KIDASA Milestones Professional 2006

By Dale Farris, Reviews Coordinator Golden Triangle PC Club March 2006 General Overview An increasingly important genre of computer software, project scheduling and management, has now become a major application in most all businesses. The many steps in key business processes can now be better managed and controlled using these exciting new applications. Building on the solid theoretical framework of fundamental project management, these computer programs provide the tools to pragmatically implement these principles in a manner that all members of the team managing the project can understand. Coordinating projects demands managerial control over time and resources, and the more complex the project, the more expensive and time consuming it becomes. This has resulted in a need for a project scheduler program to help with these critical management responsibilities. There are now many applications on the market available to help managers with this task, and as you would expect, these range in price as well as level of complexity. Also, as most folks know, the more features and capabilities that are coded into a program, in addition to raising the price, this also increases the time it takes to learn all these features. With the 2006 edition of Milestones Professional, the KIDASA company continues to build in many of the more common features necessary for project management, while maintaining their focus on ease of use. Milestones Professional 2006 concentrates on making it very easy to set up a project and produce the standard Gant chart, while heavily investing in many presentation enhancement features users will very much appreciate. The key concern of this company is providing a project management program that makes scheduling, tracking, and presenting projects very fast, while being easy to learn and use. With this newest 2006 version of Milestones Professional, KIDASA has overtaken Microsoft's Project and other programs as the project scheduler of choice. With the new and stronger capability of the program to work with Project files, customers now have a super program that is very reasonably priced (less than half the price of Project) and that will surely overtake the Project market. Milestones Professional 2006 will also definitely well serve most managers desiring a project management program that is easy to use and is loaded with many practical features. KIDASA also goes beyond what would normally be expected in this or any software program. They have coded their program to be very interoperable with Microsoft Project and other project scheduling and management programs, as well as many other Windows compatible applications. Kudos to this company for investing in the extra development time and cost to add these important capabilities into this nifty program. Customers owe KIDASA a great deal of gratitude for this, something all software vendors ought to do with their programs. At this point in the software business, there is seldom any program that could be considered unique or not available from any other company. Users of one brand of a type of program are very likely to also have installed on the same machine a competing program from another vendor. This results in a real need for these similar programs to be able to work with the various file formats created in the programs. We first began to see this interchangeability with word processing and spreadsheet applications, but there remains a crying need for this interoperability among all the many other types of software now on the market. KIDASA's Project Scheduling Program Options In addition to the mighty impressive, powerful Milestones Professional 2006, KIDASA also has other project scheduling options to meet the varied needs of all customers. These other options include Milestones Simplicity 2006 and Milestones Project Companion 2006. Click here for a review of Milestones Simplicity 2006. Click here for a review of Milestones Project Companion 2006. Milestones Simplicity 2006 Features At A Glance Best for those who need an easy tool for quick preparation of basic project charts Easy schedule creation with an easy click-drag-and-drop interface Beautiful schedules, ideal for presentation Combines powerful project scheduling and tracking capabilities with ease-of-use Easy schedule sharing with a Free Viewer and built-in "Save as PDF" Easy integration with Word and PowerPoint Same easy Milestones interface All the basics! Milestones Project Companion Features At A Glance Best as an add-on product for MS Project users who need to create presentation reports Easy schedule creation with an easy click-drag-and-drop interface Beautiful schedules, ideal for presentation Combines powerful project scheduling and tracking capabilities with ease-of-use Easy schedule sharing with a Free Viewer and built-in "Save as PDF" Easy integration with Word and PowerPoint Produce presentation reports from your MS Project schedules and keep them up-to-date Robust Internet Publishing, including “drill-down” for easy management access to project details Choose from a variety of presentation-ready formats Basic earned value reports Customize the results to meet your reporting needs New Features in Milestones Professional 2006 New features to the 2006 edition of Milestones Professional include the following. Save as PDF Custom Date Formats Apply Shadows and Highlights Color Theme Improvements More colors Date Heading Separator Symbol Markings 3D Highlights Toolbar and Toolbox Improvements Angled Symbol Text Legend Improvements Earned Value Calculations MS Project Gantt Wizard - many new features MS Outlook Import/Export Earned Value Reports MS Project Custom Import Templates Improved New MS Project Import Formats Mobile License Key Collapse Expand Indicators on Printing New Line Patterns Rounded Frame Control Transparent Pop-Up Calendar Suppress Rirst WBS Level These new features have been added to an already impressive list of features that include the following. Sidebar supports Custom import from MS Project Duration stoplights Duration indicators Duration view Percent complete view Task line hyperlinks Pop-up controls Frame shadow New curtain and connector patterns Color themes enhanced Status line for ahead/behind at-a-glance Switch time period views New import formats Stoplight SmartColumns Shorter menus Default symbol text Bookmarks Bookmark task lines Percent complete and duration views Status line zig-zag Time period view switch Symbol text SmartColumn View schedule thumbnails One-step column setup MS Project column Multi-colored column text overrides Symbol date prefix and suffix Project status overview Upgraded user manual Very Impressive! Don't you think? Operational Features This program is easy enough to be used by someone managing a first-time project, while offering powerful features for experienced project managers, and is used in many large companies for many good reasons. Milestones supports fast and easy click-and-drag scheduling, very impressive customization of presentation-ready project schedules, a great number of symbols for use with the schedules, as well as a symbol creator, and super integration with other project management and Windows programs. Quickly create stunning, professional quality schedules, choosing from a wide array of symbology, color themes, and functional templates. Open Microsoft Project files and generate a variety of presentation schedules. "Refresh" presentation schedules using updated Microsoft Project dates, and easily generate schedules using information from Excel and Access. Track numbers along with schedules to show costs, earned value and more. Display percent and symbol indicators to make status easy to see, and integrate with other programs using OLE automation. Link schedules to other documents with hyperlinks, and manage large projects with master schedules and symbol linking. Generate HTML hierarchies of linked schedules, complete with graphical hotspot links, for easy Internet publishing. Distribute Milestones Professional 2006 schedules with the free Milestones Viewer, or by pasting into another document. Easily click and drag and drop to add symbols and bars to a schedule, and organize your schedule with outlining. Use "roll-up" to show a summary of tasks, and easily show progress by using the Fill To Date feature. Dependencies between tasks is easy to show, and any of the 20 possible columns can be made a Smart Column. Smart Columns will automatically display information contained in and based on your schedule. For example, a Start Date Smart Column, when edited, will update the schedule. You can set up baseline scheduling and symbol constraints, as well as set up a schedule in calendar view. You can also publish a complete hierarchy of schedules and distribute Milestones files with the included, free Milestones Viewer. Managing large or multiple projects is easier with the Master Schedules, linking symbols, hyperlinks, and the sort, filter and find/replace tools. Sorting tasks and filtering tasks is now easier than ever, and you can include calculation/indicator Smart Columns. Data graphs related to a schedule can be displayed to display various value categories, such as earned value, budget, cost, and variance, product sales and inventory, cash flow, or work, sick and vacation days. Control the effort of a resource assigned to a particular task by using a resource allocation percentage. The resource allocation value can be entered in the Resource Allocation Smart Column, or in any cell on the appropriate task line. You can move columns around by dragging, and the menus and toolbars are similar to what you find in Microsoft Office. The program allows you to right click or double click to make changes, presents super tutorials to help speed up the learning process, and provides many starter templates and examples to help new users get started more quickly. You can outline a schedule, use "roll-up" to show a summary of the tasks in a schedule, set up Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) numbering with outlining, show progress in a schedule with the Fill to Status Date feature, and show dependencies between tasks. SmartColumns can be set up, such as start date, end date, percent complete, duration, or status date, and these will automatically display information contained in and based on the schedule. When the data in these columns is edited, then the SmartColumns will update the schedule. Baseline scheduling, symbol constraints, and a calendar view are also useful tools in this program. The program offers many ways to distribute and present a schedule, and these presentation quality features far surpass what you will find in other competing project schedulers, including MS Project. Such features include shading of symbols and bars, gradient fills, task shading, as well as the ability to publish a schedule for the Internet using the Internet Publishing Wizard. You can include schedules in other applications, email schedules to others, and run the program in full-screen and presentation modes. Printing the schedules is also very easy in Milestones, with complete control over the output on paper. Managing large or many projects is very easy in Milestones, and you can set up symbols that link to these other projects. You can also set up hyperlinks to track all project documents, and sort schedules by start date of each task, end date of each task, or any column. The task filter allows you to see only a subset of the many project steps, and you can also perform many arithmetic operations using any pair of columns or using one column with percent complete. In addition to the schedule and tracking capabilities, the program also can display graphs relating to the schedule. DataGraphs might be used to display earned value, late deliveries, product shipments per month, or product sales over a period of time. The data for the DataGraphs come from a set of numerical values called ValueSets, and there are 5 types of Value Sets. These include Keyed in global values, Values keyed into task lines, Allocate column values across timeline, Use values from symbols, and Total of other ValueSets. You also have a lot of control over how text and graphics are displayed and formatted, and you can add notes to the symbols used in a schedule. Spell checking is built into the program, and you can paste clip-art or other graphics from most standard graphics file formats into a schedule. There are also a huge number of symbols to choose from, and you have a lot of variety in how you use and display connector shapes. The handy toolboxes make using these symbols and connectors very easy. Many milestones can be added to any task line on a schedule. These can be stand-alone milestones, or they can represent a series of start and end dates. You can have many on a bar, have many bars represent several sub-tasks, and you can add start and end dates on one row. The layout and formatting of schedules is very easy and is designed around the typical manager concern to produce presentation quality schedules that are fully explanatory, while being of great practical use in the daily management of the project. You completely control the size and format of a schedule, including the physical page size of the schedule, the number and width of the columns and the size of the optimal legend. You can create a schedule the size of a postage stamp, or as large as a wall. There are also many time-scale options, including year, hour, fiscal year, century by decade, date, and quarter, and you can customize a scale if you wish. In addition, you can set up shading for weekends, use "curtains" to shade a date range, and use various gradient fills. The flexible printing options include printing in shades of gray, printing specified date ranges, use scaling to fit, print a separate page for symbol notes, hide column text after the first page, print each page by time period, and exclude selected columns when printing. Users can collaborate on schedules using Microsoft NetMeeting, and the free Milestone schedule viewer can be distributed to co-workers so they too can view and print a Milestones schedule.  The data analysis features are also quite extensive. These include the ability to use up to 9 ValueSets, display up to 3 DataGraphs below the schedule, overlay one DataGraph on the schedule area, calculate using the SmartColumns feature, generate earned value graphics, count symbols, summarize values from ValueSets, and use cost information from Microsoft Project to display earned value graphs. The schedule presentation appearance can be enhanced with the use of many neat features. You can use up to 9 outline levels, indent tasks, format columns, draw summary bars, display start and end date symbols, control the fill and line pattern of symbols and connectors, use collapse or expand indicators, and set a separate symbology for baseline summary bars. There are numerous built-in symbol shapes, horizontal connector bar shapes, vertical connector shapes, and symbol marking options. Also, you can color and shadow symbols, use over 100 milestone symbols per task link, individually color symbols and connectors, use a symbol maker to design symbols, use existing bitmap files as symbols, and work with a fully customizable toolbox. You can also design simple or multipart shapes, and you can even insert any bitmap symbol. Time-scale features are quite extensive, and the control over text and graphics is also extensively developed. You also have very extensive control over the layout and formatting of the schedule. All these many features provide the detailed control many managers need to allow them to prepare and present their project schedule exactly how they want. This state of the art control is a super advance over the early days of other project scheduler programs, such as MS Project, that required a postscript printer to even be able to control the output of a schedule in landscape orientation on standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper. What a joy it is to be able to apply these now standard design, format and layout features in a project scheduling and managing program like Milestones Professional 2006. Many of these presentation quality features are not found in any other project scheduler application now on the market. Make colorful presentation reports from Microsoft Project and keep them up-to-date. Milestones Professional and Milestones Project Companion offer the same easy-to-use import wizard for quickly transforming Microsoft Project files into a variety of presentation-ready schedules. If dates change in MS Project, use "refresh" to update the dates in Milestones. Earned Value Charts Gantt Charts Milestone Charts Summary Charts Performance Charts Resource Charts Typical Uses of the Program Milestones Professionals 2006 is an excellent choice for busy managers needing to prepare and manage a complex project, while also needing high quality paper output or web access to the files for others to review. The program is very easy to use and most importantly, easy to learn. This also means it will more quickly start providing a return on the investment in the program. Understanding the reality of typical manager time limitations, KIDASA goes further with their lineup of project scheduling programs, offering their Milestones Simplicity program that is even more easy to learn and use than Milestones Professional 2006. For a very fast, very easy way to quickly get going with a project, many managers might find Simplicity the way to go. Later, when they have a little more time, they might want to then migrate to Milestones Professional 2006. While Milestones is indeed focused on ease of use, it does contain many extra features that will of course require some time to learn, but this should take less time to learn than striving to learn more complex programs such as Microsoft Project or CA SuperProject. Finding the right balance between thoroughness of features, while offering the user an intuitive and quick to learn interface, is a never ending coding challenge for any project scheduling program. Milestones Professional 2006 represents one of the best examples how to achieve a genuinely user friendly project scheduler that is filled with the necessary features required to prepare and manage schedules. Support for Other Products In the 2006 version, Milestones Professional now supports work with many other applications. Milestones also supports a complete Automation interface so that when using Visual Basic or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) you can interchange data programmatically with all the Microsoft applications that support Visual basic and VBA, such as Access, Excel, or Project. Using the Project to Milestones Wizard, you can directly import MPP, MPX, CSV, and MPD files from Microsoft Project. With this feature, you can bring Project data directly into Milestones to take advantage of the Milestones ability to overlay cost data, such as earned value data, directly on a schedule. This process is as simple as selecting a Project file in the File, Open, Chart, process and selecting a Microsoft Project file from the Files of Type list box. In addition, you can select Import Data from the File menu, and then select the MS Project Import option. Once you have opened Project files in Milestones, you then "refresh" the Milestones presentation schedule when Project start dates change, end dates change, and new tasks are added.  You can also save any Milestones Professional 2006 data into the Microsoft Project MPX format, and then open that schedule in Project. The Custom Import feature makes it easy to bring in data from any application that can copy data to the Windows Clipboard, or to a comma delimited ASCII file, using the File, Import Data, Custom Import from Clipboard option. You can use this same Custom Import to read .CSV files (ASCII files with fields separated by commas). Just select the Custom Import menu option instead of the Custom Import from Clipboard menu option, and select the file using the standard Open dialog box. Milestones Professional 2006 is an Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) server, making it possible to paste entire schedules into other OLE compliant applications, such as the MS Office programs. Just select Copy Schedule to Clipboard option in the Edit menu. Then, in the other program, just select the Edit, Paste Link option. You can create a metafile on the clipboard, by selecting the Copy Metafile to Clipboard option in the Edit option, which just places a picture of the Milestone schedule into another application. Since just the picture is pasted, and not the entire Milestone .ML6 file, this takes up less space in the other application's file. Symbol hyperlinks can be used to link to other Milestones schedules, sites on the Internet, or other applications. You would do this maybe to have a symbol hyperlink designed to bring up another file, such as a Word document. Or, you can also set up a symbol hyperlink to start your email program. You can copy a column or columns in Excel and easily paste these into Milestones at any location within the schedule. You can also copy an entire column in Milestones to the clipboard, and then paste this into any spreadsheet program that allows these columns to be pasted in from the clipboard, such as in Excel. The MPX (Microsoft Project exchange) file format used to be the standard way of getting data into and out of Project until Project 98 came along. Now, Automation is more commonly used. Milestones Professional 2006 continues to be able to read MPX format files produced both by Project and other project management programs. To read an MPX file, you select the File, Open, Import Data, MPX Import option. Once the MPX file has been selected, the MPX Import Wizard begins. You can use a wizard to import Microsoft Project MPP files, as well as other project management applications and Project 98 files. Also, Milestones will allow you to paste information from any other product that supports the standard Paste function.  You can paste schedules into Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other Windows-based programs, and you can paste numbers from Excel into a Professional ValueSet. An OLE automation interface makes possible a vast array of interoperability with many other applications, and you can now set up hyperlinks with symbols. In addition, you can export from Milestones to PERT charts for Microsoft Project and generate PERT charts, as well as export WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) charts for Microsoft Project to generate WBS charts. The Automation feature built into Milestones Professional 2006 lets you use programs written in VB, or any other program that supports Automation, to interchange data programmatically between Milestones and these other Automation capable programs, such as Access, Project, or Excel. The program also continues to support all the proprietary CSV based import and export formats. The primary proprietary format is the Expanded 10 Column format which is fully documented in the Online Help. Activating Milestones Professional Once Milestones is installed and when you first start-up Milestones, you will be prompted to activate the software either automatically, or manually retrieve and enter an Activation Key. If your computer is connected to the Internet, then you can use this easy option. Click Press this button to Activate automatically. Using your Internet connection, an Activation Key is automatically retrieved and entered into the registry. Click OK when the Activation Successful message appears. If you receive an error or your firewall prevents this automated action, then use the Manual Activation procedure as described below. If your computer is connected to the Internet, then you can manually retrieve an Activation Key from the KIDASA web site. Or, call or e-mail KIDASA Software to request an Activation Key. Click Obtain Activation Key via the Internet. Your internet browser will launch, automatically go to the KIDASA web site, and display your Activation Key. Enter the Activation Key in the Activation Key slot, as shown in the dialog box above, to the right of Step 2. Press Activate Now. You may choose Activate Later up to 10 times before the software is disabled. If you need to enter a Program Key, Serial Number and retrieve the Activation Key, open Milestones, choose Help | About Milestones Professional | Program Key, enter the Program Key, and then click OK. Enter the Serial Number and any other missing information, and then click OK. Recommendations This latest 2006 edition of Milestones Professional is a remarkable advance for an already super project manager. As many Milestones users already know, working with Milestones Professional is definitely easier, and much more pleasant than working with Microsoft's Project, and the Milestones Professional price point is simple amazing. For this extremely reasonable price, Milestones Professional 2006 provides a powerful, feature-rich project management application that definitely will turn the heads of any MS Project user, especially after they see the new price point for the latest edition of MS Project. In addition, the learning and training costs of Milestones Professional 2006 will also be well received in any organization, because the initial cost of learning Milestones Professional will be far less than learning MS Project. This is because KIDASA takes great care in the design of their super Milestones Professional 2006 to make it one of the easiest project management applications to learn. This is important in any organization, because once an application has been acquired and installed in the organization, the costs related to learning the program must also be considered. With Milestones Professional 2006 you will certainly realize a less expensive learning curve, thus enabling users to more quickly get rolling with the program. In addition, there is far more attention to the overall design and layout of Milestones Professional, and the integration of much more dynamic chart design and print controls than found in MS Project. The inclusion in the program of the ability to recognize and export MS Project, and other project manager file formats, means all organizations with a need for a project manager application will find Milestones Professional 2006 to be a prime choice. Also, with Milestones Professional 2006, you will receive the Milestones Professional Viewer applet that will ensure that all your other internal customers as well as your key external customers will be able to view your Milestones Professional 2006 files. Price $239 street price for boxed version $219 for electronic download $99 upgrade from a prior version - boxed edition $79 upgrade from a prior version - electronic download Note that this price is NOT mis-keyed. This is the actual price for Milestones Professional 2006, and is a super bargain. Also, the boxed, CD version will also provide a valuable, Wire-O bound manual, and the CD disc includes video files that show you how to use the program, along with the FREE Milestones Viewer for your colleagues who don't own a copy of the software. $149 Milestones Project Companion 2006 - download ONLY $  60 Milestones Simplicity 2006 - boxed edition $  55 Milestones Simplicity 2006 - download edition System Configuration Requirements Windows 2000, ME, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista or later For use on Macintosh, you would need to run a Windows emulator, like Virtual PC. Any computer which can run the above operating systems will be able to run Milestones software. 98MB free hard disk space for Milestones Professional 24MB free hard disk space for Milestones Project Companion 39MB free hard disk space for Milestones Simplicity 16MB free hard disk space for the Milestones Viewer About KIDASA Software, Inc. KIDASA Software, Inc., located in Austin, Texas, introduced its first product, Milestones, Etc. 1.0, in 1989, for the Windows 2.1 platform. Since then, the company has continued to refine and develop this concept into two distinct project scheduling titles: Milestones Professional 2006 and Milestones Simplicity 2002. Founder Sue Butler used to work with the Austin Division of Lockheed, and while there she spent much time helping engineers put together their presentation-ready milestone charts for their briefings. Project management programs did not then offer the required presentation qualities, so the engineers resorted to using CAD programs, graphic design and drawing packages for this purpose, which was very tedious and time-consuming. As is usually the case with entrepreneurs, problems are opportunities, which is how Ms. Butler saw this situation that led to the introduction of the first version of Milestones. Milestones Professional 2006 offers more fully developed features and capabilities than Milestones Simplicity. Simplicity is an inexpensive package for managers with limited time to learn software but needing to quickly produce schedules. Both programs are the result of over ten years continual improvements driven by customer requests, and the attention to the customer definitely shows in this latest edition of Milestones Professional 2006 that adds a ton of features to an already feature-rich application. As for the unique company name, KIDASA, this is how the company president explains it. When they first started the company, they called it "SoftPro," but they soon found this name was too generic and also found out that several other companies were already using it. So, the president decided to come up with something unique. After mulling over quite a few names, she finally decided to just make up a name. The six letters in their KIDASA name come from the first two letters in the names of her three children, KIm, DAn, and SAm. Ever since, they have had no trouble with competition for the name, as well as no problems getting the domain name for their Web site. Neat! Contact Ms. Susan J. Butler, President KIDASA Software, Inc. 1114 Lost Creek Blvd., Suite 300 Austin, TX 78746 512-328-0167 512-328-0168 product support 1-800 765-0167 (sales and volume pricing) FAX 512-328-0247 sbutler@kidasa.com www.kidasa.com Support e-mail: support@kidasa.com KIDASA1 America Online Check this link, www.kidasa.com/news, to sign up for a newsletter that provides tips and tricks with Milestones, as well as links to more information about this nifty program.