Work with tasks

Purpose

• Creating and planning tasks in a project

• Creating tasks independently

• Assign tasks to a user, track progress, approve or reject a task

Context

You can use tasks within a project or independently in censhare Web. Tasks assigned to yourself or your group are displayed in the "My tasks" page and team calendars. Tasks are also shown in the team calendar and help teams to plan their workload.

Prerequisites

This is a basic feature of censhare, there are no prerequisites.

Introduction

Tasks are an asset type that can be used in projects or independently to plan, assign and track your work. Other than a project, a task represents a smaller piece of work. However, there are no restrictions or rules regarding the working time or number of assets to be worked on in one task. As a rule of thumb, you should be able to estimate and schedule a task without inner dependencies. For example, you are planning a campaign for a new product. The campaign includes a landing page for your website, a newsletter and a printed product brochure. You could create a task for each of the three marketing instruments for your new product and add them to the campaign. Obviously, this is not a good idea because you need several items to be ready and put together for each. Moreover, you can reuse images and text snippets for website, newsletter and brochure. Therefore, it is advisable to create more fine-grained tasks such as "Create images", "Create snippets".

Tasks are the articulation between a project and other resources. The following points give you an idea of how to work with tasks in censhare:

• When you plan a project, you look at tasks as pieces to be put together in the right order. This allows you to consider dependencies and deadlines.

• From the perspective of a team, tasks require a certain amount of the team's resources - a person and time. This requires tasks to be compatible with the team workload planning. That's why it makes no sense to create tasks that take, say, 20 days to be completed.

• You can also look at a task from the process-related perspective. For example, if you create content like images and text snippets, these usually need an approval. Other tasks like the creation of a landing page, need to be tested. These processes can be represented in tasks, as well.

• Finally, tasks can also be looked at from the content perspective. A content asset, for example, an image, that will be used in a brochure, can have several tasks assigned to it, such as "Image editing", "Approval", "Proofing", etc.

Creating tasks

There are multiple ways to create a task in censhare Web:

• Create asset: This option is available at any time in the Top navigation of censhare Web. Select "Task" or the desired sub-type and enter a name and other properties. Tasks that you create this way need to be assigned to a project or other tasks.

• In the "Tasks" widget of any other asset: In the "Details" tab of all asset types you find the "Tasks" widget. Create a task by clicking the "Plus" button. The task is assigned to this asset, for example, a content asset. Tasks that you create this way need to be assigned to a project or other tasks.

• In the "Tasks" widget of a project asset: In the "Overview" tab of a project, you can create tasks. These are assigned to the project and appear in the Project editor in the "Timeline" tab as well.

• In the widget menu of the Project editor: When you are planning a project in the Project editor, this is a convenient way to create new tasks directly on the planning board. Tasks that you create here are automatically assigned to the project and appear as well in the "Tasks" widget.

• In action menu of a sub-project in the Project editor: When you are planning a project with sub-projects in the Project editor, you can add tasks directly to a sub-project. Tasks that you create this way are automatically assigned to the sub-project and appear indented in the planning board and as well in the "Tasks" widget of the sub-project.

• As predecessor/successor task in the Project editor: When you have already placed tasks on the planning board of the Project editor, you can add predecessor or successor tasks. You do this by clicking on the "Plus" button at the left or right end of a taskbar. The newly created task will be added to the planning board and assigned to the project as well as the source task. It appears in the "Tasks" widget of the project asset and in the "Dependency of" widget respective "Dependency for" widget of the source task.

• In the "Dependency of" widget of a task: This widget shows all predecessor tasks of a task. You can create new tasks here by clicking the "Plus" button. Newly created tasks are assigned to the same project as the source task and to the source task itself (relation type "Dependency").

• In the "Dependency for" widget of a task: This widget shows all successor tasks of a task. You can create new tasks here by clicking the "Plus" button. Newly created task are assigned to the same project as the source task and to the source task itself (relation type "Dependency").

Task types

censhare possesses different task types as shown in the table below. You can use them in a project or independently. Their basic functionality is identical, except for the "Milestone" asset. On the other hand, the "Approval task" provides additional functionality for its purpose.

A special case - the "Approval" task

"Approval task" type is a special use case of the task asset. If set as default asset type in the "Approval" workflow, this works as a generic approval tool. The approval workflow consists of three steps (see table below) and is part of the standard configuration of censhare. The assigned user can set the respective workflow steps directly in the "Properties" widget, and as well in the Project editor.

Important: You can only approve/reject a task, if it has been assigned to you.

The workflow is defined as follows:

Likewise, the following transitions and actions are possible:

• Approve: To approve a task, click the APPROVE button in the Properties widget or the  button in the Project editor. Alternatively, you can

• Reject: To reject a task, click the REJECT button in the Properties widget or the  button in the Project editor. Alternatively, select the workflow step "Rejected" in the Workflow widget.

• Reopen: To reopen a task in the Project editor, open the action menu of the task and select "Reopen task". Alternatively, select the workflow step "In progress" in the Workflow widget.

Dates, durations and time zones

In a task, you can define different dates, durations and deadlines. Also, project and user time zones are displayed here. They are intended to be used and displayed in projects, team calendars and the "My tasks" page. The following table gives you an overview of the different date and time parameters and their usage. All these parameters are defined in the Properties widget:

Planning times

When creating a task, you have to define start/end time and duration. Two of the three parameters are mandatory in order to display the task on the Project editor timeline. By default, censhare shows the current date as start date and the duration of 1 day. You have three options to define times and durations of a task:

• Start-to-end: Enter a start and end time. The "Duration" field must be empty.

• Start & duration: Enter a start time and a duration. This is the default option. The "End time" field must be empty.

• Duration & end: Enter an end time and the duration. The "Start time" field must be empty.

You can plan tasks by the minute by defining start/end time. Use the time picker to define hours and minutes. If you define a duration, the base unit is hour. However, you can enter decimals lower than 1 hour as well.

For example, if you define the 1st of April at 9 am as the start time and end time of 6 pm at the same day, the duration of the task - 1 day - is calculated automatically and the task will span over one day on the timeline. Likewise, you can set the start time to the 1st of April 9 am and enter a duration of 1 day. censhare then calculates the end date, which is again the 1st of April, 6 pm. The same goes for the combination of end time and duration. In this case, censhare calculates the start time from the end backwards.

These calculations are based on the working time definitions of your system and the project availability calendar and time zone. For the working times, the base unit is always "Working hour". If you enter values in days, weeks or months, these are converted into hours. The default factors are 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week and 168 hours per month. Read the article Defining working times for more information. The conversion into hours allows you to work with different availability times in tasks, projects, personal and team calendars.

As an example, we create a task with a planned duration of 1 day and a start date of April 1st, 9 am. We assume that the working time definitions convert this value into 8 hours (this is the default factor). Next, we add this task to a project where an availability calendar is assigned. The availability calendar defines a working day from 9 am to 4 pm, including a one-hour lunch break. This corresponds to a daily working time of 6 hours. Consequently, the task spans over two days on the timeline of the project editor, although the initial value we entered in the task was "1 day".

Next, we assign the task to a user who works part-time from 9 am to 1 pm (no lunch break). Therefore, this user defines a personal availability calendar in his or her profile. In the team workload board, the same task stretches over 4 days, since the user has an availability of only 4 hours per day.

Completion

If you start working on a task, you can track the completion of a task using the "Completion" slider in the "Properties" of the task. The slider shows a percentage and indicates that a task is being worked on. Once a task is completed, the value is set to 100 percent. Likewise, you can use the DONE button to set the completion to 100 percent. Be aware that the Actual date and time settings also affect the completion state. See the section below for this behavior.

You can adjust the completion and/or set a task to "Done" in the following ways:

• Using the slider: Go to the "Properties" widget and open the edit dialog. Set the slider to any value between 0 and 100 percent.

• Using the DONE button: Click the button in the "Properties" widget without opening the edit dialog. This sets the completion state to 100 percent.

• Using the action button in the Project editor: In the planning board, click the "Done" button (  ) in the row of the respective task. The buttons appear when you move the cursor over the table columns.

• Using the action button in the "My tasks" table: In the table, click the "Done" button (  ) in the row of the respective task. The buttons appear when you move the cursor over the table columns.

• Using the action buttons of an Approval task: Approval tasks show the buttons REJECT (  ) and APPROVE (  ).

Besides the manual setting of the completion, censhare also allows you to configure automatic completion values. This automation requires that a task is assigned to a workflow. For each workflow transition, you then define a corresponding completion value. Now, if a user is working on a task, the corresponding workflow step is, for example, "In progress" and the completion value, say, 10 percent. If the user then selects the following step "In review", the corresponding completion increases to, say, 30 percent. This value is now set automatically in the task completion.

Workflow steps and their corresponding completion values are defined in the censhare Admin Client. The default system configuration contains the "Approval" workflow, which is used in the section Approval task. Other workflows with a completion value mapping may be available in your system.

Automatic completion and time calculation

The actual times represent the actual state of a task. Therefore, censhare assumes that if you set an actual start/end date, you are working on a task and deduces the completion state, if possible. Setting the actual start/end date in a task, also affects the completion state (and vice versa) in the following manner:

• Setting the actual end date also sets the completion to 100 percent. censhare assumes that a task is complete if you enter the end date. This works also if you enter a future date.

• Deleting the actual start/end date sets the completion state back to 0 percent. censhare assumes that a task has not been worked on if you remove these dates. This works also if the task had been set to "Done".

• Moving the "Completion" slider to 100 percent or clicking the "Done" button sets the actual start and end time. If the planned start or end time lies in the past, censhare uses these values for the actual dates as well. If only one of these dates were defined, the other is calculated (using the duration). If the start time or both - start and end time - are defined and lie in the future, censhare uses these values for the actual times (and calculates the missing one, if only one date has been set). If the end time is defined and lies in the future, censhare applies the current date for the actual start time and the planned end time for the actual end time. In the latter case, the duration value is ignored.

• Moving the "Completion" slider back to 0 percent removes the actual start/end time. censhare assumes that, if you have not worked on a task yet, you do not know the actual times.

• Moving the "Completion" slider from 100 percent backwards removes the actual end time. censhare assumes that you do not know the actual end time if the task is not complete yet. If you move the slider back to 0, the actual start date (if set) will also be removed. censhare assumes that, if you have not worked on a task yet, you do not know the actual start time.

• Moving the "Completion" slider to any value between 0 and 100 percent sets the actual start time to the planned start time.

Dependencies

Dependencies represent predecessor/successor relationships between tasks. The relationship itself is a dependency, while the denomination "Predecessor" and "Successor" represent a direction. They indicate that you can only start to work on a task if its predecessor task has been completed.

In the Project Editor, dependencies are shown as arrows between tasks. You can create them by clicking the "+" button at the start or end point of a task on the planning board. If you click the button at the left end, a predecessor task will be added. If you click at the right end, a successor task will be added. In the dialog, you can choose whether to add an existing task or create a new one. To remove a dependency, click the "-" button.

You can create multiple dependencies from or to one task. If you create a dependent task in the Project editor, you can utilize the automatic calculation and placement. For that purpose, you only need to define a duration for the dependent task. censhare then takes into account the start/end time and duration of the source task. The related tasks are placed so that they do not overlap. The start date of dependent tasks is set to the end date of the source task.

Dependencies are also shown on a task page, in the "Overview" tab. Here, the "Dependency of" widget shows predecessor tasks, the "Dependency for" widget successors. You can add relations in each widget by creating new tasks or choosing existing ones.

In the My tasks table, predecessor tasks are shown in the respective column. Successor tasks are not indicated here.

Result

You have created a task in a project, assigned predecessor and/or successor tasks and tracked the progress and completion.