Basic Concepts: Jira Tasks & Local Events
Jira Tasks
All Jira tasks from enabled projects are getting loaded from your Jira instance into ActivityTimeline during the initial setup and are accessible for planning for users with the required permissions.
The backlog of all the tasks is available for users on the left panel in the ‘Plan’ module, where users can see and search for needed issues (By default, it shows issues updated within the last 30 days):
Each issue is represented by an individual bar, that has a set of attributes that describes this task (i.e. priority, issue type, estimate, etc), however, the appearance is customizable and can be adjusted according to the user's needs in the Configuration → Issues menu:
Local Events
In addition to standard Jira events, ActivityTimeline also has a set of custom events that provide some additional functionality and cover cases that are generally not supported by Jira issues, such as the allocation of resources for some activity for a specific amount of time per day or tracking days off and vacations.
Here is the list of custom events that are available within ActivityTimeline.
Name | Description |
|---|---|
BOOKING | Blocks persons' capacity for a certain number of hours per day. Allows to reserve/allocate person for certain activity/project, without specifying exact Jira tasks. |
DAY_OFF | Excludes the day from user’s work schedule. System doesn’t allocate the workload on the day with Day Off. You can either have ‘Full day off’ or ‘Partial’ for a specific number of hours. |
HOLIDAY | Event used to mark public holidays and official non-working days. Can be automatically created through ‘Holiday scheme’ |
NOTE | Item does not affect user’s capacity and is a simple text message/reminder on a person’s timeline. |
OVERTIME | Opposite to Booking, this event adds certain number of hours to user’s capacity on a certain day. Recommended to use when the overtime is ‘expected&agreed' in advance, not to make the person overloaded. |
PLACEHOLDER | Can exist either as standalone item or be connected to Jira issue. Can be used to try different planning scenarios without actually changing Jira issues. |
SICK_LEAVE | This event tracks days when a user is off due to medical reasons. |
VACATION | Custom event to track users' vacations. Manager or Admin can approve vacations to restrict their editing by other users. |
In addition to these events, you can create your own events based on the system event types, like booking, a day off, etc, so it gives you even more flexibility in terms of planning.
