Workplanning: Create & Manage Activities in an Implementation Plan

This page covers:

Activities & Milestones in Amp Impact

Once you created the Implementation Plan, you can start adding Activities to track project progress. Two types of Activities can be added to an Implementation Plan: Tasks and Milestones. While the Implementation Plan record creates the structure of the project plan, Tasks and Milestones track the granular activities that need to be done throughout the life of the project.

Add/Edit/Remove Activities in an Implementation Plan LIGHTNING WEB COMPONENT

Add a Task Activity to the Activity Table

1. Navigate to the “Activities”, “Project Plan”, or similar section of your Project and select an Implementation Plan (or multiple Implementation Plans) from the picklist. Click on “Add New Activity” and then click on the “Create Task” option to add a Task to an Implementation Plan.

   

2. Fill out the details for the Activity record, such as the “Activity Name”, “Type”, “Description”, “Activity Information”, “Location” and “Status”.

   

3. Filling out the “Parent Activity” field allows you to build a hierarchy of Activities to track related Activities.

   1. All the sub-activities appear beneath the Parent Activity within the Activity Table. A chevron associated with the Parent Activity enables you to hide and display and hide all the sub-activities. 

      

   2. To remove parent-child relationships, click on “Edit” for the child Activity and remove the parent relationship.

4. The date values in the “Planned Start Date” and “Planned End Date” as well as the “Actual Start Date” and “Actual End Date” fields determine how the timeline bars appear on the Activity Gantt Chart: 

   1. If both Start and End Dates are filled out, a horizontal timeline bar will appear on the Gantt Chart;

   2. If either the Start or End Date is filled out then a tick representing the date will appear on the Gantt Chart.

5. The Baseline bar that showcases the duration between “Planned Start Date” and “Planned End Date” will only appear if you click on the “Display Baseline” button. Refer to the Edit Activity section for more details.

6. To track any stakeholders who are responsible for completing or contributing to an Activity, fill out the “Contact” field. Organizations often rename this field to something like “Responsible” but this relationship essentially tracks people related to Activities. Note that the relevant record (e.g. a Contact record) must be created first before an Activity can be related to that record.

7. Activities can be related to multiple Project Indicators and Framework Objectives. This allows organizations to track their progress toward their goals and helps them track how the Project Activities will ultimately contribute to their impact.

   1. Only Framework Objectives and Project Indicators associated with the current Project are displayed in the picklist of options.

   2. Framework Objective options are limited to the Framework related to your Implementation Plan record. However, if no Framework is related to the Implementation Plan level, all the Objectives in your system will be available.

      

8. Click “Save” to create the Activity record.

Add a Milestone Activity to the Activity Table

1. Click on “Add New Activity” and then click on the “Create Milestone” option to add a Milestone
   Activity to an implementation plan.

   

2. Fill out the details for the Milestone Activity and click on “Save” to create the record.

   

3. Filling out the “Parent Activity” field allows you to build a hierarchy. To remove Parent-Child relationships, click on “Edit” for the child Activity and remove the parent relationship.

Edit an Activity in an Implementation Plan

1. To modify an Activity (for example, update its “Status” or mark the “Actual End Date”), simply double-click on the Activity from the Activity Table and select “Edit” on the Activity from the Activity Table. A pop-up will open up where fields can be modified.

   

Need to display the Timeline bars for Activities in the Gantt Chart? Make sure the following is filled out:

• If both the Start and End Date fields (Planned or Actual Dates) are populated, then a full bar spanning the entire timeline of the Activity will be displayed.

• If only one of the Planned Date fields (i.e. Planned Start Date or Planned End Date) is populated, then a grey mark will be displayed representing the populated date. 

• If only one of the Actual Date fields (i.e. Actual Start Date or Actual End Date) is populated, then a blue mark will be displayed representing the populated date. 

• When you click on the “Save” button, the updated fields will be saved and a success message will be displayed at the top.

Remove an Activity from an Implementation Plan

1. To remove an Activity from an Implementation Plan (and delete the record), double-click on the relevant Activity and select “Delete”.

   

Navigate the Activities Table LIGHTNING WEB COMPONENT

Now that your Activity Tasks and Milestones are created, you can view and manage them in the Activity Table.

Activity Table

Below is an example of an Activity Table with Parent and Child Tasks, a Milestone Activity (indicated by the diamond), and blue bars indicating the Start and End Dates of the Activities.

A few general considerations:

• The first column contains the list of Activities and Milestones for the Implementation Plan and can’t be moved around.

• Each Activity record is hyperlinked and clicking on the hyperlink will open the Activity record in a new tab whereas double-clicking in the Activity row will bring up the Activity Edit pop-up.

• The following dates can be tracked for Tasks.

  • Planned Start Date

  • Planned End Date

  • Actual Start Date

  • Actual End Date

• Due Date can be tracked for Milestones.

Based on these dates, the following formula fields are tracked:

1. Earliest start date: The start date associated with an Activity that happens first - the Planned Date or the Actual Date. For a Milestone Activity, it will be the due date.

2. Duration: The number of days tracked for an Activity based on the actual start and end dates.  

View by Year, Month, Week 

The “View By” toggle feature offers flexibility in terms of how you can view the Activity Gantt Chart. This toggle can be used to view Activities in Year, Month, and Week views. By default, the Activity Table displays the Year view.

Activity Info Pop-Up

Hovering over any of the Activities in the Activity Table brings up an information pop-up with details about that Activity.

The visible fields can be modified - contact your System Administrator to modify the fields visible in the pop-up.

View Activities across Multiple Implementation Plans

For some projects, it makes sense to view the Activities and Milestones for multiple Implementation Plans. Simply select the relevant Implementation Plans from the multi-select dropdown picklist. All the Activities from the Implementation Plans that you have selected displays in the Activity Table. 

Toggle Baseline On/Off

The “Baseline” refers to the grey bars that indicate the Planned Start and End Dates. Milestone Activities do not have baseline values associated with them.

• Display Baseline: This shows the timeline bars associated with “Planned Start Date” and “Planned End Date” for all Activities and allows you to compare the Planned and Actual Dates.

• Hide Baseline: This hides the timeline bars associated with “Planned Start Date” and “End Date” for all Activities to only display the Actual Dates.

Toggle Critical Path On/Off

Critical Path is an Activity or a set of Activities within an Implementation Plan that must start and finish on time to ensure that the project ends on schedule. If the Critical Path gets delayed the entire project gets delayed. Critical Path also determines the shortest time a project can take to complete. 

The Critical Path displays the key Activities that need to be completed to make progress on the project. The “Display Critical Path” and “Hide Critical Path” buttons display and hide the Critical Path associated with the selected Implementation Plan. 

1. The Critical Path will be automatically updated based on the status of tasks. 

2. The Critical Path will be automatically re-calculated every time a task is modified. 

• Display Critical Path: Click on the “Display Critical Path” button to highlight in the Critical Path Activities in the Activities Gantt chart.

  

• Hide Critical Path: Click on the “Hide Critical Path” button to remove the highlighting of the Critical Path Activities.

  

Refresh when Updates on Relevant Pages affect Activities

Changes (add, edit, delete) to records that are related to Activities trigger a refresh banner to prompt the logged in user to refresh the page to see the latest data. The page can be refreshed to display the latest updates by clicking on the ‘refresh’ button located to the right of the ‘Display Critical Path’ button.

The following changes affect the Activities page: 

1. Add, edit, or delete operations on Indicators

2. Add, edit, or delete operations on Frameworks

Sort the Activity Table

Users can click on any of the columns to sort the list of Activities. By default, the Activity Table is sorted in ascending order for “Earliest Start Date” so that Activities with earlier start dates (either planned or actual) are displayed above Activities with later start dates.

If multiple Activities have the same value in “Earliest Start Date” then those Activities will be sorted in order of alphabetically ascending Name value.

Filter Activities

Filter Activities to display or modify specific parts of the project plan.

There are two ways to filter Activities:

1. Type Text in the Search Bar. This allows you to start typing text in the search bar to dynamically render matching Activity records.

2. Select Specific Field Values. Click on the “Show More Filters” button to expand the filter box. Select the relevant values to find the Activity records you need to view or modify. Unlike the Search Bar, this search filter is not dynamic and you need to click “Apply Filter” to render the Activities that match the filter criteria.

To remove this filter, click on the “Clear Filter(s)” button. The criteria in all filters will become blank, and the Activity Table will reload to display all Activities.

Managing Activities through the Project LIGHTNING WEB COMPONENT

Once your Activities and Milestones are set up, project teams typically have to manage Projects on an ongoing basis, updating Activity dates, progress, or other changes.

This section calls out the Activity elements that are typically updated as the Project progresses.

Activity Duration

The duration of an Activity is the number of days between the Actual Start Date and Actual End Date. You can also view the duration of an Activity as the length of the Activity timeline bar on the Gantt Chart. 

For Activities that start and end on the same date, the duration value equals to 1 day. If an Activity has a Start Date but no End Date, the duration value equals to 0. 

Activity Dependencies

Project managers typically need to track Activity dependencies throughout their projects. Amp Impact allows organizations to track four types of dependencies:

1. Start to start: This type of dependency between two activities indicates that one Activity can only start after the other one starts.

   

2. Start to finish: This type of dependency between two activities indicates that one Activity can only finish after the other one starts.

   

3. Finish to start: This type of dependency between two activities indicates that one Activity can only start after the other one finishes.

   

4. Finish to finish: This type of dependency between two activities indicates that one Activity can only finish after the other one finishes.

   

Add a Dependency

To create a dependency between two Activities in the Gantt chart, click on the leading Activity and drag the dependency arrow to the following Activity.

Delete a Dependency

Delete a dependency in the Gantt chart by double-clicking on the relevant dependency link and clicking on the “Delete” button in the confirmation popup.

Drag and Drop Rescheduling

Click on the Activity’s timeline bar within the Gantt Chart and drag horizontally drag it to a new place in the Implementation Plan’s timeline to reschedule. You can only drag and drop activities according to the vertical lines available on the Gantt Chart. Therefore, in the View by Year filter, it would only be possible to reschedule to the first of any given month. If you want more granular control over rescheduling you would have to toggle to View by Month or View by Week mode. 

When you drag and drop activities to easily reschedule them, the Actual Start Date and Actual End Date associated with the Activity will be updated to reflect new values.

Track Percent Completion

Mark progress for an Activity by filling in the timeline bar to indicate the percent completion.

1. You can define the Percent Complete field for an Activity directly from the Gantt chart by hovering on top of an Activity, clicking, and dragging the slider that appears to the appropriate value

2. You can also add the Percent Complete field to the Edit/Create Activity  pop-ups and set the value while creating or editing an Activity

3. The Percent Complete value is displayed on an Activity within the Gantt chart in the form of a progress text that appears on the timeline bar. Additionally, if there is a Percent Complete value, a portion of the timeline bar would have a darker color as opposed to the default color

4. By default, all activities have a Percent Complete value of 0