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July 06, 2009
Behind the scenes of Planzone: Interview with Chris Immel, software developer at Planzone
1. Hey Chris, thanks for taking the time to do this interview! To start off, could you present yourself briefly?
Sure. I’m a software developer, filmmaker, and musician. I grew up in the US in and near Austin, Texas, then lived in New York while going to film school, and finally came to Paris to make my first feature film and work on Planzone.
2. So you are not only a developer but also a film director and musician. Why are you still fascinated by a project like Planzone?
Constructing a piece of software for me is in many ways a lot like making a movie or a piece of music: one works quietly for months or years sculpting something that consists entirely of pure information, always striving for it to not only “work,” but to also in some ways be elegant and economical—even beautiful—both internally and externally. In both cases, I find a lot of pleasure in working on something that is well designed and built.
3. You have been at Planzone since March 2008. Why did you decide to work for Augeo Software?
I like both the team and the project. There are smart people here who are good to work with, and they have put together an excellent product that is fun to contribute to.
4. What exactly is Planzone and what is so special about it?
Planzone is a Web application for project management. It facilitates planning and collaboration for small- to medium-sized teams. I think that some of what is special about it is that it manages to be quite powerful while at the same time being very straightforward to use and flexible enough to work well both in traditional top-down management scenarios and in more democratic, collaborative settings.
5. You developed a lot of “intuitive” features, like drag and drop in the timeline … these web 2.0 features are great, but are they easy to develop?
Very little about developing a Web application is easy. It must run on every major Web browser and operating system, and it must be responsive and “intuitive” enough to produce the illusion of being an application running directly on the user’s desktop. Web browsers (and the Web itself) were not designed or intended to be application platforms, so accomplishing this often requires a very complicated invisible dance behind the glass and across the Internet to make something very simple happen on screen. But then, when it all works, it comes out looking easy, and one has all the advantages of an application that is accessible from anywhere.
6. In three words, Planzone is:
Flexible, Clean, and Reliable.
Chris, I thank you for the interview!
You’re welcome, Franziska!
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June 30, 2009
Hablan español? Si?!! Us too!
The summer begins and Planzone, the project management and collaboration software enlarges its service for you! By the end of July you can collaborate with all your colleagues, partners and clients from Spain or South America as Planzone will be fully available in Spanish! You can already create your project team – there is no longer an excuse not to use Planzone! Please send us your feedback or any other expectations at feedback@planzone.com! Thanks!
Enjoy the summer and “Hasta luego”!
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June 25, 2009
TRAINEE – WEB MARKETING & COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
Main responsibilities
Strengthen the web identity of www.planzone.com and manage various on-line / off-line communities and marketing initiatives:
• Publish on-line content (post, photo, video, interview) about the life in our projects, events, experiences and team members’ feelings
• Manage our blogs and groups (facebook): moderation, bug tracking
• Research, analyze, publish and share articles around the social business concept, with danone.communities’ initiative as examples
• Animate our community through weekly newsletter : from text to design
• Initiate new dynamics (360 PR : on-line and off-line) to create buzz around the subject of managing projects using collaborative tools
• Design a strategy where we can facilitate the contribution of internal and external communities (subscribers, shareholders, students, opinion leaders, general public, projects teams) in this mission.
Qualifications required
• Inquisitive personality, enthusiastic about social business, innovation and web2.0 dynamics
• Good understanding of issues and web2.0 dynamics
• Creativity and reactivity, ability to generate new ideas
• At ease with web2.0 tools: blog, facebook, twitter, RSS… Familiarity with web tools (basic skills with graphic design applications such as Photoshop, web admin tools and HTML code)
• Organization, anticipation
• Autonomy, initiative
• “Doers” attitude
• At ease in an international environment and fully fluent in French and English
• Location is Paris, France. Can assist in relocation / accommodation
• Duration of the internship between 3 to 12 months. Start ASAP
• Contact email : intern@planzone.com
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June 23, 2009
Upgrade your project team to latest self-management methods with the new Firefox plugin – now in Planzone!
We are proud to announce the release of our new Planzone plugin. From now on you will be able to create, check and complete your to-dos, without even being logged into your personal online workspace in Planzone. The plugin displays all your open to-dos, which are sorted by projects. Furthermore you can switch from one Planzone to another, so you are always informed about what needs to be done on all your on-going projects.
Thus, if you just surf the internet and a new idea pops into your mind, simply click on the plugin button and create a new to-do. Or you just finished a task? – click on the plugin and mark it as completed. As usual, your to-do is going to be moved in the completed to-do list.
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June 16, 2009
You are wondering what WE are doing?! No problem – just follow us on Twitter!
It’s official, Planzone joined the Twitter Community!
From now on you can receive Planzone Tweets with: Project management
tips
and tricks, information about our latest collaboration features,
product development
updates, videos, tutorials and more…
Happy tweeting @planzoneproject!
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June 11, 2009
Planzone gets a whole bunch of new features!
Our Planzone Development team is proud to announce the release of a new Planzone version. As usually we tried to integrate your feedback and hope that you will enjoy our new features! If you have any questions or need support, please visit our Planzone Knowledge Center or use the Planzone Forum!
> Time Tracking... next monday in the Knowledge Center
* My Timesheet: A team member can enter time spent per activity and per day, and re-estimate remaining work
* Project Timesheet: The Project Manager can view all time records and integrate time spent into the project schedule, in order to recompute actual and remaining work
* A validation process allows the team member to submit his/her timesheet when it's filled
* A discussion process allows the team member and the project manager to communicate on the timesheet
> Multi-project Reports for Administrator
* Excel reports
* All open projects dashboard, with schedule and budget indicators
* Resource utilization dashboard (on last 3 months, next 3 months or current year)
* Button in toolbar to insert a Table of contents in a wiki page
* Button in toolbar to insert a Project status chart in a wiki page
* Button in toolbar to insert a Timeline in a wiki page
* Resizable editor box
> Milestone Constraints
* A milestone can be constrained by the dates of the linked activity, so that the milestone's due date is automatically recomputed whenever the activity dates are changed
* 3 types of constraints: <n> days before/after activity finish, <n> days after/before activity start, <n> % of duration
> Timeline Interaction
* Information pop-up on milestones
* Shortcut to share the Project Timeline with people external to the Planzone
* Change of activity start or finish by resizing the blue/green schedule bar
* Shift of activity dates by dragging the blue/green schedule bar
* Move vertical separator between activity tree and date/work columns
* Edition of % complete and remaining work in Resource Usage view
> Knowledge Center
* User Manual, FAQs, Videos, Glossary and interesting Articles
* Fully translated in English, French and German
* Available since early May 2009
* Now accessible from Planzone web application
> API
* First implementation of Planzone API
* Will be developed further during summer
* Sample of API client: Firefox plugin
> Miscellaneous
* Move vertical separators between left and right panels in several views (Timeline, Resource Usage, To-dos, Documents...)
* IE8 support
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June 08, 2009
Assess project profitability and monitor project progress with the new time-tracking tool
Every day, your colleagues, partners and contractors spend time working and collaborating on projects.
Timesheets enable your company to track and keep an history of completed project tasks. Hence, these may be really helpful to estimate project profitability, as well as team productivity.
The new time-tracking tool, available with the new Planzone version (released tomorrow), lets you and your team members fill-out hours spent on a given project, or even a specific project activity. Your timesheet is then only viewable by you and your project manager.Click on the image to see a larger version.
List of time tracking features:
> Fill-out time spent on on-going project activities
> Edit easily the fields not validated yet by a project manager
> Monitor global time spent by day, and by project activity
> Create discussions to ask your project manager for an extra time to complete assigned work.
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New multi-project view on workload and resource management with Planzone
Coming along with the new version released tomorrow, project managers using Planzone will be able to see and monitor cross-project information.
The first version of our multi-project view enables you to download excel files displaying resource management for the last 3 months, as well as current resource workload. You can find all these files addressing multi-project data in the "My schedule" section of your personal workspace.
Using that tool should be a great support to avoid overloading some of your team members, and thus to adopt a more realistic approach to project scheduling and anticipate potential delays on major project milestones.
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June 05, 2009
Planzone server upgrade | June 9, 2009 from 6:30 to 9:00 am
The Planzone development team has some new features ready to add to the Planzone service. We will implement them on Tuesday morning, June 9, 2009 from 6:30 to 9:00 CET. During this time, the Planzone service will be unavailable.
Most of the enhancements are based on your feedback (printing of individual to-do lists, the personal and project timesheet, all projects excel export, publishing of the timeline...).
We'll let you know when the upgrade is complete and send you an e-mail with a description of all the new features. Certainly you will find a full description of the new features on the blog....
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June 04, 2009
Print individual to-do lists before staff meetings - soon in Planzone
Within a few days, you and your project will be able to easily print your personal to-do lists from the projects you manage in Planzone.
Choose a project and click on To-dos, here you can filter the to-do list by assignee. Now you can simply click on "Print" at the upper right of the page.
This minor, but highly valuable new feature, will certainly make your project meetings more efficient, and will critically foster project communication and knowledge sharing within your project team.
