OmniPlan

OmniPlan v2 is the worst application I've ever used from OmniGroup (and I use OmniOutliner, OmniFocus and OmniGraffle). I've found it to be very buggy/unstable and I expect waaaay better from a $200 program.

Please note that version 2.2 was released August 30th. I see that at the moment, version 2.1.2 is listed above.

For the latest Omniplan sneakypeek (early release), go to this site....http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniplan/download/sneakypeek/

If asking a simple question resulted in frowny faces, no doubt my review will be unpopular among the fanboyz. Fortunately, the Omni people addresed this issue in a recent (02/01/2012) blog post: "Also new and notable! We’re getting started on multi-project support." This had been requested since 2006. Version 2.0.3 was unable to open a MS Project MPX file, both using File>Open and dragging the file to OmniPlan. I had to Force Quit OP both times. Merlin opened the file in about 2 seconds. It did open the MPP file of the same project, and that was a bit quicker than Merlin. Merlin had a much cleaner view of the project, and this applies to Tasks or Activities, Resources, and Calendar. Merlin offers an additional view (Net Plan). I tried the "Scale to Fit Project" option only to discover there's no Undo for this. No problems with ease of use or stability. 4 stars for each of these categories. In terms of features and value I can't rate this higher that 2 stars. I'll give it another try in version 3. For now, FastTrack Schedule and Merlin are clearly a better choice, and Merlin costs the same as OmniPlan 2. People with simple PM needs will probably enjoy OmniPlan, but for the same price there are better, more robust alternatives out there.

Pity this page references the beta only. In fact, the last stable version 1.7 is available here http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniplan/download/ I would say top marks for the innovative option of English only (12.2 MB) versus all languages 41.7 MB) Clever.

I have been using this for my Project Management class and it's been fantastic! It can export to MS Project flawlessly. Highly recommended.

Gotta agree with others on price. I might as well buy MS Project and pretend I just got $150 off! I think this is a fine project management tool for an individual with modest requirements but close to 1/2 the price of MS Project? I just can't justify not just recommending project when the price delta is so small. I'd take a chance for less, not sure what the sweet spot is, but for sure I can't justify it at this price much like so many other Omni products.

Omni's pricing is completely out of whack and unrealistic, this goes for all Omni apps on OS X and iOS which is a pity as I think they would actually sell quite well if they where more realistic priced

Tried this and it does work as advertised, I had only one crash that I had to Force-Quit. But the price is way to high for me. $50 - $70 I can see, but $150 is way out of the ballpark.

Why is this program $149 when it's a Beta? And how many Betas do this mob put out. Fair dinkum. Who would buy this stuff if it's not ready, which obviously it isn't?

I love Omni. Wanted to love this, but don't. Even using the 1-day demo, I experienced myriad problems: 3 crashes, insane difficulties (and ultimately failure) to print sections of the Gantt chart without ugly flaws, one corrupted project file (probably a result of one of the crashes), and many nonfatal UI freakouts and bogosities. Also, there is a glaring design flaw: resources (people, rooms, equipment) cannot be shared among projects. This means that you either have to only use one project file (very unwieldy if you actually have a dozen real-life projects going on), or you have to guesstimate the availability of each person or resource as some smaller percentage for each project, an then hope it works out (which it does not, at all). I really hope Omni gets this in shape someday. But they have not yet, and it feels more like a pre-1.0 beta than a shipping product, when you try to actually use it to plan projects in a real business.

Two years ago I wrote some comments about OmniPlan. In two years, OmniPlan has certainly gone through various improvements. A quick guesstimate is that they've been mostly fixes, and eventually 1.5 did bring some new features: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniplan/releasenotes/ I have a lot of respect for AMBERV, and highly recommend reading her comments below. To me they make more sense than comments such as "OmniPlan is the best PM solution for Mac" or "This program is a friggin masterpiece." Fortunately for Omni, there are people who will pay $150 for OmniPlan. I would not be surprised if version 2 comes out in 2009 with a new price and an upgrade fee for current users. I'm pretty sure that version 2 is going to be a huge improvement over version 1, which is the one I'm rating (1.6.1). My overall impressions of OmniPlan have not changed. For simple projects OmniPlan may be more than sufficient. Having said this, I've never chosen OmniPlan for any of my projects. It's evident that Omni's strength resides in superb visual design and ease of use, but for this first version Omni lacked the focus of a true Project Management company. Merlin 2 and FastTrack Schedule show a different level of maturity in that regard. (These are 2 programs that I've used more frequently, but there are at least a dozen other Project Management programs for the Mac.) It's nice to see a pretty interface, but for my needs that's not enough. Compared to other "Project Management" software I have, I would choose OmniPlan over Jumsoft's Operation, but in 2 years I have not chosen it over Merlin 2 or FastTrack Schedule. These 2 programs are more expensive than OmniPlan, and to me they've been worth it. My Omni licenses include: OmniWeb OmniGraffle Pro OmniOutliner Pro OmniPlan OmniFocus Out of these, now I only use OmniGraffle Pro (4) from time to time and have no plans of upgrading their software anymore. To their credit, Omni has some amazing people offering customer support. Like AMBERV, "I used to recommend them [OMNI] to everyone...Lately, I never recommend, and I haven't bought a license in years."

how the feck did this get to version 1,5,1 already? about a fortnight ago it was still in beta. jeez! developers release new versions of their software more often than they change their underpants these days. whatever happened to taking a bit of time to bug-check before you let it out the door? that way you don't need a new release every ten minutes.

Price is the major deterrent. Hoping for it to come down. Till then I will be contented with LiquidPlanner online.

As an integrated scheduler at a major Aerospace program, I found some features lacking in this product. How do you insert columns to see Start and Finish dates? How do you insert customized filters and sorts? How can float analysis be conducted in this tool? Is there a total slack/float column? Also, I have to work with my "PC" friends and need something that exports to MS Project in a workable fashion. I was working with a client in Canada and using the beta version. I was working with Concept Pro's Project, but had some problems exporting into MS Project. WHen I exported the file as an MS Project XML file, MS Project could not read the file. When I exported the file as an MPX file, then all the tasks were not set up as "as early as possible" or "early dates". Thus, changing the lags on the predessessor or successor didn't move the start and finish dates. OmniPlan needs to workout this export function. Also, I work with projects that are 1000s of tasks lines long, the predessessor for a particular task could be several hundered lines above...the OmniPlan program doesn't appear to let you enter in an activity ID or a line number as a predessessor or successor.

This program is a friggin masterpiece. I remember the days when Windows users would stare over my shoulder at BBEdit and cry. It's not that they have stopped, but OMNIPLAN is a solid successor to this punishing OSX realization. I highly recommend this product. I've been using in production strength projects ever since I started the Demo. I proudly licensed it and will upgrade forever.

Finally! After years of "futzing" with Microsoft Project and countless attempts at trying to use other Mac-only project planning software, here is finally something that works and works well. Training time: Minimal. I just went through the built in help step by step while working on my first project. It wasn't long before I'd abandoned it and was well on my way with more complex things. I think I'll finally get back in control of my projects! Thanks Omni! ical, website export, tasklist integration is great! Maybe a kind person at Omni would consider adding Basecamp support for tasks and milestones someday. That would be thuper!

Without doing a thorough comparison since I don't have the time, I briefly tried this new version and like it better than the beta. Is it the best as stated below? That will depend on your particular needs. After trying to import 2 files I had, Merlin 2 would not import one and OmniPlan would not import the other. I then downloaded 2 Microsoft Project files from the web, and imported them using FastTrack Schedule 9, Merlin 2, and OmniPlan. All programs imported the files quickly and FastTrack was always the fastest. Times were approximately 8 seconds for Merlin and OmniPlan, and 3 or 4 seconds for FastTrack. FastTrack also opened a dialog box in case the user wanted more information regarding the import process. Visually the only display I did not like was OmniPlan‘s. This was a surprise since I'm a huge fan of OMNI and have Graffle Pro, Outliner Pro, and Web. OmniPlan Indicated certain violations after each import. A suggested solution was to “change the scheduling for this task to As Early As Possible” Looking at the ‘problematic' tasks in the other programs yielded no warning messages, and their inspectors showed that they already had the attributes set for “As soon as possible.” Since demos are available for these programs I would suggest the people try them for themselves. Another nice alternative that I didn't use here is iTaskX, which also has a beautiful, intuitive interface and is the cheapest of the bunch at $86 approximately. For simple projects OmniPlan may be more than sufficient. For more complex projects I would probably choose an alternative product. OmniPlanStill apparently has some limitations, such as sharing/managing multiple resources across various projects simultaneously. I did not test this, but some information may be found at the OMNI forums. I hope this helps.

OmniPlan is the best PM solution for Mac. Having tried a lot of the other software, I can say this is the best balance of features and simplicity. The UI is great and the output is really nice, which helps with sharing. At $150, it's totally standard in the category. Nice work, Omni.

I'm not a projects leader, but this type of software already exists for the Mac in different versions and price ranges. I've used iTaskX, FastTrack Schedule, Merlin, and OmniPlan while in beta. Although I'm a huge fan of OMNI and their products, OmniPlan has been my least favorite software of its kind. (Disclaimer: I have not tried version 1, but the previous beta). I do find it odd that 5-star reviews have appeared both here and at VersionTracker, and the reviews come from first-time posters. I will give this version a try out of curiosity, although I'm very happy that I purchased Merlin 2.