Running Projects with Office 365 SharePoint Inside and Out

First we focused on building a tremendously rich and ridiculously easy project management aggregation tool for SharePoint online (part of Office 365). We had a few languages to choose from but eventually decided on HTML5 + Javascript since it's the way of the web. As a result, installation can be done via drag-and-drop and context is immediately established by the SharePoint site. 

As we expected, Microsoft brought forth Windows 10 Universal Apps, which can also be built using HTML5 + Javascript. As a result, we are pleased to offer the first line of business Windows 10/Office 365 product which can run outside and inside Office 365. Or inside and outside Windows 10, depending on your point of view. 

The project manager can install IntelliGantt for Office 365 from the Windows 10 App Store, connect to any sharepoint.com instance and begin selecting sites, tasks lists and combinations thereof in order to build and schedule projects. At any time the project manager can 'publish' what they are working on to SharePoint for all the world to see in exactly the same environment with exactly the same look and feel. Here is our video showing just how difficult it is-- you need to click a button. Once. That's it. 

SharePoint team members can then see the aggregated sites and projects the manager wished to highlight, the fields they deemed important with the column names they set and report on their progress-- all via their web browser on any platform using any device (that has a modern web browser. Any device still being created without a modern web browser?). 

Whether inside the Windows 10 IntelliGantt for Office 365 App or within the IntelliGantt for SharePoint page, all team members get a rich gantt chart with aggregation, costing, scheduling, filtering, document attaching, discussion enabling, timeline scaling, multiple undoing environment that runs the same on both platforms. 

Because we've invested in the Windows Universal App technology, we will continue to rapidly develop new features for both platforms-- desktop and SharePoint page-- and customers will benefit from rapid deployment of two products absolutely in sync with each other. In fact, IntelliGantt will run on any Windows 10/Office 365 device combination, and make it look easy so you can focus on what's important-- your projects.

Simple Task Costing with SharePoint 2013

The IntelliGantt App for SharePoint 2013 let's you extend the basic user profiles within SharePoint so that you can tracking costs with your Task List items. For each SharePoint person you can give them an hourly rate and a level of effort value that IntelliGantt reads. Then if you assign that person to a task, IntelliGantt will compute it's cost. That is, duration in hours * level of effort * hourly rate. Here's the simplest example to get up and running.

First we must make sure every user profile in SharePoint has an 'Effort' and 'Hourly Rate' field. To do that you'll need administrative rights to your site collection. With these rights go to the SharePoint Admin Center.

Click on the 'User Profiles' and 'Manage User Properties link.

We will want to add these two fields to the 'Custom Properties' of the User Profile field template. Here we've already added the two fields.

The key here is to make sure the field names and data types are exactly what IntelliGantt expects. 'Hourly Rate' should have a field name of 'HourlyRate' and a data type of 'float'. Similarly, 'Effort' should have a field name of 'Effort' and a data type of 'float'.

Now we simply plug in the actual hourly rate and effort values for each user. The administrator can do this our the users themselves by editing their profile information.

When the IntelliGantt App for SharePoint 2013 pulls in a Task List (or two or three) it will check to see if the person assigned to a task has hourly rate and effort information. If so, then you will see cost information calculated for you automatically.

Because Printing a Project is Important

We've just added basic printing support to our cadre of online project tools. Simple and effective, this lets you print exactly what you see on the screen. Look for the 'Print' image on the left-hand side of the Gantt Chart.

Clicking on this image button will bring up the print feature supported by the web browser. In this example, we are using Firefox. Chrome also works. We are using HTML5 to do the printing so other browsers will support it soon if not already. The print dialog reflects what's available in the underlying UI. You can select the printer and change settings just as you normally would.

In this example I'm actually going to click on the 'Properties' button and change the layout from portrait to landscape in order to see more of the timeline. You can fullsize the web page before printing to fit more pixels onto the paper. You can also adjust the IntelliGantt sliders at the bottom right to compress the timeline and the vertical separation of your tasks. The result is the task list and gantt chart printed out as you would expect..

This particular image was pulled from the native Microsoft Windows XPS format. A little easier than linking to a piece of paper in the office.

SharePoint.com Now Supported

A quick note that the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 Standard or Professional now supports Office 365 and SharePoint.com. This means you can share projects to internal SharePoint sites using your regular windows credentials, to external SharePoint sites using Forms Based Authentication or to sharepoint.com sites using Claims Based Authentication. The nice thing about all these options? You don't have to worry about selecting the right one, our IntelliGantt Add In figures it out for you.

Our IntelliGantt Web Part has of course been working with SharePoint online for a while. Now that the IntelliGantt Add In communicates with SharePoint online as well, the best way to sync and interact with tasks is ready. You have full mapping features available so that you can choose whether a field is updated bidirectionally, or is only owned by MS Project. This means no one will ever overwrite your start and due dates in MS Project again.

Here is the 'proof' screenshot:

But really, there's no better way than to check it out.

MS Project Deadlines to SharePoint Tasks

Just a quick note to let folks know that we received a request to support the Deadline field in our IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010. So now it is! It is a date time field in project and can be mapped to a date time field in your task list that you can create. By default we suggest calling it 'Deadline', though you can map it to any date time SharePoint list column.

Also, not only Deadline, but all date time fields in MS Project will pay attention to the formatting options of your date time SharePoint list columns and change behavior based on the display options. If your SharePoint date time column shows date only, then the IntelliGantt Add In will compare year, month and day only when evaluating whether the field should be updated. If the SharePoint date time column shows date and time, then the IntelliGantt Add In will compare year, month, day, hour, minute and second when evaluating whether the field should be updated. In this way we make the sync cycle smarter so that only necessary updates happen. The end result is if you have turned on 'Notify when changed' within the SharePoint list, you won't be bombarded with useless update information.

Working with Master Projects

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

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

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

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

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

One MS Project Plan to Many SharePoint Sites

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

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

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

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




Next is sharing multiple summary tasks to multiple SharePoint sites:




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

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

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

Connect Project Resources with SharePoint Members

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

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



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

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

Some would say it's actually intuitive now.

IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 Intro Videos

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

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.

Reading Predecessors from SharePoint

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:

Publish MS Project 2010 Tasks to SharePoint 2007

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!

Using SharePoint Views to do a Simple Workflow

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.

IntelliGantt with Microsoft Project Trial Versions

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

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.

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.

Working with SharePoint Members as Project Resources

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!

Supporting Actual Work and Remaining Work on SharePoint

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.