RationalPlan Project Management Software 4.2 – Increased Productivity and Ubuntu Adoption

Craiova, Romania, January 10, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Project management software provider RationalPlan just released their latest version 4.2. The current version offers increased productivity for managers by reducing the time needed to handle resource allocations. At the same time the company decided it is the right moment to expand on the Ubuntu market. Hence the application now offers native integration with the Ubuntu operating system.

RationalPlan is a fast growing project management solution that recently received the third place at the Project Management Election organized by Capterra. It was 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.

Important changes added to this version:

Timesheet view displays only the resources working in the current project
in Leveling panel the resources are displayed according to applied task filters
added a percentage work load chart for resources
Ubuntu operating system integration
added the notion of special working days for tasks
added a new report for task cost distribution
improved printing
added the notion of responsible user
improved Mac OS X integration

While in Timesheet view it is now possible to display only the resources working in the current project. This helps users focus on important tasks and do not get distracted. The same procedure is applied while in Leveling panel. The resources are displayed according to the applied task filter. It is easier to follow the allocation of work for a few resources instead of all the resources from the company. Additionally a percentage work load chart was added. This gives a birds eye view over the resources load status. The manager can easily see if the resource is overloaded or underloaded so he can take the work from an overloaded employee and assign it to an underloaded one.

In the last few years Linux became more and more popular as an operating system mainly because it can be used for free. Although there are many versions on the market Ubuntu is one that has more and more success to the end users. “Ubuntu Software Center was the main reason that made us decide to port our products on this niche. Users can now easily download and install RationalPlan from the Ubuntu apps directory. Ubuntu is a great operating system for business and office needs and RationalPlan is an ideal tool for such needs,” says Gabriel Toader, CEO at Stand By Soft.

At users request RationalPlan team decided to make working with calendars more flexible. Special working days (days off, holidays etc.) where available for resources since many versions ago. But this was not enough. The same needs were encountered for tasks. It is a waste of time to create working calendars for each task that requires a special working time. A better solution would be to use a base calendar and just adjust the working time for those special days for each task that needs it.

A new type of report was added in version 4.2: the task cost distribution report. Users can now also generate and print the cost distribution for tasks in a time phased manner and not just see it within the application. Printing mechanism was also improved a little bit and new placeholders where added like the #Client and the #FileName. A few more minor problems where also fixed.

Mac users can also be happy with the new version since a few Mac specific problems where also fixed. A major one was related to the compatibility with Java 7.

On the server side RationalPlan was also improved. Now managers can create responsible users accounts. They can be seen as team managers that is smaller project managers that are responsible only on certain phases of the project and not over the entire project. This is very useful for senior project mangers to delegate responsibilities to junior project managers. For resource type users it is possible now to update not just the completion of tasks but also the actual work. This feature was added to the web based interface since on the desktop clients it was already available.

RationalPlan suite includes:
RationalPlan Single Project – an alternative to 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 http://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 planning 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.