Creating and Scheduling Plans

You can create a new plan in different ways. For example, you can create a new plan from scratch or you can copy and modify an existing plan. You can also base a new plan on a project or opportunity, or a plan created in iAccess for Vision.

Calendar

When you load a plan, the dates displayed on the Labor, Expenses, and Consultants tabs depend upon the relationship between the date on which you are opening a plan and the dates specified for the plan:

  • If today's date occurs before the plan's start date, the calendar display scrolls to the first time period specified in the plan.
  • If today's date occurs after the plan's end date, the calendar display scrolls to the last time period specified in the plan.
  • If today's date occurs at any point between the plan's start and end dates, the calendar scrolls to the time period containing the current date.

Project Records

When you create a new plan based on an existing or to-be-created project record, you must consider what information you want to transfer from the project into the plan. This includes not only the project, phase, and task records, but associated employees and team members, generic resources, actual hours, and account records. You may also create a new project based on an existing plan, and map the information accordingly.

Opportunity Records

When you create a new plan based on an existing opportunity record, you must consider what information you want to bring from the opportunity into the plan. You must also consider if you want to use an existing plan as the basis, or template, for your new plan created from an opportunity.

Using Historical Data to Improve Your Plan Estimates

Before you create a new plan from a project, you can generate the Planning Actuals report. Use this report to review actual labor hours for historical projects. This is useful to analyze past performance and/or to develop more accurate estimates for upcoming plans/opportunities.

Using iAccess for Vision Plans

If you create plans in iAccess for Vision, the plans are read-only in Vision. However, you can change an iAccess for Vision plan to a Vision plan, which allows you to edit the plan in Vision. Going forward, you must maintain the plan in Vision and can no longer make changes or updates to the plan in iAccess for Vision.

Task Dependencies

After you create a basic plan, you can set up relationships, or dependencies, between tasks in the plan. For example, you can specify that task 01 must finish before task 02 can start.

Related Topics:

  • Checklist: Creating a New Plan
    If you are new to Planning, review the steps that you use to create a plan.
  • Checking In and Checking Out Plan Records
    An internal feature that checks plan records in and out ensures that more than one user cannot modify the same plan at the same time. This feature reduces conflicts and maintains the integrity of each plan's data.
  • Shifting Planned Assignments
    As plans evolve, you can change and shift assignment dates on the Planning grids. When you shift these dates, your plans remain accurate and up-to-date over the course of the project life cycle.
  • Spreading Data Evenly on the Planning Tabs
    A task's duration is the span of time between the start and finish dates. When you change a task's dates, Vision can re-spread the task's data evenly on all Planning tabs.
  • Task Dependencies
    After you build your project schedule and add associated tasks, you can set up relationships between the tasks. These relationships are also known as dependencies.
  • Scheduling Dependent Tasks Using the Gantt Chart
    The Schedule tab includes a grid and an interactive Gantt chart where you can create dependencies between tasks.
  • Guidelines for Creating Plans
    If you are new to Project Planning, you may want to review guidelines for creating plans from other plans, projects, and opportunities before you complete any of those procedures.
  • Procedures for Plans
    You can create a plan from scratch or base a new plan on an existing plan, project, or opportunity.
  • Procedures for Task Dependencies
    There are several methods for creating and modifying dependencies between tasks.
Parent Topic: Project Planning Overview