All,

My company is currently working on an application for Mac that combines the features of an outliner with columns (with multiple field types) with those of a calendar and a timeline view.

The app also has very powerful filtering features allowing the filtering of what appears in outline, timeline and calendar views.

for those of you interested watch out for its release in April or May on the Mac App Store.

We have a long term road map of planned features.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
Peter

From the name of the application and from what you describe as its main features, this sounds as if it is primarily intended as a task and project planning tool. Is that correct?

Peter -- you have to know you cannot post a teaser like that on the home of CRIMPing without telling us more more more -- LOL

Like, perhaps, is there a beta coming along that we can apply to join? Or maybe some screenshots?

SheetPlanner wrote:

for those of you interested watch out for its release in April or May on
the Mac App Store.

Sounds seriously cool. But as Paul says - go on, let us have a couple of teasers. Maybe some alpha/beta screenshots? That's guaranteed to have CRIMPers salivating!

Hi,
Anyone know how to post screenshots on this board?
Peter

SheetPlanner wrote:

Hi,
Anyone know how to post screenshots on this board?
Peter

I don't think you can. Maybe just link to screenshots hosted elsewhere ?

Hugh,
I think the way to look at it is as a tool to organize information (often task or activity type information), plan it (when do you want to do what) and then act upon it. Organize, Plan, Act.

It will allow you to go from a 50,000 view of your goals, milestones on a yearly to quarterly to monthly perspective (on a timeline) down to 5 foot (an individual task).

It will be ideal for lightweight project management but its incredibly flexible, I could see people using it for all sorts of things, managing lists, rudimentary CRM. It will have some simple calculation functions built in to begin with and later a full calculation engine.

One really cool feature is how it will use tabs. Tabs will allow multiple views of your data. One tab could be a complete outline, another tab could be a filtered list. Each tab can have its own combination of outliner and timeline or outliner and calendar or just outline, timeline or calendar.

Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Peter

Hugh,
I think the way to look at it is as a tool to organize information (often task or activity type information), plan it (when do you want to do what) and then act upon it. Organize, Plan, Act.

It will allow you to go from a 50,000 view of your goals, milestones on a yearly to quarterly to monthly perspective (on a timeline) down to 5 foot (an individual task).

It will be ideal for lightweight project management but its incredibly flexible, I could see people using it for all sorts of things, managing lists, rudimentary CRM. It will have some simple calculation functions built in to begin with and later a full calculation engine.

One really cool feature is how it will use tabs. Tabs will allow multiple views of your data. One tab could be a complete outline, another tab could be a filtered list. Each tab can have its own combination of outliner and timeline or outliner and calendar or just outline, timeline or calendar.

Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Peter

Paul,
Yes we will do a beta in March. Please provide me your contact info to be added to the beta list.

I invite anyone else who wishes to participate in a beta to send me their email address and contact info.

Thanks,
Peter

peterdavey29@me.com

Hi,
Do you know how to post screenshots on this board?
Peter

The only way we've done it is to put them on a site like Dropbox and post the link here.

https://www.facebook.com/sheetplanner/


Some screenshots on the Facebook page.

Well, that looks suitably dribble-worthy - much more useful than the rather hopeless OmniOutliner multi-column view, especially if you're intending to build a calculation engine as well.

Can you attach external files? Such as PDFs and graphics/images?

Cheers,
Bill

Bill,
Yes. Check Facebook page again.
Peter

Oops, missed that. I will indeed!

Hi all,

I added a couple of screenshots of the Timeline view which has just come out of development.

https://www.facebook.com/sheetplanner/

Thanks,
Peter

Looking good - I'm excited!

Peter -- looks cool. Also looks a lot like a "standard" project planning tool -- MS Project, Merlin Project. I don't see anything in the screen shot that I cannot do in MS Project. (Believe me, MS Project is execrable, so anything can be better than it.)

So help us understand the difference between what you're building and what's already out there in the market?

SheetPlanner wrote:

Hi all,

I added a couple of screenshots of the Timeline view which has just come
out of development.

https://www.facebook.com/sheetplanner/

Thanks,
Peter

Paul,
Those two screenshots yesterday give it a very PM Flavor....so I can see what you mean.

...however thats just one side of the app.

The app has 3 major components. Outliner with standard and custom columns. Timeline View. Calendar View. We will add other view types in later versions.

There are powerful filters and the ability to link to files in your filesystem and view them in tabs.

Speaking of tabs, you can have as many as you want and each tab can have its own combination of outline, timeline, calendar.

The tabs are not different documents but different views of the same document. This means for example you could have an entire outline in one tab and filtered list in another (like for example a list of items due in a particular week or day or whatever you can think of that you can specify in a filter).

I have to think about the marketing for the product and have not really done so yet. Right now I think of it in terms of a tool to organize, plan and then act upon your projects and todo's.

Its also document rather than database based, so the documents are portable. You might choose to use individual documents for separate projects or purposes.

I think the best way to think about it is that its a multipurpose information management tool. A bit like ECCO.

Hope this helps.
Peter

Sounds more than "a bit" like ECCO, which makes me very happy. Nothing since 1997 has come close.

Am I correct that SheetPlanner will allow me to save multiple tabs, each of which shows a different filtered view of the same data, much like the Notepads in Ecco?

2nd question: one of the (many) best features of Ecco was that in a Dropdown Column, I could select more than one dropdown value for any item. Will I be able to do that for SheetPlanner?

Thanks much - can't wait to try this out.


SheetPlanner wrote:

I think the best way to think about it is that its a multipurpose
information management tool. A bit like ECCO.

Peter

Excellent features, Peter.

I'm in. When do we see the product on the market?

Hey Rogbar,

The document saves automatically and since each tab is just another view of the content there is no need to save each tab.

Version 1 allows just one selection in a dropdown list in a a list column type. We will look to add multiple selections at a later date.

Thanks,
Peter

Paul,
I think we will get it to market by June if not sooner.


The product is remarkably bug free so it makes me optimistic about the beta cycle.

Thanks,
Peter

So if I close the document and open it tomorrow, the same tabs will appear?

Also, in your original post, you mentioned a long term road map of planned features. Can you share some of those with us now?


SheetPlanner wrote:

Hey Rogbar,

The document saves automatically and since each tab is just another view
of the content there is no need to save each tab.

Version 1 allows just one selection in a dropdown list in a a list
column type. We will look to add multiple selections at a later date.

Thanks,
Peter

Rogbar,
If you close the window hitting the red traffic light it closes the window and all its tabs. That state is remembered and yes when you reopen the document, the tabs state is restored.

Command W closes tabs, so you have to get used to not hitting command tab to close a document if you want the tab state maintained when you reopen the document.

The roadmap for 1.1 will be things like data entry helpers, (timestamps, serial numbers), picture column type, maybe a template browser and system notifications.

The long term roadmap is extensive, basically every feature you have ever wished for!!!

When we get 1.0 out, I will think more about releasing the roadmap.
Peter