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.

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.

However, we received an unexpected help request the other day. What do the status icons in TA actually mean? It was unexpected as they’re all explained in the help manual…

The trouble with help manuals is that sometimes you need to know where to look to find the answer to your question! Not very helpful in that case. (For the record its: TA User Guide > Using Time Architect > Time Architect Workspace > Grid Mode > Project Review ) You could also type ‘review’ into the search tab.

So this article is a quick overview to what the Status Icons mean and why they are in there in the first place!

TA has a number of features that we like to think of as either unique or at least unusual. One of these is the ‘Today Line’ that is drawn onto the Gantt Chart. This line is drawn live onto to Gantt chart to represent NOW in terms of both date and time. From this feature we developed the idea of review status. By looking at the Today Line and % completion for a task - you get a status for each task. TA tracks a total of 10 statuses.

For a full explanation of the icon statuses, please take a look at the explained section of the TA website:

http://www.solutionsreality.com/products/timearchitect/what.aspx?ID=8

We will add this to the TA report engine as an additional section in the report in a forthcoming release of TA.

This, of course, was the bit that couldn’t be found anywhere in the manual!

Well after trying all the combinations of:

• EASystem::ShowWeb()
• EASystem::ShowPage()
• EASystem::ShowLink()
• etc…

I finally managed to hit on the right one! EASystem::ShowURL(url to goto) as with most things it’s easy once you know how - it’s just finding it sometimes that’s the pain! Hope this helps someone else out there!

Although MS Project will allow you to open non-native language Project files (.mpp files) eg a German project in English project and vice versa this is not true for the Excel Workbook format! The Workbook needed to have exactly the right headers and sheet names as the native language of the version of MS Project that was being used.

Now, we are a small team at Solutions Reality and our language skills, whilst passable, do not stretch to translating all the fields into all the languages that are needed for TA - our International user base is expanding - so what to do?

Well, actually, we went for the easy option! After all, sometimes that’s the best approach!

Instead of needing to translate all the files and set up the resources etc in TA that would not be flexible enough, we decided to get TA and MS Project to do all the hard work for us!

First export an Excel Workbook format from MS Project as described in this article. It can be as simple as 1 task, we’re not interested in the information at this point, all we’re interested in is the MS Project Excel structure!

MS Project will create the Excel file and use the appropriate local language of MS Project to label the columns and the worksheets.

Save this export somewhere that you can remember. Ideally, take a look at the Time Architect downloads page and if we don’t have a template in your language then please send it to us so that we can share it with other TA users. (Currently we have German but are hoping to add more real soon…)

Now export from TA as normal but when you come to generate the spreadsheet you need to specify that you wish to use a template file:

this is as simple as checking the “Export workbook in another language” option and then specifying the correct file path to the template file.

TA will then create the file in the appropriate language. Oh and it will remember the setting and the filepath between sessions so once set you should never need to do it again!

So, the question is, how do you get information from MS Project to EA/TA? Unfortunately, MS Project files (.mpp) are a proprietary Microsoft Binary format and we don’t have the ‘rules’ for how to read them, so we needed a different approach.

MS Project does offer a number of useful export options, one of which is the Excel Workbook format - or ‘Project Excel Template’ as it is called in the Export Wizard. There is one minor hurdle about that format too, which is that MS Project creates Excel files in Excel ‘95 format, even when using MS Project 2007. Like the .mpp file, Excel ‘95 is a proprietary Microsoft Binary format and is difficult to read unless you are using MS Excel which can happily convert Excel ‘95 format to more up to date versions…

So, with all that in mind, this is how you get your data from MS Project into EA/TA via the Import from Excel option in TA.

With the following MS Project Gantt Chart:

First, create the Excel Workbook in MS Project:

Select “Save As” and make sure that you specify that you wish to save in Microsoft Excel Workbook (*.xls) format. By choosing this option, MS Project will start the export wizard so that you can configure the output accordingly.

The next step is to convert the ‘95 format sheet to ‘97 - 2003 format. The easiest way to do this is to open it in MS Excel and save as ‘97-2003 format. We are trying to find a better way to do this but unfortunately this step is very important at the moment!

Now that you have the file in the correct format, it’s time to bring it into TA/EA.

Simply choose “Import from Excel” from the the Add-ins > Time Architect menu. TA will now start its own wizard.

Just find the correct file and click on the next button.

If TA will not advance to the next screen then check:

• Is the file in ‘97 - 2003 format
• That the file is not open in Excel.

Time Architect will automatically recognise that the file is in Workbook format and select the option for you. All you need to do now is click next again.

In TA 2.1 we spent a long time working on the idea of merge and how you could round-trip between TA and MS Project. There will be an article on this soon - but for now we’ll bring this data in as new items. Simply select the “Import as New” option and click next.

The final step of the wizard allows you the final control as to what you want to import and where. You must specify where in the model the elements should be imported. Click on the “…” button and choose where to import the elements to. Then choose the element type to be created and if needed you can specify a stereotype to apply. By default TA will import links between elements as dependencies with the <<TA> stereotype. If you need more control then you can specify the link type, direction and stereotype as needed. Then click “Import” and TA will bring in all the data and links creating additional packages as needed.

TA will even give you a report on how successful the import was…

To give you the following results in EA/TA (once you generate the Gantt Chart)

Please note, this was imported with TA 2.3 Beta (to be released this week…). TA 2.3 recognises links to and from packages.

Nevertheless, the need to get resource and timing information from TA out to MS Project is still an important one so, in this article, I’m going to show you how easy it is…

Before explaining the process, however, there is one important caveat! The MS Project .mpp file is a proprietary binary format and TA can not create the .mpp file format; instead it relies on MS Excel format for information exchange.

TA has the ability to export the data-grid directly to MS Excel format as a single worksheet. MS Project can read either a simple worksheet or workbook format and includes a specially formatted workbook to facilitate transfer to and from the program.

Exporting from TA in MS Project Excel Workbook format (phew!) is simpler to do than say!

Taking the following TA Gantt chart as the example (this does have the TA 2.3 feature that supports links to/from packages):

(click on any image to see the full size version)

In TA, simply select select the “Export All Data To MS Project Workbook” option from the Import/Export icon on the toolbar:

and TA will open up the “Export to Workbook dialog” screen:

at this stage, don’t worry about all the other options, just choose the correct file path for your Excel Workbook and click “Generate!” (We’ll explain all the other options in the future tutorial about round tripping between TA and MS Project.

This will generate a full MS Excel Spreadsheet something similar to the following:

this file will include all the relevant column names and worksheet names (IN ENGLISH) there will be a follow on article explaining how to generate workbooks in other languages…

Now open up MS Project and select File > Open and you will be presented with a standard file dialog:

just make sure that you specify that you wish to open a .xls file and MS Project will then start the appropriate wizard to allow this to happen:

ensure that you select the “Project Excel Template” option and click next. For now, just select the import as new option (again there will be a full explanation of round-tripping soon).

MS Project will read the Excel spreadsheet and your TA data has been successfully imported! It should look something like this: