If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch we have some great news for you!

As I mentioned in our last newsletter we have been working on an app for the iPhone. Well, the SharedPlan iPhone Project Management app has been approved by Apple (on the first try – which we understand is pretty rare) and is now freely available to you. You can download it from iTunes now.
The SharedPlan iPhone app provides you with a read-only view into the latest status of your projects stored in SharedPlan Central (our online tools for project planning and management). Project status that may be viewed includes:

• a summary of the project with project goal, web site, overview, and version information
• project resources with assignments, notes, email and phone numbers (you can quickly send email or call resources)
• project tasks with start and end dates, duration, resource, and critical path information.

The SharedPlan app connects to SharedPlan Central to gather your project information. Use the app with your existing account, or let it create a free account for you and populate it with a sample project to get you started.

The SharedPlan iPhone app caches project information so you can update the project information before going into an area with no wireless network – very handy for meetings.

We’ve been using it internally for a few weeks now and have been amazed at how access through the iPhone rounds out the services offered by Central and Pro. With the addition of the iPhone app you can now truly stay up on your project deliverables and status from anywhere, anytime – Pro on your Mac or PC, Central for the Web, and now the iPhone app for your pocket/purse.

As always, we welcome your feedback on the iPhone app. And, if you would like, leave a review or rating in the iTunes App Store. We’re thinking about the next app and would love to hear from you on what you would like to see in it.

SharedPlan Software has released version 5.4 of their Pro project planning and management software for Mac OS X. Pro version 5.4 extends SharedPlan’s leadership in project planning and management software that is available to everyone that needs to complete a project whether they are using a Mac, or Windows, or the web. No other company provides this degree of flexibility and accessibility.

Specifically, Pro 5.4 improves on our existing cost management through additional reporting options that are a great way for project leaders and team members to stay on top of project costs as they are accrued. This release also improves the user interface for interaction with SharedPlan Central and the reusable resource pools which customers find useful for easily maintaining consistent resource information across multiple projects – just enter the information once and reuse it in other projects. SharedPlan has also increased the performance of their critical path analysis which is especially obvious in larger projects. And finally, SharedPlan is in the final stages of development of an iPhone app which will use data from SharedPlan Central which is also accessible with SharedPlan Pro.

All of these features were designed based on feedback from SharedPlan customers and are intended to provide them with an ever improving tool set that is available everywhere, easy to use but robust enough for large projects.

The SharedPlan product family combines ease-of-use with cost-effectiveness to create a PM software solution that can be broadly deployed on corporate desktops. “Project management is no longer the responsibility of just those with ‘Project Manager’ in their title, yet the majority of PM software applications are designed and priced only for professional project managers,” said Roger Denton, SharedPlan’s founder. “SharedPlan Software is developing tools for all those that contribute to projects, rather than just for those who manage them.” SharedPlan’s PM software tools are designed for all project participants, from first-time project managers, individual contributors, or small team leaders to full-time project managers or department heads.

SharedPlan Software was founded with the recognition that the larger the project, the less the project manager is capable of knowing about the entire undertaking. This knowledge gap is one of the key causes of project failure. Because of the expense and complexity of traditional PM software, it is only useful for the project manager and does nothing to address this knowledge gap. The combination of SharedPlan Pro and Central form a complete toolkit that greatly improves the likelihood of project success by enabling all project team members, from individual contributors to professional project managers, to participate in the creation and maintenance of the project plan. This collaborative environment is enabled by SharedPlan’s products’ multiplatform capabilities, pricing, ease-of-use, and content-sharing features.

Pro 5.4 is available for immediate purchase.

We’ve decided to extend our 50% off sale. We’re not sure when we’ll end it but we will provide plenty of notice before doing so.

Our products are available for purchase at:

http://www.sharedplan.com/buy.html

We’re please to release Pro 5.3 which now supports loading reusable resources packages from Central.

This is a great way to rapidly apply resources to your project and not need to reenter the information each time you apply a resource to a project.

Pro is available for immediate download at:
http://www.sharedplan.com/getsharedplan.html

Central is always available at:
https://www.sharedplan.net

Reusable Resources
Resources are a key component of every project – whether those resources are people, equipment, or material. And, most of us draw resources from a pool for each project. Our customers have told us that when they plan a project they would like to have a common resource pool and select the ones required for the new project.

Well, we’ve added reusable resources to SharedPlan Central and of course integrated them with the project editors in Pro and the Central so they are easy to apply to your projects.

We’ve also taken it a step further so that you can create reusable resource packages which allow you to pool resources into convenient groups.

Basecamp® Import
Basecamp is a popular tool that many people use for day to day management of projects. In some ways, Basecamp is a competitor to SharedPlan but, we believe SharedPlan’s strength in project planning combined with Basecamp give our customers a stronger set of tools with which to plan and successfully complete their projects.

We’ve added support for importing projects from Basecamp and into SharedPlan Central. It’s quick and easy, just login to Central, click on Tools and Help and then click on Import Basecamp Project and follow the instructions.

We don’t plan to stop with just import and are working on support for exporting projects to Basecamp.

More Email Collaboration
We’ve expanded the email collaboration options in Pro and Central. In Pro there is a new option under the Collaborate menu that will allow you to send email to all project resources. In the Central project editor when you open the Resources panel you’ll see an Email All button that will do just what you think. (Thanks to Scott for the suggestion!)

Also, the next time you are in Central you’ll notice that in several places where there are email addresses you will be able to click on the address and send email.

More Is In The Works

As you may know, our future product features are largely driven by feedback from customers so if there is something you need please let us know.

You’ll be hearing from us again in the next month or so with another list of improvements. So, stay tuned…

We’re celebrating the successful completion of four years in business by offering 50% off SharedPlan Pro and SharedPlan Personal project management software for Mac OS X and Windows.

This is a limited time offer.

You can get more information on this sale at:

http://www.sharedplan.com/buy.html

The next time you upgrade your copy of SharedPlan Pro or Personal project management software for Mac OS X and Windows don’t blink because the downloads are now much, much faster.

We believe this is a small but important improvement because it will save you and our future customers precious time.

We’ve just released version 5.2 of our SharedPlan Pro project management software for Mac OS X, and Windows.

Pro 5.2 includes numerous bug fixes as well as the ability to send email to all resources on the project.

SharedPlan Pro 5.2 project management software for Mac OS X, and Windows is available for immediate download at:

http://www.sharedplan.com/getsharedplan.html

Last summer we introduced our online Gantt chart project editor as the latest project management tool available through SharedPlan Central. At the time, we denoted it as beta. Today, we’re pleased to inform you that the project editor is no longer in beta.

But, some things don’t change: we always appreciate and value your feedback and we’re continuing to improve all of our products. Please let us know how our products can better suit your needs.

We’ve just released SharedPlan Pro version 5.1.

Pro 5.1 has improved navigation in the Visual Plan editor as well as a number of bug fixes. To see the improved navigation, just right click in the canvas area of the Visual Plan editor and you’ll see what we mean. This was added based on customer feedback.

As always, Pro (our project management software for Mac OS X and Windows) is available at:

http://www.sharedplan.com/getsharedplan.html