MS Project 2007 - How good is it?

Rory,

To answer your last point: consolidate all your plans into one NEW WINDOW and work on updates in this new consolidation project, the source projects will be updated as well; be careful not to save baseline in the consolidation, BUT in the source files.

I don’t know SureTrack; you could have a look at PSNExt (http://www.lebihan.com/uk/home/index.jsp) or AstaDev PowerProject (www.astadev.com)

Hope it helps,

Alexandre

Thanks Alexandre - I didn’t properly look into all the status date options and the project update, these make MSP a lot better for getting early start dates. All this still seems miles off the usability of P3e, especially when using resources to shape financial spends (MSP just seems to want to talk %utilisation).



I’m trying to find what is the best combination of Enterprise and on-site planning tools. Also decent Primavera planners are in short supply. was trying to establish if begginer planners using MSP (2003 or 2007) could feed back (update) into a P3e enterprise. Does anybody know if suretrack is an easy but better alternative?



ALSO: When I mentioned a planning calendar I meant that updates are only needed once every four weeks but all plans must have the same data date - all setting the same status date would do that in MSP, right?

Rory,

exchange project data between MSProject and P3? forget it, MSP 2007 is not better than 2003, 2000 or ’98; could be worse, as MS has written off any reference to old (obsolete they say) file formats

I don’t understand your mentionning of project calendars, what does a calendar do with data date? in MSP you can easily change the "Status date" in Project, Project Information.

Alexandre

Hi Guys,



Although your posts are informative could either of you enlighten my as to whether MSP 2007 has improved it’s offering of planning to a planning calendar (e.g. my data date changes from the first of one month then to the first of the next in the following update cycle). Also I’m keen to use MSP to upload / update a primavera main schedule with MSP and have 12 codes (which are hierarchical) to manage / validate. Until recently this seemed a nightmare in MSP to control cause there were only 10 ’outline’ codes i could use.



Does anybody know if these have improved?

Much too long? It was 4 mouse clicks that literally took 5 seconds.

That’s right; much too long to do and not intuitive at all

If you want to make next saturday a working day I just entered a description of the exception in the grid on the Calendar dialog and then selected next saturday in the calenar, click the details button and then select Working Times instead of NonWorking and then clicked OK to accept the default working times. If you want to make the start and stop times for that saturday different than the default then you have to enter data but not otherwise.

Brian,

I meant "Exception" in the calendar:

It is easy to create a new day-off: just select the day you want in the calendar, and give it a name in the list, right?

but how to say that you will work saturday next? you will select the day, click Details, and then change the whole lot of data in the following window

In P3, you just select the day and click Non-Work; only if you want to create a longer non-work period will you have to open the detail window

as we say in French, "le mieux est l’ennemi du bien": "the better is not the best"

Full point on this topic,

Alexandre

To say that any software company specializes in producing bugs is just inflamatory. It is easy to pick on MS. A bug in their software makes more noise because it impacts more people. Software has bugs for sure. If Primavera had the market share then we would all be here complaining about them. :-)



What do you mean when you say "Exceptional work day" Im not familiar with that term.



I was also not aware that MS was trying to "copy" the P3 Calendar. In the end does it matter? Does it help anything to make such comments? :-)

Brian,

OK, no software app is ever exempt of bugs; but MS specializes in new bugs added to new releases of old apps: how can you explain that it was not possible to promote the 1st subsidiary of a summary task in MS Project 2003 Std release 1, how can you explain that in MS Project 2007 Std or Pro all existing resources are selected when you open the Assigne Resource window?

Calendars: MS attempt to copy P3 calendar is not a success; although adding a non work period is not difficult, adding an exceptional work day is a nightmare

Alexandre

You list 5 really good Pros and and 3 cons. Con 1 is a little diffuse but am I to assume that Primavera is without bugs? :-) Con 2 is a mystery to me because I see it as easier and much more convinient to create exceptions since exceptions can have names, show up in a list in one place and can have recurrence patterns like an appointment in Outlook. Con 3 is a con only if you really, really need to save as an MPX file or an MPD database file.

alex,

Pros:

1. calendars: mimics P3 calendars, but no so easy to use

2. edit, undo: now unlimited number of levels, until youi save the project file

3. visual reports: the usual caracter based reports still exist, the new visual reports use MS Excel / Visio 2003 or greater olap technology to display histograms and curves

4. cost resources: makes the description of task fixed cost easier

5. budgetary resources: intended to setup the project initial budget; I have still to discover what MS wants me to do with them

Cons:

1. new and amazing bugs

2. difficult to setup a exception working day in calendar

3. cannot save to "obsolete" file formats (as MS sees it)

Personaly speaking, I would not upgrade

Alexandre