RationalPlan Project Management Software v3.12: Resource Availability, Better Tracking and Improved Printing

Stand By Soft has released RationalPlan 3.12, a strong project management software application developed to assist project managers in creating plans, tracking progress, allocating resources, managing budgets and analyzing workload. Suited for applications in the area of construction, engineering, services&consulting, software development or for a simple student project, RationalPlan can help complete projects on time and within budget.

Important changes of this version:

  • Added resource work availability for an easier leveling
  • Better tracking by adding a catch up to date completion
  • Improved printing
  • A more user-friendly interface
  • Bug fixes

RationalPlan added resource work availability for an easier leveling. With this feature RationalPlan makes a step forward in becoming a resource management software and not only a project management software . Now users have an added feature to the mechanism of resource leveling. Project managers have the possibility to supervise the workload of any resource from the company using the available work information. The Resource Sheet view can now be customized to show all kind of data (work/cost): Available, Capacity, Actual, Remaining, Overtime etc. Actual and Remaining are best used for tracking the project workload and cost. But the real powerful help comes from using the Capacity and Available notions. Managers will see now how much a resource can be loaded and how much it is still available. When a resource is available in a certain time period then that available amount will be displayed with a green color such that you know it has a free time. If a project is behind its deadline and the manager need more work force to keep it in schedule it has two possibilities: use more resources and increase the project cost or level the actual ones if possible. With RationalPlan all he has to do is see where resources are green and use that available work where it is needed. Hence it will be obtained an optimum resource workload balance.

With this version it was added a catch up to date mechanism for task completion. Usually managers are updating the project completion status based on the information coming from the field at a higher level of details e.g. analysis phase has been completed. It is inefficient and a lost of time to update the completion of all tasks from that phase. Instead, a mechanism like the one offered in RationalPlan will allow the manager to just select that phase, the completion date and it is done.

Also the printing mechanism was also slightly improved by adding a fit to page action. There are times when a project plan could fit on one single paper page but that should be done by selecting the optimal zoom factor which is a time consuming task. Now users can do this with just one click.

The developers from Stand By Soft worked in this version also on the interface of the products. To be mentioned: the table selection is now extended over the charts giving users a better orientation and synchronization between the table and the associated chart. Also there have been added more actions like insert task and break task to the Gantt chart. Less important changes are straightforward for the user and are left to discover them by himself.

Some important bug fixes of this version are related to the import/export of MS Project files.

RationalPlan suite includes:

RationalPlan Single Project – project management software for single projects
RationalPlan Multi Project – project management software for multiple projects, projects that are interconnected through dependencies and share common resource
RationalPlan Project Viewer – free project management software viewer, the perfect solution for anyone (from project stakeholders to team workers) to view projects details
RationalPlan is designed as an affordable alternative to Microsoft Project with some extra-features like multiproject management and it is covering project management area from WBS construction, project planning and scheduling to critical path management, over allocated resources detection, progress tracking, cost estimation, etc. Gantt chart support as well as various time line reports are also provided. It offers the most important capabilities of a good project management software while being able to operate on various platforms starting with Windows, Mac, Linux and all other Java enabled platforms.

RationalPlan Project Management Software is available at http://www.rationalplan.com. It can be download from https://www.rationalplan.com/download.php.

About Stand By Soft

Stand By Soft was founded in 1997 as a software company specialized in building desktop applications and components.

Address: Aleea Parului, Nr.4A, Craiova, Dolj, 200346, Romania
Email: marketing@rationalplan.com
Phone: +40727159969

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