One Place

Project and Task Management

• Introduction
• Project Management
• Project Overview
• Project Statistics
• Task Management
• Task Details
• Task Comments
• Repeating Tasks
• Entering Dates

Introduction

OnePlace has many work management features for helping you and your team become more productive and complete more work together. At the heart of the work management features are projects and tasks. This section will help you understand how to create a project plan within OnePlace and populate it with the work (i.e. tasks) that you and your team need to do.

Project Management

When you navigate into a workplace, the projects contained in the workplace are shown in a tree control on the left side of the page (see below). These projects are always shown on the page, no matter where you navigate within the workplace, so you always know where you are at in the project hierarchy. You can expand a project in the tree by clicking on the small + icon to the left of the project name (collapsing a project works the same way). When you expand a project, you see the sub-projects underneath the project. You can perform actions on any project in the hierarchy by hovering the mouse cursor over the "Actions" link to the right of the project name, and an actions panel will pop up containing all the actions you can perform on that project. To navigate into a project (i.e. see the details of the project), just click on a project name.

Please note that this project hierarchy view is only available when you have projects enabled inside the workplace. If you prefer to work without the use of projects and sub-projects, you'll see a much cleaner view of your workplace in which to store your tasks and additional workplace information.

Project Overview

When you navigate into a project, the view switches to one that is focused on the project, and the set of tabs shown changes slightly. The data shown on the tabs is now filtered by the project, meaning you only see data attached directly to that project.

This view contains a set of actions called Project Actions that you can perform on the project:

• Edit - Edit the properties of a project, such as the project start date and deadline, and whether the project tracks time.
• Archive - Move the project into the Archive for storage.
• Copy - Allows you to quickly make a copy of a project structure, including tasks within the project.
• Trash - Move the project into the Trash.
• Move to Draft - Marks the project and all its sub-projects and tasks as unreleased (status = draft). This action is useful if you want to keep other team members from working on a set of projects.
• Release - Marks the project and all its sub-projects and tasks as released (status = planned). This action is useful if you want to allow other team members to being working on a set of projects.
• Promote to Workplace (Box icon) - You can also promote a project to a workplace. All the existing members of the workplace that contains the project being promoted will be in the new workplace. This will be common when a project in an existing workplace gets so big that it warrants its own workplace, or if the team that is going to work on it is different.
• Print - Displays a report containing various information about that project that you specify you want included in the report.

The bottom row of buttons are used for starting and completing a project.

• Start - Marks the project and all its sub-projects and tasks as complete.
• Complete - Marks the project and all its sub-projects and tasks as complete.

Project Statistics

OnePlace provides you with statistics for a project to help you keep on top of how the project is doing.

By default, the statistics are calculated using all tasks within the project. However, you can also provide a time frame for calculating the statistics. In the example below, the same project as shown above is filtered based on a time frame. In this case, the statistics are based on all tasks that were worked on between 11-1-09 and 11-30-09. This is a nice way to see what happened in the project over a specific time frame.

Task Management

The Tasks tab within a workplace displays all tasks that belong to the workplace or project (if you are drilled into a project). The view settings toolbar provides controls for filtering, sorting and grouping tasks. To navigate into a task (i.e. see the details of the task), click on a task name in the list.

Task Details

Once you are drilled into a task, the view you see switches to be focused on that task. To get back to the view containing all the tasks, simply click the "Back to Tasks" button.

You can see any notes or files attached to the task in the Notes and Files panels. You can also attach new notes and files using the Add buttons in these panels.

If the list of tasks on the Tasks section contains more than one task, you will see a set of navigation controls at the bottom of the Task Details view which can be used for navigating through the tasks without needing to return to the tasks list first.

This view contains a set of actions called Task Actions which you can perform on this task:

• Edit - Edit the properties of a task, such as the task deadline.
• Archive - Move the task into the Archive for storage.
• Copy - Allows you to quickly make a copy of a task.
• Print - Displays a report containing details about the task that you can then print.
• Trash - Move the project into the Trash.
• Reschedule - Moves the task to another date on your schedule. Note that if you move the task to a date in the future, this will remove the task from view in the Do section.
• Assign - Assign the task to yourself or another team member. You can also reassign the task from one person to another.
• Apply Time - If you are tracking time on a task, this button can be used to enter time you've spent working on the task. For more details on time tracking within OnePlace, click here.
• Promote to Project - Sometimes you realize a task is really a project in disguise, and you need to break it down into smaller steps. In this case, you can promote the task to a project (note that you'll need to drill into the new project in order to flesh it out).

The bottom row of buttons are used for starting, pausing and completing a task.

• Start - Marks the task as in progress and start tracking time on the task (if this task is set up to track time). There is functionality within OnePlace around in progress tasks (such as OnePlace automatically pulsing the fact that you started the task to your teammates), so it can be helpful to start each task in this way when you begin working on it.
• Pause - Pauses the time tracking for the task.
• Waiting For - Marks the task as waiting for something before things can proceed.
• Complete - Marks the task as completed/finished.

Task Comments

OnePlace allows you to hold a conversation around a task using the "Comments" feature. Anyone in the workplace can comment on a task, and the conversation can be as long as it needs to be. The latest comment is at the top of the "Comments" panel, and the oldest comment is at the bottom (on the last page of comments). The screen shot above shows a task that has three comments on it.

To add a new comment to a task, simply click the "Add" button in the "Comments" panel header. A dialog will pop up (shown below):

Comments work much like discussions. You can quickly reply to someone else's comment by clicking on their name in a comment, or by hovering over a person's name and clicking the "@" icon that appears. You are also allowed to edit or remove your last comment provided that no one else has posted a comment since you posted yours.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe to Comment Notifications

One nice thing about task comments, is that you can subscribe yourself or others to be notified when new comments are posted on a task by other members of your team. To subscribe someone to receive comment notifications, click the "Subscribe" button in the "Comments" panel header. This will display a menu listing all workplace members who are currently not subscribed to this task. If you are not subscribed to this task, your name will appear at the top of the menu. There is also an "Everyone" choice that you can pick to subscribe all unsubscribed workplace members.

If you want to receive comment notifications for other tasks, you must subscribe to each of those tasks as well. To stop receiving comments notifications for a particular task, click the "Unsubscribe" button in the "Comments" panel header.

Certain users are automatically subscribed to receive comment notifications on a task. When a task is created, the person who created the task is automatically subscribed, provided his/her "Automatically subscribe me to comments for tasks I create:" preference is set to "Yes". The task creator can later opt out of receiving comment notifications on the task by clicking the "Unsubscribe" button for that task. The person that is assigned to the task is also automatically subscribed. However, this person does not have the ability to unsubscribe from the comments.

Comment notifications are like any other system notification, in that they are sent to a user's inbasket and/or email, depending on how that user has his/her user preferences specified.

Repeating Tasks

OnePlace supports the ability to create tasks that repeat over and over again, according to a pattern that you define. You can create tasks that repeat daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, and you can control how often they repeat (e.g. every other day, every third week, every 6 months, every 10 years, etc). When you complete a repeating task, OnePlace will automatically create another task identical to the one you just completed, but for the next date in the repeating pattern.

You can create a repeating task in the same way that you create any other task, by using the Add Task dialog. Simply click on the Repeating tab on this dialog (shown below), and you'll see a set of radio buttons that determine if the task repeats, and if so, how it repeats (i.e. its repeating pattern).

There are four types of repeating tasks:

Daily

Daily repeating tasks repeat every N days, (1 = every day, 2 = every other day, 3 = every third day, and so on). The light blue message shown at the bottom of the Daily box will update each time you modify the pattern, and will tell you in plain English what the pattern is.

Weekly

Weekly repeating tasks repeat every N weeks (1 = every week, 2 = every other week, 3 = every third week, and so on). You can choose which days of the week the task repeats on. The example below shows that this task will repeat every two weeks on Monday and Tuesday.

Monthly

Monthly repeating tasks repeat every N months (1 = every month, 2 = every other month, 3 = every third month, and so on). You can choose between repeating on a specific day of the month, or a specific day of the week. Both choices depend on the start date that you provide. The example below has a start date of Wednesday, Feburary 24th, 2010, which happens to be the fourth Wednesday in that month. So, by choosing the "Day of week" option, this task will repeat every 3 months on the fourth Wednesday of the month. If the "Day of month" option was chosen, then this task would repeat every 3 months on the 24th of the month.

Yearly

Yearly repeating tasks repeat every N years (1 = every year, 2 = every other year, 3 = every third year,and so on), and depends on the start date that you enter. The example below shows that this task repeats every year on the Fourth of July (because the start date is 7/4/2010).

Note that when you create a repeating task, you must specify a start date, and you can specify an end date, although it's not required (the repeating task can be opened ended). Also, the start date must be on or before the end date.

Another option you have when creating a repeating task, is to have OnePlace schedule new instances of the task, or to have it set the deadline of new instances. You can also choose both if you like (schedule the tasks and set the deadlines). See below.

To stop a repeating task from repeating any more, all you need to do is edit the task and choose "Never" for the choice on the Repeating tab.

Entering Dates

OnePlace allows you to enter dates on projects and tasks (start date, deadline, scheduled on etc.) as either actual dates or relative dates. Actual dates should be entered in the format of m-d-y or m/d/y. Relative dates can be entered using the values: today, tomorrow, yesterday or +N, where N is a whole number. You can also choose dates using a pop up calendar control. Shown below is an example of entering a relative deadline. The deadline is being set for 3 days out from the current date.