RationalPlan Archives - Page 5 of 7

RationalPlan 4.1 Is Ready For Project Managers To Control Their Projects

RationalPlan version 4.1 is out. In this release were added some new features requested by users while others were improved: a customizable subject can now be used when sending emails with assignments to resources, more fields were added when exporting to spreadsheets, improved reporting and a faster way to establish the project workflow and to create dependencies.

RationalPlan is a project management software created to serve many types of users starting from novice project managers, users that need an environment to handle multiple projects and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access. It has been developed to help project managers keep their projects on time and within budget.

Changes in RationalPlan 4.1:

added notes to risks on Project Info report
added more fields when exporting to Excel
a faster way to establish the project workflow and to create dependencies
added customizable subject when sending emails with assignments to resources
use auto completion for clients combo box in Project Info view
bug fix related to importing projects to Server
bug fix for computing total actual/remaining costs in Timesheet table
bug fix – scroll to the start of the project on chart each time the current project changes (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00October 17th, 2012|News, RationalPlan|Comments Off

RationalPlan in the Race for the 2012 Project Management Election

We are pleased to announce that RationalPlan has been nominated for Capterra’s Project Management Election 2012 as being one of the 55 contending project management software providers. These 55 nominees were chosen from a few hundreds of software solutions.

Providers are split into two:

The Traditionalists – those who identified a Traditional/Phased-Approach as the methodology that best fits their software
The Contemporaries – those who identified Agile or another methodology as the best fit (as well as those who indicated their solution is tailored to multiple methodologies)

The election will start on October 9th and will have four rounds, each round for a duration of one week. The candidate pool will be narrowed down at the end of each one-week voting “round” based on which candidates have the most votes. Project managers can vote their preferred project management solution just once every day. The election will end on November 6th when the winner will be announced.

So give us a helping hand and vote RationalPlan as your preferred project management software. Voting is easy and fast and does not require anything from you except two mouse clicks: one for selecting RationalPlan in the The Traditionalists red column and the second one at the bottom of the page to Submit your vote:

Thank you and do not forget to vote RationalPlan for the Project Management Election 2012 every day!

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00October 5th, 2012|Contests, RationalPlan|Comments Off

RationalPlan Project Management Software Goes Viral Using Popular Social Networks

The team behind RationalPlan Project Management Software recently revamped their website, offering a new modern look to their users. In addition to that, the social networking life caught form on the project management blog and through the help of the well known social platforms Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Project managers need more that just a project management solution to successfully manage their projects. They also need to have access to project management related articles and discussions on forums, blogs and social media. The experience and knowledge is gathered in time and this is a long process. However a faster solution is to obtain it from experienced and senior managers.

“We reached the conclusion that our users need more besides our RationalPlan products. They also need to learn how to use them, they need tools and techniques to be applied, they need a place where to chat and share opinions. And what better place to find all that than through our forums, blogs and social networking sites?” says Gabriel Toader, CEO of RationalPlan.

Users can stay up to date with the buzz around RationalPlan products by subscribing to feeds or can actively participate on the Project Management Facebook or Project Management Google Plus pages. Twitter fans were also not forgotten. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00September 11th, 2012|News, Project Management Software, RationalPlan|Comments Off

Is RationalPlan Supported On Mac OS X Mountain Lion?

In the recently released Mac OS X Mountain Lion the Gatekeeper was introduced that by default does not allow users to run applications downloaded outside of the App Store. In this situation are also the RationalPlan users that are downloading our products directly from our website.

So if you find yourself a Mountain Lion user and when trying to install RationalPlan you get an error like this one:

you can solve it by going to Apple menu > System Preferences… > Security & Privacy > General tab and under the header “Allow applications downloaded from:” check the Anywhere box. This will allow you to install RationalPlan. However after the install is complete you might want to set it back to Mac App Store and identified developers. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00August 28th, 2012|RationalPlan|Comments Off

RationalPlan 4.0 – A Brand New Design

The developers from Stand By Soft are pleased to announce the release of a major version for the project management suite RationalPlan. Version 4.0 comes with a new design, a modern look and a more pleasant color scheme for the eye.

This is a major turn around as the company decided to focus on three different areas or more exactly on three important needs for different types of project managers. These needs are covered by the main three products: Single, Multi and Server.

Although different, in the essence the entire suite has something in common. “Our moto – Manage your projects the easy way – defines in the best possible way what we want from this suite of project management products. Every manager needs to effectively handle his projects and there are many tools in the market for this. However what we want is to also offer the easiest and fastest way to achieve that.” says Gabriel Toader, CEO at Stand By Soft. And the main feature to sustain this idea is an embedded Project Guide that will get project managers through each step of the planning process.

“Your kick-start to manage projects” that is the purpose of the Single product. It was especially designed for the novice or accidental project managers and it is the right solution to choose when managing small projects or when the management experience is missing.

The Multi product is more a program management application. “Get your projects together!” explains the best what for it should be used. Those program managers that need to handle multiple inter-related projects and even with shared resources can find in this product a solid help to support their work.

There is nothing easier that to “Manage your projects in one place“. And that place is the Server product from RationalPlan. With this product all the company data like projects, resources, calendars etc. are in one single place. From here anything can be accessed by anyone and from anywhere. All it needs to be done is to create some user accounts and set the appropriate rights. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00July 4th, 2012|News, RationalPlan|Comments Off

Support For Working With Subprojects In RationalPlan Project Management Software

RationalPlan version 3.26 was just launched with support for working with subprojects. Besides this feature, useful for big projects, other changes were added like improved printing customization, other types of task scheduling and much more.

RationalPlan is a project management software created to serve many types of users starting from novice project managers, users that need an environment to handle multiple projects and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access. It has been developed to help project managers keep their projects on time and within budget.

Important changes added to this version:

possibility to work with subprojects
dependency driven duration type scheduling
customizable header and footer for printing
added date range for Task deadline filter
more data added to the web interface of the Server

Certain companies often need to manage large projects. This kind of projects however are to big to be handled as a whole and must be decomposed in several smaller parts. And each part is treated as a project with its own assigned project manager and its own budget and time constraints. However all these projects are related and are actually subprojects of a master project. This necessity is now covered by RationalPlan Multi and users will have the possibility to work with master projects and subprojects. Of course resources can be shared between project so that overallocations and overtime costs to be detected and correctly computed.

(more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00March 1st, 2012|News, RationalPlan|Comments Off

RationalPlan Project Management Software Is Now Available In Spanish

RationalPlan version 3.25 was just released. The most important thing to be mentioned in the new version is the availability in Spanish language. Other features include the addition of a new resource type – cost resource, the possibility to sort clients and resources, better notification mechanisms, improved printing and much more.

RationalPlan is a project management software designed around the principle “easy to use” and can serve many types of users starting from novices, those that need an alternative to Microsoft Project, users that need an environment to handle multiple projects and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access for multiple users. It has been developed to help project managers keep their projects on time and within budget.

Important changes added to this version:

availability in Spanish language
improved printing
added cost resources
added accrual notion for costs on resources and assignments
improved notification mechanism
improved behavior for different time zones
better handling of external tasks from MS Project

The developers from Stand By Soft would like to thank to all the people that have contributed to translating RationalPlan in Spanish with special thanks to Pablo Avegno, Project Manager at Ventalum Argentina.

(more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00December 12th, 2011|News, RationalPlan|Comments Off

iReports trick for page numbering including last page

When designing some reports which were expanding on multiple pages the need of numbering the pages occured. The first thing to do was to search the internet and see how others managed this problem. The first idea that popped out was to use the Page X of Y tool from iReports located in the Palette view. It was a very easy and straight forward approach because there was no need to implement additional functionality, just a simple drag and drop to the Page Footer band and some additional tweaks just to look god.

However this approach proved to be a bad one when the page number grew to a 2 digit number and the two text fields overlapped and lost their alignment. Even more, on the last page of the report the page number was not shown. To properly solve this problem the RationalPlan team found a new way to show the page number on each page including the last one.

For showing the page number on the last page of the report the Last Page Footer band must be added by right clicking on it in iReports in the left panel called Report Inspector. After having both bands active (Page Footer and Last Page Footer) drag and drop the Page X of Y tool from the Palette view to the Page Footer band. Resize each text field to look like in the picture and align the text to right respectively to the left in each text field. Now the expression of each text item must be slightly changed by right clicking the text items and writing “Page ” + $V{PAGE_NUMBER} in the first one and ” of ” + $V{PAGE_NUMBER} in the second one. Make sure that the first text item has the evaluation time set to Now and the second one to Report. This setting is located in the Settings view in the Text field properties category.

The last thing to do is to copy the first set of the text items and paste it over the Last Page Footer band and align them accordingly and this is it. Now the text will appear as it should be regardless of the number of pages and the last page will be also numbered. Good luck!

By Andrei Ticudeanu|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00October 11th, 2011|RationalPlan|Comments Off

RationalPlan Version 3.24 Is Available With New Features

RationalPlan version 3.24 was just released. Many new features were added like the possibility to work with custom filters, to attach documents or to use rich text editors on tasks. More reports are available now in multiple languages and as a bonus a preview capability is also present. Another thing that deserves to be mentioned is the compatibility with the latest Java version 1.7.

RationalPlan is a project management software designed to fit multiple types of users starting from novices, those that need an alternative to Microsoft Project, users that need an environment to handle multiple projects and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access for multiple users. It has been developed to help project managers keep their projects on time and within budget.

Important changes added to this version:

Added support for custom filters
Support for multiple languages for reports
Added a new “Resource assignments” report
Added documents for tasks
Improved the functionality for managing conflicts
Added WYSIWYG rich text editor for the notes on tasks, resources, clients and risks
Added support for Java 7
Added the possibility to preview reports

The reporting mechanism was significantly improved from multiple points of view. The most important is the possibility to have a preview of each report before it is decided whether it will be printed or not. Next a new type of report was added: “Resource assignments”. This report is useful to generate the list of responsibilities for a certain resource. This way the project manager can hand over either digitally through .pdf files or manually through printed sheets the list of activities that each resource has to do. And all of these are now available in multiple languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Romanian.

Working with filters on tasks just got easier and at the same time more powerful. With the addition of custom filters users can now create any combination of the already existing ones. They will be able to see for example the tasks that are not completed and that are assigned to certain resource and that have a deadline.

The way users can manage documentation on tasks in the current version should be more helpful. They will have the possibility to attach documents as links to local files or to web pages over the Internet. More than that the Notes area was transformed in a rich text editor from a plain one. Users will be able now to format texts and add hyperlinks or images. The rich text editing was also extended to other data like resources, clients, risks etc.

Many more minor improvements were added like an easier way to manage conflicts, some cosmetic issues, better translation in other languages and so on. Support for the latest Java version 1.7 was also added.

RationalPlan suite includes:

RationalPlan Single Project – the alternative for 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 Viewer – free project management software viewer, the solution for anyone (from project stakeholders to team workers) to view projects details
RationalPlan Project Server – a centralized place to manage the company’s projects while offering concurrent access to different users

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. RationalPlan is a project management software that follows the general recommended guidelines from project management domain. MOOS Project viewer is a Microsoft® Project viewer that allows you to open, view in a dynamic way and print any Microsoft® Project file

Contact name: Lucian Ioan
Address: Aleea Parului, Nr.4A, Craiova, Dolj, 200346, Romania
Email: marketing@rationalplan.com
Phone: +40771610710

###

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00September 6th, 2011|News, Project Management Software, RationalPlan|Comments Off

JasperReports tutorial for JAVA using JasperViewer to preview reports

JasperViewer it is a very useful component which allows you to preview the reports from your application before saving them as documents. It also offers additional functionality like printing the reports, saving them with different extensions (ODT, HTML, DOC, PDF and others), navigating through out the report’s pages and zooming in or out. This was the perfect component for fulfilling the customers request here at RationalPlan because it was very easy and straightforward to use. The tricky part and also what I consider a drawback is that if you want to customize its appearance and functionality you can not do it.

First let us try using the viewer as it is without any customizations. The class that describes the viewer is JasperViewer. Looking at the API you can see that the constructors can receive three types of components: an InputStream, a JasperViewer or a String that describes the source file. Because we use a custom data source (click to see the tutorial) to fill our reports it was very simply for us to use the already generated JasperPrint object and pass it to the JasperViewer constructor.

[sourcecode language=”java”] JasperPrint print = JasperFillManager.fillReport(projectCalendarStream, hm, mainReportDS);
JReportsViewer jReportsViewer = new JReportsViewer(print);
jReportsViewer.viewReport(); [/sourcecode]

In the first line of code we created the JasperPrint component with the JasperFillManager and then we pass it to the constructor in order to create the report. The last line just shows up the JasperViewer dialog.

The next step is to create a customized version of the JasperViewer component to fulfill our needs. Let’s say we want to allow the users to save the reports only as a PDF document. Here is the source code for JasperReports.

[sourcecode language=”java”] public JReportsViewer(JasperPrint jasperPrint, boolean isExitOnClose, Locale locale) {
if (locale != null) {
setLocale(locale);
}
this.isExitOnClose = false;

initComponents();

this.viewer = new JRViewer(jasperPrint, locale);
List<JRSaveContributor> newSaveContributors = new LinkedList<JRSaveContributor>();
JRSaveContributor[] saveContributors = this.viewer.getSaveContributors();
for (int i = 0; i < saveContributors.length; i++) {
if (saveContributors[i] instanceof JRPdfSaveContributor) {
newSaveContributors.add(saveContributors[i]);
}
}
this.viewer.setSaveContributors(newSaveContributors.toArray(new JRSaveContributor[0]));
this.pnlMain.add(this.viewer, BorderLayout.CENTER);
}[/sourcecode]

This is one of the constructors that we kept because we use a JasperPrint object. We have deleted the other ones because we don’t use source files or InputStreams. As you can see inside this constructor we have a list of JRSaveContributors. These contributors represent the save extensions and as already mentioned we only want to keep the PDF format. To achieve this we look for the JRPdfSaveContributor and when we find it we add it to our list of contributors. Then we set this list as the new list of contributors.

This is a minor customization but if you want other complex ones you might need to take the source code, apply your changes, create the jar and then replace the original JasperReports jar with your own.

Hope this short tutorial helps. Good luck!

By Andrei Ticudeanu|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00September 5th, 2011|RationalPlan|Comments Off