With Microsoft's update to Office 2004 v11.2.3 new support for sync services are available. Entourage syncs with Mac OS X Sync Services Users of Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later versions of Mac OS can synchronize Entourage items with other programs, such as Address Book and iCal. You can also synchronize items with other Macintosh computers via Apple's .Mac online services, and with portable devices, such as phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), that are compatible with iSync. Entourage can synchronize contacts, events, tasks, and notes through Sync Services.

This update enables all Merlin users using MS Entourage to sync their contacts with Apple's Address Book. Thus, enabling them to allocate these contacts as resources in Merlin projects.

Merlin is currently a single user application. Nonetheless it is important to be able to share the project information with your team, management or clients. Merlin offers several different functions and options to carry this out. This article shows the options you as a user have to exchange your project data with others.

Activities' durations are optimised. This button is always activated after you have created a new activity. This optimisation can affect the following situations:

• Forward calculated activities with a fixed earliest end date
• Forward calculated activities with a fixed "to end" relationship
• Backward calculated activities with a fixed latest start
• Backward calculated activities with a fixed "from start" relationship"

As optimisation is not possible for the groups in a project, this button has been deactivated in this area.

It is extremely common that different countries, time zones and even projects or resources may vary and have different working hours/days and holidays. This makes it necessary to change the calendars accordingly. Changing the default project or resource calendars is quite simple and can be done in a few simple steps.

As of version 1.3.4 (released 4th July) Merlin adds another feature to its list of magical powers. Linking activities becomes, with this feature, even easier than before.

Since Merlin 1.3 it is possible to import appointments from iCal calendars into Merlin's project calendar. However, only appointments that have been set as "all-day" appointments (e.g. Bank holidays or an all-day seminar) are taken over and shown in Merlin's calendar. Merlin shows these days as work-free days. In the field "Reason" the name of the appointment will be displayed. In our example we want to import all German bank holidays into our Merlin project calendar. We have entered all the holidays in iCal and marked them as an "all-day" appointment and named this file "German Holidays". Now you can export into Merlin.

Since Merlin 1.3 a specific calendar can be saved and used for a number of projects. This is good when you are working with different resources who have different working hours or projects in different time zones or countries, for example.

The information from selected rows that are copied in Merlin 1.3, can now be used in other applications. All information from the current columns are considered in the clipboard including the columns header.

One of the most noticeable improvements in Merlin 1.3 is - besides the new graphical symbols - the netplan. Using the shortcut Cmd+4 (or in the "View" menu or the toolbar) this view can be called up. The netplan is a modern form of the traditional PERT chart, it offers however, more extensive information and displays a logical sequence of the activities.

Since Merlin 1.3 the activities for the Gantt chart view can be set over the key SHIFT and a mouse click to the earliest possible start date. Therefore in backwards calculated projects the latest possible end date is defined.