AppleScript – I. Love. Merlin.
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 27. August 2010
I was reading a post of Eric D. Brown by the title I. Love. WordPress. It was a ”wow” effect, I just had to write in our blog here I. Love. WordPress too but I. Love. Merlin. more 
We use WordPress for our blog, and have experience from other blogging systems as well. So I am completely with Eric Brown on that. WordPress is great, but…
Merlin has an even better / warmer position in my heart. Merlin is a professional tool, one can see this at one glance…
Tags: Applescript, Merlin
Can I use Merlin for project management on Windows?
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 24. August 2010
A question we receive eventually in support is the following:
We have seen Merlin running on mac and are pretty sure it covers our needs for project management. Where do we find download files for Windows or Linux? We have no Macs in our company.
Our answer:
Merlin is a native Mac OS X application and Merlin Server is implemented as a MAC OS X system preference pane. Following system requirements apply:
There is no Windows or Linux version available, sorry.
(In case you’ve missed the “Get a Mac” ads series of 2008 here is a link on YouTube ;-))
Tags: Linux, Merlin, System requirements, Windows
Merlin – copy activities quickly into the library
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 23. August 2010
Merlin’s library is a very practical feature. You can place there project structures, elements or documents often used in your projects and find contacts of your AddressBook, Entourage or an LDAP server to use as resources in new projects.
To place new objects into your library you can use drag & drop. An even quicker way is to right (or ctrl) click your selection and call “Copy to Library”
Easy, isn’t it?
You may want to watch the relevant video on YouTube
Related posts:
Tags: Library, Merlin, Merlin 101
Great ideas
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 20. August 2010
The last 3 days we have had our regular team meeting. It was very productive, enlightening and fun for yet again another time. Infrastructure worked, people were willing to share information and did so in a comprensible way, ideas came up, decisions were made and our team culture grew.
So being back and retrospecting the past few days I am considering the lessons learned from this last trip:
- It’s always great when meetings are successful, but it sure takes a certain amount of preparation otherwise you can be sure they will fail. Need some tips about that? That’s fine, just check out this post… (more…)
Tags: Creativity, Ideas, Meetings
Master planner quotes
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 17. August 2010
You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.
Great design does not come from great processes; it comes from great designers.
The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money
When I first wrote The Mythical Man-Month in 1975, I counseled programmers to “throw the first version away,” then build a second one. By the 20th-anniversary edition, I realized that constant incremental iteration is a far sounder approach. You build a quick prototype and get it in front of users to see what they do with it. You will always be surprised.
Fred Brooks, in an Interview by WIRED, July 28, 2010
Quote of the day
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 13. August 2010
I believe that every project manager is born happy; but it takes years to figure that out.
Found here
Tags: PM, Positive attitude
Life without i-Devices
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. August 2010
Returning from my summer holidays taken in a small island somewhere in the middle of the Greek aegean see, I cannot help but asking myself how I could ever manage and make it on time catching my plane flying me back home. I don’t ware a watch, I don’t need one as I always carry my iPhone in my pocket. While on holidays not only I had not checked the time on the cell phone but barely even used it for calls, or text messages. Theoretically I could check my emails when being near an open WiFi, but in fact this had never really worked out because either the WiFis were password protected or my battery was that low that upon connecting to the open WiFi the device would simply shut down by itself. (more…)
Applescript – transferring selected structures to iCal
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 13. July 2010
It’s been a long time ago, we’ve posted an applescript sample. The script for todays’ post was initiated by a user support request. The user knows that Merlin can export or sync project and resource calendars to iCal and already uses these options, however he sometimes need to export only some selected structures to iCal and was wondering how to do so.
One possible approach would be, to right click the specific project structures, call “Save selection” out of the contextual menu, open the newly created project and export to iCal.
Another approach may also be to write a script, similar to the ones we’ve written in the past for TimeLine 3D, Things or others, transferring just this selection.
Are you interested in the script solution? Great, here you are. Enjoy the script.
To find out how to place it into your File > Send To menu, please read here more
Tags: Applescript, Export, iCal, Sync
Merlin – Importing a checklist
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 12. July 2010
Merlin is very powerful and sophisticated piece of project management software on MacOS X. It allows not only to attach checklist elements onto your projects, activities, activity groups or resources, but also supports importing such lists created and saved by other applications. To import a checklist into your project just follow the next simple steps:
- Ask for a checklist saved in .opml format.
- Create a checklist element in your project; enable the display of elements area and add a new checklist element.
- Use the elements inspector and press the ‘import’ button.
- Select the .opml file with the checklist and you are done.
Wanting to forward your checklist entries to someone not having Merlin? Simply use the export button and save in an .opml format, which can be opened by outline software.
You would like to transfer checklists from one project to another and wonder whether there is an easier way than export/import? Of course, just select the element in the elements area, copy, open your target project, select a position onto which you would like to checklist to get attached and paste.
Need a report of your currently selected checklist? Just click onto the ‘report’ button and see Merlin creating the desired report containing just the selection.
You may want to watch the relevant video on YouTube.
Tags: checklist, Export, Import, opml, Screencast
Quote of the day
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 9. July 2010
Quote of the day…eh… I meant quote of yesterday
Train your mind to snap into action at the onset of laziness.
Found here as a one of three tips against procrastinating and the full story comes from here
Enjoy and defeat procrastination, but in case you can’t, check this out; Google chrome fastball – a race across the internet.
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