Tips & Tricks Archives

The Importance and Advantages of Checklists

Checklists have become indispensable in project management, especially in a world where complexity and multitasking are the norms. Drawing from my two decades of experience as a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with the Project Management Institute (PMI), I have consistently seen the transformative power of well-structured checklists. They serve as reminders and crucial frameworks guiding teams through intricate project landscapes. In this article, we delve into the significance and benefits of checklists, particularly in managing diverse and challenging projects across various sectors in the United States.

At its core, a checklist is a simple yet powerful tool that ensures consistency and completeness in carrying out tasks. In project management, where oversight can lead to costly delays or quality issues, a checklist safeguards against the fallibility of human memory and attention. This is even more critical for projects with high stakes, such as construction, healthcare, or IT, where the margin for error is minimal.

The 5 Reasons Why Checklists Are Important

Checklists bring many advantages to the project management process, […]

By Daniel Raymond|2023-12-10T07:49:56-05:002023-12-10|

Tip of the month: New online help and videos

The sun is shining brightly on this almost summer day. Earlier in the morning you may have noticed a change if you are seeking for help on any topic within AceProject.

Our hope is that you were presently surprised with the new streamlined support area that was put in place. The migration to the new system will be fully complete in 2 weeks, after our next release. It features a single search field with drop down filtered results to ease in finding the answer to your question fast.

You may also want to go more in-depth and expand your knowledge and possibilities using AceProject by looking at the User Guides and new Videos sections.

And as always, please do contact us directly if needed!

By Daniel Raymond|2014-06-09T10:30:38-04:002014-06-09|

Tip of the month – March 2014: Discover the power of AceProject’s API

The API, huh?

AceProject is able to do some incredible things…but not everything. Sometimes you wish “if only there was a way to (fill in the blank)”. Well, if you didn’t know this already, AceProject comes with a fairly complete API or Application Programming Interface. I won’t say that now you have endless possibilities…but you almost have endless possibilities. The API is a function library that can be accessed outside of the AceProject interface to do some really nifty things.

If you are like me and have little or no experience in programming, wouldn’t you want to have access to this powerful mechanism? Say for example that you want to extract some information directly to Excel because for some reason it is not accessible to export from the AceProject interface?…well, now you can.

The following video shows how to extract a GUID and get data to come into Excel without any programming…take a look:

What could one do with the API? (with a little help from a programmer)

Connect systems together and exchange data – Do you have a third […]

By Daniel Raymond|2014-03-17T14:10:01-04:002014-03-17|

Switching Back to Standard Time

AceProject will switch clocks back to Standard Time on Sunday November 7th, 2010.

By Daniel Raymond|2010-10-29T13:00:21-04:002010-10-29|

Task Reminder vs Actual Dates

When using the task reminder, only the estimated dates are taken into account.

By Daniel Raymond|2010-10-21T10:24:26-04:002010-10-21|

Show/Hide “Follow AceProject” – Why We Did This?

As you probably noticed, we added a set of icons named “Follow AceProject” on the login page lately. These are links to all our social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube) as well as our RSS feed and our blog. Since we provide updates and other valuable information on these sites, we felt it was appropriate to share them with you on both AceProject’s website and login page.

If these icons are annoying for you and your users, it’s possible to hide the “Follow AceProject” section under “Admin -> Account Info -> Branding”.

By Daniel Raymond|2010-10-15T09:24:12-04:002010-10-15|

A workaround for sub-tasks

Sub-tasks are definitely one of the most requested features to add in AceProject. We are still unsure as to whether they will be added someday or not. There are technical reasons, but also usability reasons. Actually, sub-tasks wouldn't be used by everyone, and most users who would, don't need all the sub-tasking properties available in products like Microsoft Project. Our biggest challenge is to keep sub-tasks as simple as possible, and usable by anyone.

That being said, there's a workaround for sub-tasks in AceProject that works for many users. It simulates sub-tasks, although it doesn't replace them per se.

All you need to do is use integer task numbers for tasks and decimal task numbers for sub-tasks. If necessary, you may set dependencies between specific tasks.

Here's an example:

We are aware that this is not ideal, but it works pretty well for basic sub-tasking.

By Daniel Raymond|2010-04-07T13:56:00-04:002010-04-07|

A workaround for recurring tasks

Recurring tasks is one of the most requested features on our wishlist. Since this feature is rather complex to implement, and we have a lot on our plate, we have decided at this time to invest our energy on other enhancements like cost tracking. Recurring tasks will be added to AceProject someday, but not in the near future.

That being said, there is actually a workaround for creating recurring tasks in AceProject, thanks to the "Move/copy a task" feature. If you're willing to repeat the process periodically, you'll get recurring tasks without too much trouble. Here's how to:

Step 1 – Open the task that reoccurs and click the "Move/Copy" link at the upper right.

Step 2 – Select the "Copy this task within the same project" option.

* You may also select items to copy (comments, task documents and/or user assignments.)

* When you're done, click the "Go to Step 2" button.

Step 3 – Set the new task's dates (i.e. the next occurrence)

Step 4 – […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-12-09T14:32:00-05:002009-12-09|

Two Reasons for Creating Custom Task Reports

The Custom Task Reports feature in AceProject is a user-favorite, for two main reasons:

Save reports

Custom task reports are the only reports that can be saved and shared with other administrators and users with portfolio access. Administrators can see the entire report while users with portfolio access can only see the projects and tasks they're assigned to. Saving and sharing task reports is real time-saver as those reports can be accessed via a link. There is no need to ask all users to apply this filter, and this one, and this one, and this date range to view the report. You send them the link, they login to AceProject and voilà, here's the data.

Create very specific and targeted reports

Even though AceProject is loaded with reports, you may not find the one you really need. There may be a missing filter or two, and that will keep you from providing your boss with accurate data. That being said, custom task reports offer zillions of possibilities. You decide the fields to display, the sorting order and the filters […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-11-18T14:00:00-05:002009-11-18|

Two Reasons for Setting Users to “Can’t Login”

In AceProject, users may be given two statuses: "Can Login" and "Can't Login". The default option is "Can Login", which means that the user CAN access the application. On the other hand, "Can't Login" means that the user CANNOT access the application. In other words, the user is blocked. There are a two main reasons why an administrator may want this:

Block employees who no longer work for the organization

Usually, when someone leaves the company or gets fired, their access to the corporate intranet and other internal systems gets revoked. If they don't belong in the organization anymore, they don't belong in the internal systems either. That's usual procedure.

If you need to keep an history of the user's activity in the account, you can't delete their profile as AceProject will ask you to delete all the user's data altogether. In this case, setting the user as "Can't Login" is ideal as they still exist in the account but can't access it.

Create non-human users (i.e. material resources)

We've seen clients who created user profiles for material such as […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-11-12T16:44:00-05:002009-11-12|