Hi,

I've been working on the Gantt part of the new Seedcode Calendar Pro. My understanding of the Projects/Jobs, Activities & Phases Heirarchy (as my work needs it to be) are as follows:



(the sub descriptions are in-house categories)

Regarding Phases, I understand them to be 'Sub Categories' of Projects. I find it confusing, that when in the Projects Layout, these phases are mixed in with the Projects Records. Especially as each phase is given an independent/unique Project ID also which is consecutive/mixed in with the Projects ref ID's. I guess a filter could be used to just show Phases vs. Projects, etc, but that seems that they should have been seperated in the first place, but linked by the Project Id ref. (does this make sense?) As the Phases currently stand right now, they are not really a 'sub category', in the diagram as it is existing now in Seedcode, they are 'beside' the Projects in the hierarchy, instead of below.

I've read through other posts which describe creating phase 'templates'... which require a separate table on their own with unique ref. id's seperate to the Project Id's but linked via Project Id. I am going to try to jiggle this one out on my own- but I wanted to make sure I was understanding/using this correctly in the first place. This seems like a lot of legwork for what I feel should possibly already have been incorporated with the original version?

Basically, for a workplace that has multiple projects with multiple phases per project, the phases must by default be a separate table? (let me know though if my logic is wrong here)

I think I may run into problems when I get to the part of how the Phases are viewed on the 'sub tabs' in the Projects Layout... as these will all have to be redirected to the new Phases table? And the same with the views in the Gantt Chart? (Viewing wise, I thought for future ref. for anyone else who comes across this they should set up a separate color 'code' for phases vs. projects & activities. i.e. projects could be various block colors, phases could be various colors with dots or stripes, activities could be something else, etc.)

Sorry for the rambling... just thinking out loud also.

Thanks in advance for anyone with any advice or pointers.

*k

Hi K. Thanks for the post.

This is certainly something to which developers have a number of different approaches.

But phases do not have to be in a table separate from projects. It certainly depends on how you treat your projects and phases. For example if all projects must have at least one phase, then separating projects and phases starts to make more sense.

However, if you want to be able to do the same things to projects that you do to phases (log time against them, record activity against them, etc.) and you don't want to require each project to have at least one phase, then keeping them in the same table really starts to shine.

This is especially true if you have a project that down the road needs to become a phase of another, existing project.

At least that is the thinking behind our setup in SeedCode.

One other thought I'd offer is that if you do decide to create a new table, that it might be more interesting to think of yourself as creating the Project table not the phases table-- you likely already have your phases table in the SeedCode table currently labeled "Project". = )

Before I get a response, just to let you know I've started playing around with the new phases table & I suspect I may be making this more complicated than it is. I imagine, there is a simple, elegant solution to my above query....

Thus far I've duplicated the 'Projects' table (by exporting one record as a fp7 file then re-importing it as a new table called 'Phases', so that all the default fields I thought I would need would already be there, just needed to be tweaked) Also duplicated the projects layout with the fields being from the new phases table, for a more detailed phase view.

But I keep running into script & field & link problems when trying to connect the new phases fields to the existing views, i.e. gantt chart, phases tab under projects, etc.

I think I've possibly started *()&(& backwards : ) Is their a more direct way to do this?

Also, which 'primary' id's do i need to link to the other table's id's??? (i'm slightly confused between the 'k-prime' & 'kf' versions.

*k

Oops, I got the response before i got a chance to respond!

I understand what you're saying, at first I thought it could simply be solved by starting our Projects (which we call 'Jobs' here) with 'J'XXXX and our Phases with 'P'XXXX and have some toggled view or script to seperate. But then I realized it was the consecutive seriality of our Job Numbering that needs to remain intact, taking me back to a seperate Phases table. (Our studio runs on a 'Job Number' basis/emphasis (vs. Job Name) for filing, archiving, purchase orders, etc. and their are 100's existing already)

Ideally, whenever a new 'Job' (project) was created, It would automatically prompt for a default value list of phases you could choose from to automatically create, with the user adjusting the dates at that time or later.

(Most of our projects go through at least one phase if not a combo/variation of many)

Uhm, check out our website in the Projects section to get a general idea...

http://www.mikesmithstudio.com/projects/0.htm

I'll keep tweaking along and let you know how it goes.

*k

=)

msskat wrote:But then I realized it was the consecutive seriality of our Job Numbering that needs to remain intact, taking me back to a seperate Phases table. (Our studio runs on a 'Job Number' basis/emphasis (vs. Job Name) for filing, archiving, purchase orders, etc. and their are 100's existing already)

If you need to keep project numbers / phase numbers sequential, you'll want to add a new field for your project number and for your phase number and not use the Project ID already in SeedCode for this purpose: our ID will just become "behind the scenes" keys used to related items together. You'll then set your project number and or phase number with a script when you create new projects or phases, using something like Max() to find the highest project number currently in use. You might also consider prohibiting the deletion of projects so you don't have gaps. You can do this by modifying our "Delete Project { Dialog }" script. Check our our documentation on deleting projects for some background on how we're using that script.

Ideally, whenever a new 'Job' (project) was created, It would automatically prompt for a default value list of phases you could choose from to automatically create, with the user adjusting the dates at that time or later.

There are a couple of ways to get this idea of "default phases" or "phase templates" in place. Here is one of our favorites:

http://seedcode.com/support/viewtopic.php?t=1426

Ah! I'm beginning to see the light! Thank goodness for lateral thinking

Perhaps I should have mentioned the consecutive serial Job Numbers before , but I only intuitively knew that we needed to separate the phases records for some reason, at least visually, etc. & it was only till I wrote the above I figured out why! I think this is the case here at the studio as we run sometimes up to 20 to 30 consecutive various projects at all various stages with various details, and use something like the projects layout already quite heavily, toggling back & forth or in list view between records, so having loads of phases in between projects would be too confusing for us.

I'm going to test out the above now versus pursuing my earlier creation of a separate table.

I think if I do the above, then create a quick script at the opening of the Projects layout that only shows the Projects/Jobs records (without mixing in the Phases records) and also a separate Phases Layout we're good to go.

Thanks for your advice!

*k

msskat wrote:I think if I do the above, then create a quick script at the opening of the Projects layout that only shows the Projects/Jobs records (without mixing in the Phases records) and also a separate Phases Layout we're good to go.

thanks so much for the advice. i have set up and seems to be working well.

*k

Glad to hear it.

Keep the questions and comments coming!