Merlin Project Express - Gantt

Overall, I like this app very much. It is significantly less expensive to RENT than Merlin Project, and noticeably less powerful. Most of the professional Project Management features of Merlin Project won't be missed - but a few will be. For example, there's no view or report that shows a resource is overbooked (as far as I can see). It's important to note that the FILES are compatible between Project Express and Merlin Project, so you can always rent its big brother to get a missing view or report.

For the price of a latte per month, you can have a powerful tool for building and managing projects. The beauty of Merlin is you can keep it simple or deep dive into utilizations and cost. Need to get a project approved by management? You can quickly create colorful Gannt charts and export them to your presentation software. Did someone in your group build an MS project program and you just want to look at it? Merlin reads and writes MS Project. Don't have a Mac? For the same price of MS Project you can buy a new Macbook Merlin. Or buy an iPad and Merlin for half the cost ,keep your Windows machine and buy 100 lattes.

I've been using this app for a couple of years already and while lately the developers have improved the UI and made some meaningful changes, I still run into extremely frustrating situation. Either resource assignments don't calculate correctly or you get conflict warnings without any explanation or simply basic controls are burried and takes forever to do simple operation. That's why I love it and a hate it at the same time!

Complete crap! Already subscribed but keeps on asking me to subscribe again and again.

I actually like this app, but it doesn’t let me subscribe to extend my service. Wish I could use it. Reaching out to the developer, but may need to look for another app.

First, allow me to qualify myself - I am a Project Management Professional with 30 years experience in project management and have been teaching project management, including MS Project, for the past 18 years. My first impression is that it is fairly decent tool and pretty easy to use if you know the best practices in scheduling. Note: I have not explored the muti-user, complex functions of the SW. I have only used the sheduling portion of the SW. That’s OK becauese I have found the rescorce planning and loading in all scheduling tools to be require a so much investment in time to set up and maintain as to be cost prohibitive. That said, in the several days I have taken to explore Merlin, I suggest the following improvements: 1. Incude all the task relatonships. Only FS and SS are included. FF in particular is missing and most useful. SF should be included for completeness. 2. There is no network diagram view. While this view to look at the overall projct is generally imposssible to fit on one screen in a useful way, the network view is most useful in finding “hangers” and to check that all the necessary predecessors are defined and there are no incorrect ones. 3. The calendar assumes a 40 hour 5 day workweek. It does not allow a 7 day workweek unless you schedule 24 hours a day and 168 hour workweek. 4. The user manual documentaton found in the trial version of “Help” is merely a description of the each screen. If does not provide detailed informtion on how to use the functions of the SW. For example, there is not listing of supported predecessor relationships or how the calendar variables interact. Allow me to qualify myself so you can validte the veracity of my comments - I am a Project Management Professional with 30 years experience in project management and have been teaching project management, including MS Project, for the past 18 years. I rated it 4 stars because it does comply in large measure with best practices, is reasonabley intuitive and is available at a reasonable cost.

I would have paid for annual subscription if it came with the 30 trial period, as it states iin the app store.