Tue, 13 Mar 2012 OmniPlan 2.0.3 review

OmniPlan is designed to help you take in the broad view of a large-scale project, while still keeping you focused on the details necessary to make sure all your resources are in place and the project is completed on time.

Tasks, resources, and a complete project schedule are easy to create, and once you have the basics in place it’s easy to link, rearrange, and reschedule every aspect of a project. If certain aspects are out of sync – if something scheduled for tomorrow is dependent on something that won’t be completed until next week – OmniPlan displays visual cues to help you see where the schedule won’t work. You can colour-code each segment of a project, and create styles so that each project you work on has a similar look and feel. You can also add notes, documents and images to each task.

OmniPlan can help to facilitate collaboration. Projects can be synchronised with a centralised server. The program currently supports CalDAV, WebDAV, Google, MobileMe, and Omni Group’s OmniSync server, but, as yet, there’s no iCloud support. You can track changes made while the documents are stored on the server with options similar to those in applications such as iWork or Office, so it’s easy to see and approve changes made by other collaborators on the project.

Equally as important as collaboration, OmniPlan offers a multitude of import and export options, so you to create and share project files with users working on other platforms. OmniPlan files can be exported in CSV, PDF, OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner files to Microsoft Project’s XML and MPX formats.

OmniPlan helps you plan every aspect of a project, helping you track the resources and people you need to get the job done on time

The only downside to OmniPlan is not so much a problem as it is a challenge associated with most applications of this type. While it’s easy to get started with OmniPlan, you’ll find a significant number of sophisticated features that may prove challenging to master. You can expect to spend several days, if not weeks, learning where all the features are and putting them all to good use.