Author Archives: Perri Pappas

How would you do it?

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Hi, this is me Perri…

in a project in support I have seen the following milestones configuration:

Start to Start

The 2 milestones are linked by a start to start linkage and the finish to start linkage is used only for the next activities.

If I were to setup these 4 Merlin project lines, I would have connected the milestones by a finish to start linkage as well.

I am wondering thought whether this is a better way… Milestones have no work or duration settings, so it does not make any difference whether you connect them by start to start or  finish to start. So you could do either way, right?

From what I can tell, this configuration makes easier to read such a project chunk. Here is how it would look like in a finish to start linkage:Finish to start

But how would you do it?

Jogger thoughts – Part II

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Hi, this is Perri…

remember me?  I am Perri Pappas, the girl from Greece, doing her internship by ProjectWizards and trying to learn all about Project Management and Merlin there is to know. Do you remember my jogger thoughts? I was jogging and thinking that my daily jogging training was a project I could setup in Merlin. While running I had mentally listed all activities thinkable, I had defined all linkages necessary, I used milestones to state the change of status of the various phases. I even considered publishing the project for the iPhone and entering the actuals on the run by the Merlin iPhone app. I was very happy about my project. I really thought my project plan was complete. Are you wondering why I speak in past tense?

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The best is yet to come…

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Hi, this is me Perri…

I was hearing the other day this song, and I could not help myself but to hum its melody…

Surely I have learned many things about Merlin in my first 5 weeks of internship by ProjectWizards, but there is so much more for me to discover. Here I have colleagues that not only know their software product but also have profound experience in Project Management. They know when to enter the planned values and actuals on the activities or to the assignments, when to use utilization or work percentages, whether or not to enter values in percentage or in time units, whether to link the activity groups or their contained sub-activities, which calendar to apply for which conditions, which report to call on which occasion and so much more…

I am so happy to have applied by ProjectWizards for an internship and that I could start… The best is yet to come. I am sure about that! 🙂

Where do the activities go?

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Hi, this is me Perri…

have you ever wondered where the activity snippets go, when placed into Merlin’s Library? No? Not really? Well, I did yesterday. I had noticed an inconsistency in the items listed in my Library in comparison to these of my colleagues. Some of the activities I had saved there, where outdated. To solve this I simply removed the outdated items from the Library and asked my colleagues for the right files. As soon as I received the files I have inserted them into my Library by  drag & drop. Fine, but where did my colleagues knew, where to find the files I needed?

Curious as I am, I have asked them so now I know. Next time I need the original files of my activity snippets or documents I have dropped in Merlin’s Library, I am going to check the following path:

~/Library/Application Support/Merlin/Library/

UPDATE: This information or the location of other special paths can be found in Merlin help and also here.