Quick Project Planning and Management with Outline

Here is what you can expect from the Planning module.

The Zen of Planning - avoid repetition, stay focused, get more done

Planning Module lets you work as you think. It removes distractions and makes it easy to carry out batch updates. Planning module shows your entire project plan in a single screen. You can review and update milestones, tasks and subtasks from the same screen. It is designed to boost your productivity with activeCollab. Our studies have shown at least 5X improvement!

Birds eye view of project plan

Planning module provides three view modes – a tree like Outline view, Cards view to focus on level 2 items and Timeline view to see the Gantt chart of your project. You can focus on items you wish to work on and can edit any part of the plan. You can even see multiple projects at once in the Timeline view.

Additional Assignment filtering options

Apart from project planning and managing, Planning module also helps you get things done. With our enhancements to Assignment Filters, you get additional filter options, can group tasks up to four levels, see everything you need to do on a single page, and quickly complete / edit / track time on tasks.

Quick and easy editing

From within the Planning module, add / update and delete milestones, tasks, pages and sub-tasks. You can even promote or demote item levels – e.g. convert a milestone into a task, or a sub-task into a task. You can drag and drop items, complete / open items, change their priorities & visibility, add estimated efforts, assignees, start and due dates.

Designed to save your time and money

We added lot of smarts to Planning module to save you time and money! Estimates, Assignees and Dates will auto expand, Completed and Overdue items will show differently, Text Import allows magical plan creation by typing or pasting text, Options allow you to restrict what fields show up, Filters allow you to narrow down work items. We encourage you to explore and discover these little gems!

Estimates, Workflow Status, Batch Updates, Category Templates and more...

Planning module adds a lot of useful features to activeCollab. We have added category level templates for Tasks. This lets you add a predefined structure to your descriptions. Batch Update allows you to edit multiple items at once and is full of smart tricks to save you time!

Intuitive Project Planning, Adjustments and Management

The most striking element of Planning module is it’s intuitive spreadsheet like Outline view. You can navigate your project plan with keyboard, adding or editing items as you move along. Smart auto completes, estimate totalling, promoting and demoting items (Tasks to Sub tasks, or Milestone) and lots of other carefully implemented features will make managing your project plan a delight.

Planning module not only saves time, it gives you great sense of control over a dynamic project plan.

Batch Update items easily

Project Gantt Chart – combine multiple project for an overview

Cards View in Planning Module

Feature Overview for Planning screen

• Plan your project as you think!
• Excellent keyboard shortcuts and productivity enhancements.
• Add / Edit plans inline in an easy spreadsheet like view.
• Batch update your projects:
  • Set Start Date
  • Set Due Date
  • Complete
  • Set Estimate
  • Set Assignee
  • Set Subscribers
  • Visibility
  • Priority
  • Category
  • Status
• Export and Import Plan as CSV or XML.
• Assign multiple resources to Tasks or Milestones.
• Card view of Tasks for quick review and story boarding.
• Timeline – Gantt chart view of each project and ability to see multiple projects in the timeline.
• Print project plans.

Assignments Plus – Getting things done!

Planning module does not stop at planning! We’ve even included a ton of improvements to Assignment Filters that’d make it a lot easier to keep track of your work and get it done.

Assignments Plus Task Filtering and Management

Additional Grouping Options for Assignment Filters

Feature Overview for Assignments Plus

• List all the Tasks, Subtask, and Milestones as assignments.
• Edit or delete task, subtask or milestone from the list.
• Live search to quickly find an item.
• Four level grouping with many useful filters.
• Smart “schedule” grouping and due date filters (for example: “Due on in next 10 days”)
• Track time and add estimate on object right from the list.
• Improved, easier user interface and design.
• Export assignments to HTML and CSV.
• Complete / reopen tasks from the list.

Settings

Permissions and Settings for Planning module

The Zen of Reporting - monitor key trends, focus on productivity and stay informed

We believe project reports should show real progress and should be actionable. Reports Plus shows you key performance trends for your projects. It goes beyond the % completed bar graphs and shows you real progress made every week. You can now visualize when will your projects complete. Spending a few minutes on Reports Plus module every day will avoid surprises and keep you grounded with reality of your projects.

Reports that matter

Burn down chart tells you items remaining in your project. It’s the simplest and most effective chart to measure project progress. Velocity tells you the rate at which you are completing pending items. Assignment and Hours chart for people tell you how occupied a team member is and where is their time going. Usage stats tell you how active your projects are. You can get status of all projects of a client in one screen. Reports Plus shows you only what matters!

Sensible date ranges, Printable reports, Quick navigation buttons, Ability to configure calculations and more...

Reports Plus packs numerous productivity enhancements that will make your job easier. Printed reports let you easily share them with team members, quick navigation buttons help you go back and forth, filters let you see data you want. Administrators can configure score calculations and permissions easily.

Designed to save your time and money

We understand your time is precious. Reports Plus is designed to save time and make you more productive from ground up. Reports are available from one screen. Every single aspect is aimed at effective tracking. We have paid attention to small details so that you can benefit immediately. We encourage you to explore and discover these little gems!

Project Reports

All key project performance monitors in one place. Great for agile teams and program managers.

1. Key Performance Indicators: Overall Velocity, Hours, Progress Indicator and Next milestone
2. Burn Down Chart: indicating the velocity at which the project is moving and giving you an estimate of when the project is likely to complete
3. Hours Chart: shows weekly tracked hours, total estimated hours and total tracked hours till date
4. Tasks Progress by workflow labels
5. Most Active & Open items – which work is keeping your team occupied currently.
6. Longest Overdue: These are items that either need some love to complete them, or an edit that removes the due date on them!
7. Project Status Overview – shows overall progress, project name, leader name, percentage completion, number of tasks done and total tasks, total hours tracked – and optionally the next milestone in this project.
8. System Stats – Not visible in this screenshot are quick stats about the system – total projects, users, files, their size etc.

People Reports

Accessible from People list, the “report card” tells you not only the performance of a person, but also how occupied she is and projects she is working on.

People Reports – Activity Score, Key Statistics and more

The new leaderboard tells you who’s collaborating more actively and getting things done!

Leader Board – Rank & Activity score.

Time Reports

• Clearly see who spent how much time on which project and totals.
• Understand how much time in a project is billable or not.
• Filter time reports at runtime and eliminate the need to create multiple time reports (or narrow down as you wish).
• Round up time records to 5, 15 or 30 minutes. And then create an invoice out of them.
• Quickly see time spent by each team member across all projects from a single place.
• “Quick View” support for Tasks.
• Shows the estimate as well.
• Invoice can be generated from Project level.
• Summarize the time records by Date, Project, Milestone, Billing Status, Task Category, Project category, User, Client, Task, Job Type.
• Summarize upto 3 levels.
• Add Time Reports as a Homescreen Tab – works for people without project management access too!
• Mass update: Change billable status labels, job type of selected time records, round the time.
• Export Time Reports in CSV and HTML formats.
• Print Time Reports.

Time Reports Plus in action

Batch Update Time Records

Time Reports Grouping Options

Financial / Invoice Reports

Finance related KPI’s and Invoice reports in a breakthrough interface. Manage your invoices, take immediate action or send email reminders to clients.

Quickly search for an invoice just by typing the Invoice number / Company Name / Amount / Project Name. These reports also make it much easier to access invoice details. Just click on an invoice number to jump to it.

Invoices and Financial Reporting for activeCollab

Reports Plus Settings

Reports Plus Settings – Permissions and Options

You can determine how you want Activity Scores to be calculated

Reports Plus module is available to everyone with permission to see reports plus, not just Administrators / Project Managers.

Accessing Reports

• Project and Finance Reports: Click on Reports link in left most main menu, then click on “Reports Plus”.
• Time Reports: Click on Reports link in left most main menu, then click on “Time Reports Plus”.
• People Reports: Click on People link in left most main menu, then click on a person’s name. You will see her report card under profile details on right.

BTW, Reports Plus works on mobile devices too! Access activeCollab from your mobile web browser and navigate to a report you want. It will adapt to your screen size automatically.