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, Screencast
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…’
Note: Screencast save as single page PDF attached
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Screencast
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, Screencast, Styles
Merlin: Lead/Lag between activities
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. January 2010
We all know that you can link activities and create various kinds of dependencies between them in Merlin to express the flow of your activities through out your project. We often get asked in support how to define a lead or a lag on such dependencies.
Nothing more simple than that…
You simply click onto the linkage line as shown in the Gantt chart between the activities, switch to the inspector and enter there the desired lead or lag value.
day vs eday…
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Screencast
Merlin: ASAP, ALAP
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. January 2010
We get asked from time to time in support how an ‘As soon as possible’ (ASAP) or ‘As late as possible’ (ALAP) setting in start or end of an activity influences its duration. If you are also wondering how Merlin is specified to handle them, you can read here more about it.
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Screencast
Merlin: iCal calendar import
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. January 2010
Did you know? I had not until now. You can import iCal calendar onto your project or resource calendars and get the entries added as exceptions. Cool, isn’t it?
For those of you, like me, not knowing this functionality until now, here is how to proceed:
- You locate the iCal calendar you want to import(*) to your Merlin project.
- Open your Merlin project, select the top most entry in the outline, switch to the calendar tab on the inspector and call ‘Import…’. (more…)
Tags: Calendar, iCal, Integration, Merlin, Merlin 101, Screencast
Merlin: Optimize finish to finish linked activities
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. January 2010
When entering activities the flexible way, meaning without defining any fixed start or end dates, you get them all aligned and starting on the current date.
Supposed you link them by a finish to start linkage, you will see the successor activity jumping to a starting point after the end of the predecessor.
Now let’s say you have two other activities, needing 1 week and 1 day work accordingly.
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Screencast
Merlin: Stretch task
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. January 2010
I recently purchased Merlin 2 for project management on my Mac. Good stuff like a lean and mean MS Project, does exactly what I need and no more fortunately. I have also used PSScheduler for some years. They have one task type that saved lots of effort, I call it a stretch task. Might be worth while doing that in Merlin as well.
A stretch task has a start-to-start predecessor and a finish-to-finish successor. It is always automatically as long as necessary to fulfill constraints. So if the successor goes back in time, a stretch task automatically becomes longer…
It is always great to read such support email requests. Accolades for the software, combined by a wish for a new feature already existing, so here you are:
A stretch task in Merlin and how to set it in 4 simple steps.
- Link task 1 and task 2 by ’Start – Start’.
- Link task 2 and task 3 by ‘Finish – Finish’.
- Set the end of task 2 to ‘as late as possible’.
- There is no step 4
Update: Screencast attached
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Screencast
Merlin: Gantt chart is missing!
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. January 2010
Thinking about the frequently asked questions posed by Merlin users we have found out that the undisputed winner is the following very irritating but simply to solve situation:
The Gantt chart is missing!
Supposedly you open a project file and see the outline and all activities or the resources with their assignments in the utilization view but no Gantt chart. You look under the “View” or “Window” menus, hope to find there a toggling “show/hide Gannt chart” menu item, and find nothing. This happens because the Gantt chart hadn’t been removed from the activities view, it was only moved outside the visible area of this window.
Solution: If you do not see the Gantt chart, simply slide the control on the bottom right of the activities or utilization area to the left.
Update: Screencast attached
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Screencast
Merlin: Adding another ruler grid level in the Gantt chart
Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. January 2010
Merlin displays two ruler grid levels on the Gantt chart per default for new empty projects. One in days and another in calendar weeks. Depending on the planned work values of your activities, you may want to zoom in or out the time scale. To do so, simply click the according buttons on the bottom of the window.
Should you however need more ruler grid levels, you may define up to four. To add another grid, just click on the arrow pointing down on the right end of a grid level and select ‘Add top row’.
Tags: Merlin, Merlin 101, Screencast
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