Contents of the Activity Details_Dialog

Common Fields

The following fields are common to all tabs:

Field	Description
ID	An activity ID can consist of 1 to 59 characters, including the periods that are used to indicate hierarchical levels. IDs containing the following four symbols " , \| ; are used as delimiters in Open Plan and may cause problems when importing or exporting data. The activity ID serves as the default sort order for most views and reports. Although Open Plan supports almost any activity numbering system, most organizations use activity IDs that have some significance built in such as a prefix that refers to the project. Another approach might be to use the activity ID to associate activities with specific elements in a work breakdown structure. Attention: For information on automatic numbering, see Automatic Numbering.
Desc.	A description can contain up to 60 characters. You may use both upper- and lowercase characters. By default, Open Plan defines the maximum field lengths of 59 characters for activity and resource IDs, and 60 characters for activity descriptions, resource descriptions, code IDs, and code descriptions. It is possible, however, to modify the standard data structure and data dictionary so that any of these field lengths can be as long as 255 characters for new projects. Attention: For information about customizing the Open Plan standard data structure and data dictionary, contact the Deltek technical support staff.
Status	The status of an activity is displayed on all tabs of the Activity Details dialog box except the Notes tab. The status of an activity can be one of the following: Planned: The activity has not yet started. In Progress: The activity has started, but is not yet complete. Complete: The activity is complete.
Duration	May be entered on any tab of the Activity Details dialog box except the Notes tab. This value should represent the most likely duration for the activity. Durations may use any of the following duration units: m: months w: weeks d: days h: hours t: minutes

While a duration may contain decimal values (for example, 4.5 D), you cannot enter duration using mixed duration units. (For example, 4D4H is not allowed.) Open plan interprets an activity with a blank duration field as having zero duration.

You can use decimal values for durations (for example, 1.5d), but you cannot mix date formats by entering durations such as 1w2d.

If you enter a duration that is not consistent with fixed target start and finish dates for the activity, Open Plan will use the duration implied by the target dates when performing time analysis and resource scheduling calculations.

You can avoid having to specify a time unit when entering durations by assigning a default duration unit for a project through the Preferences tab on the Project Properties dialog box.

If the activity type is Subproject, Hammock, Effort Driven, or External Subproject, Open Plan ignores any value you enter in this field and recalculates the duration each time you perform time analysis.

Common Buttons

The Activity Details dialog box has the following buttons that apply to all tabs:

Field	Description
Close	Closes the dialog box, saving any changes.
Undo	Cancels any changes on this dialog box that have not been saved using the Apply button.
Apply	Applies and saves changes on this dialog box, while leaving the dialog box open for further action. This button is disabled until changes are made.
New	Displays a blank Activity Details dialog box. You can specify that the New command will either copy the information for the current activity, or display a blank entry screen for a new activity. To set this option, go to the File menu, click Preferences Application. On the Edit tab, select the first option in the Activity Dialogs section (Do Not Clear Contents of the Dialog Box When Creating a New Activity).
Progress	Displays an Activity Progress dialog box that you can use to enter progress information about the selected activity. By default, the Activity tab of this dialog box is selected.
Help	Provides access to the online Help topic for the displayed tab.