ProjectLoad Blog

The administrator has always had the ability to specify default phases for new projects by type. When someone is adding a new project, they can choose to generate the default phases and the system will create phases automatically based on whatever the administrator specified for this type of project. Those default phases may now include dates and hours. The administrator simply specifies what percentage of the project dates should be used before the default phase starts and/or stops. For example, specifying zero percent in the default phase start date will cause the generated phase to inherit the start date of the project. Specifying 25% will cause the phase to have a default date 25% of the way between the project’s start date and target date. This same principle applies to the target date and to the estimated hours for each phase. Note that as before these are simply defaults the project manager can generate on new projects and thus can be overridden as needed on a project by project basis.

If you go to the Settings page, a new option called “Start Page” is now present. It contains a list of pages that you can have displayed immediately after logging on instead of the default daily timesheet page. This list includes the monthly and daily timesheets, the home page, the projects, activities and alert listing pages and the reports page. You can also select “Timer” to have the timer automatically startup when you logon.

For people who prefer to use the keyboard for navigating, access keys have been added to ProjectLoad. Most of the buttons are now displayed with one of the letters on the button underlined. To “click” this button using the keyboard instead of the mouse, Windows users can simply press the Alt key along with that letter and Mac users can press Control and the letter. This will allow you to save changes, perform searches and traverse the site using the keyboard for most of the navigation.

Along with the buttons, access keys may be used to switch the page you are viewing. Access key “1″ switches to the first tab, Home page, access key “2″ will take you to the second tab, the Projects listing, etc.

One of the major underlying assumptions in ProjectLoad is that those people who are responsible for performing assignments are the ones that should provide and maintain the estimates for those assignments. Each person is assigned work from project managers but it is ultimately up to the person doing the work to provide feedback to the project manager on when the assignment will be completed and how many hours of effort will be required. As long as staff provides accurate estimates, the system can provide information on projected workloads, project schedules, overtime requirements, and scheduling problems for people, teams, and projects.

Up until now the system has assumed that once the regular work hours of an individual were exhausted, overtime would be assigned evenly to all days in the timeframe an assignment was to be worked. Now you can choose to have the system place overtime only on regularly scheduled work days instead of placing hours on off days (until a limit is reached). This gives more flexibility to indicate there may be times when overtime is required and when it happens they are more likely to work longer hours on a normal work day than to come in on an off day.

To use this new feature, simply go to the Settings page and specify the number of overtime hours you would like placed on regular work days before you are willing to work on off days. If overtime is required based on your estimates and regular work schedule, overtime will be placed on regular work days first until the specified limit is reached. If even more overtime is required, then additional hours will be placed on days you would normally not work at all.