Task Card

Under development

Task Card Is a feature of Epicflow that grants higher level of convenience for your team in work with one particular task.

It brings all information on the task in structured way to grant you simplest and easiest way in editing and control of all related to the task information and parameters.

Task Card Elements

This part will contain general description of elements and actions which can be performed at Task Card page.

• For open Task Card go to the
  • Task List and press left mouse button on any task name in the Task column to have it opened
  • Pipeline and press left mouse button on any task from the Gantt Chart to have it opened.

Screen #1 – Task Card

In the left top corner we have Priority of the task. Hovering over your mouse cursor will trigger popup message depiction with the Chain of tasks which contributes to the Task’s priority itself.

Screen #2 – Task Card – Priority

To the right from Task’s Priority we have task name, which you can easily edit and adapt to your needs and “three dots” with “cross” icons at the right top corner.

• “Three dots” icon calls for the context menu to Complete or Delete task
• “Cross” icon will close Task Card.

Next element is Progress Bar, which indicates Total percent of task’s accomplishment.

Screen #3 – Task Card – Progress Bar

Right bellow it we have Project name, Summary, Phases, Description, Tags and the closest upcoming Milestones for the Chain where we have the task.

Separate elements are:

Stage – identifies whether the tasks are completed, not estimated, upcoming, not ready to start, or blocked

Assignments – list of groups or resources assigned to the task’s accomplishment with identification of the current sub-task status (“Not in progress”, “In progress”, “On hold”) and Progress of accomplishment.

Project Manager – with the name of Project Manager responsible for the Project fulfillment process and control

Task ID – ID of the task

and

Last but not the least part is Relations tab with information on Predecessors and Successors linked to the task.

Add Remaining hours Estimates

Once all the resources have been added and tasks are specified, the hours can be applied against the them right in Epicflow UI. These need to be added one at a time. 

• Open Task Card for the required task
• Point over your mouse cursor over the required Resource

and

• left click over one of the “Total”\”Spent”\”Remaining” cells to start editing of such 

Screen #4 – Task Card – Estimates Editing

Difference between Spent, Remaining, Total

Each task is characterized by estimation of a time which is remaining for its fulfillment, already spent and total sum of such. It’s an essential part of the system and update of those values helps with project’s flow, impediments identification and priorities order.

Remaining is the number of man hours left to accomplish the task. You can modify this number, but please note that it will change the number of Spent man hours or Total.

Spent is the number of man hours that a resource has already burned to accomplish the task. If you increase the number of spent hours, Remaining hours will get reduced accordingly.

Total is the sum of Remaining and Spent man hours.

Uploading Progress on Task

Progress on task accomplishment is measured in decreasing of Remained hours estimation. To update the Task Progress you would need to change value of Remaining hours.

• Open Task Card for the required task
• Point over your mouse cursor over the required Resource

and

• left click over one of the “Total”\”Spent”\”Remaining” cells to start editing of such 

For the tasks with one assignments, you also can use Progress bar element. Just by left mouse click over it and draging the cursor you may set required % of task Accomplishment.

Screen #5 – Task Card – Progress on Task

Task Status

Status of the task can be measured with next three options:

• “Not in progress” – nobody is working on the task yet
• “In progress” – task accomplishment is under the process
• “On hold” – task was set on pause

In case if engineer or PM register progress on task status will be automatically changed to “In progress”.

Also status “Not in progress” is available for selection even after the status was changed to any other.

Task status for a specific assignee can be changed either

• via Task Card

Screen #6 – Task Card – Assignment task Status change

or

• directly from Task List view

Screen #7 – Task List – Assignment task Status change

Close the task

Once all the Total Remaining hours have been spent, the task will be shown as a completed one.

Also you can complete the task via selection of “Complete” item from context menu, appearing on left mouse click over “three dots” icon, located in the right top corner. In this case all Remaining hours are going to be set to 0 for all assignee automatically.

Screen #8 – Task Card – Complete the Task

For the tasks with one assignments, you also can use Progress bar element. Just by left mouse click over it and dragging the cursor you may set 100% of task Accomplishment.

For JIRA and CSV integration in case of the task transfer to the “Done” state Epicflow automatically set Remaining hours to 0.

Assigning and re-assigning Resource\Group

• To change assigned Group for the task in the Task Card press left mouse button over Assignment engineer and select appropriate Group name from the appeared list.

Screen #9 – Task Card – Resource Assignment

• To change assigned Resource for the task in the Task Card press left mouse button over Assignment engineer and select appropriate user of Particular group from the appeared list.

Esc” or left button click anywhere at the page will cancel the change Resource action.

Instead of any particular Resource assignment user can select “anyone” option from the appeared drop-down. It does mean that anybody from the specified Resource Group, who is available, is defined to carry our the task.

Adding the second resource to the task

For the second resource adding to the task you will need to:

• Open Task Card
• Press “plus” sign located right above Assignments list and in newly appeared frame select:
  • Group or user as Assignee
  • specify Total work
  • specify Assignments units  

Screen #10 – Task Card – New Assignment

Shrinking assigned resources to the task

For the case when you would like to shrink resources assigned for the task you need to:

• Open Task Card
• Hover over the required assignee your mouse cursor
• In appeared frame press “trash” icon to remove such resource from Assignments list

In case if you do have only one assignee in the task you wont be able to delete such.

Screen #11 – Task Card – Task Assignment

Cross-group resource assignment

Sometimes situations arise when the resource from another group possesses the necessary skills to perform a task. At the same time, the task is assigned to a specific group but nobody from the group can be used to accomplish the task due to overload or capacity issues. Also reassignment on another group is not appreciated.

The way out of this situation is “cross-group assignment”. It’s mechanism which allows you to assign a resource from the different group than specified for task accomplishment.

Suppose that the resource “Admin” has the skills to perform the task set in front of the “BE” group but he is not a part of that group. Also resources of “BE” group are not in position to work that task and to work it out we are going to involve “Admin” and for that we are going to reassign it on it.

When you go to the Task Card and left click on any Assignment in a new frame will appear where you will see a list of available resources for assignment with the primary assigned group at the top of the list.

We are interested in the resource “Admin”. By selecting it, we see that it is now indicated in the task card. However, the execution group is still considered “BE.”

Note that with such approach the Load created by this task will be evenly distributed among all groups in which the “Admin” resource is allocated and excluded from BE group.

Comments

Comments is an additional functionality for sharing crucial information directly in Epicflow among all concerned people.

With appropriate set of rights each user can add, remove or edit comment but only personal comments can be removed or edited.

If you would like to add new line during typing shift-enter combination can be used for that. Pressing enter button will add comment to the task itself.

Among all comments user can define an important one by lighting up star icon which appears to the right from the comment on hovering over such.

In a similar way, hovering mouse cursor over the task, you can select option “edit” or “delete” the task itself.

Selecting toggle “Only important ” will hide all not-important comments.

Screen #12 – Task Card – Comments

Please note that the last added comment to the task marked as important will be shown in the “Comments” section of the “Task List” page. In case if there no marked comments as important one, the last added will be selected to be displayed.

Screen #13 – Task List – Comments