Stand By Soft has released RationalPlan 3.14, a strong project management software application developed to assist project managers in creating plans, tracking progress, allocating resources, managing budgets and analyzing workload, now going international and planning translation in several languages.

Important changes of this version:

• Added code for internationalization
• Outlook integration for .ics file (only VEvent) when sending email with assignments to resources
• Added deadline column and graphical representation
• Possibility to directly open Single Project files into Multi Project files
• Possibility to disable “check for updates”
• Increased execution speed
• Store/load settings for risks view
• Improved look and feel for Mac OS X
• Improved file locking mechanism
• Bug fix: Related to importing MS Project files
• Bug fix: When changing a calendar make a reschedule
• Bug fix: Compute the actual/remaining duration of phases correctly
• Other enhancements and minor bug fixes

RationalPlan started it’s way to become an international product. Although for now only English language is supported soon enough there will be added other languages (Italian, French, German). This means that users from all around the world will be able to use the set of project management tools that RationalPlan offers in their own language.

Current version added Outlook integration for iCalendar .ics files when sending emails with assignments to resources. Now users can add Outlook to Apple iCal and Google Calendar list of clients that can open .ics files generated with RationalPlan. Still this feature is available only for VEVENT generated items and not for VTODO ones. This lack of functionality is the result of the fact that Outlook does not fully support the iCalendar protocol. More exactly Outlook does not support VTODO and VJOURNAL elements. This Outlook lack of compatibility with the iCalendar standard is a problem for many project management software packages available on the market but Microsoft seems to refuse to implement it even in Outlook 2007.

Task deadlines are easier to be managed starting with this version. Users can display them as columns in tasks table and view them also on Gantt chart. Hence delayed tasks are easier to detect and the project manager has more time available to solve them.

One other issue that was treated in this version is the file locking mechanism. RationalPlan uses a file lock system to avoid concurrent access conflicts from different users. But on certain network sharing protocols like Samba file locking mechanism is not supported. On these networks RationalPlan will still open files but without locking and is the users responsibility to manage concurrency.

The interface settings are now also kept for the “Risks” view. In addition to this the manager has the possibility to print the list of risks for a project.

The execution speed of the application was increased substantially on certain views like the “Resource Sheet” and “Task Sheet”. More changes were made for a better integration of RationalPlan with the Mac OS X platform. Also some important bug fixes are related to the import 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 OS X, 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

###