A few people asked in previous threads to be kept informed about Hyper Plan v2. Its now out! You can download a free trial for Windows or Mac and find out more about what's new here:
http://www.hyperplan.com/hyperplan_v201.html

In v1 I concentrated first on proving that there was a market for the basic concept and getting the right basic functionality. In v2 I have concentrated mainly on making it more polished and easy to use, based on my own experiences using it, lots of great customers feedback and also some input from a usability expert I employed.

Some eye candy:
http://www.hyperplan.com/assets/images/HyperPlanV2.png

Any feedback is very welcome.

Congratulations on v2 Andy. I just purchased the upgrade and it looks good. Useful features have been added too, but it will take me some time to explore these. Swamped with work right now.

Jon

Andy,

Thanks for the notice. The improvements look very substantial. I am considering a purchase. Am I reading your license correctly when I interpret it that I can use Hyperplan on both a PC and a Mac with the same license?

Thank you.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Andy,

Thanks for the notice. The improvements look very substantial. I am
considering a purchase. Am I reading your license correctly when I
interpret it that I can use Hyperplan on both a PC and a Mac with the
same license?

Stephen

Yes. A license allows you to install Hyper Plan on up to 5 computers (PC and/or Mac) for your own use. You can also move Hyper Plan data files between PC and Mac (they are text/xml).

Very nice upgrade. I appreciate the upgraders' discount. Thanks Andy.

HyperPlan v2 will be on 'bitsdujour' soon, with a 50% discount.
I should have known that last week...

HyperPlan v2 will be on ‘bitsdujour’ soon, with a 50% discount.

Yes it will. It was arranged with BDJ quite a while back. New licenses will be $20 instead of $40 during the sale. But only new licenses are discounted, not upgrades from v1 to v2 (which are already discounted 60%).

BDJ and similar deal sites are a bit of a faustian bargain for vendors. On the minus side they discount 50% and take a comission of 50%, so we only get $10 per sale. That's not great for us, especially when we still have to provide technical support. Also people who have recently paid $40 and find out about the 50% off sale can get buyers remorse. On the plus side we get exposure to a new audience and hopefully we can make money from upgrades further down the line.

If anyone has bought a new license for Hyper Plan for $40 in the last few weeks and is feeling buyers remorse because they missed the sale, email me:
http://www.hyperplan.com/contact.html

I had considered posting a discount coupon here. But I thought would be crossing a line into inappropriate self promotion.

Thanks Andy. Looking forward to using v2.

Do you have your own forum for users? I'm guessing there might be some emerging use cases or good practices that users would want to share if you had your own place to discuss them.

Paul Korm wrote:

Do you have your own forum for users? I'm guessing there might be some
emerging use cases or good practices that users would want to share if
you had your own place to discuss them.

Currently I don't. An active forum is a real asset to both the users and the vendor. But a dead forum is a bit of an embarrassment for the vendor. So I just need to judge when is the right time. I really like the discourse.org forum software.

Understood. Thanks Andy. You're a pretty gregarious fellow, I imagine, and a developer who's open to to the customer's interests and opinion. So, I'm sure a forum would be lively.

Absolutely agree with using Discourse over phpbb, a custom job, or any other the other existing options. Forums that use Discourse offer more flexibility to everyone Just having the ability to edit or withdraw one posts is huge. I've heard it can be a struggle to implement and manage though.

Andy Brice wrote

I really like the discourse.org forum software.

Paul Korm wrote:

Absolutely agree with using Discourse over phpbb, a custom job, or any
other the other existing options. Forums that use Discourse offer more
flexibility to everyone Just having the ability to edit or withdraw
one posts is huge. I've heard it can be a struggle to implement and
manage though.

I would use a third party that offers discourse hosting. It is too much of a time drain to keep updating the software myself.

Paul Korm wrote:

>Do you have your own forum for users? I'm guessing there might be some emerging use cases or good practices that users would want to share if you had your own place to discuss them.

Andy Brice wrote:

Currently I don't. An active forum is a real asset to both the users and the vendor. But a dead forum is a bit of an embarrassment for the vendor. So I just need to judge when is the right time. I really like the discourse.org forum software.

@Andy
FWIW, as HyperPlan and InfoQube are both about information management, offering 2 different solutions, mostly complementary, and in waiting to have your own forum, you can certainly piggy back on the IQ Community Forum.

If you are at all interested, it would take me a grand total of 2 minutes max to create a new forum board dedicated to HyperPlan, no cost of course !
Who knows, perhaps a synergy between the two programs and user groups can be created.

It's no Discourse, but Drupal based and still a nice place to share !

HTH !

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer
http://www.infoqube.biz
http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=tracker

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

FWIW, as HyperPlan and InfoQube are both about information management,
offering 2 different solutions, mostly complementary, and in waiting to
have your own forum, you can certainly piggy back on the IQ Community
Forum.

If you are at all interested, it would take me a grand total of 2
minutes max to create a new forum board dedicated to HyperPlan, no cost
of course !
Who knows, perhaps a synergy between the two programs and user groups
can be created.

It's no Discourse, but Drupal based and still a nice place to share !

Pierre

That is kind, thank you. However I would definitely need to 'own' my forum. And it seems that managed discourse hosting is available from only $20/mo: https://www.discoursehosting.com/

InfoQube looks interesting and quite different in approach to Hyper Plan. So maybe there is some possibility for cross promotion at some point. Email me in a few months if you are interested (very busy with v2 right now!).

I notice that you have a portable version that runs off a USB stick. A few Hyper Plan users have asked for that. Do you just look for a .ini file in the same folder as the executable and read preferences from that (otherwise store them in the registry)?

BTW I noticed a typo on the home page:

"MS Word and Excel users have read and use your IQ data"

Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

Andy Brice wrote:

InfoQube looks interesting and quite different in approach to Hyper Plan. So maybe there is some possibility for cross promotion at some point. Email me in a few months if you are interested (very busy with v2 right now!).

I notice that you have a portable version that runs off a USB stick. A few Hyper Plan users have asked for that. Do you just look for a .ini file in the same folder as the executable and read preferences from that (otherwise store them in the registry)?

BTW I noticed a typo on the home page: "MS Word and Excel users have read and use your IQ data"

Hi Andy,

- Always open to collaboration. It's a tough world out there for developers, so we need all the help we can get !
- Re: Portable app: I've sent you a private email (from the HyperPlan contacts page) with detailed info on how to do it. HTH...
- Thanks, Fixed. I also updated some of the stuff there which was pretty outdated !

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer

Would the good folk of this forum like to share how they are using Hyper Plan (outside bog standard project management)?

I like the idea of the program - it reminds me of the Outlook plugin TaskCracker, which I use daily - but I'm a bit stumped for inspiration on how I'd use the software. I'm not sure that my life is complicated enough to require it. But I can feel a CRIMP coming on and I think I'd like to be persuaded I'm wrong!

;-)

Graham

Graham Rhind wrote:

Would the good folk of this forum like to share how they are using Hyper
Plan (outside bog standard project management)?

I like the idea of the program - it reminds me of the Outlook plugin
TaskCracker, which I use daily - but I'm a bit stumped for inspiration
on how I'd use the software. I'm not sure that my life is complicated
enough to require it. But I can feel a CRIMP coming on and I think I'd
like to be persuaded I'm wrong!

;-)

Graham

Possibly not the inspiration you're looking for, but check out "The Mechanic" (Charles Bronson) - back in the day, he only had a cork board to work with.

@Graham

Would the good folk of this forum like to share how they are using Hyper Plan (outside bog standard project management)?

Pretty much anything where you have discrete items/orders/tasks that you want to display in a structured visual form. Especially the sort of things you would otherwise do by sticking post-it notes to the wall or making a list/table in Excel.

One that I know about (from support emails) include:

-production management
-sales pipeline tracking
-document management
-music database visualization
-sports fixture scheduling

I used it to track buying Christmas presents. With a card for each present to be purchased. Card properties=bought by, bought for, status (to buy/ordered/arrived/wrapped) and cost. ;0)

Graham Rhind wrote:

Would the good folk of this forum like to share how they are using Hyper
Plan (outside bog standard project management)?

I like the idea of the program - it reminds me of the Outlook plugin
TaskCracker, which I use daily - but I'm a bit stumped for inspiration
on how I'd use the software. I'm not sure that my life is complicated
enough to require it. But I can feel a CRIMP coming on and I think I'd
like to be persuaded I'm wrong!

Graham

Other than planning, scheduling staff and patients, and tracking I use it for demonstration purposes. This is going to sound crazy, but most people I encounter do not get pivot tables. Hyper Plan allows you to see information in a variety of ways. During the demonstration, most have the "ah-ha" moment. And yes, I know that IQ is capable of the same thing and much more, but this is simpler and more visual.

Jon