Re: [Planner] Questions/suggestions

["lincoln phipps openmutual net" <lincoln phipps openmutual net>]

Mikko Harjula wrote:

> I just found Planner.  Thank you for this great program!
>
> I am now working to map my project specifics into Planner.  First I
> entered all project meetings as subtasks but soon noticed that this
> will result in serious problems.  I cannot have the actual work use
> the time left over from meetings.
>
> Then I switched to entering meetings into the calender as
> non-working-time.  This approach seems to work ok.  However it is a
> bit awkward to me that project meetings cannot be seen as project
> task.  Is it planned in the future to be able to manage periodic or
> repeating tasks?  Another idea might be to subtract the time used for
> fixed time tasks from the working hours.


Yes - meetings or other periodic project coordination work isn't
handled directly by Planner. I'm thinking of two things here that
may solve this - I'll post my ideas to the planner/planner-dev lists.


> I think that the past time and the future time would benefit from
> somewhat different handling.  The current behavior of Planner seems to
> focus on tasks in the future compartment.  Currently if I planned to
> work on a task 50% but have actually managed to work only 25%, then
> how do I fix this?  I cannot set different "commitment percentage" for
> different time periods.  For tasks in the past I would like to enter
> the hours actually worked for each task.

Ah - actuals verses planned ! This isn't handled yet by planner.
Deviation from a baseline and being able to show project/task slip
is an important feature that would be ideal to add to planner.

Probably not too hard either - just save a baseline (copy current
start/end/work/duration etc to "baseline" variables for each for
each task and then continue.

If a person then changes actual task allocation to 25% and it shifts
the times then delta between baseline and actuals could be displayed
or reported on.

Rgds,
Lincoln (a new Planner hacker).