Frequently Asked Questions
Getting started with a new tool is never easy - regardless of how intuitive or how easy it is to use or to install. The following questions have been asked repeatedly by new users and administrators of Onepoint Project. We hope that our answers are helpful.
User Q&A
Questions regarding Access Permissions
How does the user level relate to the permissions you can set for a user?The user level denotes what maximum "permission level" this user can get. An observer user can only get observer permissions. A contributor user can be an observer or a contributor on a project, resource, etc. Finally, manager users can get any access role level on a business object, i.e., they can be observers, contributors, managers and even administrators.
Why can a manager user not create or edit projects, portfolios, pools or resources?The user level of a manager only denotes his or her "maximum" permission level for a business object. Permissions themselves are defined on the per-project, resource etc. level. Before a manager can create or edit a project, portfolio etc. he needs to be given the appropriate permissions for the project, portfolio etc. in question. For instance, in order that a user can create a new project, he or she must be given manager or administrator permissions for the portfolio the project is to be created in. You are doing this on the "Permissions" tab of the "Edit Portfolio" dialog.
Questions regarding Project & Resource Planning
Why can I not assign the resources I have created to activities in the "Projects/Planning" tool?Onepoint was created with primarily a team-based environment in mind. Therefore, resources first need to be assigned to the project (by a user with manager permissions for the resources in question). Only afterwards, they can be used in project planning. There are several ways to assign resources to a project; the most efficient one for assigning multiple resources to a project at once is to use the "Assign to Project" button in the "Resources/Administration" tool.
If I change the duration of an activity the effort is automatically adjusted: how can I enter the duration independently from the effort?Onepoint supports two planning modes: Effort-based planning (the default setting, for backward compatibility to classical planning tools) and independent planning. Independent planning mode lets you enter duration and effort totally independently from each other; the system will keep care of checking the overall % assignment for you. In order to switch to independent planning mode, simply disable "Effort-based planning" in the "Settings" tab of the "Project Properties" dialog (accessible via the "Projects/Administration" tool).
How can I plan the effort in hours rather than in whole days?For durations, Onepoint Project currently supports only whole workdays, since we believe that hour-based planning of durations does seldom work in the "real world". However, it is still possible to assign effort on the basis of hours by switching off "effort-based planning" in the project settings (use the "Settings" tab in the "Edit Project" dialog).
How can I delete a predecessor link I do not need anymore?You can either select it in the "Schedule" (GANTT chart) planning view followed by pressing the DELETE key, or you can remove it by editing the "Pre." column (short for "Predecessors") in the activity list.
I am missing the functionality to use colors or patterns in my project plans - how can I do this?Instead of directly providing the ability to color activities, we decided to use a more structured approach. Onepoint's commercial editions provide so-called "activity categories" that are defined across all projects. They in turn can be assigned colors in order to provide a more clear visualization of the schedule and the work breakdown structure (WBS).
Questions regarding Time & Progress Tracking
Why am I not able to change the "& Complete" in my project plan?Onepoint Project supports two settings for specifying/calculating the "& Complete" field. The default setting is that the & Complete is calculated based on the effort-to-complete ("remaining") estimations of the project's contributors. If you want to disable this behavior you have to specify this on the "Settings" tab of the "New Project" dialog when creating a project. Please note that for data consistency reasons it is currently not possible to change this setting later on.
Why am I not able to create a work slip? / Why is the "Track Time" button grayed out in "My Work/Tasks"?In order that you can create a work slip there must exist open tasks for one or more resources that are linked to your user. It is a common mistake of users who are new to Onepoint Project that the resources are not linked to the corresponding users. You can link a resource to its user by opening the "Resource Properties" dialog in the "Resources/Administration" tool; simply set the "Linked User" to the user in question on the "General" tab.
Administrator Q&A
Questions regarding Database Support & Connectivity
Does Onepoint support MySQL as database? If yes why is the MySQL JDBC driver not part of the distribution?Yes, Onepoint supports MySQL 5 and newer; please check the README.TXT file inside your installation package for the exactly supported minimum version number. The JDBC driver is not part of all distributions, because it is licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL) and, therefore, we are not allowed to redistribute it together with our commercial editions.
Does Onepoint support PostgreSQL as database?Yes, Onepoint not only supports PostgreSQL 8.3 or newer, we even suggest using PostgreSQL if you want to use an open source database, since we believe that PosgreSQL is the most stable and reliable open source database. A suitable JDBC driver comes with all editions of Onepoint Project.
Does Onepoint Project support Oracle as database?Yes, the commercial, server-based editions of Onepoint Project support Oracle Database 10/11g. Use the Oracle "Thin" JDBC driver to connect to an Oracle database.
Does Onepoint Project support Microsoft SQL Server as database?Yes, the commercial, server-based editions of Onepoint Project support Microsoft SQL Server. Until Onepoint Project 8, only MS SQL Server 2000 is supported; starting with Onepoint Project 8 Update 2 MS SQL Server 2005 SP 2 is supported, too. Please use the JTS-JDBC driver that comes with Onepoint Project for connecting to a MS SQL Server database.
Does Onepoint Project support IBM DB2 as database?Yes, the commercial, server-based editions of Onepoint Project support IBM DB2 release 9 and newer.
Other Connectivity & Integration Questions
Does Onepoint Project support LDAP/Active Directory?Yes, the commercial, server-based editions of Onepoint Project support both Active Direcory and Open LDAP out-of-the-box. Connectivity to other LDAP-based user directories (such as, e.g., Novell) is available on request.
General Questions regarding Installation & Administration
I tried to install Onepoint Project Open, Group or Enterprise Edition on my Linux installation, but I only get an error when trying to connect to Tomcat - what am I doing wrong?Unfortunately, a number of Linux distributions do not do a good job in distributing a "good" Java Runtime, nor a properly configured Tomcat package. This is by far the most common issue when installing a server-based Onepoint Project edition on a Linux system. Our recommendation: Make sure you have a Sun Java Runtime (not GNU - GNU will not work) and do not install Tomcat via a packaging tool such as rpm, apt-get, emerge etc.; instead, get an official tomcat package from http://tomcat.apache.org (installation of Tomcat is really plug & play also from a TAR.GZ/ZIP-archive). With this setup, Onepoint Project should be installable without any problems as described in the supplied README.TXT file.
Why does my Tomcat-based Onepoint Project installation on Mac OS X Server not start/work?For Tomcat, add the property "java.awt.headless=true" in the file "catalina.properties" located in the "conf" folder. Mac OS X Server does not correctly set this property by itself causing Onepoint Project to access certain AWT/graphics operations that are not supported on an OS X Server operating system. Please note that this is only necessary of OS X Server version, not for the OS X desktop operating system.
I upgraded Onepoint Project (potentially from an Open Edition) and it does not run anymore - what is the problem?Make sure that you have moved out or deleted your previous "opproject" directory inside the Tomcat webapps directory before you deploy the new WAR file. The reason for this is that there are known issues for Tomcat that deployment does not always work 100% correctly if you deploy a WAR file over an existing deployed Web application. Restart Tomcat after deployment in order to be sure that the Web application is properly initialized the first time it starts up. If it still does not work please make also sure that you also clean up all client-side caches (browser and Java Runtime caches). Even though we use versioning and different filenames, sometimes the browser or the Java Runtime cache our Java Applet.
My users sometimes get weird effects like an operation would be hanging and I can see "OutOfMemory" exceptions in my Onepoint log files - what can I do?Tomcat by default only uses a fraction of your physical memory, therefore, Onepoint Project can run out of memory if you use large project plans, many users and/or large attachment files (on most DBMS except Oracle). In this case, increase the Tomcat memory settings, e.g., via executing "export JAVA_OPTS="-Xms256m -Xmx512m -XX:PermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m" from your command line under Linux before starting Tomcat. The first two settings are the heap size (start heap size and maximal heap size); if you have sufficient physical memory we suggest configuring at least -Xmx1024 for 1 GB maximal heap memory size for a production-level installation.
I just installed Onepoint Project and it works, but I am getting weird characters instead of Umlauts - why?You probably used the wrong character set when creating the database: You have to use Unicode or UTF-8. For instance, in MySQL 5 the default character set is Latin-1 and the default collation is Swedish.
What is the correct spelling (upper/lowercase) of the "Administrator" user?The "official" version is "Administrator", but you can also use "administrator" or "ADMINISTRATOR". We allow all three spelling versions since MySQL handles uniqueness of names in a different way than most other databases.
The database user password in the configuration file is encrypted - how can I change it?Simply remove the encrypted="true" attribute and change the value inside the