Gantt charts, 2 years of requests finally fullfilled by Allenlook

[WiZaxx]

Allenlook has found a solution and he is working hard to make it better and better, so skip this and go here:http://forums.fengoffice.com/index.php?topic=3826.0

BTW, if you are tempted to vote "A what chart?" read thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart

--Wz

[Pet]

I voted yeah nice to have because I know it would be appealing to a lot of people, but actually I hate Gantt charts lol.

[conrado]

Ha! I liked the option 'A "what" chart?'.

Requests have not been ignored. There has been an attempt to raise funds to sponsor this feature but, as surprising as it may seem to some, it hasn't drawn much interest yet.

[WiZaxx]

Well, yes it was a provocative subject, and yes it was intentional. But I would like to move the mud over this topic a bit.

On my first attempt of getting some sort of Gantt viewer, I used the isGantt (with approval from the original developer) but the forum won't let me attach a screenshot.

Now I'm trying to build the XML file from the database using PHP but I'm not a programmer, so for me is a huge challenge.

Is anyone interested in joining forces?

[allenlook]

Absolutely.  We are building the queries and stored procedures over the past few days, and we have experimented with jsGantt, Google Chart, Google Visualizations, and most recently FusionCharts.

We'd be glad to share with you and the community, as soon as we find a good, printable, embeddable, and automatable Gantt chart - many of the ones we have tried either rely on a Google spreadsheet first (ViewPath Google Visualization), import of data (Gantter.com) or can't be printed (easily) or, or, or...

We are building a set of stored procedures that will create a "rich" set of data that contains both the original IDs of the workspaces, milestones and tasks, as well as new unique IDs for each, as well as a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).  That way this one set of data can be used to feed all the different Gantt charts we're seeing out there, as well as (hopefully) the nice timeline views we've seen.

We'll also be working on PHP pages that can be embedded on a tab, and which allow for filtering by workspace, milestone, tasks, owner, date ranges, etc.

[WiZaxx]

Have you played with Open Flash Chart 2 at all?
I believe it is used in fengoffice already, right?

Anyhow, it seems you are waaay ahead of what I can do, so hat off!

[allenlook]

I was not aware of it, but I will look into it right now!  Thank you for the pointer.

[allenlook]

Open Flash Chart 2 does not appear to have a Gantt chart?

[WiZaxx]

But it is flash, and there is a huge base of flash developers we can leverage.
I'll check on this .................

[amejat]

Ha! I liked the option 'A "what" chart?'.

Requests have not been ignored. There has been an attempt to raise funds to sponsor this feature but, as surprising as it may seem to some, it hasn't drawn much interest yet.

Dear Conrado,

Could you please explain us what are:
- The development model of Feng Office ?
- The economical model of Feng Office ?

From my experience asking for a spreadsheet app and from your answer, it seems to me that:
- There is NO MORE active development for Feng Office
- ONLY "sponsored" features will be developed

It just does not make sense at all. This project started great but since you decided to become a "start up" and to try to make money on it, it just collapsed.

The only people answering emails are "commercial representatives". The only answer is "pay first and we will see". And there is no more official roadmap or development plans.

My humble opinion: KICK OFF all the commercial experts you hired and hire new developers. This project is going nowhere at the moment.

To me, it is a dead end and as long as I do not see a real development of it, I will not promote it anymore.

[WiZaxx]

We'll also be working on PHP pages that can be embedded on a tab, and which allow for filtering by workspace, milestone, tasks, owner, date ranges, etc.

I just came across this plugin for project.net. http://sourceforge.net/projects/dotmods/files/Interactive%20Gantt/
It is an interactive gantt  . Do you guys think it could be tweaked to work in fengoffice?

Cheers

[allenlook]

Looks like most of the work on their website was done in 2003-04.  The demo site has been down for a long time, and their original SourceForge pages are deprecated and no longer available.

I'll try to download the latest iGantt, but it might just be a module addon for dotProject...

[allenlook]

Back in late '08, according to their forums...

"Hey guys,  I kind of abandoned this as it was more a proof of concept than anything. "

[allenlook]

I just want to update everyone that I have a new tab defined in Feng Office, and it contains a selection form to pick Workspace(s), Milestone(s), User(s) and Date(s) and it displays a Gantt chart using jsGantt.

The minor problem with jsGantt is apparently it needs all of the workspaces, milestones and task/subtasks to be added to it in the exact order they need to appear on the chart.  I thought it would not matter because it is array and parent/child based, but yes it does matter.  It is also *very* sensitive to data types and required values.

The hardest part is getting something that looks like a work breakdown structure out of Feng Office.  The workspaces are embedded in a ten-column construct (p1-p10), then the milestones are a single layer below that, then the tasks and subtasks are an infinite-depth construct that can belong to either a workspace directly (as Unclassified) or a milestone.  It is a bit complicated.

Note: If the Feng Office team has a way to generate a WBS would you be willing to share just that logic?  Obviously there is a way to do it as the workspace tree is generated and the milestone/task/subtask view is shown on the Tasks tab?

It will take us a bit longer to polish this into something I would even call a "hack", but we will post the solution back here for the community.

The Gantt chart will not need to be integrated as a tab in Feng Office, but it can be done.  I will include instructions when we are done.

[WiZaxx]

@Allenlook:
you really got the grasp fengoffice!
Don't let it go!

--Wz