Section 3.4: Task Lists & Tracking

The Tasks tab, under Plan on a project, brings three kinds of work into one view: Deliverables, Milestones and Work Orders. You can read it as a list or as a board, and group it however the work reads best.

1. Find and arrange tasks

The toolbar at the top of Tasks holds:

• Search tasks: filter by title or description.
• List and Board: switch between rows and lanes of cards.
• Status, Type and Assignee filters. Type narrows to Deliverables, Milestones or Work orders.
• Sort by: Due date, Status, Assignee or Title.
• Group by: Work package, Status, Assignee or Due date.
• Work package: add a new work package. See Section 3.2.

When the row runs out of room, the filters fold into one Filters button.

Under the toolbar, the counts for overdue, due this week and in progress work as quick filters, beside a count of how many tasks are done.

On a phone, the project's deliverables and milestones open as one list grouped by work package, with a search field. Tap one to open it, and change its status there if you can edit it. See Section 1.7.

2. The board

The board lays work out as cards in lanes, with a count on each lane.

What the lanes mean

The lanes follow Group by. Group by Status and the board reads as a pipeline, with lanes such as Not started, In progress and In review. Group by Work package, Assignee or Due date and the same cards rearrange around that. Grouping changes how you look at the work and nothing about the tasks themselves.

Reading a card

Each card shows what you need to triage it without opening it: the type, the title, the status glyph, estimated hours, the due date and who it is assigned to. A card waiting on another item shows Waiting on a dependency.

In the list, deliverables and milestones on a project with a portal client also show an eye icon that says whether the item is visible in the client portal.

Moving work

Drag a card from one lane to another to change that value. Dragging a card between status lanes changes its status. A lane that cannot take the card you are dragging dims.

Due date lanes are read only. Grouped by Assignee, only milestones move between lanes. A deliverable's people are set on the deliverable, and a work order's crew on the work order.

Work package lanes have an Add task control at the bottom, so a new item lands in the lane it belongs in.

3. Add work

In the list, each work package has an add button (Add to this work package). Choose Deliverable, Milestone or Work Order:

• Deliverable opens the new deliverable panel on the right.
• Milestone opens the New milestone panel. See Section 3.2.
• Work Order opens the New work order page. Creating a work order needs Manage tasks on the project. See Section 3.3.

4. Edit a deliverable

Click a deliverable to open it in a panel on the right. You can change:

• Title, Status, Priority and Type.
• Start date and Due date.
• Work package and Milestone.
• Depends on, with a Dependency type of Blocks, finish that first or Relates to, optional.
• A description of what has to be delivered.

Assign people

Under Assignments, set the Estimate for the deliverable, then click Add and choose each person in the Add a person… field, with a role and their allocated hours. Split evenly shares the estimate across everyone, and Fill remaining leaves anyone who already has hours alone and shares what is left among the people with none.

Click Suggest to have ABRAM fill the rows for you. Each person it picks shows the reason, and Undo takes a suggestion back. If nobody fits yet, ABRAM says No one fits yet: give a row a role, or add people to the project crew first.

Click Open full details for the deliverable's own page. See Section 3.13: Deliverable and Work Order Pages.

5. Progress

Project progress updates as work moves. A deliverable or milestone counts for more as it goes from In progress to In review to Completed, and ABRAM recalculates the work package and the project each time the status of an item in a work package changes. The Progress figure under the project title follows.