Claremont Controls

HORNET SOFTWARE Business Resource Management
Release Notes: Windmill V7.2.1d

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Activity Data Panel

The following topics and areas have been revised for release 7.2.1d of Hornet Windmill.
  1. Cursor movement on the Activity Data Grids has been extended to allow automatic scrolling of the cell marquee from the end of one row to the first column on the next row (cursor right), and similarly from column 1 to the last column of the previous row (cursor left).
    This is added to both the Main Data Grid and the grid displays on Secondary Panels (e.g. precedents, successors, resource allocations etc.). On the secondary panels any columns shown greyed (non-edit) will be skipped; this does not apply to the Main Activity Data Grid.
  2. On the Activity Data Grid the key press SHIFT + RETURN will return the cell marquee to the first column of the next data row.
  3. The menu items Open Parent and Open Sub Network on the File menu will now retain the current loaded Select and Sort file; formerly the default SAS file was loaded. This change allows existing selection criteria (e.g. by resource) to be retained during the change of network. Should the existing SAS file fail to select any activities in the new network, then Hornet will automatically revert to the default SAS file.
  4. A new item View Clip File Contents... has been added to the Edit menu. This option will list the activities that are currently held in the Hornet clip file following a previous Paste action.
  5. A new section Activity Proposed Dates has been added to the Schedule menu. This displays a list of options for setting or releasing Proposed Dates, either Hard Dates or Soft Dates, for all selected or marked rows on the Activity Data Grid. Formerly you could only set/release these dates on an activity by activity basis, but these new options will apply the changes to all selected activities as a form of global edit. Further details on this topic are included in the help.

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Standard Reports and Report Instructions

The following topics and areas have been revised for release 7.2.1d of Hornet Windmill.
  1. On all standard Bar Chart Reports the current project date (time now) is drawn as a vertical double line in red (previously it was marked on each row as a star symbol in black). All standard Graphics Bar Chart Symbols (.GBS) and Legend (.LGD) files have been revised to specify the new style. If you use your own custom GBS files in your reports then you should change the following entry in the file:-
    Symbol Code
    PR_DATE
    Bar Style
    LINE
    Fill/Symbol Code
    LNDSOLID
    Colour Code
    RED
    To restore the previous star symbol for project date change the entry in the GBS file to:-
    Symbol Code
    PR_DATE
    Bar Style
    SYMBOL
    Fill/Symbol Code
    3
    Colour Code
    BLACK
    The Project Date can also be added to Histogram reports, drawing a vertical marker from top to bottom on the histogram report. By default this is NOT shown so if required you will need to add an entry similar to that for the Bar Chart in the current Graphics Histogram Symbols (GHS) file; a Symbol Code named PR_DATE must be defined.
  2. On all standard Bar Chart reports a new option to show or exclude activity Target Date Symbols has been added to the Barstyle tab of the report control panel. The default action is not to include Target Date Symbols, so check this item if you wish to include them. The facility is supported by the BARLINE command and can therefore be added to your own custom reports. Previously the Target Date Symbols were controlled by including/excluding the entries from the current .GBS utility file, this new option makes control of this option much easier.
  3. The inclusion of bar labelling on Standard Bar Chart Reports has been amended; the positioning of activity numbers in front of bars and text above bars is more accurate. The use of these labels on reports has been extended to cover the 'grouped' style of bars (either individual bars or shown as a summary bar) and the fisheye bar chart styles.
  4. On Bar Chart and Histogram reports the calendar timescale drawing has been enhanced by centring all month text and displaying digits accurately within each section of the calendar. This gives a neater appearance when drawn on all report page sizes.
  5. The MULTIBAR function has been extended to allow bars to be added to the display using the current activity Colour Style and Fill Style settings. This will be useful for custom reports where the bars are positioned on the report in relation to specific date calculations.
  6. On all tabular reports numeric parameters are now always drawn right justified within the column area defined for the value. This change improves the look of tabular reports produced through GraWin as it overcomes the general problems of aligning numeric values when proportional width fonts are used when printing the report.
  7. In reports the names displayed for Resources and Calendars are now formatted in a lower-case style with just a leading capital letter (formerly these were displayed entirely in upper-case). This change improves the appearance of the reports and minimises instances of item names over-writing following data columns on the report. On Bar Chart Reports, the symbols drawn to represent Dummy and Key activity types have been moved slightly. Now zero duration activities are drawn at the start of the Start Date (formerly the Finish Date was used), whilst 1 day activities are drawn with the symbol centred in the day. This improves the legibility of the report and ties in better with the logic links when they are included on the report.

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Database Transfer - MPX Format Files

The Hornet Windmill Database Transfer utility provides for the import and export of data in MPX file format (mpx.dio). Hornet Windmill uses the MPX Version 4.0, which allows project data to read from other systems (such as Microsoft Project) and also output for use by other packages. Consult the help pages for details on using this facility.

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Other Revisions

The following topics and areas have been revised for release 7.2.1d of Hornet Windmill.
  1. Within the definition of Management Codes and Heading Codes, the specification of code items including embedded space characters is illegal. This in now trapped by Hornet and will not be accepted until a valid entry is specified.
  2. For projects where days are split into two or more shifts, the option of Load Standard Shutdowns on the Calendar Management panel will now register incoming dates as spanning the entire day (i.e. finish on the last shift in each day).
  3. Within Calendar Management the option to Load Standard Shutdowns can be extended to offer a range of holiday dates, rather than just the single set of holidays read from file SHUTDOWN.HOR. Further details on this are included in the main help pages.
  4. In the Resource Spreadsheet a number of enhancements have been completed to make it easier to calculate and sum resource profiles, and to make the operation of the panel faster when updating or reading in resource profile values.
  5. The grid prompt facilities in the Utility edit section for Legend (LGD) files has been enhanced. Prompts for colour and fill style use the 16 option dialog panel, whilst the list box prompts are shown for styles based on LINE or SYMBOL types. If you wish to bypass the colour and fill panels, press CTRL + T to activate the original text prompt panels for these values. The same displays have been applied to Graphics Bar Chart Symbols (GBS) and Graphics Histogram Symbols (GHS) files.

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