Planning Module Documentation
We spent 40% of our development time on making Planning Module easier to use. At the same time, there are new paradigms that may need explanation. Here is our user guide.
This is work in progress. We didn’t get much time to write documentation during development 
Quick Tour
We encourage you to take a look at the Quick Tour Video (2 minutes). In most cases, Quick Tour should be sufficient to get you started.
User Guide
- Introduction
- Setting up Planning Module
- Installation & Setup (video tutorial available)
- Upgrading Planning Module from any previous version
- Advance Configuration
- Changing calculations in estimation: hours per day, week, year
- Changing date format
- Selecting Assignees and Subscribers
- Using Planning Module
- Outliner: tabbing, new entry, deleting, editing, drag drop, keyboard navigation
- Estimates: short hand notation, auto conversion, auto sum, no update if greater, batch update in %, days etc
- Assignee Names: first person leader, short forms allowed, auto complete on backend
- Start – Due Dates: auto calculation for milestones, auto complete in outliner – current month, year, red for overdue items, batch update to add / subtract days
- Batch Update: Need for batch update, selecting multiple items in outliner / cards view, shortcut key for batch update, switch to cards view to show more options in batch update, easy editing of start/due dates, estimation padding, assigning to people
- Focus mode: Need to focus on an iteration / milestone, larger font for better readability, keyboard shortcuts, Cards view in focus mode. Focusing on tickets. Hiding completed items or items without milestone to focus.
- Import / Export: importing formatted text, exporting XML, importing XML, added as new items
- Cards View: Why, adding details, workflow status, estimate slider, next-previous, category templates, filtering
- Gantt View: Timeline, zooming, expand – collapse plan, display of milestones / tickets / tasks. Progress %. View only – can’t edit. Printing visible portion as image.
- Auto Save: Every 5 minutes or on save. Shows recover / discard project on opening screen
- Ticket Hacks for AC
- Shows Planning module data in aC pages
- Setting up the hacks
- Workflow Status
- Using: ticket list, mass edit, workflow status, category icons, estimates and start dates
- Planning module + Reports module integration: Estimated hours vs Actual display
- Adding Translations
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Getting Help via GetSatisfaction
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m interested in implementing AC within our studio and am running the trial version. This module seems like a nice enhancement. Especially the Planning module + Reports module integration: Estimated hours vs Actual display. Can I create a project estimate with hours assigned to individuals and/or tasks and track the progress? Can you give me more info on this? How does it work? Thanks, -Bob
Hi Bob,
You can assign estimate to tasks, and then track them via Planning / Reports modules. Planning module will let you compare estimates vs actual time for each project at any given time. Reports module will let you compare total estimate vs actual time for a single or group of projects and their trend over a period of time.
In a future release of Time Reports Plus, we will also add estimate vs actual comparison. This will provide even more flexibility.
:Nirav
I need task dependencies because I find myself wasting a lot of time if I have to update the due date of one object. It would nice if it had at least start to finish dependencies. I think I might have to go back to using MS Project.
You can use batch update feature in Planning module to reschedule a set of items at once. You can also reschedule a milestone from within activeCollab and choose to reschedule all activities linked with that. activeCollab does not provide true task dependencies so that is a limitation…
Is it possible that the estimate fields only reflects the hours, and not break it down into month, weeks and days format? We would like to see the hours for each project only.
Thanks,
Yes. The latest version of Planning module allows you to turn off automatic conversion of hours into weeks/months etc. You can change this from within Planning module, via the Settings icon in top right.
Is there a way to have notifications sent to assignees when a task or milestone is added to them?
Thanks!
@Amy: You can turn notifications on under Planning module settings in aC admin. Note that this will send notifications for all changes and may result in many emails!
I utilize activecollab and currently have the Ticket Status module add on. I would like to be able to report actual vs estimated hours. I was thinking of just purchasing the reporting module as the ticket status also provides an estimate field. Will the report module provide me with the ability to report actual vs estimated hours?
If you have Planning module or Tickets Plus module, and enter estimates using either of them, Reports module will be able to pick up those estimates and compare them against actual hours.