MS Project import – User defined fields
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 12. March 2010
If you have MS Projects containing user defined columns and need to edit them in Merlin, simply save those files in the MS Project XML exchange format. Open the XML file later on in Merlin, click any activity in your project and check the ‘User Defined Fields’ tab. You will find them all listed there displaying their contents.
Please note:
MS Project will not save the custom titles into the XML file, so Merlin displays their column identifier.
Tip:
- If you have only one user defined field simply edit its title in the ‘User Defined Fields’ tab
- If you have imported various user defined fields at once, you may want to display first the columns on the outline to know which column title fits which content.
Isn’t great? Not only seamless import of MS Project files but also to such a deep extent. Merlin never ceases to amaze me 
Tags: MS Project, User defined fields, XML
Merlin: resources utilization dynamically adjusted
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 8. March 2010
This is a tip of our CEO, Frank Blome, as discussed at the CeBIT 2010 and published on our German MacPM blog:
Supposedly you plan an activity of 5 days work to be accomplished in the duration of 10 days. As an experienced PM and Merlin user you create the activity in your project as follows:
This results to a 50% utilization for the assigned resource
Tags: Actuals, Documenting actual work, Merlin, Merlin 101, Utilization
Merlin import of EXCEL files
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 2. March 2010
Merlin can import seamlessly lots of file formats, here a list of the currently supported formats:
- MS Project (.mpx, .mpp, .xml)
- OmniOutliner (.ooutline, .oo3)
- OmniPlan (.omniplan)
- NovaMind (.nmind)
- MindManager (.mmap)
- Merlin 1 (.merlin)
- Merlin 2 (.xml)
- Text files (.txt, .csv, .tsv)
- OPML files (.opal)
So you look on the list above, have project WBS saved in MS EXCEL and don’t know how to proceed?
Tags: Excel, Import, Integration, Merlin, Merlin 101
Applescript: Shifting activity starting dates at once
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 26. February 2010
From time to time we get asked in support, how to shift all given planned starting dates at once in Merlin projects to a new date while maintaining the slacks.
If the activities are linked together, the user may use the dynamic shifting project setting, and define a new planned starting date for the first activity. The linkages between activities will shift the successor activities as needed.
If the activities are set to specific starting dates, and you want to shift them all by the same amount of time, you may consider writing an AppleScript to read the given planned earliest start dates of the activities, apply the desired time offset, and write the new date back onto the activities of the project.
But why bothering writing a new Applescript from the scratch, when there is already one which we have just written doing so? Spend your time on managing your projects, not on scripting. Be lazy and productive. Just click here to download it
Tags: Applescript, Merlin, Merlin 101
Merlin: CSV duration units
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 22. February 2010
There is a new feature in Merlin 2.7.6 and its CSV reading & writting possibilities.
You can now define the unit for the durations and choose one of the following: Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Calendarweeks, Months and Years.
This is very practical in case you want to import project information in spreadsheets of MS Excel, Numbers, etc and need further calculations referencing duration data.
In this case simply choose the appropriate unit when exporting. Merlin will recalculate project durations if necessary in the output.
Merlin: Fractions vs. time units
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 12. February 2010
Merlin creates new activities having the default work specified in the project settings:
Should you assign a resource to this activity, Merlin will automatically define its work as 100% of the work defined in the activity.
So when to use fractions in work (or duration) and when not to?
The answer is simple: It depends on what you want to do.
Tags: Fraction, Merlin, Merlin 101
Merlin: Coloring priorities
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. February 2010
We have already wrote about the various PM templates Merlin has built-in. One of them is called ‘ToDo List’. It was implemented, as the name states, to help you creating easily a list for your ToDos.
If you use this template you will notice that the activities are colored. Can you guess why is this so? No?
Let me give you a tip… Enable the column ‘Priority’ in the Outline, you will see that the activities have priority levels and as you know Merlin applies styles by conditions.
So… now you know. In this project a style set was used for coloring.
To enable the priority coloring onto your project, make sure your activities have the appropriate priority level set, call View > Show View Options, switch to the ‘Styles’ tab if necessary, and select from the ‘Style Sets’ popup the ‘Priority’ set:
To define other colors than the predefined ones, simply select the conditions (very high priority, low priority, etc ) and edit accordingly.
Merlin: Print a date range
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 21. January 2010
What I really want to do is print a date range. Either that’s not possible or the instructions are hidden deep enough that I can’t find them. Seems like it would be a pretty basic function.
The above text was sent to us as feedback to a Merlin documentation file. Unfortunately the user had not entered an email address so we cannot answer directly. Anyhow in order to provide an answer and in case someone else is also wondering about that, here you are. The instructions to it:
- First you limit the visible date range in the views.
- And then call File > Print…
Tags: Feedback, Merlin, Merlin 101
Merlin: Applescript
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 21. January 2010
Is there is a way to print all notes entered in the activity view of a Merlin project at once?
Yes of course. You can enable the display of the ‘notes’ column, disable all other columns, hide the Gantt chart, adjust the column width and the row height accordingly and print.
Should you however happen to have, longer texts than the above setup could show completely, you may consider exporting the file as CSV and import into another application.
If export is much too inconvenient for you, you can use this AppleScript. It writes the project and activity notes into a text file, which you can later on open and edit with your favorite text application to complete your project management reports.
UPDATE: We have updated the script and enabled UTF-8 encoding for the created text file. This solves an issue with non English text (i.e. German texts with special characters) and wrong encoding of these texts, which will be now correctly transferred.
Tags: Applescript, Merlin, Merlin 101
Merlin: How many calendar weeks in a year?
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 15. January 2010
Last year we had 53 weeks and met the problem that my customers in some countries did not had 53 weeks but 52. When we in Europe ‘lived’ in week 53, they already start calculating with week 1. Even though we have the same date, in weeks they are ahead of us.
And now, when I do project management in Merlin I see that this program is also 1 week ahead.
Is there something I can do?
Yes of course, you simply have to make sure that you all use the same ‘calendar’. It all depends on the definition when a week starts. A week starts in Europe on Monday. In the USA and some other countries on Sunday.
This is the Gantt of a project having Sunday as first day of the week:
This is the Gantt of a project having Monday as first day of the week:
Both displays are correct, it is only a question of the desired settings.
Tags: Calendar, Merlin, Merlin 101
PMOT, AGILE Tweets
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