Introduction

In HORIZON PPM the definition of Scheduled Activities are the components added to the project plan. (Whereas Actions are unscheduled or low-level detailed tasks required to support the project plan. 


Example Scheduled Activities listed for the example Oracle Financials Migration project include Analysis & Planning; Design; and Configuration.


The definition is left open for you, your PMO and your stakeholder group to decide if something should be tracked as a Scheduled Activity or an ad hoc Action.


Accessing Scheduled Activities

Activities can be accessed from 4 locations in HORIZON PPM ...


Portfolio Calendar

All scheduled activities for all active projects are included on the Portfolio Calendar.


See Portfolio Home for more details


Project Home

An automatically generated Gantt chart of the scheduled activities on the Project Home 

More details on the Gannt chart are provided in the Project Gannt Chart section below.


Navigation

Scheduled Activities are also accessible from the left-hand side navigation bar...


Schedules & Events

This page has three tabs allowing a user to toggle between Activities, Events and Calendar


Activities are covered by this page. Additional help is available for the Events and the Calendar tabs.


The Scheduled Activities Dashboard

The dashboard includes 3 elements to help teams understand the scheduled activities...

  • Counters providing details on the amount of remaining time available between the current day and the projects target operational date (if set).
  • The automatically generated Gannt chart providing a visual representation of the schedule (the same chart as seen on the project Home page).
  • And a table representation of the same scheduled activities.

Countdown Widgets

Where the Project Operational Target has been set for a project HORIZON PPM automatically generates the following countdown widgets ...

  • Remaining Calendar Days - a count of all days from the current day through to the Project Operational Target date.
  • Remaining Working Days - a count of all working days from the current day through to the Project Operational Target date. This count subtracts all weekends (any Saturday or Sunday) and any event marked as Non-Working Day  which matches the users location from the overall count.
  • Remaining Weekends - a count of weekends until the Project Operational Target date.
  • % Working Time Remaining - The percentage of working days left between the current date and the Project Operational Target when compared with the time between the Project Start date and the current date.


See Add/Edit Project for details on setting/changing the Project Operational Target or the Project Start dates.


Project Gantt Chart

Horizon PPM  automatically generates an interactive Gantt chart of the scheduled activities based on the entries in the data table (on the same page).


The colours of each bar are automatically generated. Activities with the same owner share the same colour. The two-tone colouring is a representation of progress based on the % complete for the activity..

A pop up with summary information is available by hovering the cursor over a scheduled activity.


Clicking on the bar of a scheduled activity opens the viewer/editor for that individual activity.

Clicking anywhere else on the chart navigates the user to the Schedules & Events page.


Scheduled Activities Table

The Scheduled Activities table provides summary information of the scheduled activities in a format that can be searched, sorted and exported (like any other table within HORIZON PPM).


Viewing/Managing an Activity

Select any activity to enter the editor... 


Selecting an activity opens a form which can be updated...

These form fields are...

  • Activity. The title of the activity.
  • Start Date. The date the activity is scheduled to start.
  • End Date. The date the activity is scheduled to end. 
  • Assigned To. The owner of the activity responsible for its progression and completion.
  • Status. HORIZON PPM also provides the Red/Amber/Green (RAG) traffic light (with an additional blue representing complete or cancelled) to indicate the health of an activity.
  • Comments. Comments relating to the status/plans of the activity.
  • Tags. An optional field to add tags to an activity. To add a tag type the word or words and press the return key (this may be a go button or similar in the virtual keyboard on a mobile device). The system then highlights the new tag in blue but doesn't submit the form allowing additional tags to be added.

Note: Tags are a powerful feature allowing easy identification and access to common items across the projects and portfolios. See the Tag Search page for more details.

  • Complete. An optional field to demonstrate the progression of an activity showing the percentage complete.
  • Completion Date. The date an activity was actually completed. This may be before, on or after the desired end date.
  • Last Updated. An automatically updated field displaying the last date/time this activity was updated


Adding a new Activity

To add a new action select the Add button at the top right of the table.

Adding a new activity opens the same form as described in Viewing/Managing an Activity. See above for details.

Once the form is submitted and the new activity is created and the user will be redirected back to the Activity Dashboard with the table refreshed to display the new activity.


Deleting an Activity

To delete an activity enter the specific activity (see Viewing/Managing an Activity above) and then select the Delete button at the bottom left of the form.

HOIZON PPM will prompt for confirmation of the deletion before proceeding.


Once the user confirms the deletion by selecting OK to proceed HORIZON PPM will provide confirmation of the activity then return the user to the Activity Dashboard.