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
Merlin iPhone – how does it work?
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 6. July 2010
Merlin iPhone is such a great option for mobile project managers. Share your projects with Merlin for Mac OS X and the optional iPhone sharing service or use a Merlin Server in which iPhone share is build-in. As long as you have a connection to the mobile data net or WLAN hotspot, with Merlin iPhone you can access your project from anywhere.
It all sounds great to you but how does it work? Easy and straight forwards (as always in Merlin).
Check screenshots of the app in the product page, watch accompanied screencasts illustrating the functionality, read the Merlin iPhone QuickStart Guide, or test it for your own.
Wherefrom to download it? Merlin iPhone app is available in iTunes Store as free download.
Not always online? That’s fine with Merlin iPhone. You can view your project offline, and will need an online connection only when making changes and populating the new state of your project.
What about iPad or the new iOS 4? Merlin iPhone runs on iPhone 4 and on iPhone devices with iOS 4 just as well. Our developers are already working on an adjusted version to look better on the iPad or the new iPhone 4, so stay tuned.
How do I setup my router? Just proceed as explained in our blog post ‘using Merlin’s web module‘. Web and iPhone sharing are both using the same port and our configuration suggestions apply for iPhone sharing too.
Tags: iOS 4, iPad, iPhone 4, Merlin, Merlin iPhone, Merlin Server, Merlin Web, PM
Merlin, global unit for calculated durations
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 15. June 2010
From time to time we receive requests on how to set up a global unit for calculated durations. So for example:
…when planning my project in Merlin, the calculated duration of the project is
shown in a dynamic unit, i.e. day, week, month, year, depending on the
length of the activity. How do I fix it to show weeks? We mainly operate in
weeks…
Well nothing simpler than that. (more…)
Tags: Durations, Merlin, Merlin 101, Units
Merlin Channel at YouTube
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 4. May 2010
For all of you who happened not to notice it yet, ProjectWizards have a YouTube Channel.
You will find there introduction videos for the ProjectWizards’ products (Merlin for Mac OS X, Merlin Server and Merlin iPhone) along with short ‘how to’s.
We pay attention to develop user friendly and straight forward quality software. Deliver good online documentation and react on your feedbacks. Offer responsive support. Are active in user groups. Blog tips and tricks frequently. Nevertheless sometimes a short movie tells more than 1000 words can.
So here your are: ProjectWizards’ YouTube Channel An additional bookmark for your web browser.
Have you bookmarked or subscribed the news of our blog? If not, just click onto our feed and have it subscribed in your webbrowser.
Tags: Merlin, Merlin iPhone, Merlin Server, Videos, YouTube
Merlin: Project Settings for Combined Projects
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 14. April 2010
If you wish to observe and manage multiple projects in one Gantt chart, you can combine them into one, Master, project. To do so in Merlin you can either use drag & drop or a menu command:
Once you have combined your projects we suggest you focus onto the ‘Utilization‘ view for detecting over-allocations. All resources together with their assignments on all combined projects will be listed there.
Although the projects are combined now into one master file, the following issues need to be kept in mind.
- Changes to each file will be saved back to the individual file
- Each project has it own calendar, settings, resources and resources calendars
- Dependencies that cross projects can not be created
- If resources are used across multiple combined projects, you will see multiple instances of the same resource in the Resources View. This is expected behavior. Resources having the same name will be considered as ‘Master’ resources and their utilization for all assignments on all combined projects will be accumulated in Utilization view.
How to access Project Settings for Combined Projects?
Tags: Combine Projects, Master, Merlin, Merlin 101, Project Settings, Utilization
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.
You may want to check attached screencast
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Priorities, Styles
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
Merlin: Accumulating expected working hours
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 13. January 2010
I am doing project management with Merlin on Mac OS X. Is it possible to display the expected work accumulated by month or week for the resources of a project?
I mean something like the following:
Resource A: January 2010, 20 hours, February 2010, 30 hours, etc
Resource B: March 2010, 10 hours, April 2010, 5 hours, etc
Resource C: December 2010, 30 hours, January 2011, 15 hours, etc
Yes of course.
This is possible in Merlin’s utilization view. Here a small description of how to do so.
(more…)
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101
Merlin: PDF with or without the outline
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 12. January 2010
I’ve exported my project to a PDF for distribution, and only the Gantt chart displays, not the info in the left side.
Exactly, that’s right, this is how image export is specified. To export the Gantt.
If you want to save the activities outline and the Gantt chart in a PDF, you can call the print dialog, make sure that ‘Print Outline and Gantt’ is enabled in the ‘Activities’ pane…
… and call ‘PDF’ > ‘Save as single page PDF…’
You may want to check attached screencast
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101
Merlin: Wrap text to next line
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. January 2010
Have you came across this situation? You enter long titles for your activities or activity groups and notice that the column width is not wide enough to display the complete text. So you enlarge the column to get the whole text visible and ’steal’ space from your Gantt. Not a very good solution, your monitor has a defined resolution after all, and you cannot expand Merlin’s window for ever…
Well this is a problem you do not really need to cope with. How?
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Styles
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