As an upgrade from Time Line (for DOS) Version 4, Time Line 5.0 offers you a wide variety of new features and capabilities in six specific areas:
Resource Management
Performance and Capacity
Network Power and File Control
Flexibility and Calculation
Editing
Reporting
You will probably find the greatest enhancements in Resource Management. While everything that's new and elevates Time Line to a more sophisticated level than ever, it is still straightforward and easy to use.
Resource Management
-> Individual Resource Calendars. Schedule vacation days and periods of equipment unavailability more accurately.
-> Variable resource availability. Reflect the effect of staff changes or other factors affecting productivity by varying resource availability over time.
-> Resource Contouring (TM) option. Maximize productivity. Resources can get a head start on tasks by beginning as soon as they become available, whether or not all the resources assigned to the task are available. Also, tasks can now be scheduled to start before a vacation or other downtime and continue afterwards.
-> Accuracy in tracking Spent and To go effort. Time Line now lets you split Spent and To Go effort on a task and monitor each independently. Time Line automatically adjusts a task's end date whenever progress is updated. End dates are even adjusted for future tasks that have work done on them before their scheduled start.
-> Enhanced histograms. Display more resource information, including vacations and changes in availability on the newly enhanced histogram.
-> Accelerated histogram display. Use the Histogram Hotkey (TM), <Alt-F8>, to bring up the histogram for any highlighted task or resource instantly.
Many of the new features increase the general performance and capacity of Time Line.
Performance and Capacity
-> Cross-project WBS views. Use the Task Link Viewer to save time and energy when linking multiple projects. It displays names and WBS numbers of tasks from other schedules.
-> Maximize schedule capacity. Check the enhanced Stat screen to see a breakdown of current memory utilization, information that can help you optimize memory usage and increase maximum schedule size.
-> High-level WBS support. Assign prefixes to WBS numbers to identify companies, departments, or projects associated with each task.
Network Power and File Control
-> Cross-file resource leveling. Level resources across multiple schedule files, whether across a network or on a single computer.
-> On Target linking. Share information across an organization by linking Time Line files to On Target files.
-> Compatibility with DOS emulators. Time Line file names are now acceptable to DOS emulation programs. Run Time Line on a Unix workstation, for example.
Flexibility and Calculation
-> Customizable column names. Rename columns to make reports and Gantt views more understandable. For example, an Auxiliary column could be names "Who's Responsible" or the Slack column could be renamed "On Time?".
-> More auxiliary columns. Use any of the fifty additional auxiliary columns for detailed accounting or custom codes to track and report progress in detail.
-> Roll-up flexibility. Choose from four roll-up methods-Baseline Cost, Baseline Effort, Effort, and Duration-to better understand how a project is progressing.
-> Flexibility in resetting baselines. Rest all elements in the baseline when necessary or, if you choose, keep some baseline information intact and reset only dates or costs.
-> Special fixed tasks. Increase schedule precision by specifying whether a fixed task "Must Start" on a given date or must "Start N-> Sooner Than" a specified date.
-> Vacation day option. Analyze the effect of employee vacations on critical projects, by ignoring all scheduled vacation days.
-> Workday flexibility. Increase scheduling flexibility by specifying workdays in quarter hour increments in the Master Calendar.
-> Critical path choices. Model projects more accurately by assigning any task to the critical path or removing individual fixed-date tasks from it.
-> Negative slack. Monitor tasks which are running late by viewing the slack column, which now displays negative slack, the amount of time a task is late.
-> More date and slack computations. Take advantage of automatic computation of Slack and Late Independent Dates and display them in the appropriate columns.
-> New CPM dates. Analyze the impact of resource leveling by displaying the date each task would have started, if it weren't leveled, in a special data column.
Editing
-> New mouse buttons. Three new buttons-INS,DEL, and HELP-speed and simplify editing, and make help only a mouse click away.
-> QuickPick (TM) access to column choices. Press [F2] while editing a "multiple choice" column in the spreadsheet and see a list of all choices of action appropriate to the column.
-> Quick keys. Use new editing shortcuts to save time. [Ctrl/End] deletes to the end of the line. [Ctrl/Enter], like [F10], accepts entries and modifications.
-> More advanced Help. Get context-sensitive help on specific data columns by pressing [F1] while editing.
Reporting
-> Calendar Report. The new Calendar Report shows scheduled vacations or equipment unavailability.
-> Availability Report. Display resource availability at any time in the schedule in the new Availability Report.
-> Rate Report. Display varying costs rates for resources during the course of a schedule in the new Rate Report.
-> Varying Assignments Report. Display resources' actual usage during the course of a schedule in the new Varying Assignments Report.
-> Enhanced Detail Report. Show the details of each resource assignment to each task, over time.
-> New graphics fonts. Get Postscript-like output on ordinary printers.
-> New graphic printer and plotter drivers. Graphics print faster and are supported by more devices. More paper sizes can be used.