Plan project tasks

This page is for project managers and planners. With the SmartERP Planning - Project bridge installed, a shift can belong to a project and a task, and a project manager can plan the shifts of the projects they manage without being a Planning Administrator.

What the bridge adds#

• Project and Task on shifts and, for Project, on shift templates. A shift for a task takes the task's project.
• Schedule by Project under Planning → Schedule → By Project, and Project → Planning (screen title Planning of My Projects) with the shifts of the projects you manage.
• On each task: a Planning tab with planned, open and remaining hours, a Shifts button, and a Plan button.
• On each project: a Planned button with the planned hours, and a Planning section in the project overview.

[planning-schedule-by-project]

See how much of a task is planned#

Open a task and its Planning tab:

[planning-task-planning-tab]

The Shifts button at the top of the task counts the task's shifts and opens them on the schedule.

Plan a task with the Plan button#

1. Open the task. It must belong to a project and have hours left to plan.
2. Press Plan in the header. The Plan dialog opens with the hours still to plan, the task's deadline and its Planning Role filled in.
3. Check Hours to Plan and Hours per Day (8 at first). Choose Start, the first day to use.
4. In People, choose the people. Leave it empty to create open shifts. With a role chosen, only people holding the role are offered.
5. Tick Publish Now only if you want the shifts published at once.
6. Read the table at the bottom: for each person it lists the days, times and hours Planning will create, for the first 31 days. A message shows when a person's hours do not fit in the next year ("Name: only x h fit in the next year.") or when the plan ends after the deadline ("Name finishes on date, after the deadline.").
7. Press Plan.

[planning-spread-dialog]

A message says "n shift(s) planned for Task." Planning creates one shift per working day, at most the Hours per Day, inside the person's working time, skipping days of time off and time that the person already has a shift. Each shift's allocated time is exactly the hours planned. If no working time can be found you see "No working time found to plan these hours."

You can start the same dialog from the schedule: open the To plan panel, find the task, drag it onto a person or press Plan….

Let project managers plan their projects#

A project manager (the Project Manager field of the project) who is not a Planning Administrator can:

• see, create, change, publish and delete the shifts of the projects they manage, including drafts, and see the capacity figures of the people on those shifts;
• open the schedule, use New, drag and drop their shifts, and see their tasks in the To plan panel;
• publish with the Publish button on a shift or card.

They cannot:

• touch shifts of projects they do not manage, or move a shift to another project: "You can only plan shifts on projects you manage.";
• change roles, templates or settings (those are for Planning Administrators);
• use the schedule's Publish dialog, which is limited to Planning Administrators; see Troubleshooting.

If change approval is on, their changes to published shifts wait for the shift manager; see Approve changes to published shifts.

Project overview#

For Planning users and for the project manager, the project overview shows a Planning section with the hours planned, done (when the Timesheets bridge is installed), still to plan and open; a bar for each of the next eight weeks; and a table of hours and planned cost by role. The Planned button on the project form opens the project's shifts.

Next#

• Track time worked
• Book time with a forecast