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RationalPlan 6 - Project Baselines, Reports, Clients Management, Improved Scheduling and Microsoft Project Integration

11-02-2022 02:49 PM CET | Business, Economy, Finances, Banking & Insurance

Press release from: Stand By Soft

Stand By Soft launches RationalPlan 6 a new major version that comes with lots of new features and improvements especially for the web based interface. To be noted the possibility to work with baselines and Earn Value Management technique, generating reports, clients management, improved projects scheduling with timescales up to seconds, custom columns and new filters, data export etc. Compatibility with Microsoft Project files was also enhanced, while integration with Google Drive was updated to the latest V3 version.

The upgrade from RationalPlan 5 to RationalPlan 6 will be free for customers that have purchased the product in the last year. Older version 5 customers will be able to upgrade with a 50% discount.

RationalPlan is a project management software suite that is available either as stand alone products or as a cloud service. It is used by individuals and companies that need a solution to manage their projects in an efficient way.
New features in RationalPlan 6

possibility to work with baselines and Earn Value Management technique when managing projects
reports were added to Portfolio view: calendar report, resource assignments, costs, project info, task cost distribution, resource cost distribution, resource work distribution
added project status column in Timesheet view and corresponding filter in My assignments view
On-Premise products (Single and Multi) are now available within the Microsoft Store
Clients view was added and also exporting clients to Excel
updated "Tasks for resource…" filter to be able to filter for tasks without resources assigned
added custom columns for Portfolio, Clients and Resources and a corresponding "not contains" filter
added expand all/collapse all buttons in Gantt view and a level expand functionality
improved the scheduling algorithm to keep the completion date when changing task duration
export projects in several formats (.srp, .xml, .xls)
updated Google Drive integration to V3
added minutes/seconds timescale for micro-projects
edit the task name directly within the tile component when working with task lists
Improved compatibility with Microsoft Project
Bug fix regarding ALAP constraints
Bug fix: guard against milestones when computing the % complete to avoid division by 0 and hit NaN value
Bug fix: do not allow to remove the last rate for a resource

Baselines management is essential for tracking the evolution of a project. With RationalPlan users can save up to 10 baselines for different stages of the project. Using these baselines and an estimated project budget they are able to work with well known entities from Earn Value Analysis like: CV, SV, CPI, SPI, ACWP, BCWP, BCWS. For those that are more interested on this subject, the team behind RationalPlan prepared some short tutorials on Earned Value Management.

Using the newly added Project status column in Timesheet view and the corresponding filter in My assignments view, users can focus on certain types of projects by grouping, sorting or filtering tasks according to their needs.

The On-Premise products (Single and Multi) from RationalPlan suite are now also available within the Microsoft Store. It is just another option to install or buy the products for those Windows users that prefer to manage their software through Microsoft Store.

Starting with RationalPlan 6 reports were added to Portfolio view in the web interface: calendar report, resource assignments, costs, project info, task cost distribution, resource cost distribution, resource work distribution etc. This way users can directly generate a report from browser without the need to start Planner+ as it was required until recently.

Managing clients can now be done directly from browser. At the same time it was added the possibility to export them to Excel format both within the Cloud service and within On-Premise products.

"Tasks for resource…" filter was updated to offer the possibility to also set a criteria for tasks without resources assigned. This way project managers can see not just the tasks for a particular resource but also which tasks are unassigned. This is useful for resource work leveling.

Custom columns were added for Portfolio, Clients and Resources views. They are used to store details not available by default in RationalPlan. Using these columns, data can be sorted, grouped or filtered by, even using a "not contains" criteria. This gives flexibility in managing various details for projects.

Productivity is many times measured in the ease and speed of using a software. And when working with large projects with complex work breakdown structures, sometimes you need to look at task level details while other times you just want a birds eye view from an upper level.

You can now switch fast between these 2 cases in RationalPlan using the expand all/collapse all actions in Gantt view with a level expand functionality. Want to see just the main phases of a project up to level 3 and collapse everything else? Just hit "Expand all 3"!

The scheduling algorithm was improved such that when changing the duration for a task that was already started the application keeps the completion date and automatically recomputes the % complete. The completion date is the date up to which the task was executed. This date remains fixed even if from various reasons (poor estimation, unforeseen factors occur) the duration of the task needs to be updated. That is the already executed part is kept as is and only the remaining part of the task gets modified.

Starting with this version users can export projects within Portfolio view in several formats (RationalPlan Single .srp, Microsoft Project .xml, Excel .xls).

The integration with Google Drive was upgraded to the latest V3 version in order to comply with the latest Google security requirements.

For those customers that need to perform micro management for projects we have added a minutes/seconds timescale. For graphical performance reasons this feature is not active by default and needs to be enabled within the application. This is just a visual feature that helps project managers to easily plan very small projects with task durations up to seconds… It is worth noted that the project scheduling algorithm behind RationalPlan works with data up to miliseconds with high efficiency even for multi year projects!

When working with task lists the name can be edited directly within the tile component. This is just another productivity feature to increase the speed when doing task management.

The integration with Microsoft Project was improved to better support the latest file versions.

Besides the above mentioned features many more bugs were fixed. To be mentioned: one regarding project scheduling for tasks with As Late As Possible constraint, guarding against milestones when computing the % complete to avoid division by 0 and hit NaN values, not allowing users to remove the last rate for a human resource as at least one rate is mandatory etc.
RationalPlan is offered in two flavors

RationalPlan Cloud - a monthly payment project management solution offering a centralized place to manage the company's projects while offering collaboration through concurrent access for multiple users; a Free tier is also available

RationalPlan On-Premise - a suite of products for those that prefer to have the software installed on their machines

RationalPlan Single Project - an alternative to Microsoft Project and the perfect solution for novice or accidental project managers
RationalPlan Multi Project - project management software for multiple projects, projects that are interconnected through dependencies and share common resource
RationalPlan Project Server - the On-Premise version of RationalPlan Cloud that can be installed on users hardware
RationalPlan Project Viewer - a free project viewer, the solution for anyone to view projects details

###

Contact name: Crina Popescu
Address: Ion Maiorescu, No. 4, Proiect building, Craiova, Dolj, 200760, Romania
Email: marketing@rationalplan.com
Phone: +40770595742

Stand By Soft was founded in 1997 as a software company specialized in building desktop applications and components. RationalPlan is a project management solution that follows the general recommended guidelines from project management domain. MOOS Project viewer is a Microsoft Project viewer that allows users to open, view in a dynamic way and print any Microsoft Project file.

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