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Scheduling

2021-07-16 19:02:02

Overview of scheduling options

You can set planned schedules for tasks from the task detail panel, the Gantt chart, or Calendar. You can schedule tasks for a certain day or across several days, and to start and end at a specific time.

You can create “scheduling links” between tasks inside the same project, which will connect their start or end times together. For instance you can have a finish-to-start relationship between two tasks such that when one finishes the other should start. These are easy to visualize (and create) on the Gantt chart. You can also create links from the item detail panel. You can also enable constraints to the schedule of tasks.

Schedule a task on the detail panel

You can schedule a task directly from the detail panel:

1.From the detail panel click the dates next to "Planned schedule."

2. Enter the planned effort. Planned effort is an estimate of how much time you expect the task to take. Effort is utilized in your resource management features, see related articles below.

3.Set the planned dates by clicking on the planned dates field. Click on a day to set the task for a specific day.

Click and drag to specify for multiple days. The planned date is when you expect this task to be worked. For example a given task might have 5 hours of effort and occur anytime within the course of 3 days.

4.Specify the start time. Click the hours and or minutes next to start time. Enter the desired start time.

5.Follow the same steps as step 4 to set your end times.

Schedule a task on the Calendar

There are views for the day, week, and month:

In all view levels you can:

Double click to open the detail panel.
Double click to create a new task or click and drag to create a new task with a schedule.

In the 'Day' view:

On the day or week views click and drag the bottom of the task to increase or decrease the duration (end hours and minutes) of the task.
Click the task to bring up options: view details, edit or delete task.
Click and drag the task to change its start time.

In the 'Week' view:

Click and drag the bottom of the task to increase or decrease the duration (end hours and minutes) of the task.
Click and drag the task up or down to change its start time.
Click and drag the task left or right to change its planned day.

Schedule a task on the Gantt chart

The Gantt chart can be scaled to the: minute, hour, day, week, month, quarter, and year. To scale, select the scale option on the left top side of the Gantt chart or hold Ctrl and scroll with your mouse wheel.

Drag tasks horizontally along the Gantt to set the start dates.
Drag the start or end of the task to increase the task duration.

Schedule links on the Gantt chart

You can link together tasks via finish-to-start, start-to-start and finish-to-finish links.

Create these links by dragging and dropping from (and to) the circles that appear when you hover or select the task bars.
Remove the constraints on the Gantt by clicking on the constraint lock icon or the linking arrow.

Schedule finish-to-start in Tree or Flat view

Since the finish-to-start link is the most common choice, there is a menu option in the Tree view that lets you link together a string of these with one action. Just multi-select the tasks you wish to link, click the actions menu and select “Schedule Items Finish to Start”

You can also break these links by selecting “Remove Finish to Start link on Items”

Setting date constraints

By default, OneDesk uses the very loose constraint of “Start No Earlier Than” and chooses today’s date or the project’s start date. There are other kinds of constraint that you can pick:

As Soon As Possible
As Late As possible
Must Start On (anchors the start date to a date)
Must Finish On (anchors the finish date to a date)
Start no later than (constrains the start date to anytime before a date)
Finish no later than (constrains the finish date to anytime before a date)
Start no Earlier than (constrains the start date to anytime after a date)
Finish no Earlier than (constrains the finish date to anytime after a date)

You can set a date constraint for a task in the Task Planned Values. To bring up the Task Planned Values, click the task to bring up the detail panel and click the dates next to "Planned schedule, as you would for scheduling from the task detail panel. (Note: from Tools on the top panel select "Dock detail panels on right" to open the detail panel without exiting the Gantt chart).

Date constraints on start and end dates

When OneDesk calculates planned finish dates on tasks, it does so by calculating from the task’s start date. If you don’t explicitly define a start date, then here is how OneDesk calculates it:

If the time when you create the task is before the project start date then it starts it on the project start date
If the time when you create a task is after the project has started, OneDesk will schedule the task for that day, in the theory that you probably don’t want to schedule new tasks in the past.
If you link tasks together (for example as finish-to-start) then OneDesk will calculate the start date based on the previous tasks using CPM calculations.
If you set a date constraint then OneDesk will use your date.
If you change the project start date then tasks will be rescheduled.