Bamboo Solutions PM Central Integration

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...

... 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

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

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

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

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

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.