Project schedule overview [in-depth guide]
While your project schedule should be predetermined to the best of your knowledge in your Project templates, there does come a time when you may need to update your project's schedule to meet the current needs of the client project(s).
This guide will cover the steps of creating new tasks on a blank schedule, as well as adding tasks to an existing schedule. Plus, some advanced features to give you a further understanding of how the schedules are designed to work for you.
NOTE: The Schedule screen will now update if someone else is editing the same schedule at the same time.
Guide contents: Schedule overview | Schedule view toggles | Edit column sets | Creating a new schedule | Add tasks to existing schedule | Fixing predecessors | Advanced schedule features | Resources
Schedule overview
In the setup of any project, you will see "Schedule". Clicking on this will open your project schedule.
The Schedule screen provides the following features:
- The schedule can be set to auto-save when moving from field to field or save changes only when clicking the SAVE button.
- The Gantt view, task details, and copy from are fixed panels that can be hidden or shown in any combination.
- You can view task-based conversations.
- Assignments, though visible/editable via the Task details panel can open up into a separate panel. This panel allows navigation between tasks.
- You can create "column sets". These are predefined sets of columns that you can toggle between to allow you to view/edit the information that is necessary at that time, ex. setup of schedule may have different columns vs. traffic.
Show task details
From the upper right of the schedule click on Task details.
The task details allow you to adjust and view all task-related information
Along the top of the Task detail panel you will see:
-Task name
-Navigation to next/previous task
-View/edit current task detail
-View/edit current task to-do list
-View/edit current task conversations
Edit task details
The tab is separated into assignments at the top, task plan, actual, and other information.
Plan
This area allows you to adjust the planned areas of the task, this includes plan start, plan complete, duration, constraint, & predecessors.
NOTE: This panel is the only area that allows the setup of cross-project predecessor links.
Actual
This area allows you to set how actuals are tracked and to edit %complete, priority, actual start, & actual complete dates.
Other
This section is used to set up task controls, such as track budgets & allow all on time sheets.
To-do lists
This tab allows you to add/edit/view to-do lists for the selected task.
Task-level conversations
This tab allows you to add, edit & view all conversations for the selected task.
Schedule view toggles
Show/hide Gantt view
From the upper right corner, click on Show on the Gantt chart icon.
Once open you can select day, week, or month views
Show/hide copy tasks from templates/projects
In the top right corner, click on Add task from the Templates icon.
Select a template or project from the drop-down list. You are able to copy all tasks or drag-n-drop tasks from displayed tasks into the current schedule.
Show/hide task details
Clicking on the Assignments from the grid or the task details will open the new Assignments panel.
Assignment Details
There is a more detailed look at the assignments, where you can also manually adjust weekly buckets. To access this, click on the blue letters in the Assigned column, or Assignment Details from the Task Details.
This will open a new screen where you can edit the assignments with greater focus.
Clicking Show Weeks will change how you can allocate time and then bucket the hours by the week.
NOTE: Once you override the hours in the weekly buckets, the system will use those numbers for allocations in resourcing.
Edit column sets
You can now create custom column sets, instead of choosing the columns by the security group.
NOTE: You will need at least the Security Right of "---Allow access to lists" in order to be able to edit column sets.
You can also override the label of each column to suit your preference.
Once a column set is added, the drop-down will then appear for all users. Default layout relies on the columns for that security group.
Creating a new schedule
When creating a new schedule, the project schedule screen will appear rather empty, with the only option to add a task.
NOTE: If you are working in a project template, there are no dates listed, just days in duration for each task.
Click Add a task.
Name the task and enter the days on which you plan to complete the task.
NOTE: Track budgets is checked by default for all new assignment-level tasks.
Enter the Task Name, Days and Assignment(s). To add Assignments, click on the Add link in the Assigned column, or click Add Assignment from the Task Details on the right.
Be sure to populate the User Name, Service and Allocated Hours.
NOTE: This is what drives all the Resourcing features within Workamajig.
You can add multiple assignments to a single task, so long as they all share the same goals.
Add additional tasks by clicking on Insert row from the schedule.
If you have checked in your Display options, then you will see the Predecessors automatically populate.
Now continue to fill out the remaining tasks to fulfill your project schedule needs.
Copying Tasks from a Template or Project
Click on one of the two shortcuts to open the Templates panel.
Choose your template or project. Then click on Copy all tasks (this will bring over the full schedule), or drag and drop just the tasks you want to bring over (this copies only the data for those individual tasks).
In this situation, the end result looks like this.
Adding tasks to an existing schedule
Let's say you have the following schedule and you want to add a revisions task after the reviews task.
Option 1
One way is to click on the Insert below the plus sign on the task that you want to enter the new task below.
Enter the new task's name, duration of days, and assigned people.
The end result would look something like this. Note how the Final task has two predecessors. To adjust predecessors, see the next section.
Option 2
The other way is to simply click Insert row at the bottom of the schedule and then drag and drop the task to where you want it to be.
The new task is inserted at the end.
Drag and drop the task to its desired place in the schedule.
After the task is moved, note how the predecessors are still based on how the task was originally added.
Fixing predecessors
There are times when you may want to fix the predecessors for the entire schedule. To do this, please review the following steps.
Click the checkbox at the top to check all tasks. Then select the Unlink button.
Now, all the tasks will have the same start date (today).
Click the checkbox again to highlight all tasks and now click the Link option that appears.
The end result would look something like this, where all tasks now push out based on the previous task.
Advanced schedule features
Switch to project
You can switch to another project's schedule right from the schedule you have open.
To do this, click on the Search icon next to the project number.
Then from the drop-down, choose the project you want to switch to in the schedule.
You can enter the client ID for more refined results.
Then click GO!
Schedule direction
By default, the schedule direction for new projects is set to 'from project start'. This works best with the 'as soon as possible' constraint. The design here is that your assigned users work based on the task's start date and not necessarily the due date. The schedule status will turn red if any task's due date pushes past the project's due date.
You can change the schedule direction to 'from project completion'. Doing so will make each task constraint set to 'as late as possible'. When using the schedule this way, your predecessors will then work backward from the last task's due date. And if a task is not completed by the task due date, then the task will permanently turn red and cannot auto-push forward.
Task constraints
The default task constraint is 'as soon as possible'. The design here is that the current task is ready to start now, based on the use of predecessors. The other constraints allow you to adjust how each task behaves.
For more info, please refer to the Task constraints [in-depth guide].
Predecessors
This refers to the link established between tasks and is designed to push the planned start date of the next task, based on the actual completion date of the previous task.
Predecessors are created automatically based on where you are adding a task to the schedule.
For more on this, please refer to the Task predecessors [in-depth guide].
Auto pushing of task dates
By default, the system will update the active project's tasks plan start & plan due dates each night if the task has an actual start and/or actual completion date.
There are three main settings that control this automation.
- Push schedule dates on tasks: Auto-pushes the task's planned start date nightly.
- Push schedule end dates on started tasks: Auto-push the task's planned completion date nightly.
- Actual dates change the plan date: Instantly adjusts the remaining tasks/predecessor's plan dates based on the actual completion date of the previous task.
This can be set at a system or project level.
For more info, please refer to the Auto schedule [in-depth guide].
Cross-project predecessors
This feature is designed for use in campaign-related projects. This allows you to have a task in project 1 "trigger" the start of a task in project 2.
For more info, please refer to the Cross-project predecessors [in-depth guide].
Resources
Project templates [in-depth guide]
Task predecessors [in-depth guide]
Task constraints [in-depth guide]