Tag Archives: Applescript

Applescript – MS Excel to Merlin

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Can I import a selected range of cell from an MS EXCEL sheet into Merlin as tasks?

Merlin can import various file formats.  For a complete list please check related topic in Merlin online help.

The official way to import MS EXCEL documents is to save them as csv files, and to open the csv file in Merlin in a second step.

  • So you select in MS EXCEL File > Save as… > Comma Separated Values (.csv)
  • You drag the csv text file to Merlin’s project listing and
  • map the fields of the csv files to Merlin columns.
  • Merlin will then import the file into the existing project.

To quicken things however, we have created a small Applescript sample, which handles the current MS EXCEL selection, goes through its rows and enters them as tasks into an existing Merlin project.

If interested, feel free to download, use or modify as you like.  Continue reading →

Applescript – MS Word to Merlin

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Can I import a selected list of activities from a MS Word document into Merlin as tasks?

Merlin can import various file formats.  For a complete list please check related topic in Merlin online help.

MS Word documents are most commonly used for long texts and maybe project or task scope description. Lists are usually recorded in MS Excel, GTD applications, or even mindmapping software. To import tasks out of an MS Word document, you should export it into a compatible format.

  • So you select in MS Word File > Save as… > Plain Text
  • MS Word prompts for the desired formatting and encoding
  • You save the file
  • You drag the plain text file to Merlin’s project listing and
  • map the field in the plain text to Merlin’s <title> column.
  • Merlin will then import the list into the existing project.

To quicken things however, we have created a small Applescript sample, which handles the current MS Word selection, goes through its paragraphs and enters them as tasks into an existing Merlin project.

If interested, feel free to download, use or modify as you like.  Continue reading →

Applescript – elapsed duration in human friendly time units

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When planing and managing your projects with Merlin for Mac OS X you have 4 main windows: Activities, Resources, Netplan, Utilization.

Depending on the view you have selected, the main area offers you different details and information about your project. You can view and in certain cases modify the main outline of your project, adding activities, groups and milestones. Furthermore, this area also allows you to work interactively with the Gantt chart, Netplan and resource utilization.

Per default the label in the Gantt bar show the expected duration in working times. So it may show 2 days for example for a task starting Friday and ending Monday if weekend is defined to be workfree time.

If you want the label in the Gantt to show the real time elapsed, you may do so. Just go to View > Show View Options > Styles
Click into the label you want to edit and select “expected elapsed duration” for its content.

This of course would then show the duration in e-units. What to do if you don’t want those edays, emonths, eweeks to be shown? You may use attached script sample created in AppleScript.

It goes throught all activities of the top most opened project, checks for the expected elapsed duration of the task, and writes it in the subtitle field in human friendly units. If you enable the display of “subtitle” for the label, you are set.

Note: The script cannot create a live connection between the columns “subtitle” and “expected elapsed duration”. That is, before printing your project, make sure you call the script again Gantt  to actualize outputted data. Continue reading →

Applescript – Split activity in completed and remaining sub tasks

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When managing a project with Merlin you create your tasks and assign them to your resources. As your resources work on their task, you as a PM update your project by entering the actual values. That means, you enter the percentage of the completed work and the actual start date. If updating the tasks in absolute mode, you can enter the actual work or remaining work and duration.

Next time the resource works on the task, and reports its progress to update the data, you enter the new ‘% complete’ and if updating the tasks in absolute mode, the amount of actual work and remaining work so far.

Some users however would like to be able to pause the works on a task, to plan the remaining work sometime later on. This is also a good idea, if wanting to vary the utilization of a resource on a task in time.  So to do so in Merlin, you would need to create two tasks. One for the first part of the works on the task, and a second for the remaining.

To quicken this procedure, we wrote an applescript sample which requires Merlin 2.8.4 or newer, and creates the two sub-activities based on the planned and actual values of the task in progress.

If interested, feel free to download, use or modify as you like.  Continue reading →

Applescript – Evernote to Merlin

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Merlin project management software integrates easily with lots of other Mac and Windows applications. For some applications you need to export/import files, with others you simply sync from Merlin. If you use Evernote to record your notes and want to transfer them to Merlin, you may now do so, by the use of the following script sample created in AppleScript.

It reacts on the Evernote selection and transfers selected notes to Merlin. Just select the notes you want to transfer in Evernote, call the script and see selected notes transferred in the top most opened Merlin project as file elements. Those elements can be then viewed even without connection to the Evernote account or the Evernote app on your Mac and are now part of your project.

Download: Evernote > Merlin AppleScript sample

Update on Jan 16th, 2013: Activated an alert informing about the inserted elements. Saved the AppleScript application as Applescript to avoid issues with Lion and Mountain Lion Gatekeeper.