This has led to quite a lot of head scratching and trying to understand how to get the installer program to correctly register the Time Architect Add-In both with the .Net Framework and the COM+ framework needed for it to show up correctly in Enterprise Architect.

After various bits of trial, error, testing and swearing we believe that we have solved the issue.  To this end there is a new version of the installer available from the website that should mean that TA installs ‘out of the box’.

Should anyone have any problems with the new version of the installer - that appears to be working - then please drop us a line and we’ll have another look at the installer.

Many thanks and all the best.

over the next week or so we need to make some changes to servers, networks and equipment back at SRL HQ. To this end we’ll be taking the store and downloads off-line from about 3pm (British Summer Time GMT +1) on 31st March 2009 and hope to have everything back up and running again as soon as possible thereafter.

Support and emails will continue during this period, so please feel free to contact us if you have any questions…

Firstly, a new NEWT site. We are working with our local archery club (Lincoln Archers) to provide a full make-over of the current website (http://www.lincolnarchers.co.uk/). This will be both graphical and functional…

We are also working with Border Bows (http://www.borderbows.com), based on the Scottish side of the Scotland/England border, to give them a fully functional web-tool that will not only mean that they can keep the site up to date but will also assist in some of the day to day functions of the business too.

Lincoln Archers

The Lincoln Archers’ site is currently a static HTML page based website. Whilst providing all the core information it suffers from the traditional difficulties of keeping it up to date and limited access to the files behind.

This makes for an ideal candidate for NEWT. With its flexible approach and multi-user access it can be maintained by the (appropriate) club members from any web browser. With its approval and publishing features then ‘articles’ can be approved by the committee before going live for everyone to see.

The site will also benefit from NEWT’s tiered options meaning that the site will present a ‘public’ face that anyone can access and a ‘private’ face that will only be accessible to members of the club itself. This means that site can show an audience specific face… Members will get access to more information and features than the public.

We plan on having this updated site live by the end of March.

Border Bows

Originally planned as a straight NEWT site we have now enhanced the plans and are providing the first of our NEWT(+) sites. The site will utilise NEWT functionality where appropriate but will also benefit from a number of additional features.

The site for Border Bows is slightly different to the ‘usual’ NEWT based site. As well as being information driven it also needs to be product driven and showcase Border Bows’ innovation and design. This has led to some interesting design work and is making for a very interesting site (but then we would say that…).   

As a manufacturing company, Border Bows want to concentrate on their core business, of making some of (if not the best) archery limbs, risers and bows in the World, rather than worrying about what is on their website. We’re working with them to provide a tool that by helping with some of their processes will also keep their website refreshed and up to date.

This site is being delivered as a phased approach and the initially prototype should be entering testing very soon.

We’ll let you know when it’s due to go live!

Final thought

If you’re noticing a common theme here, then even hardworking IT types are due some downtime sometimes too

Well, we can assure you that there’s a lot going on in the background! Time Architect v 2.3 went to beta at the tail-end of 2008 and we believe that it should be all ready for launch early in February 2009… (Keep watching, as soon as it’s ready, we’ll let you know!)

We’ve also been working on a number of other projects both for clients and internally and hope to have some formal announcements soon. In the next couple of weeks we should be announcing the full details of our new add-in for Enterprise Architect that we plan to release to public beta very soon…

We’ve also been working hard with a number of partners on a range of things and there should be some announcements on some of those in the near future too.

So, all in all, don’t worry, we’re still here and we have some good stuff planned for 2009!

In this article I’ll show you a couple of ways that you can use TA to create links between a new element and existing elements and also how to connect an existing element to multiple elements. This can be done no matter where the element is in the EA project browser.

This article arose because I was asked “how can I create multiple links to a milestone?”

You could add the links to/from the milestone one at a time by double clicking on the child element and then double clicking on the parent element (if you are in Gantt Chart mode) or by right clicking on the element in Grid mode. However, if you need to add a lot of links this could take a while…

If we have the following Gantt Chart:

(click to see larger). We can see that ‘milestone’ is currently set to occur after ‘Task E’. If we want ‘milestone’ to also follow Task Y, Task Z and Task2 then please follow the following steps:

• Switch to Grid mode.
• Highlight Task Y, Task Z and Task2 (press CTRL key to allow multiple row selection)
• Press the ‘add link’ button:
• (click to see larger)
• TA will now show the Add link dialog:
• (click to see larger). The specified link type will be created to connect all selected elements and the specified element. This means you could link hundreds of elements to a single element if so required…
• Click OK and TA will create the link…

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS ONE OF THE FEW ACTIONS IN TA THAT HAPPENS IMMEDIATELY. THESE LINKS WILL BE CREATED IN YOUR MODEL AS SOON AS YOU CLICK OK!

The model will be updated accordingly and the Gantt Chart will show the effect of these links:

A milestone is represented in TA by a simple black diamond but this can be on its own or on the end of an existing task. This was done to represent additional effort that may be required to achieve a milestone but cannot be split from it:

(click to see larger)

But how can you set a milestone…?

The easiest way to set a milestone in TA is set the duration of the task to be zero hours. This will automatically change the notation from the task bar to the black diamond shape. This is the ‘normal’ type of milestone.

If you want to specify that a ‘normal’ task is also a milestone then you can do this from the properties dialog. Simply select the element, or multiple elements if you want to create a number of milestones at the same time, and open the properties dialog - either click on the properties button or right click in datagrid mode:

(click to see larger). This will then open the properties window:

(click to see larger). Then simply click on the ‘This task is a milestone’ checkbox to set the task as a milestone.

Depending on how you have your version of TA configured, creating a milestone can add a colourful background to the Gantt Chart. This feature was added so that it was easy to find milestones on a big Gantt Chart.

To see this feature in action - or turn it off open up the project settings dialog by either clicking on the white project bar at the bottom of the Gantt Chart or by clicking on the Project Configuration button:

(click to see larger). This will then open up the project configuration screen where you can control how the milestones are displayed:

(click to see larger). PLEASE NOTE the ‘Show Milestone Highlight background’ option applies to all milestones.

Sometimes, you may create one type of link and wish to change to the other. This is easy in the model itself as you can just change the stereotype or even delete the link and recreate it. But how can you change the link when you are working in Gantt Chart or Grid mode?

TA provides a button to allow you to manage all the links from an element to its parent elements. (TA does not have a method to change the links from parent to child at this time.) This button is not the most obvious button on TA’s screens:

This button is only active if the current element has links to one or more parent elements. This button becomes active in either grid or Gantt Chart mode. Clicking on this button will bring up the manage link dialog screen:

this will then allow you to change the type of link if needed. Through this screen you can also manage lead and lag on a task as required.

Well, once again, it’s that time of year when most of us think about doing very little for a few days other than eating, drinking, sleeping and spending time with family and friends (please choose your own order for these…). It seems like Christmas 2007 was only a few weeks ago, but Christmas 2008 is all but arrived and another year is coming to a close.

We’d like to take this opportunity to wish all our customers, business partners, friends and acquaintances a very Merry Christmas and a very successful 2009! We’d also like to say thank you for your support, custom and interest in Solutions Reality and our products and we look forward to working with you all next year.

With this being the festive season…

… we will be shutting the office from 23rd December through to 5th January 2009. During this period there will be limited support available via the contact form (http://solutionsreality.com/contactus.aspx) - drop us a line and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

During this quiet period we will be releasing TA 2.3 beta to our beta testers ready for a release early in 2009. This will be followed quite quickly by the updated Time Architect website (www.timearchitect.net) and the final version of the NEWT website (www.sitesareeasy.com).

So although we’ll be quiet we’ll still be busy!

Once again thank you for all your support and we hope that 2009 will be a great year for you all!

Matt and the rest of the Solutions Reality team…

We then had a few issues with hosting which meant that the database got deleted and the forum kind of died a death because of it.

Since we have moved the hosting across to Netcetera, our new hosting provider, we have had no issues but also no forums…  We want to understand what people like about TA and also the things that frustrate them too - we’re sure there must be some things…

So, would anyone like to see the forums started again?

We look forward to hearing from you either as a comment on the blog or via the Solutions Reality contact form.  If you are concerned about emailing us, then just add a spoof email address in the form - like some people do when downloading!

Just for the record, we NEVER give out email addresses to anyone.  They are only used internally to register downloads to purchases and to inform you of critical changes to our products (if required).

We’ve just got our first ping back…! It may not sound like a lot to the experienced and the popular blogs out there but it means that there must be at least one person out there reading this!

When you start a blog there is always that nagging question to as to whether anyone will ever read what you write! But I’m pleased to say that someone is and it seems that it was quite popular too. All I had to do was mention the ubiquitous iPhone and an article gets found!

For anyone who is interested this is where we have been pinged from:

http://diggffxi.info/tags/102/200812/apple-computers-for-home-7.html

BUT before you go there - be aware that when I tried to go there I was given a google warning:
http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?tpl=safari&site=diggffxi.info&hl=en-us

so maybe I was being a little premature with the joy?