Scheduling Overview

Click the Scheduling icon in the Smart Planning tab.

Populate the following information on the General tab:

• Project Start - This is the project start date.
• Data Date - Sets the “current” or as-of date that you are looking at in the system.
• Project Finish - This is the project finish date.
• Auto CPM - This should generally be set to On, so logic is automatically applied to items in your schedule.

Populate the following information on the Progress tab:

• Schedule Mode - The Schedule Mode can either be Scheduling or Planning. Activities without predecessor logic or constraints will be scheduled against the Data Date.
• Out of Sequence Progress - This should remain on retained logic, retains planned dependencies between unworked portions of activities.

• Auto Progress - If set to On, Schedule assumes that work is proceeding as planned.  Activities will be progressed to where they were planned to be on the data date.  If set to Off, you manually progress activities. This should be done prior to advancing the data date of the project.

• Recalculate Actual Units When Duration % Complete Changes - Actual units on assigned resources update per the duration % complete. For example, if a 10-day activity is progressed to 50% duration % complete then a resource assigned to that activity with 100 units planned would update to 50 actual units. Off - Duration % complete and Actual units are unlinked.

• Relationship Lag Mode -Dictates which calendar between a predecessor and its successor the lag of a relationship is used when establishing Finish and Start dates in CPM.

  

Populate the following information on the Float tab:

• Identify Critical Activities by - Identify critical activities by either the Total Float or the Longest Path. If the Total Float value is less than or equal to the defined number of hours (default 0) then it is an indication that an activity is critical. The Longest Path is the path through a project network from start to finish where the Total Duration is longer than any other path.

• Total Float - Set the Total float to less than or equal to 8 hours. The Total Float represents the amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting the completion date of the project.

• Manually Configure Settings - Set the Manually Configure Settings to On.

• Define Critical Activities Using - You can define critical activities using either Total Float or Free Float. Free Float represents the amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting the start date of its subsequent tasks.

• Number of Paths to Calculate - You can calculate up to 10 sub-critical paths. This helps you to better envision the activities that have a potential of being delayed, which gives you additional time and consideration to push out the schedule. You can choose to execute certain actions such as defining the critical activities by using either free float or total float, select an activity to stop showing multiple float paths, and determine the number of float paths to calculate.

  

  To see the float paths in plan , you can group by float path in the Group By Builder to see which activities are critical and sub-critical, and the float path where they reside.

  

In the Available Columns column, scroll to the Duration section. Then select the following columns for percent complete:

• % Complete

• % Complete Type

• Dur % Complete

• Phys % Complete

• Unit % Complete

Use the arrows to move the columns to the Selected Columns column.

Select Set View to add the percent complete columns to the Gantt chart.