Managing projects, assigning tasks, and tracking progress are foremost among a manager's greatest responsibilities. @task lets you do each of these with ease. @task enables you to:
You can create projects and tasks with a few simple mouse clicks. If you have planned appropriately, @task makes creating a project a simple process.
When you create a project, @task gives you several options. You can customize the start date and status, select the events that you want @task to record, set the update type, assign the user group, and set up the queue properties. You can even build your own custom forms to create, capture and store data related to your unique tasks.
For example, a city government that uses @task can use it to plan a project to build a park. Bill, the city planner, is in charge of the project. He logs into @task, creates the project, names it, and schedules it from the start date (though he could have scheduled from the end.) He assigns a status to it to show that it is in the planning stages. Later, he can change the project status to current, or to one of a variety of other status options. Bill selects from among the types of events that he wants @task to record, and selects the group of people to whom he will assign the tasks.
Next, he builds customized schedules for his projects. He selects holidays and sets the standard work schedule according to city policy. He builds additional schedules for each of his contractors in which he customizes the number of hours worked per day and the days worked per week. @task takes his custom schedules into account when he plans his tasks.
Next, Bill sets his options for handling issues. Because he decides to handle issues using a help desk queue, he constructs and sets the attributes for the help desk form.
Bill needs some custom data to go with this project, so he builds a form with specific fields to capture and track data that is specific to his project. He makes forms to list and rate the contractors that have previously worked with the city and to keep track of which contractors are reputable and have good work histories.
In just a few minutes Bill has created his project and can move on to creating the tasks.
When you create tasks, you have more options that let you specify priority, tracking mode, duration, user assignments, dependencies, and custom data. These options give you complete flexibility in deciding on and implementing a specific plan to complete your project.
Continuing from the previous example, Bill, the city planner, uses @task to manage his park construction project by creating specific tasks efficiently and specifically. As he creates the tasks, he names them, gives them a priority, sets the tracking mode to specify the way in which users update progress, and sets task constraints to specify the timing and dates for each task. He plans the task durations and makes assignments. He constructs dependencies for the tasks to ensure that the tasks that need to be done first get scheduled and completed first and so that @task schedules the tasks in the correct chronological order.
The first task he creates involves cleaning debris from the lot that is about to become the park. Other tasks involve removing some trees and shrubs and bringing in some top soil. Because he cannot bring in the topsoil and level the ground before the debris and trees are gone, Bill sets up some dependencies so that the first tasks are complete before the others start.
For each task Bill creates, he sets dates and durations. He decides which tasks should be closer to the beginning of the project, and which will need to be near the end. Some of his tasks need to be done on a specific date while others can be placed where ever they fit. Bill has complete flexibility to schedule tasks as necessary. He considers seasonal temperatures, budget constraints, planned road closures and other external factors as he plans and schedules each task.
For each task he creates, in addition to setting schedules and priorities, Bill needs to capture some additional custom data. His state mandates that each city must keep track of the number of contracts that go to minority-owned businesses. Bill adds a check box field to his task form so that when he assigns a task to a contractor, he can check the box to keep track of this statistic.
Managing teams is easily accomplished with @task. It has many features that are focused on helping you manage users with maximum efficiency. You can look at time sheets and check status and progress for each employee. With @task you can quickly see which of your people is most efficient and gets the most done.
@task's web-based architecture also makes it simple to manage teams that are geographically dispersed or that fluctuate. While building the city park, Bill can hire any contractor who places a bid and create a user account for each contractor. The contractor can log in from anywhere and update the status of each assigned task. This contractor does not have to purchase any software or do anything other than access a URL and log in to @task. For security, the contractor is given permissions to see only information relating to his task assignments.
Because not all organizations can take the same holidays off, @task has a feature that allows you to set a schedule of the days that you plan to take as holidays. When you apply one of these to a project, @task automatically schedules around those days. For example, Canadian users can schedule Canada Day on July 1st as a holiday while users in the United States can schedule Independence Day on July 4th. If a task is scheduled during a week that contains a holiday, @task automatically assumes that you do not work on a holiday and adds an additional day to the schedule.
@task also lets you set different schedules for each user assigned to do tasks. If you use contractors or your employees have different schedules, you can set up a schedule for each user and @task keeps track of all the schedules when you assign tasks.
This not only applies to holidays, but to daily work hours. You can create schedules with a work week that is 10 hours a day, Wednesday through Saturday. @task keeps track of everyone's schedule and applies them to a project so you know exactly when each task will get done.
Regardless of how carefully you plan a project, unforeseen problems arise. @task has many powerful features that let you capture, communicate, track, and resolve issues to minimize the impact that they have on your project. When you set up a project, you select the way that you want to handle issues. You can create notification rules to alert people instantly as issues related to tasks arise. You can also create queues for employees, customers or anyone else to submit bugs, change requests, feedback, or issues. You can create forms to queue these requests and assign them to individuals specifically or to groups to be resolved by the next available group member. When you create the forms, you can also create fields to capture any information that you need, sort the issues, and prioritize them.
@task lets you manage your project budget. You can keep track of costs for employees and job roles. When you create user accounts, you can enter a cost per hour. Then when you create projects, you can enter a budget amount. @task keeps track of your resource expenditures and costs.
If you have the same type of project that recurs, you can set up a project template with its tasks and their durations. Then when you need to create this type of project again, you can save time by using the template. The tasks, time lines, and descriptions are already set up for you. You can even save the task assignments and then choose whether or not to use them when you create a new project.
When projects are too large for a single person to manage them, you can use @task's distributed management features. You can assign multiple managers the responsibility to oversee task sets, and make them accountable to all project participants.