The Omni Group on Monday announced the release of OmniPlan 2.0, a new version of its project management software for Mac OS X. It costs $199; upgrades from the previous release are available.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]OmniPlan was developed to help project managers figure out and manage resources, control costs and monitor aspects of the plans they put together, collaborating with colleagues and sharing details and schedules.

Major improvements to the 2.0 release surround the collaboration capabilities. You can use a WebDAV server to sync projects between resources, publish tasks automatically upon saving, find new changes automatically through Apple’s Bonjour technology or at a specified interval. Customized AppleScripts can also be executed to help automate workflow. OmniPlan 2.0 supports Apple’s Calendar Server technology, also.

Scheduling has been overhauled in the new release, with support for fiscal years now available (in addition to calendar years). You can schedule projects backwards from a fixed date; compare projects against multiple baselines; highlight paths to individual milestones using a new inspector; set optional start and end dates and more.

Filtering has also been improved, with the ability to save commonly-used filters for reuse later. You can also configure publishing actions to use filters.

The Omni Group has improved printing capabilities with flexible options headers, improved page margin support and the ability to expand or collapse all notes and task and resource groups.