Project schedules

A schedule is a set of tasks to be completed in a project. When you create a project, you can add one or more schedules to the project to organize all of the work that needs to be done for the project. Project managers and project members with permission to manage a schedule can add tasks at any time.

Each task in a schedule can be assigned to a member of the project. If you provide a start or end date for the task, Marketing Operations OnDemand automatically sends alerts that remind project members of what needs to be done. You can use the schedule as a way to track milestones. If you enable time tracking, you can use tasks to monitor how much time people spend for billing or resource management purposes.

Tasks can include approval tasks, which are single-step approvals. Tasks can be as comprehensive as you need them for your organization. You can provide descriptions for tasks so that others know what each task entails.

Examples:

If everyone in your organization knows what "Design and layout" means in relation to a banner ad, then you can define the task as "Design and layout".
A task that you define as "Approve by Legal" might involve several steps of reviews and meetings. If the Legal organization is outside of your department and does not have access to Marketing Operations OnDemand, the steps they require to approve an item will not be in your schedule.

Tracking time

Time can be tracked with project tasks. When you add tasks, you can include planned time.

Team members can then log the time they spend on their tasks by adding time records. If a team member spends longer than the planned time on the task, the task appears in red on the Schedule page.

At the end of your project, you can evaluate the discrepancies between the planned time and the actual time spent to better schedule your next project.

Schedule templates
A schedule template contains a re-usable set of tasks for a particular type of project. The template defines the task sequence, durations, and resource roles or owners. Schedule templates can represent a whole schedule or part of a schedule. IBM® provides several example schedule templates for common marketing projects.
Adding a schedule to a project
When you create a project, you can add one or more schedule templates. You can also append tasks from schedule templates to an existing project schedule.
Adding tasks to a schedule
You create schedules by adding tasks. You can also add tasks to existing schedules, even if you created the schedule from a template.
Shifting a schedule or task
You can shift an entire schedule or specific tasks forward and backward. For example, you might want to shift tasks in your schedule if your due date is slipping or if work is going faster than you originally planned.
Modifying tasks
After you create a schedule, you can modify the tasks. You might want to modify a task to change the assignee, due date, or status.
Adding a predecessor to a task
Add predecessors to tasks to specify what tasks need to be completed before this task begins.
Approval tasks within schedules
You can create single-step approval tasks within project schedules to review project-related items such as a budget.
Creating an approval task within a schedule
Project managers and schedule managers can create approval tasks within schedules.
Copying approval tasks
You can copy an approval task to start a new approval task. The new approval task has the same approval title, description, dates, reviewers, and attachments as the original approval task. You can then modify the new approval task.
Managing schedules and tasks
As a project manager, you must maintain the schedule for the project.
Schedule fields
When you add a schedule to a project, you need to complete the fields on the New Schedule page.
Schedule Setup fields
When you add a schedule template to a project, you need to complete fields on the Schedule Setup page.
Task fields
When you add a task to a schedule, schedule template, estimate, or estimate template, you need to complete the task fields.

Parent topic: How to work with projects in Marketing Operations OnDemand