Gant for .NET 3.0 Includes Scheduling Engine for Custom Application Development
ILOG®, a leading provider of enterprise-class software application components and services, has announced ILOG Gant for .NET™ 3.0, the industry's first Gant chart graphics tool for the .NET environment with a customizable pre-built project management capability. The latest addition to its award-winning visualization suite, Gant for .NET 3.0 will increase flexibility in the development of custom, feature-rich project administration applications that meet the budget and business requirements.
Today, thousands of organizations rely on project planning and scheduling programs for project timeline management, allocation of resources, and reporting of information. To deliver these applications, solution authors have been relying on pre-built, off-the-shelf applications that may not adapt to their unique organizational needs or budgets; or have been forced to build home-grown software applications that can be costly and time-consuming. ILOG Gant for .NET was developed to help attend to this critical need.
Custom Project Management
The new "project management Option" in Gant for .NET provides a comprehensive tool set for designing a visually-rich user interface and a scheduling engine that adds project scheduling capabilities to a Gant chart. This functionality provides the foundation for a pre-built planning and scheduling of projects automated solution that can be deployed across the entire enterprise "as-is" or customized to the organization's own specifications in Visual Basic or C#. It also allows application engineers to quickly create and deploy custom project programsin a more cost-effective and time-efficient manner. For example, a software solution author can easily implement a new way of managing custom calendars for special working hours and days (i.e. vacations, holidays), so that tasks are automatically adjusted and assigned to available people.
Through seamless integration with Visual Studio .NET, software developers can now modify the data connection, scheduling algorithms, user interface and interaction and rapidly configure and deploy the appropriate project management solution. The "Project Management Option" in ILOG Gant for .NET 3.0 also includes server-side and client-side support allowing deployment to the Web or the desktop, so the application can be shared with customers, partners, or suppliers -- a feature not available in the off-the-shelf software applications.
More Intuitive and More Interactive Gant Charts
In addition to the custom "project administration Option", other key new features in ILOG Gantt for .NET 3.0 include flexible "TreeTables" -- a new interface option which makes the grouping of tasks easier because users can group rows according to user preferences. In addition, new workforce scheduling and reservation controls allow resources to be aligned with available working hours and project time. The new version also includes more expressive styles, for example when the project reservation unit takes less than 100% of the assigned resource the activity bar can become semi- transparent, making it clearer for the end-user.
More Services with Less Code
Interactions in the Gant chart are now based on the style definition enabling easier editing of data with less code. For example, when a style defines a bar for displaying the "PercentComplete" property, no code is required to edit this property, the interaction is set automatically. In addition, ILOG Gant for .NET 3.0 now enables user-defined properties to be added to the model so that it is automatically supported by the SDXL format. This facilitates easier localization of the final software solution so when it is deployed to different countries, the provided resource files can be translated with a tool that automatically creates the satellite assemblies for that location.
W2G, a leading provider of building design software applications, developed a new construction management software solution, Integra(TM), using ILOG Gant for .NET to chart and schedule every aspect of the complex building process.
"ILOG's Gant for .NET overwhelmingly reduced the time and cost required to build the Integra software application," said W2G Development Manager, Paul Usher. "In addition to the product's rich functionality, ease of use, real-time charting capabilities and overall quality, we've been able to save at least six months' development time just in not having to worry about doing feature control. It's an absolutely awesome product!"
ILOG has invested more than a decade creating sophisticated graphics tools and engines that enhance decision making speed and ability by making vast quantities of complex data more comprehensible and manageable for users. Through its Java, .NET and C++ graphics libraries and components, ILOG provides the industry's most comprehensive set of graphics tools that support everything from air traffic control and homeland security, to ensuring the reliability of the most demanding telecommunications networks. With each of ILOG's visualization products, programmers can save 50 to 80 percent of development time in creating user displays.
Launched in January 2004, ILOG Gant for .NET was the first Gant chart available for the C# programming language. ILOG Gant for .NET 3.0 is available immediately.
