Project Planner Reader

Project Planner Reader is an easy-to-use software application that enables you to open and view files created with Smartworks Project Planner (PPR format) or Microsoft Project (MPP format). It doesn't contain any editing options but it's possible to customize a bunch of viewing preferences and to print information.

Same interface as Project Planner

Setting up this program is a fast job that requires minimal user intervention. It adopts the same interface as Project Planner, showing all its options. However, all features which are not dedicated to viewing or printing files are greyed out and cannot be selected.
This makes it a bit frustrating to figure out what Project Planner Reader can actually do instead of what it cannot do, especially since there are multiple view modes available with distinct sets of options.

View the project plan and resources

After opening a PPR or MPP-formatted file, you can study the project's tasks, such as task IDs, names, links, start and end date, duration, status, predecessors, owner, resources, and actual cost. Double-clicking an entry from the list gives you additional data, like dependencies, status change details, or job notes.
Moreover, you can examine resources (user names and IDs, groups, types, status, unit, email addresses), sort resources by any group, and filter tasks by various criteria: incomplete tasks for resource, critical, document, lagging or milestone tasks. A search function is available for both the project plan and resources.

Study Gantt charts and consult a calendar

Project Planner Reader lets you check out Gantt charts for the project, display grid lines, jump to a specific date, zoom in and out, as well as filter resources by groups and tasks by type (ongoing, complete, critical, lagging, milestone).
Plus, you can consult a calendar, jump to a specific date, change the scale (one week, two weeks, single month, summary graph), zoom in and out, as well as filter tasks by type and resources by groups.

View a network diagram and reports

Project information may also be investigated in a network diagram, where you can zoom in and out, display only the critical path in the project, show or hide grid lines, and filter tasks by name.
Meanwhile, reports can be compiled on the spot for the project's summary, critical, milestone, unstarted, lagging, ongoing and completed tasks, resources, or the calendar.

View and configure graphs

Graphs are available for the project's estimates, costs, resource usage, general information, and PERT analysis. It's possible to configure estimation options, such as setting planned, actual, optimistic, pessimistic, realistic or PERT estimated graph mode, plotting against the number of tasks or hours, or considering holidays.
Cost and resource statistics may be displayed in a bar graph or line chart, in hourly, daily, weekly or monthly mode, and the graph can be marked as a completed or incomplete project. Meanwhile, project data which reveals total tasks versus task status, owners or completion time, or users versus completion time can be shown as pie, bar, line or step graphs (in 2D or 3D mode).

Configure settings to print projects

Documents can be previewed and printed with the information obtained from any view mode. If you have a PDF virtual printer installed, you can save projects as PDF documents. When it comes to printing Gantt charts, the tool gives you the possibility to select a date range, adjust the resolution, choose the items to print while excluding the rest (task ID, name, status, or owner), as well as include or exclude summary tasks.
Concerning calendar printing, you can set a header and footer with project or company name (or both) and specify the alignment, include or exclude the page number, margins and today's date, define page margins, and set a date range.
As far as general options are concerned, you can pick another UI skin and customize the colors for color-coded tasks: normal, milestone, summary, critical, completed or lagged tasks, holidays and today's date in calendar, along with status in Gantt chart. Moreover, you can hide task names in Gantt charts and show the number of units from the project start date.

Evaluation and conclusion

We haven't come across any stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that the software utility didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. It had minimal impact on computer performance, running on low CPU and RAM.
On the other hand, the interface is misleading, since it doesn't give you a clear outlook of the program's functionality. We found it difficult to test because of this. Moreover, due to the fact that it's old, it froze several times while we were exploring options.
Nevertheless, Project Planner Reader serves it purpose as long as you keep in mind that it's designed solely designed for viewing and printing Project Planner and MS Project files.