OnePoint Report Nr. 9 (Q2/2006)

Editorial

Dear Readers!

Welcome to the first “international” issue of the OnePoint Report. OnePoint is going to become more international throughout this year and this issue can be seen as a test on how our readers respond to a Report written in English instead of German – so please, give us feedback whether you like it or not, thank you!

A lot of things are going on at this very moment which I want you to know about:

We signed up our first “real” customers in May and this far they are very happy with our Project Leadership Software product
We just released the first service pack ever for OnePoint Project and also updated the demo version (see the “Solution” section for details) while we are already developing the upcoming OnePoint Project 06.1 release
We are step by step implementing our improved positioning and corporate identity
We are in the process of creating a dual-language version of our Website (German/English)
We are hosting our first “Business Breakfast” together with the Know-Center and our development partner Codemart: “80% aller IT-Projekte scheitern” on June 30 (see the “News” section on how to register)
We have signed a contract with IBM in order to present OnePoint as an IBM business partner at the IBM booth at the Systems 2006 tradeshow in Munich
I am going to start a private Weblog called “TaskOne” in August (see “Comments” for a short pre-announcement)

Finally, be aware that I will be on holidays from this Monday, June 19 to Tuesday, June 27 in order to gather some strength, because this will be a hot summer of new products by OnePoint! In case that you require help or there are urgent questions, please contact my partner, Jochen Mersmann (jmersmann@onepoint.at or +49 711 666 02 92).

Best regards,

Gerald Mesaric (CEO)

Solution

OnePoint Project 06 Team Edition: Service Pack 1

Service Pack 1 (SP-1) solves a number of smaller issues which we and our customers discovered over the past few weeks. The more visible bug fixes are in the areas of:

Attachments and auto-saving
Cut, copy and paste behavior (inserting vs. replacing on paste)
Cost controlling view (expected values)

In addition, we have added two small features which are important for day-to-day work in production environments:

Edit work slip now allows to add new activities
New configuration option
```
<secure-service>true</secure-service>
```
allows to enable Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption between the applet and the server

The download link to the service pack will be distributed to our customers and partners automatically. If you are in need of a server-based test installation, please contact us at info@onepoint.at.

Please note that the MySQL JDBC driver is due to the fact that it is distributed under the GPL license no longer part of the OnePoint Project Team Edition package. However, the correct driver can be downloaded from the OnePoint Website by using the download link shown in the “Download” section below.

New OnePoint Project 06 Demo Version

The new demo version of OnePoint Project 06 is based on the SP-1 and thus, comes with all the bug fixes and the improved edit work slip behavior. In addition, it has gotten a little bit easier to install the demo version, since you no longer need to configure the location of the Web browser and we are working on it to simplify installation even further. See the “Downloads” section below for a link to the new OnePoint Project 06 Team Edition demo.

Important: Please be aware that the demo version no longer ships with the MySQL JDBC driver due to MySQL licensing restrictions; however, you can download the driver separately from our Website (see “Downloads”).

Please note that the current demo version does not come with Mac OS X support. The major reason is that we are using a new, improved way to open attachments and reports which does not yet work correctly on the Mac. However, be assured that we are working on the problem and we will come up with a Mac OS X ready demo version within the next couple of weeks.

OnePoint Project: Downloads

OnePoint Project 06.1: First Look

The upcoming minor release of OnePoint Project will primarily focus on extending existing functionality and further improving the usability of the product such as:

Extensive (10 level) undo functionality for the project planning tool
“Drill down” feature for resources and costs controlling tools
Filtering for resources, project or project plan versions in controlling and resource utilization tools
Logical backup and restore functionality

Finally, the 06.1 release will complete the English language user interface which was introduced in release 06 – an important step for becoming more international.

Hint: MySQL & Large Attachments

MySQL is in its default configuration only able to handle so-called Binary Large Objects (BLOBs, which we use to store attachments and archived reports) of 1 MB or smaller. In order to store attachments larger than 1 MB you have to manually update the following lines in the database configuration file “my.ini” located in the MySQL installation directory:

#The server's default max_allowed_packet value is 1MB.
#You can increase this if the server needs to handle big BLOB columns.
max_allowed_packet = <maximum size of attachment>

News

6.6.2006 - Business-Frühstück 2006: Warum 80% aller IT-Projekte scheitern more

Comments

This time I want to use the “Comments” section to pre-announce my upcoming private Weblog (“Blog”) called “Task1” which will focus on the simplification of project management. The idea is simply to introduce people to the terms and methods around project management in a very practical and pragmatic way – without all the academic details the average project manager does not care about.

During the past couple of months I have found out that a lot of people (especially in mid-sized businesses) stay away from project management altogether, because they think it is too complicated and too academic to be usable for their daily work. They are scared off by hundreds of different project management methods and “Introduction to Project Management” books with 1000 pages or more.

I want to show these people that project management does not have to be this way: I want to demonstrate that there are simple approaches to project management which are very relevant to the daily operation of small and medium sized businesses and I will explain the most important terms and methods from “task one” on. Maybe you want to “pre-bookmark” my upcoming Weblog – I hope to see you there in August:

blog.task1.info

About

About the OnePoint Report

The OnePoint Report is a quarterly, electronic publication, issued by OnePoint Software GmbH. In order to subsribe to or unsubscribe from the Report, please simply send us a short e-mail to report@onepoint.at.

About OnePoint

OnePoint is the first vendor of Project Leadership Software focusing on Hi-Tech companies. We provide a simple, practical and integrated solution for planning, progress tracking, controlling, monitoring and reporting of projects. Our unique smart client technology combines the benefits of both traditional Web-based and desktop-oriented client-server software.