Below, you can read notes and change logs of all Menlo Tools for Project updates.
Latest Version
Changelog for v27 – Released 15th of November 2024
(15/11/2024)
New tools:
- Mark Critical Path in Team Planner (under Formatting Tools)
- This tool will allow you to see which tasks are critical in the ‘Team Planner’ View by formatting them to have a red fill/outline.
- Open Baseline for Edits (under Information Tools)
- This tool allows you to edit baselines faster. You select a baseline from a dropdown, and the tool quickly opens its three main columns: ‘ BaselineX Start’, ‘BaselineX Finish’, and ‘BaselineX Duration’.
It also allows you to quickly change the format shown for dates, as it is often useful to be able to see times when working with baselines. The ‘Change Date Format’ tool can then be used to set it back to what you had after baseline edits are done.
- Change Date Format (under Formatting Tools)
- This tool lets you quickly change the format used for dates, such as what you see in the Start and Finish columns. This is faster than MS Project's built-in method. Can be used after ‘Open Baseline For Edits’ to change the date format back to what you had before.
- ‘Suggest Alternative Resource for Overallocated Task’ (under Information Tools)
- Use this tool on a task with overallocated Resources. It will look at what Resources are on the task currently causing the overallocation (say it's ‘Plumbers 1’). It will then look to see if Plumbers 2, Plumbers 3, and so on are defined in your project. It looks at whether any can be applied to solve the overallocation if it finds them. If it finds a solution, it will suggest that Resource to you. If it can’t find a suitable resource, it will offer to create and apply a new one (i.e., if you already have Plumbers 1 to 3, it will suggest Plumbers 4).
New functionality for existing tools:
- Format Summary Tasks to Menlo Palettes (All Options)
- These tools will now prompt you before running. This is because they must open all summary tasks to perform their functionality. The prompt informs you on how to optionally save the open/closed state of your Summaries beforehand and then how to reload it after using the palette tool so that you don’t have to go back and do it manually.
- These tools will also return you to the task that you selected before running the tool rather than leaving you at the bottom of the programme once the tool is finished.
Other Changes:
- Reorganized the layout of the Information Tools menu with better headings.
- Minor changes to the wording of some dialog boxes for better readability.
Changelog for v0.1.26 – Released 4th of October 2024
(04/10/2024)
Read More
New tools:
- New feature for QA Audit – ‘Export QA Data to Excel’, is now available in its first iteration. You can generate an Excel report of your QA Audit. Later updates will give greater detail for each test.
- Further refinements to QA Audit:
- Fixed the Automatic vs Manual Scheduling test, which was not working correctly.
- Fixed how the Fix All False Criticals tool appears if accessed through QA Audit.
- New options and functionality added to ‘Insert RFI/CAN/CI Sequence’ tool:
- Added the option to add any correspondence trails under the summary task. This is controlled via a checkbox on the dialog for the tool and is remembered between uses of the tool for a session of Project.
- Added functionality so that if you only add single RFI or CAN, a task for waiting time for an expected response, and then a milestone for that expected response, are added.
- Refinement to how user forms are scaled at different Display Settings. Should make user forms/dialogs far easier to read and use if you use values other than the default 100% Scale value.
- Refinements generally to tools that involve Excel – should no longer leave ‘ghost’ Excel processes running that interfere with the tools later on.
- Fixed ‘Transfer Baseline Between Projects’ from incorrectly handling the Cancel button press.
- Revised ‘Import CIs from an Excel Sheet’ so the input dropdown refreshes the list of already open Excel files every time the dropdown is pressed rather than when the form is loaded.
- ‘Fix All False Criticals’ now sets the Number11 field to 1 for tasks that it fixes automatically. This is in advance of a new tool in the next update, ‘Verify Fixed False Criticals’, which will check previously fixed False Criticals and update the fixes made if necessary.
Changelog for v0.1.25 – Released 9th of August 2024
(09/08/2024)
Read More
- Added the ‘Link Selected Tasks where the Name Contains’ tool under ‘Logic Tools’. This tool will prompt you for a text input, then scan through the tasks in your active selection and link any tasks in sequence if their Names contain that text input.
- Added two tools under ‘Information Tools’:
- ‘Add Critical Revision Entry’
- ‘Remove Critical Revision Entry’
These allow you to input the identifier for a given Critical Revision and either add or remove it from the text in the Critical Revision (Text26) field.
- Revised some button names to make them more intuitive:
- ‘Show Names with Leading Spaces’ is now ‘Correct Names with Leading Spaces’
- 'Show Names with Trailing Spaces' is now ‘Correct Names with Trailing Spaces’
- 'Show Names with Double Spaces' is now ‘Correct Names with Double Spaces’
- 'Show Uncapitalized Names' is now ‘Correct Uncapitalized Names’
Changelog for v0.1.24 – Released 31st of July 2024
(31/07/2024)
Read More
- Fixed a problem causing the Menlo Tools tab to disappear from the ribbon.
- Revised the button icon for ‘Show Estimated Tasks’
- Removed a test tool mistakenly left in the previous release.
Changelog for v0.1.23 – Released 26th of July 2024
(26/07/2024)
Read More
- Added the ‘Show Uncapitalized Names’ tool under ‘Text Tools’, which finds and filters for any tasks where the first appropriate A-Z character is uncapitalized, and optionally allows you to capitalize these Names with one button press.
- Revised the ‘Identify Circular Logic Loop’ tool to give a more intuitive readout of information of a task chain preventing logic being added.
- Revised the QA Audit tool so that the fix for the Default Task Type for new tasks test is to set the Default Task Type to be Fixed Units and Effort Driven, rather than Fixed Work.
- Fixed errors within the ‘Add Predecessor to Many Tasks’ and ‘Add Successors to Many Tasks’ tool preventing them from working as intended.
- To bring them in line with other similar Filter tools, the following tools were tweaked so that they scroll to the selected task on the Gantt Chart once they have filtered:
- [Filter for] Selected Task + Predecessors (X Levels)
- [Filter for] Selected Task + Successors (X Levels)
- [Filter for] Selected Task + Predecessors + Successors (X Levels)
- Tweaked the following tools so that once their respective Filters are applied, the tool will navigate to the first relevant task. This fixes an issue where, after the code applied the Filter, the user would see a blank programme until they scrolled up or down, which would then actually show them the Filtered-For tasks.
- [Filter for] All Tasks with These Names
- [Filter for] All Tasks where the Name Contains
- Fixed the ‘All Tasks where the Name Contains’ tool applying a Filter for blank rows if the user supplies no text, or presses Cancel on the input box.
Changelog for v0.1.22 – Released 15th of July 2024
(15/07/2024)
Read More
- New version to address the Menlo Tools tab disappearing from the Microsoft Project ribbon. We believe this may have been due to a recent Microsoft update to Project that somehow interfered with Add-Ins.
- Added the ‘Show Names with Trailing Spaces’ tool under ‘Text Tools’, which finds and filters for any tasks with spaces at the end of the Name, and optionally allows you to remove all spaces at the end of any task Names with one button press.
- Fixed the ‘Create a Multiple Unit Sequence’ tool.
- The tool now accepts a Unit Number value that is just a number rather than only when there is a piece of text followed by a number. For example, ‘ 1’ would be acceptable as well as ‘Unit 1’.
- Replicated tasks now always come in as Automatically Scheduled regardless of whether the default setting is for new tasks to be Manual or Automatic.
- Fixed the ‘Add a Predecessor to Many Tasks’ and ‘Add a Successor to Many Tasks’ tools. Previously, both of these tools would run into issues if there were blank rows present in the programme.
- Tweaked the startup position of the user forms for the ‘Identify Circular Logic Loops’ tool. They will now start centralized to the monitor on which Project is running.
Changelog for v0.1.21 – Released 21st of June 2024
(21/06/2024)
Read More
- Added the ‘Show Estimated Tasks’ tool under ‘Information Tools’, which finds and filters for any tasks flagged as Estimated, and optionally allows you to switch them all to non-Estimated with one button press.
- Added the ‘Show Names with Double Spaces’ tool under ‘Text Tools’, which finds and filters for any tasks with double spaces in the Name, and optionally allows you to switch all double-spaces to single-spaces with one button press.
- Added the ‘Show Names with Leading Spaces’ tool under ‘Text Tools’, which finds and filters for any tasks with spaces at the start of the Name, and optionally allows you to remove all spaces at the start of any task Names with one button press.
- Revised the functionality of the 'Fix All False Criticals' tool. It now handles more cases automatically, including:
- False Critical is caused by a non-critical successor with 0% progress marked, but an Actual Start is present.
- A new specific fix for when a False Critical is caused by a Successor that is 100% complete. Previously the same fix was applied for an in-progress but incomplete Successor, which was incorrect.
- Slight revisions to the ‘Fix All False Criticals’ tool Report form to improve readability.
- Added Highlight and Filter functionalities to the Fixer form of QA Audit.
- Updated ‘Create a New Daily View’ and ‘Create a New Monthly View’ to display the status date as a solid red line on the Gantt chart.
- Added the built-in Highlight menu to the Menlo Tools tab under the Visibility + Navigation group.
- Generally, the position of built-in buttons was shifted relative to the Menlo Tools buttons so that the Menlo Tools buttons were shown first. Separators were added to the ribbon to divide Menlo Tools and built-in buttons, and in the case of the Visibility + Navigation group, into smaller sections of built-in buttons.
- Revised super tips (button hover information) for:
- Insert an RFI/CAN/CI Sequence
- Import CIs from an Excel Sheet
- Create a Multiple Unit Sequence
- Fixed wording of Show Incomplete Tasks before Status Date and Show Complete Tasks After Status Date for consistency.
- Improved licensing related user forms.
Changelog for v0.1.20 – Released 10th of June 2024
(10/06/2024)
Read More
- On ‘Insert an RFI/CAN/CI Sequence’, CI Issue Milestones are now correctly bought in at 0d, not 1d.
- Fixed the text wrapping display of a label on the ‘Import CIs from an Excel Sheet’ tool user form.
- Fixed the progress form for the ‘Import CIs from an Excel Sheet’ tool. Previously it incorrectly showed the current CI number instead of the count position of its progress.
- Fixed the embedded .mpp file for the ‘Menlo Tools Setup’ button. Reduced file size and removed elements that previously caused an external data warning when the file was opened. The results of this is also a decreased download and installation size.
- Added a new ‘Current Version’ button under the Menlo Tools Option menu for information purposes until our ‘Check Latest Menlo Tools Version’ code is improved.
- Tweaked positioning of tooltip icons on QA Audit Form top section.
- Fixed a tooltip appearing where it shouldn’t have on the QA Audit Form.
- More intuitive handling of active/visible windows for ‘Transfer Baselines Between Projects’.
Changelog for v0.1.19 – Released 8th of June 2024
(08/06/2024)
Read More
- Improved code for deciding where user forms should open, especially for multiple monitor setups. Forms should now always open in a sensible position on the same monitor as where you have Microsoft Project open.
- Revised the ‘Transfer Baselines Between Project Tool’. Optimised to halve the time it takes to transfer data between projects. Also added a progress form to show a live view of how far through the procedure is.
- Added ‘Check for Updates to Menlo Tools’ button. You can now compare the current version of the installed Menlo Tools for Project against our latest version and be taken to our website to download it.
- Fixed incorrect Text28/Text29 Custom Field usage on the ‘Insert RFI/CAN/CI Sequence’ tool.
- Tweaked the user form for the ‘Transfer Critical Revision between Projects’ tool to only show the file name in the dropdown of already open files, as opposed to the full file path.
- General refinements and adjustments to ribbon layout and button placement.
- Minor changes to the wording of some buttons:
- ‘Fix Incomplete Work Before Status Date’ is now ‘Show Incomplete Work Before Status Date’
- ‘Fix Complete Work After Status Date’ is now ‘Show Complete Work After Status Date’
- Tweaked the ribbon position of the ‘Setup Menlo Tools’ button and gave it a new icon.
- Added new icons for the ‘Get Support’ menu for the following buttons:
Changelog for v0.1.18 – Internal build, unreleased to clients, updates carried forward to v0.1.19
Read More
- Revised layout and display of the QA Audit Test form.
- Made the form resizable and added a button to resize the form to default dimensions. Works well for making the form smaller so you can see more of the programme when working on a 1080p monitor. May be revised further to improve functionality when making the form larger.
- Generally revised top section to include better information, added tooltips for the Status Date and Critical Revision Identifier inputs.
- Generally cleaned up the tooltip icons for the tests to have consistent dimensions/layout.
- Fixed the ‘Fix’ button procedure for the ‘Correct Status Date has been set’ test on the QA Audit.
- Revised layout of Visibility + Navigation tab buttons.
- Minor general tweaks to Ribbon wording for consistency (removal of ellipses)
- Improved icons for:
- All ‘Format Summary Tasks to Menlo Palette’ tools
- The Menlo Associates + Academy menu
- Programme QA Audit button
- Revised layout and display of the licensing form and associated text/information.
- Fixed ‘Transfer Critical Revision between Projects’ not starting when its button was pressed.
Changelog for v0.1.17 – Released 31st of May 2024
(31/05/2024)
Read More
First technical release version.
