But 'should work' and 'does work' are often different things in this world so this morning I signed up for a BPOS account myself.

I'm pleased to say I was able to drop in the IntelliGantt Web Part, configure the MS.SP.url parameter and, lo and behold, it did indeed work. Here's the screenshot:

As you can see, not only is this running within the the BPOS environment (check out the size of that url!), but its also running with SSL-- another feature the IntelliGantt Web Part supports.

Finally, I'd like to show another image highlighting the bottom right of the Gantt chart:

By default you will see the words 'IntelliGantt BETA' on the bottom right of the Gantt chart. Furthermore, if you click on this, a browser window will open up taking you to a forum on the teamdirection.com site where you can post questions and look for answers.

For any SharePoint hoster and integrator (folks like Rackspace or Implement for example), this area of the Gantt chart-- the display string and the target link-- is customizable. Basically, we want to introduce a simple way for partners to 'brand' the IntelliGantt Web Part so that their name is visible and a link can take them to their website where they may help the customer with any questions.

The way to do this will be in the initParams value passed in to the IntelliGantt Web Part control. For example:

param name="initParams" value="BrandingText=Successful%20Partner,BrandingUri=[your uri]"

The result will be this:

Naturally this is just the start of the customizations we plan to do as initial states, color schemes and more all enter the mix. The order in which we do things will be driven by customer, and partner, demand.

IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint on a Mac

2010-05-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

This just in-- Silverlight 4 works very well on a Mac with Safari!

I had to share a screenshot of our IntelliGantt Web Part talking to SharePoint and running on an Apple Mac:

Looks pretty good! Also, please notice that our web part is running inside of WSS 3.0 in this picture. I will post 'How-Tos' in the next couple days on how to site the control in SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010, MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0.

Showing Rich Text in Tooltips

2010-05-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I thanked Tim Heuer for creating the Floating Window control and letting us use it. This reminded me that I also need to thank David Anson for his excellent HTMLTextBlock control, which we are also using. It's what enables IntelliGantt to show the rich text content from SharePoint description fields within our 'super' tooltip.

HTMLTextBlock is great, and should also be added to the WPF Toolkit, in my humble opinion.

Searching for Tasks Through Sites and Subsites

2010-05-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

As we've mentioned before while introducing the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint, you have the option to look at all tasks within a SharePoint site, as below:

(Note: While it was cool to see the Gantt Chart on a SharePoint site's home page, I wanted it a little bigger. So I created a new Site Page, added the IntelliGantt Web Part and had it take up all the real estate).

You also have the option to drill down through sub sites and find all tasks from buried in your SharePoint hierarchy as well:

One of the first things you'll likely notice is you have a lot of tasks to look at! Wouldn't it be nice to have a search button that let's you search for simple keywords through all the tasks that IntelliGantt finds? We thought so too. The sharped eye'd reader will notice we've introduced a new button since the last blog post-- Search!

When you click on the magnifying glass, a floating window pops up that let's you enter keywords in a simple text box just like Google. (If you're thinking 'how did you do a floating window?', go see Tim Heuer's excellent blog post and codeplex project. And please vote for it to be included in the web toolkit!).

Type in a word or two that you'd like to find...

...and IntelliGantt will query your SharePoint server for tasks that have text fields matching your words.

Just in case you are wondering, IntelliGant did not pull down all items in the Task List from SharePoint and search for them locally, one at a time, on your computer. Instead, IntelliGantt created a CAML query that executed on the SharePoint server so that only results travelled across the wire. If that sounds a little too techie, just know that you're SharePoint administrator and IT networking folks will thank you!

The other really powerful feature of Search is to easily combine it with views, which often have their own search information defined.

In the above screenshots you'll notice we used the 'Default' view for each Task List, which is usually the 'All Tasks' view. However, we can also select 'My Tasks' and apply it to every Task List.

This is very helpful in and of itself as it makes it easy for every user to see what's assigned to them. But what if they wanted to see what's assigned to them on a certain date? Again, the Search is your friend.

Bring up the floating Search window once more by clicking on the magnifying glass and type in a date (IntelliGantt will recognize dates as well and apply it to your task Start and Due dates fields).

Execute the search and now we've made a more complex search-- all my tasks on 6/15-- surprisingly simple.

Of course the more sites, sub sites, task lists and tasks you have the more powerful this feature becomes. It's perfect both for team members who would like one place to see what they need to do and for managers who need one place to see what's been done.

Print the IntelliGantt SharePoint Gantt Chart

2010-05-11T20:29:00.001-07:00

Not to give away my age, but back in the early 1990s we were on the cusp of the paperless office. By the mid-nineties we were on the precipice. At the end of the millenium the experts assured us that, after that Y2K thing caused everything to stop, when we restarted (rebooted?) the office would be absolutely, guaranteed, bet-your-bottom-dollar-on-it paperless.

In that context, we are pleased as punched that in the year 2010 Silverlight 4 now supports printing. I have to admit I like the theory of a paperless office, but I like the reality of what customers want even more-- and in no uncertain terms people want to capture our Gantt Charts on paper.

Now you can.

1) Go to a SharePoint site with the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint installed.

2) Click the picture that looks like a printer.

3) Select a date range to print and a printer. By default IntelliGantt chooses the start and finish of the project. You can adjust this on the fly.

4) When you click 'Select Printer' the standard printer selection form in Windows pops up. I will choose a PDF for reasons that will be clear at the end of this post.

5) Since I chose PDF, it will ask me where I want to save it on disk. I find this step interesting because, remember, this is from a Silverlight application. Good golly, we can start to interact with the desktop. Awesome!

6) Here's probably the coolest visual part-- you can watch the pages being printed one at a time with a full preview for each page. If you see something you don't like, cancel it.

7) Voila, we are done! This example happens to be in PDF, but it just as easily could have been to your printer where the Gantt Chart would be waiting for you-- nice and warm in the print tray.

One thing to note about the output. Compare the visual in step 1 with the last visual above. Notice that the print output shows the complete Gantt Chart while the first image didn't have quite enough space for the start and finish dates? The print routine pays attention to the start and finish you specify in the print dialog and figures out what's necessary to print the range. Nice.

Of course, it's still hard to send paper through the internet. But I do have this PDF file! Which means if you want to see the actual PDF I just produced and print it for yourself, here you go.

The IntelliGantt Web Part Within SharePoint

2010-05-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

While a great looking and full-featured Gantt Chart has many merits on its own, if you're going to call something a Gantt Chart for SharePoint it's probably a good idea to actually show it within SharePoint. Not that I don't appreciate a good developer view now and then, but here's a screen capture of the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint within SharePoint 2010.

The most important thing to note: This is not photoshopped!

I'll cover how to drop our web part within a SharePoint page in a separate post, but rest assured we're making it very easy for anyone to give the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint a test run.

What I wanted to point out in this post is how this web part gives you a full visualization of the entire hierarchy. In this image you see six total items from the SharePoint site called 'SubSite 1', the task list called 'SubSite 1 Tasks' and the actual task items in the task list: Container, Chew Gum, Look and Walk. So far so good.

Since IntelliGantt gets its data from a SharePoint Task List, you can of course see the same data using just your web browser. However, when you navigate to the SharePoint Task List notice that only the three top-level items are visible: the Container folder, Look and Walk. The Container folder does indeed still contain sub tasks, but what you see in SharePoint is the following:

If we switch to the Gantt View for this list, we still just see the folder and 2 tasks:

IntelliGantt, on the other hand, gives you a complete view of your task hierarchy.

And naturally, the values roll up, like Start Date, Due Date and Percent Complete-- all reflecting the collection of child tasks. With this web part you can see all the tasks in your project just like you can in MS Project or IntelliGantt on the desktop.

Finally, we took this ability to its logical conclusion-- if you would like to see all the tasks in your project, then it stands to reason you might want to see all the tasks in your sub sites too. Just click the arrow next to the 'Views' dropdown (yes, that will be covered in another post) and IntelliGantt will discover the task lists lurking in your subsites and gather everything into one view.

Ah, I see that a few tasks we pulled in are behind. Looks like we have more work to do!

The Worlds Best SharePoint Gantt Chart

2010-05-05T01:26:00.000-07:00

Coming soon to a browser near you.

I thought folks might like to see a peek of the new Gantt Chart TeamDirection is working on. We're calling it the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint and have created a brand new section in our forum to start fielding questions.

Obviously we will have screencasts and tutorials. But here's what will be available from day one:

1) It is in Silverlight 4 and therefore will use the new PRINT capability

2) It will have interactive zoom in and zoom out to seamlessly move from hours to quarters when viewing your tasks. Gantt zooming is probably the number one request from folks interested in SharePoint Gantt Charts. It's really cool to see so I'm looking forward to demo'ing this feature!

3) All changes you do to the grid and gantt will be reflected immediately both in the UI and in the actual SharePoint item. No need to worry about clicking an 'Update' button, IntelliGantt figures it out for you.

4) You will be able to include subsites and all tasks from subsites in the web part with a click of a button (the arrow next to the print image. The preview picture below is actually including subsites.). This gives the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint simple, yet powerful, rollup capability for any hiearchy of projects.

5) Did I mention beautiful printing?

6) Extremely intelligent auto-refresh features that automatically pull down all the data, or just the changes from the last time IntelliGantt refreshed.

7) Task grid columns that automatically configure based on SharePoint views.

8) Scaling, Scaling, Scaling. We've already tested the IntelliGantt Web Part for SharePoint with thousands of tasks with just about zero performance impact.

And of course much much more. Please contact sales at teamdirection dot com if you'd like to give the beta a test run. The first release will be targetted toward SharePoint 2010 (both Foundation and Server) with a follow on released supporting WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007.

And finally, the picture:

Pre-Defined Workspace Settings

2010-03-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

One of the most powerful features of IntelliGantt, the ability to adjust Workspace Settings, just got better. Customers loved the ability to configure Start Dates, Finish Dates and other fields to their custom sharepoint web parts, liked the ability to save their workspace settings as the new default but needed a better way to manipulate multiple configurations. We're happy to introduce Pre-Defined Workspace Settings.

The idea behind this feature is to more easily support custom lists that 3rd party vendors create. IntelliGantt is flexibile enough to handle just about any custom list you can create. However, it was proving arduous and mistake prone to go through the Workspace Settings and adjust them one-by-one. In this case, CorasWorks came to us and asked for a better way to support their Project Portfolio Management templates. As a result, we came up with a way to generate and use Predefined Settings, as highlighted in the image:

Rather than a single checkbox that let you 'Save to Defaults', now you can select the default, out-of-the-box configuration (which works with any default, out-of-the-box SharePoint task list). Or, you can select a configuration provided by a 3rd party or an in-house developer and all of the appropriate settings will be updated for you.

Notice in the last image that the Start Group, Finish Group and Effort Groups were changed based on the selection of 'Coras Works PPM - Push to Project'. Rather than having to generate this every time, a simple Pre-Defined Settings selection does the work for you.

Any Workspace Setting configuration can be captured by clicking the '+' button right by the words 'Pre-Defined Settings'. You can start with the default selection, do your mappings and click '+'. A form pops up showing you the current Workspace Settings templates you have available and let's you name the current configuration:

In this case CorasWorks wanted two Pre-Defined Workspace Settings-- one to do the initial publish and the second to handle subsequent synch operations. Once you have your settings named, click 'OK' and it will be available in the future.

If you'd like to distribute the Pre-Defined Workspace Settings to other users, that is possible as well. All Pre-Defined Workspace Settings are stored in a special directory under the current users data profile. For example, on Windows Vista/Windows 7, all these settings can be found at:

C:\Users\\AppData\Local\TeamDirection\IntelliGantt\Configuration\WorkspaceSettings

You can simply copy the pre-defined settings from your data directory to another users data directory. Then, the next time IntelliGantt is run, the Pre-Defined Workspace Settings you created and distributed will be available for that user.

We hope this feature encourages using IntelliGantt and the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project with many custom SharePoint lists in the future.

MindManager for SharePoint Released

2010-02-24T14:59:00.001-08:00

Perhaps you noticed that a popular desktop program just acquired rich SharePoint connectivity. Since its released I can finally tell you a little about it.

We've been working very closely with Mindjet for the last several months enhancing the core MindManager product with the ability to authenticate with SharePoint, discover its site map, acquire data from web parts and even apply simple, relavent queries. The end result is SharePoint items become MindManager topics within your MindManager maps.

We're very excited about this solution for several reasons. First and foremost-- it's built upon TeamDirection technology (yay team!). MindManager uses our TeamDirection Windows Sharepoint Services Communication library (TWSS) so that it can work with both SharePoint 2007 and with SharePoint 2010. This is the same communication library we are building our next versions of IntelliGantt on, which is great because its been well tested.

Second, we think this solution is the perfect example for what makes a desktop application so useful-- the ability to personally aggregate data from multiple sources into a view of your choosing and design. MindManager with the TWSS makes it easy to roll SharePoint data from multiple lists, sites and SharePoint servers into one visually compelling, and comprehensible, map. You could have 5 different browsers open clicking through each site in your browser, or you can have one map showing all the late tasks-- with automatic refresh to keep you absolutely up to date.

If you've been finger wrestling the mouse left-click button with all the different sites, lists and display pages within SharePoint, you should checkout what MindManager for SharePoint offers. It's a great application and your fingers will thank you!

Third, we've agreed that third parties can use the TWSS installed by MindManager for SharePoint to do their own SharePoint operations.

And fourth, it's just plain cool to see your technology in use for a product with a user-base in the millions and growing.

Overall, its been a great experience that we at TeamDirection would absolutely do again. In fact, if you have a product that you think would benefit from tight SharePoint integration, TeamDirection has the know-how, the tools and the experience to make it happen.

Bringing in the New Year

2010-01-14T00:09:00.000-08:00

We just posted an update to IntelliGantt and the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project this evening. It addresses two issues:

1) Basecamp recently updated their user account information, so we changed IntelliGant to work with the update. ToDo Item assignments will now be correct when importing, exporting or synchronizing. Also, when importing, we assign a 2-day duration by default. Since Basecamp doesn't actually have a start date, we get to make it up.

2) Workspace Settings were not persisting when, after saving a customization as a default, you immediately create a second project and share to SharePoint. Now, when you save as default, the next project you share will in fact use the Workspace Settings customizations you just saved.

It's been a little light in the posting department because we've been quite busy the last couple of months. We're working on a few new features within IntelliGantt, new products for the upcoming Office 2010/SharePoint 2010 cycle and doing custom work for a major software vendor hooking their products up to SharePoint-- watch for announcements on this one soon as well.

Our roadmap?

For the current IntelliGantt product suite we will be adding a better way to handle multiple workspace settings, not just a single default. We're working with a couple customers right now who have cited a need to create, distribute and use customizations. Because IntelliGantt supports so many fields, it will be easier to send files around rather than recreate specific SharePoint field mappings.

For the next generation IntelliGantt product suite, we will of course be adding support for MS Project 2010-- both our desktop and our Add In for MS Project. We've also been pleased by the reception to our Basecamp integration and will rev that as well.

Finally, we will be announcing soon our first SharePoint web part. Look for the beta of that to begin the first part of April.

We at TeamDirection appreciate your feedback and look forward to creating even better SharePoint and Basecamp solutions for you in 2010.

Cheers!

Basecamp Due Dates

2009-11-20T09:24:00.001-08:00

We are already receiving pings on this one and, thanks to our crack engineering staff, have updated IntelliGantt and the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project. Now IntelliGantt will publish the Finish dates of your tasks as Due Dates within Basecamp.

The value here is whenever you need to reschedule a project, you have the full power of a rich scheduling engine to automatically adjust the dates and the rich integration of IntelliGantt to automatically all the due dates within Basecamp.

We will keep the 'old way' of adding due dates to ToDo Items so that it will be easy for people to back out of it. Just go to Settings->More Settings and turn off the Append/Prepend due dates selections.

Going forward, all tasks will have their Due Dates in Basecamp populated because that's what IntelliGantt does-- help you schedule (and share) tasks.

We will have a screencast showing the integration on Monday, but you can try out this new IntelliGantt feature today if you'd like.

IntelliGantt with Microsoft Project Trial Versions

2009-09-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of folks wanted to evaluate the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project recently and ran across an issue I would like to share. They had MS Project versions 2000 and 2003 respectively. Since the IntelliGantt Add In is built for MS Project 2007, they went to Microsoft and installed the MS Project 2007 trial version. After all, they wanted to see if everything worked before upgrading to MS Project 2007 and IntelliGantt.

However, in trial mode, there was odd behavior in that every time they attempted to 'Share' a project to their SharePoint site, MS Project thought it was in edit mode and therefore the 'Share' operation was not successful. Folks were able to export the project to SharePoint, but then were not able to 'Stay Connected' (which is basically how 'Share' works under the covers).

Being in the IT department, our intrepid IntelliGantt evaluators were able to activate their MS Project trial and then, lo and behold, the problem went away and full IntelliGantt sharing was available.

So, if you're testing IntelliGantt with a trial version of MS Project and are seeing this behavior, see if you can try IntelliGantt with a licensed version of MS Project during your evaluation.

Or you can just trust me :)

Mapping SharePoint Fields to Project

2009-09-22T00:36:00.000-07:00

With IntelliGantt you've always been able to create new fields within your SharePoint task lists by using the powerful 'Workspace Settings' form to activate fields and determine which data goes to SharePoint, comes from SharePoint or both.

The latest incarnation of this form is below:

You may notice now there is a new column available, with a button above it no less. This new column, named 'Server Name' let's you attach IntelliGantt to existing SharePoint list columns. In effect, it let's you map your SharePoint fields to Project fields.

This is especially helpful when you've customized your lists to handle specific types of tasks and have built dependencies with other lists-- perhaps a data connection or two. It would also be great if IntelliGantt pulled in fields created by workflow activities so that a project manager could monitor workflow progress within their tool. (In fact you can, but I'll detail it in another post).

For more details on how exactly you can map a project field to a SharePoint field with IntelliGantt, check out our help page.

If you'd like to try it today, check out our 15-day fully functional evaluation.

The Hidden Talents of our Dog

2009-09-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

And now for something completely different...

We have a dog named 'Pudge' approaching 10 years of age. Sure, we've taught him a few tricks-- the basic 'Shake', a simple 'Roll Over' and a couple more. Turns out he had one more trick up his sleeve (yes, our dog thinks he's human so yes, he has sleeves). We would never have found it without the help of our two daughters playing with their blocks.

The kids were playing with 'animal sounds' blocks that, when joined correctly, make sounds-- a pig grunting, a cow mooing..... and a horse whinnying. Imagine our surprise when the kids were trying the sounds of the farmyard and we heard Pudge's contribution.

For whatever reason, it only works with the horse.

Basecamp Todos, Meet Your Due Dates

2009-09-02T02:05:00.000-07:00

We've received a ton of feedback since we introduced Basecamp integration into our IntelliGantt products. For such a simple looking web application, Basecamp has an awful lot going on!

Which is a good thing and speaks well to how effective Basecamp's solution works as a communication tool.

Of course, scheduling is still a part of project management and that's where IntelliGantt comes in. We just posted a screencast that shows in detail how you can import a Basecamp project, apply schedules to the deliverables and, best of all, attach due dates back to the Basecamp Todo items. This means team members using their web browsers can see the most important piece of the project-- when their Todo item is due.

We did have to make a few assumptions. For example, when importing a Basecamp todo item, IntelliGantt creates a task. In order to create a task, we need at least a start date. Since Basecamp doesn't have one we use 'today'. Since rescheduling a project in IntelliGantt is as simple as dragging the project summary bar, it works.

Once in IntelliGantt, you can create task dependencies, regroup things in summary tasks and even define hourly rates for resources in order to see cost information.

To show start and finish dates we introduce a special 'Title Format' option that lets you prepend or append start or finish dates to Basecamp Todo Lists or Todo Items. That's a lot of 'ors', so this is a great segue to the screencast which shows you exactly how it works.

When you select a format like, 'prepend finish dates', your next update will adjust all Basecamp Todo items such that the due date will come before the Todo item's display name. This feature is locale aware so that US folks will see the dates formatted as Month/Day/Year while European folks will see Day/Month/Year.

There's a lot going on with this feature, but hopefully it will be simple and easy to use-- just like Basecamp.

Filtering SharePoint Members in your Project

2009-08-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

SharePoint is quite flexible in how many ways users can become site members. So flexible, in fact, that you can add every person in the company to a root site and have every sub site inherit that member list.

Which is great, unless your company has 50,000 people in it.

We've listened to our customers at large organizations who are using IntelliGantt and the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project to run projects within their departments, with external vendors but not across the entire company. The fruit of our efforts (and your suggestions) are two tools: 1) A resource pool that helps you be more selective with who is included and 2) a resource filter that helps you be more selective with who is excluded.

The Resource Pool

This feature allows you to pull SharePoint members from a specific site, organize them by groups and select individuals you will be working with often. You can add them to your currently selected project by clicking the checkbox by their name, or remove them from the project by unclicking the same checkbox. We even let you enter an hourly rate that will be used when they are assigned to tasks. This is a common scenario and we have a helpful page dedicated to walking you through exactly how it works.

The Resource Filter

This feature is designed to help you exclude people from your project. For example, if the SharePoint site you are working with has 50,000 users as members, I would strongly suggest unclicking the 'Add Members as Resources' checkbox so that everyone is not pulled into the project. Then, use the resource pool above to be more selective about whom to include.

Or, if your groups is more manageable but there are just a few folks (or system accounts) that don't need to be added to your project, you can define any combination of the three tests shown in the picture: 1) display names that start with a string you provide, 2) display names that end with a string you provide and 3) display names that contain a string you provide.

All three test cases are always run, but you can customize the tests per project. This means if you have a couple system accounts, like NT_AUTHORITY in the picture above, you can easily exclude them from the list. If you'd always like to exlude NT_AUTHORITY (and who wouldn't? :)), you can save the exclusion lists as the default setting for all newly created projects going forward.

Check out the help page for this feature as well.

Taken together, IntelliGantt will help you work with your resources as adroitly as it helps you share your tasks. And again, thanks to our customers for letting us know how important resource filtering is.

A Bigger SharePoint Gantt Chart

2009-08-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

[April 2011 Update - The Big Kahuna of SharePoint Gantt Charts]

A lot of customers have been asking about the Gantt chart native to SharePoint and how it could be customized. One of the recurring questions is how to make it bigger. For instance, the Gantt Chart and the Task List are split about 50/50 in the default SharePoint view. Wouldn't it be nice to expand the Gantt view to take up the entire real estate?

Marc Molenaar thought so too, and fortunately he had the time to do it. Check out his blog posting that shows how you can use JQuery to supersize the Gantt Chart.

Great Stuff.

Rain Makes Headlines in Seattle

2009-08-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

From today's front page of the Seattle Times:

Really? Rain in Seattle? At this hour?

This must be a sign of something... a sign it's been a great summer!

Timeboxing a Task List

2009-07-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

We just added a new feature to both IntelliGantt and the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project-- task list timeboxing. This was actually a customer request that we thought was a good idea. We worked with the customer for their requirements and this is what we came up with:

Well, not quite all of that. The new feature is located within our 'Workspace Settings' form that gives you many, many options. The Time Box feature is in the lower right:

Using these you can specify an 'After' date and a 'Before' date. This means all tasks after X and before Y will be published, synchronized or exported (depending on the operation you chose). This means if you have a long duration project spanning several months, you can provide a bit of focus to the immediate tasks during a defined time.

This will work in combination with the 'Filters' you can specify in the other tab. The logic is the filter will be ANDed to the TimeBox values.

The other new feature is SharePoint specific-- the ability to tell IntelliGantt which task list view to use.

More than a few customers have customized their views and rather than IntelliGantt using the default AllItems, would like IntelliGantt to use one of their smarter views. Now you can click on the 'More Settings' from the Workspace Settings and supply the view you want IntelliGantt to use.

Thanks all for your suggestions!

Bamboo Solutions PM Central Integration

2009-06-29T07:02:00.000-07:00

We're keeping this here for posterity, but if you're looking for a great SharePoint Gantt Chart for visualizing and aggregating SharePoint tasks, we recommend the IntelliGantt Web Part.Bamboo Solutions recently invited us to kick the tires on their PM Central solution. Since IntelliGantt already integrates with their Task Master and Project Portfolio Dashboard, it seemed like a natural. Thankfully, the PM Central solution packages the Task Master and Dashboard into well planned and visually rich SharePoint templates geared toward the project manager and team.

The result is impressive-- a comprehensive view of all your projects with detailed project information in every site. The only thing missing was the ability to synchronize IntelliGantt and Microsoft Project plans. That's where we come in.

Using IntelliGantt or the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project you can work with your current project plans in PM Central with your team. The project manager plans the schedule and scope, the team report their progress and give their feedback. Where PM Central really shines is with the summary rollups management is always interested in seeing.

We created a page giving you the detailed steps to get IntelliGantt up and going with PM Central and the Task Master. We think it can be done is less than 3 minutes the first time you try. The result will be a schedule the project manager owns, but a plan visible to the entire team.

A Few Hundred Pages of Documentation...

2009-06-26T01:05:00.000-07:00

... makes for a quiet blog.

I'm currently helping a client migrate several terabytes worth of data into their SharePoint server. It's a fun problem as there's a Siebel CRM application that most of the business folks use, which of course needs to integrate with SharePoint. Naturally you'd think it'd be easy (heh heh). The issue was every document was being stored in Siebel as an attachment to entities and activities, which makes it really hard to do document management things such as versioning. They developed a system that sort of worked, but when a big government agency asks you about your document management strategy... well, then attachments don't look so good.

The document management and versioning answer turned out to be SharePoint, but the trick was how to match Siebel's relational view of the world with SharePoint's hiearchical (as in web addressing) view. It turned out the business organization had a natural encapsulation within Siebel that lended itself very well to a URLs hiearchical requirements. So we developed an addressing scheme the Siebel developers could generate from Siebel data, transform it into a URL using predefined rules and thereby point users to the right spot in SharePoint.

And did I mention a few hundred pages to document this all? Just adding to the terabytes!

IntelliGantt in the Show Me State

2009-06-03T06:49:00.000-07:00

There's no such thing as bad press-- especially when it's really good.

I had the pleasure to read Jamie Scheppers post describing her experience with Basecamp, Microsoft Project and IntelliGantt. In addition to showing the superb level of education the University of Missouri provides, it also captures the exact user scenario IntelliGantt is designed for-- bringing systems together in order to bring people together.

We're happy to provide a solution that makes sense and look forward to working with Jamie and other Basecamp users to improve the experience, provide more features and make the integration that much better.

If you've got something to say, be sure to let us know!

What the Competition will do

2009-05-19T07:02:00.001-07:00

I was just on the phone with a prospective customer today doing an IntelliGantt demonstration and accidentally learned something about the competition. She's currently using the free, fully-functional 15-day evaluation of IntelliGantt and trying it out for their team. She is also testing one of our competitors at the same time. As a result, after installing IntelliGantt the two products were visible on the menu bar-- side-by-side (cue spaghetti western music).

Until you restart MS Project.

So she asks me: 'Why did the IntelliGantt menu disappear?'

Hmmm... well, we haven't seen that one happening in-house in the test lab, so we go through the code, put in several checks and add additional logging. These changes go in to one of our automatic updates customers receive.

It turns out one of our competitors is removing IntelliGantt from the Project menu. During the online demo she confirms that if she removes the other add-in, the IntelliGantt menu reappears.

Good to know.

Why would the competition resort to such tactic? The reason is clear-- when compared side-by-side for value there is no comparison. IntelliGantt offers the most robust, feature-complete client side integration between Microsoft Project and SharePoint available today.

We don't charge your SharePoint users an access license. We don't require complex server installations. We don't try to upsell you to more expensive plans. Heck, we don't require anything of the server except that web services be enabled.

We just make it simple. Want to work with SharePoint out of the box? IntelliGantt is your best solution. Want to make use of the 'Fabulous Forty' templates from Microsoft? Again, it's IntelliGantt. Need a richer web-based Gantt Chart? IntelliGantt is happy to work with web part providers like Bamboo Solution's Task Master.

Integration with a Portfolio Dashboard? Check.
Client side resource pool? Check.
Client side multi-project dashboard? Check.
Robust baselining and actuals support? Check-a-Roonie!

Our job is to provide the best solution connecting your project desktop with online services. Looks like we've done so well that the competition wishes you'd never seen it.

Viewing Parent/Child and Task Dependencies in Task Master

2009-05-05T00:21:00.000-07:00

IntelliGantt supports Bamboo Solutions nifty Task Master web part which lets you see parent/child relationships, task dependencies and milestones within SharePoint via your web browser. However, by default IntelliGantt uses the 'Tasks and Milestones' filter, which filters out summary tasks.

Because this creates a subset of all your tasks, IntelliGantt essentially 'flattens' the hiearchy-- because summary tasks are not shown there is no parent to set.

Similarly, if a filter is active, task dependencies are not shown because its either not clear or possibly even misleading to attempt a partial set of task dependencies.

Therefore, if you want to make use of all the Task Master features with IntelliGantt (both the desktop and the MS Project Add In) you will want to make sure the filter in the Workspace Settings is set to 'Show All Tasks'. By default it is 'Tasks and Milestones'.

Here's a screenshot of what you want to set:

To access this in IntelliGantt, select a project, right-click and choose 'Workspace Settings'.

To access this in the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project, drop down the 'IntelliGantt' menu to the 'Project' menu flyout and choose 'Settings'.

Also, be sure to activate the 'Milestone' field so that milestone information is sent to the Task Master. This maps to any zero duration task in IntelliGantt. In the Add In, its any zero duration task or any task marked 'true' for the MS Project Milestone field.

Finally, if you consistently work with the Task Master, you may want to click the 'Save as Default' checkbox at the bottom of the Workspace Settings. This will save your current settings and apply them to all new IntelliGantt projects going forward-- like Task Filter.

TeamDirection Sets Up Basecamp

2009-04-29T00:34:00.000-07:00

A brief note about a major new feature we've just put in-- integration with Basecamp.

Our philosophy has been, and continues to be-- provide the best tools on the desktop for the project manager to connect with his or her team.

The most productive tool for the project manager married with compelling and productive solutions for the team. We think it makes sense. See what you think of the screencasts. Or better yet, try it out for yourself. Both the IntelliGantt desktop and the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project have this feature as of today.

IntelliGantt Basecamp Introduction

IntelliGantt Basecamp Options

Microsoft Project Basecamp Introduction

Build 4.0.0.147 Released -- Task Master Support

2009-04-27T01:14:00.000-07:00

We're keeping this here for posterity, but if you're looking for a great SharePoint Gantt Chart for visualizing and aggregating SharePoint tasks, we recommend the IntelliGantt Web Part.

Just a note that build 4.0.0.147 of IntelliGantt and the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project has been pushed to the web. This one has rich support for Bamboo Solutions Task Master web part. This improves the Gantt Chart experience in SharePoint with parent/child relationships, task dependencies, milestones and scaling.

You might also notice a new sharing option. Because we're still building the support pages it's still on the QT.

Now Supporting Bamboo's Task Master

2009-04-24T03:37:00.000-07:00

We're keeping this here for posterity, but if you're looking for a great SharePoint Gantt Chart for visualizing and aggregating SharePoint tasks, we recommend the IntelliGantt Web Part.

We were hard at work building a great new connectivity feature into IntelliGantt when the phone started ringing.

'I need a better Gantt Chart within SharePoint.'

'How can I show parent child relationships in the SharePoint Gantt Chart?'

'Is there any way to show task dependencies in the SharePoint Gantt Chart?'

'What about scaling?' (I assume she meant 'in the SharePoint Gantt Chart' as well)

In fact, I think the single most popular post on this blog is this one-- all about creating a Gantt Chart view for your task list.

Point Taken! If only there was a good Gantt Chart for SharePoint.....

Turns out there is: the Task Master web part from Bamboo Solutions. In fact, last November we hooked up IntelliGantt and the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project to the Bamboo Project Portfolio Dashboard.

This April I'm pleased to say we just hooked up IntelliGantt (both flavors) to the Bamboo Task Master. Import, Export AND bi-directional synchronization supported. Resources with hourly rates, Costing and Work supported. Resource Pools, Templates, Multi-Project view all supporting excellent collaboration.

It's fresh out of the oven, but if you'd like to beta test it then send support [at] teamdirection [dot] com a note and you can try it today. The beta period shouldn't be long-- a week or so-- as the Task Master is built upon the standard SharePoint Task List which IntelliGantt has been working with for years. We just had to get the new fields Bamboo added situated-- Parent Task and Predecessor Task.

Here's a picture of the Task Master above and the IntelliGantt desktop below.

Now back to the really cool connectivity feature to surprise you with next week :)

Forms Based SharePoint Login

2009-04-21T01:36:00.000-07:00

A few people have been asking about this as they're working with IntelliGantt. SharePoint has a feature whereby you can 'disable' NTLM login and instead present a web form authentication challenge. Up to now IntelliGantt would alway use NTLM by default. However, with build 4.0.0.146 (which we just posted), IntelliGantt provides the ability to force a login when first connecting with a SharePoint site.

The built-in Windows Login form will still appear, but the value IntelliGantt will use will duplicate the same username/password values in the form authentication.

By default this 'Require Initial Login' is turned off. You turn it on by opening the 'SharePoint Settings' form. In the desktop this is found under the 'Settings' menu. In the Add In, it's also found under IntelliGantt->Settings. Because there are just a few way to customize SharePoint my hunch is you'll see more SharePoint Settings options in the future.

Here is the screen with the checkbox at the bottom. In case you're wondering what all the 'priority' and 'status' strings are for, this is how International users can customize the priority and status fields IntelliGantt uses when updating task values in SharePoint in your preferred language.

Modifying Content Types With Additional List Fields

2009-04-10T11:07:00.001-07:00

One of IntelliGantt's most powerful features is it's 'Workspace Settings', which allows the project manager to add fields to a task list, dynamically update read/write privileges, change their display name and description. When working with some templates, however, you may be flummoxed when you see your fields in the overall view (like Actual Duration and Duration):

But when you go to edit a task, the custom fields are not there:

In fact, it feels like it should just work when you go to the task list's List Settings administration page and see the custom fields there:

The unknown key to this conundrum is that the list is actually using a content type to define its fields. This specific list is from the the 'Change Request' template from the Microsoft 'Fabulous Forty' pack. Other templates from the 'Fabulous Forty' also use content types to define the fields for their Project Tasks, Project Milestones and other lists. In fact, content types are very powerful in that they encourage re-use. The problem here is more with the UI as the fact that a content type is in use is totally hidden.

To add your custom fields to the content type this list is using, first click on Advanced Settings, located in the General Settings group near the top. Clicking on Advanced Settings let's you see this very important setting:

In order to add fields to our content type we will need to manage the content type, so click 'Yes' for this setting. Now when we return to the List Settings page, notice a slight change (helpfully outlined in burgandy):

There's that content type! This Project Tasks list is using a 'Project Task' content type to define the fields. Click on the 'Project Task' entry which takes us to this page where we can refine it:

Select the custom fields you wish to add to the Project Task content type (all of them in this case):

The end result is that now these custom fields will be available when you edit a task:

This isn't specific to task list, but is a general solution for how SharePoint binds lists with content types. The key is the enabling content type management in the Advanced Settings.

Thanks to Jack Hill from Oxbo International for working with us to solve this puzzle.

Marking Fields with New or Unread Data

2009-04-05T23:34:00.000-07:00

Up to now in IntelliGantt we've been marking entire rows as unread. Which is good, but considering an IntelliGantt row can have more than 100 custom fields, we thought we could do better. For instance, it might be useful to show which fields changed after a synchronization. It turns out the difference logic we use can do a field-by-field comparison, which means we can do something like this:

You can see the top two rows have unread markers on the left. More subtle is the dark gray circle in the top left of the task display name in row 2. This is the 'unread field' marker. We originally started with a similar 'unread task' marker in the cell, but it turns in to be a lot of yellow and is so vibrant its quite distracting.

The gray circle is not as visually intrusive so you won't lose track of the task data. There's also some interesting things we can do with this as well, such as changing its color when the mouse is over it. We're even thinking of making it behave like a button.

What will it do? Hmm... We have an idea for that.

Work, Estimated Work, Actual Work, Remaining Work and Work Variance All At Once

2009-04-03T00:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit more detail on how you can track Work, Estimated Work, Actual Work, Remaining Work and Work Variance using either IntelliGantt or the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project with WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007.

First of all, you want to make sure your 'Workspace Settings' activate the work fields you need. For this example we will use all the Work Group and the Work Remaining fields, so we mark them as 'Members Read' and 'Members Write' like so:

You won't be able to set the 'Members Write' checkbox for Work Variance because this is a read only field. That is, the value is always computed.

When you share a project to SharePoint with these workspace settings, you'll have the work fields you enabled available for you to edit, like so:

In IntelliGantt or Microsoft Project, when you update 'Work' fields, you will see the ramifications to your updates immediately with schedule changes, percent complete changes or work percent complete changes. This makes it easy to also undo a change. With SharePoint, we get all the data at once and its up to IntelliGantt to make sense of it.

So how does it handle changes to Work, Estimated Work, Actual Work and Remaining Work at once? IntelliGantt enforces an implied order to your changes. That is, IntelliGantt will order the datastream coming back from SharePoint and evaluate the 'Work' fields in the following order:

1) Work
2) Estimated Work
3) Actual Work
4) Remaining Work

Because IntelliGantt has its own scheduling model, it can apply changes that affect the schedule as it works down the list. For example, let's say I only update the Work field. We see in the above example it is 16 hours. What if I make it 24 hours?

I click 'Update' in IntelliGantt and it communicates with SharePoint, performs its calculations and changes the list to...

Wait a second, what happened? The answer is that first it applied the change to Work, which increased from 16 hours to 24 hours. This resulted in the project model being updated. Estimated Work and Actual Work were unaffected by this change. Remaining Work, however, was affected. In the IntelliGantt model the Remaining Work value jumped from 6 hours to 14 hours; an increase of 8 hours-- the same 8 hours we increased Work by.

However, the value in the SharePoint field Remaining Work was still 6. It had not changed. So, as IntelliGantt worked through the order of 'work field' updates, it computed the difference between the IntelliGantt models Remaining Work and SharePoint's incoming data value for Remaining Work. That value? Negative 8 hours, which cancelled the 8 hours we just added. The model worked perfectly! :)

For those non-model types (myself included in this category), we can do a couple things to change behavior so that our Work update 'sticks'.

1) We can turn off the 'Members Write' flag for the Remaining Work field. If this flag is off, IntelliGantt will not receive the Remaining Work value, the difference won't be computed and therefore the model won't add the opposite of the Work value we put in.

2) We can update what we want the new Remaining Work value to be. If we add 8 hours to Work, then we can add 8 hours to Remaining Work. When IntelliGantt adds the new Work value, it will add 8 hours to Work and to Remaining Work in its model. As IntelliGantt works through its order of updates, when it gets to Remaining Work, it will compare the incoming SharePoint value with the value in its model-- and it will match. So no update will happen. Which means Work will be 24 hours and Remaining Work will be 14 hours.

Would you believe there's actually a third way to update Work without updating two fields or performing any match? Remember that these work fields are processed in the order defined above: starting with Work and finishing with Remaining Work. We can take advantage of this and only update Remaining Work like so:

When IntelliGantt processes the incoming data, it will evaluate the work fields as follows:

1) Work -- No Change
2) Estimated Work -- No Change
3) Actual Work -- No Change
4) Remaining Work -- 8 hour change therefore add 8 hours to Work

Of course, we don't want to always add to our work load. We also want to get things done. This is best done by changing Actual Work to reflect how much work you've done and then by changing Remaining Work to reflect how much work you believe is remaining. For example, with our original values:

Let's say I've actually worked (yes, hard to believe) an additional 2 hours but believe there's still 5 hours remaining. In this case, I would add 2 hours to the existing 10 hours in Actual Work and subtract a single hour from Remaining Work.

When IntelliGantt performs a synchronization, it will do the following:

1) Work -- No Change
2) Estimated Work -- No Change
3) Actual Work -- Add 2 hours and, by implication, subtract 2 hours from Remaining Work
4) Remaining Work -- Add 1 hour and, by implication, add 1 hour to Work

The end result will look like this:

Granted, it is easier to simply modify the percent complete field and call it good. But if you'd like to be more rigorous than percent complete updates and want to start tracking hours, simple math with Actual Work and Remaining Work can lead to powerful results.

Working with SharePoint Members as Project Resources

2009-03-25T13:24:00.001-07:00

We get this question quite a bit so we've posted a 'Best Practices' page explaining how both IntelliGantt and the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project work with SharePoint members. They also work with Outlook contacts and resources you add manually, but the SharePoint case is the most interesting.

The two use cases this page covers:

1) Building a simple resource pool from a SharePoint site
2) Turning resources that are really roles into actual SharePoint members (and yet they're still project members-- it's magic!)

Well, not quite magic. Basically, it all comes down to the email address. In MS Project, resources support an Email Address field. This is not in the default view so you have to insert the field into the 'Resource Sheet' view. If the Email Address field for an MS Project resource matches the Work Email field of a SharePoint member, they're connected! That's the manual approach.

Because connecting resources to SharePoint members requires this bit of housekeeping, there's really a third reason for the 'Best Practices' page-- how to add 'SharePoint Approved' members as resources to your project. With the IntelliGantt People pool, once they've been retrieved from SharePoint its as simple as clicking a checkbox.

Hopefully the 'Best Practice' page is more than a good read-- we want it to be helpful too!

IntelliGantt API Update

2009-03-24T11:15:00.001-07:00

Just posted a simple 'Getting Started' document that explains the general concepts behind the IntelliGantt API and supports the accompanying sample application. Our goal is to make it very easy for system integrators to connect MS Project and WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007. For example, a hosting provider can easily add a feature that takes an MPP file and fleshes out a task list.

With this API, you will want to install IntelliGantt V4 on the same machine as the sample application. The sample application's reference paths assume you install IntelliGantt V4 into the default C:\Program Files directory.

Since you can now install IntelliGantt V4 on 64-bit machines as well, you may find the sample app doesn't find the references. This is because Windows 64-bit will append Program Files with a (x86). So you will want to update references in this case from:

C:\Program Files\TeamDirection\...

to

C:\Program Files (x86)\TeamDirection\...

You can get the API and documentation from our forum here.

Supporting Actual Work and Remaining Work on SharePoint

2009-03-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

We enhanced both the IntelliGantt rich internet application and the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project recently to better support updating Actual Work and Remaining Work via WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007. With IntelliGantt RIA it was a snap as our model has proven to be very accurate, especially how we handle Estimates and Actuals.

So we thought it would naturally fall out for the IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project since they both share the same code base. But what we discovered was this:

Notice that each task has a duration of 2 days and a work of 24 hours. We started with with three tasks of 2 days duration and 2 days work. With Task I we set Actual Work to 8 hours and Remaining Work to 16 hours. This increased the Work field to 24 hours and gave us new % Work Complete, % Complete and Actual Duration values. With Task II we set Actual Work to 8 hours and Remaining Work to 16 hours. This increased the Work field to 24 hours and gave us a similar % Work Complete value. However, you'll notice quite a few differences between Task I and Task II: the same action gave us different % Complete and Actual Duration values.

This makes it really difficult to build a model for.

Finally, for Task III we did the exact same steps as above, but then typed in the same % Complete value (56%). MS Project took that value and slightly changed Actual Work, % Work Complete, Remaining Work and Actual Duration.

After studying the issue for a while, and working with our customers, we determined that the % Complete field is the key. Because this field can be arbitrary when updating Actual Work and Work Remaining fields, the solution is to NOT update the % Complete field and just let MS Project do its thing. IntelliGantt can then update and maintain the Actual Work and Work Remaining fields correctly-- and MS Project will maintain them correctly as well.

Everybody wins!

This investigation had an additional benefit in that it spurred us to create a form that a) let's you configure for this option and b) change the default behavior for automatically updating estimates and actuals.

Before, because we've been worried about automatically updating actuals and thereby automatically updating your project schedule, we had people 'Apply Actuals' so there wouldn't be any surprises. With the new usage model, project managers can tell IntelliGantt it's OK to update actuals immediately. Again, this makes it easier to use the Actual Work/Remaining Work update method. IntelliGantt is smart enough so that only the 'Actual Fields' you enable via IntelliGantt->Project->Settings will be applied.

Finally, you'll notice that you can set which Baseline you'd like to use for the current Estimates values. This makes it easy to create multiple baselines but still have an 'active' one that SharePoint members can view.

With build 4.0.0.139 the menu addition under IntelliGantt->Project, as shown below:

We have a help page explaining estimates and actuals options in greater detail. Better yet, you can try either our Rich Desktop or Wicked Smart Add In and see what you think.