We recently spoke with the folks from Project Wizards - makers of the great project management app called Merlin. They've said that many of their users have suggested that there should be some kind integration between Merlin and Daylite. We looked at our request logs and saw that many of our users have also requested the same thing.

So this is an invitation to those people. Tell us what/how you'd like to see and have.

This is an exploratory discussion. We are not sure what this will lead to and we aren't making any commitments as of this moment.

So let the ideas flow.

We do not currently use a full-blown project management solution. However, we are expecting to hire a certified project manager in the coming week and will be looking for a project management application tool for this person. Any project managers that work directly with DayLite will have a serious leg up on the rest, for our needs.

I was under the impression that Daylite would continue to develop its own tools for a similar project management solution in future versions...

While I hope for continued refinements of the Project Management portion of DayLite, I hope that they do not try to make a full-blown project management tool out of DayLite. Building a good project management tool is a significant undertaking by itself.

It is my hope that MarketCircle stays in the CRM/Collaboration space yet works hard to extend the integration with the makers of great software in other areas. This explorative thread is a good example. And the continued development of the tools (APIs) to enable other applications to work with DayLite and vice versa is the key to that. Another key to that is the often talked about Sync Services.

If I am not mistaken, What AJ is asking here is whether or not he should commit already heavily tasked (there are a lot of feature requests!) MarketCircle development staff to assisting on writing whatever plug-in code is needed for both applications to talk to each other rather than just leaving it up to the other guys to work through the plug-in API, for DayLite. While I have found that the MarketCircle guys would always answer my questions about the API, I think AJ is looking to see if there is justification for increasing the amount of involvement from his team.

From a pure marketing perspective, if they have the resources to directly solicit and help various third-party software makers to work directly with DayLite, I think they should do it. They need to jump-start the culture that is built-around DayLite. Meaningful integration is non-trivial. However, further work on the making the API tool easier to use for the less skilled or too busy programmers is also a worthwhile use of their time. So, it will be interesting to see what the MarketCircle team does.

quote:

Originally posted by Les:
I was under the impression that Daylite would continue to develop its own tools for a similar project management solution in future versions...

We will absolutely continue to improve the project management part of Daylite and in fact working with Merlin will force us to do. The projects part of Daylite is significantly different than what Merlin does. Think about resource balancing, costing and all the super advanced features that are required by pure and hard core project managers.

We've gotten a lot of requests so we want to see what people want in more detail.

I can understand the desire to be all things to all people. I appreciate the marketing perspective. At this juncture, focusing exclusively on further developing and perfecting (while simplifying) the current product is from my perspective singly the approach to take.

Clearly, there are many outstanding feature requests and issues to work out that aren't being met. Not to mention a real need make the process of using Daylite a lot easier for 'Non-' power users. When I read through the board, even the beta testing logs, I see this as the major recurring theme.

With the advent of a highly friendly and even more reliable product, I believe that you will see a significant increase in the number of people who start to use, i.e., purchase Daylite. Greater options to you.

Lastly, of those who have requested such a highly powerful project management app interface, are there really that many 'real' users to justify such a commitment? And as it is with most feature requests--perhaps it's better to focus on the twenty that will return an eighty. Put your efforts towards pulling together the pieces within Daylite rather than trying to bring in more from the outside.

Today, Daylite is the best CRM application for the Mac. Terrific. Now make it a great application.

In addition to that what AJ said, please also think about the "other" features of a project management like Merlin 2. I mean the basic ones like time calculation with or without dependencies and much more. It is not just to adding 1+1 ;-) In general I see a huge difference between a project management application and a Groupware or a CRM.

Let us imagine a typical procedure:
You get in touch with a prospect and talk many times with him. All the attained information goes into daylite. At one point (hopefully) the prospect becomes a customer and you have to start a project. This is the point where Merlin comes into the game. You can plan this project in Merlin and afterwards send the results (just the data or even graphically) back to daylite. Then you would have the real advantage to monitor your activities out of the project in daylite as well.

OK, this is a very basic workflow… ;-) But also I'm wonder what other scenarios and workflows are imaginable?

I was among the people who tried to push for a meeting of the minds of Merlin and DayLite and am happy to see them talking, and hopefully integrating.

I have read this whole thread and here is what I was hoping for. No one needs or wants DayLite to be a Microsoft Project or FastTrack replacement. But, it gives us a "project" based way of approaching our businesses/ideas and have tasks in them, but has no dependency of follow-on tasks to automatically shift forward in a calendar when a primary task if delayed.

Next, (and I know Marketcircle is working on improving this) I find the "export to ical" a lame way of doing things, because I use iCal/iSync as the basis for updating all my PDAs and phones (including info from AddressBook).

It would be MUCH more effective if changes to Tasks in Merlin AND DayLite made/propagated changes to those tasks in iCal so one did not have to be managing one Task in three places... e.g. my client says send me a proposal, and then follow up with an action.

Those two actions are Tasks in my DayLite data with limited "dependecy" creaton capability, they are separate tasks in Merlin with the ability to link their dependency, and THEN I need to have the two tasks also in my iCal so that they can be synched to my PDA.

Now, the client says, hey, instead of Monday, let's do this proposal on Wednesday. Now, I have to go into DayLite to change that task, then manually change the date of the one-week-later Task.

Then I have to go into Merlin and change the principal task, which at least will automatically move the follow up task a few days forward, but now I have to decide, which one do I export to iCal from, DayLite or Merlin, or do I need two separate calendars in iCal to import the data from both, which would then give me separate duplicate copies of each task from Merlin AND DayLite.

Pretty soon I will need an assistant to manage my personal information manager DayLite and my project manager Merlin and....

So, ideally, in my humble opinion, it would be great if the "project" metaphor in Daylite was improved on its own to be more friendly to changing sub-tasks' dates.

I would need this data to be written into an iCal like database live or automatically every X-minutes/hours, so I do not have to go exporting/importing stuff into iCal just so my PDAs are in synch with that data.

At this stage the product is perfectly suitable for people who only need the project metaphor in Daylite without actually doing typical PROJECT MANAGEMENT that Merlin/FastTrack would do. For people who need more project management tools this would be a great point of integration, where a PROJECT in DayLite can be "Serviced off" to Merlin and Merlin gets to create a new project file/dataset based on Project name, description, start/end target dates, and next project tasks/sub-tasks.

At this stage one can debate, should every task in Merlin now also be fed back into DayLite (for people like many of us to whom DayLite is a full life/business management tool, not just CRM) or not?

Ideally, ALL our life's works' tasks/appointments are visible in a unified calendar - in DayLite for example.

After all, without such integration, if I am commited to 3 hours in Merlin to client X it would be nice to have that on my DayLite calendar so I do not book off that time block for a phone chat with Client Y who is merely an opportunity and not yet a project.

This is the additional comments I had sent to Merlin I believe, related to OpenBase use, what to integrate, etc.

Imran


Your comments welcome:

Some thoughts... it would be great if one or both applications had a preference that gave me a choice that EVERY task/event change etc. is not just put in your applications' repository(ies) but also immediately written/modified in iCal. This would make people really productive. Right now I have several machines of mine that synch of iSync, including my Sony Ericsson P900 (coming soon P990), Nokia 9500, Verizon 6700, iPod, and others. Offloading, or updating live (I may not understand the technical challenges) the iCal/AddressBook means I do not have synch every time manually from DayLite/Merlin to iCal/AB and then synch them to iSync/iTunes/.Mac etc.

It is in Merlin's interest to work with DayLite as I believe that application has the potential to be a Notes/Exchange type platform for Macs. Even cooler would be if Merlin even considered two options. Using its own current/future database e.g. $79-99, and a fuller version, say $149, designed to use OpenBase. You could even do a 5-year strategic partnership, where that version of Merlin is based on working with DayLite and even uses DayLite's OpenBase data. That could even help you have price points of $69 and $119, which would have a huge impact on the project management product line taking off on Macs. That would keep your costs low, as you could avoid having to get a separate OpenBase install license. e.g. Currently, my SOHO NOTES and DayLite applications use OpenBase. That means in both cases the price I paid for the applications has an embedded component of 'OpenBase cost'.

If SOHO Notes would work with DayLite, it would be priced lower for me, not needing for a "second license" that I am indirectly paying for. Additionally (as I have suggested to AJ in the past and to SOHO), it would be so incredibly powerful for DayLite to read SOHO Notes' notes and link them into my DayLite objects. Right now, I like both products but am frustrated when I manage my notes in SOHO Notes and then often look for them in DayLite thinking I had linked them into some object. DayLite does some note grabbing, but nothing compared to SOHO Notes. Yes, I know, you cannot all integrate with all applications, but believe me, and this is strategic long term advice, some level of this integration will actually not just make the Mac platform even more competitive on the business side for companies, but also make you guys better than any Exchange based solutions. Remember, what makes Exchange so strong is not it's crappy functionality and bloated nature but how many other applications are written to work ON it and with it.

With some good templates of people's typical use... e.g. Mac types are creative, put in a template for "Publishing My Book", "Starting New Business", "Building New Home", etc. you could even drive PM as FileMaker drove DB usage on consumer level machines."

And here is a posting on MacWorld's site:
http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=440703

I welcome any form of discussion between the two companies. I am not familiar with Merlin but I do see that any form of integration with other apps is a good way to build the product.

I see three potential users for project management. The first does not require project management at all and that is fine. The second will be comfortable with whatever form of project management is in DayLite. They need project management but are not at the 'power-user' level. This is an important group. I agree with was was said in earlier postings. I don't want to see MarketCircle stop the continued development of the Project functionality in DayLite and based on AJ's response, I don't believe that they will.

The third group is the power users group. They need more than what a single app will give them and that is where I see the potential for a joint partnership to work. So if it can be justified, I say go ahead.

As for the DayLite to iCal situation. I might be in the minority here but only one of my 10 plus installations has asked for that. Personally I see it as a duplication. There are not too many users who will be using both iCal and DayLite and I think that the goal would be to move away from iCal. I realize that the synching issue might prevent that.

Finally, to the posting about making the application easier to use. I think that we have a wonderful app now which is easy to use for the basic features. But, there is still opportunity for the PARTNERS to go in and do training and implementation assistance. That is our bread and butter so while I am in favour of improving the ease of use, I don't want to make it too easy.

Hope this helps,

iCal

There is no way to avoid supporting iCal syncing. That is a natural extension of a very powerful and desirable Sync Services technology. Sure, Marketcircle could probably not sync calendars, but if they are already dealing with calendar issues with other applications, I think that iCal will be dealt with automatically.

I think another important piece here is to somehow integrate an invoicing/accounting system into Daylite. So many of my clients who use Daylite (including myself) don't understand how DL can support Estimates as a feature but be unable to go further and generate invoices for tracking and more.

I mean, Billings is out there, but it uses a completely different database and is tied to Apple's address book. There seems to be a disconnect here that is unnecessary. I personally dislike having to go to a different application for my billing and reference a different contact database for this purpose. Isn't that one of Daylite's great features - the integration and management of contacts, organizations, events etc...Invoicing and accounting seems so obvious.

I can tell you that the interest in Daylite would increase many-fold if/when this component is added to DL's feature set.

quote:

Originally posted by Les:
Today, Daylite is the best CRM application for the Mac. Terrific. Now make it a great application.

Just to address Les's concern. We totally agree and we are working on the things you mention - now.

What we are doing here is looking a little further ahead - for planning purposes.

quote:

Originally posted by Jeff Barrett:
I think another important piece here is to somehow integrate an invoicing/accounting system into Daylite. So many of my clients who use Daylite (including myself) don't understand how DL can support Estimates as a feature but be unable to go further and generate invoices for tracking and more.

Not to worry - we are listening.

For the time being, you can edit the estimate template, change the title to 'invoice' and work with that. That is what a lot of our customers are doing.

I could not disagree more with building in full accounting/invoicing functionality. It is natural for some of those functions to be in DayLite just like there are rudimentary Project Management functions. However, just like Project Management is not a full-blown system trying to compete with the dedicated systems, nor should accounting functionality.

Rather, I would like to see DayLite extended with separate applications with DayLite as the centerpiece. For example, if DayLite had a robust communications process in place with a MYOB, then MYOB could put data like current accounts receivable totals into the DayLite database so that you could view it in a HUD when you are looking at a company or contact. If you wanted to drill down and see all the details, there would be a link that would bring up MYOB and all the tremendous functionality and detail you could want for an accounting function. If you didn't want to use the limited price quote functions of MYOB and wanted to use the limited Estimates function in DayLite instead, you could do so and yet have DayLite "convert" a sold Estimate into an order.

So I vote for more robust connections and making current features (e.g. group calendaring functions like proxies and adding more pre-defined reports) more powerful.

Thanks AJ. Glad to hear that. And for the 'future' it looks like a positive step.