How to track project phases (with dates) as well as to-dos?

[Scott_Murray]

When managing a pipeline of projects, the board view is very useful as a way of tracking what “phase” a task is in — moving from left to right (completion) over time. Then the subtasks in that task capture my team’s specific to-do items.

However… “phases” in that sense don’t have dates on them. I use Instagantt and find it useful to be able to have dates on each “phase”, so we can generate Gantt chart view of all our projects and their progress.

Until now I’ve done this by having subtasks represent a “phase”, each with start and end dates. For example, say I produce movies (I don’t). A task could look like this:

Movie Title

Subtasks / phases:

• Writing
• Planning
• Preproduction
• Shooting
• Editing
• Distribution

So “Shooting” is a phase, and within Shooting you could have your specific to-dos, like:

• wrangle the actors
• apply makeup
• get everyone in costume
• check the lighting and cameras are working

But now we’re 2 levels deep into subtasks, so this is unsatisfactory.

If I had these phases set up as board columns, can I also assign dates to them? I need to know how long each thing is sitting in a given phase/column, and get warned when it’s at risk? (Like, if task x has been in Shooting for more than 2 weeks, it’s overdue!)

Appreciate any help in thinking about how to think about this.

[Rebecca_McGrath]

Hi @Scott_Murray, thanks for reaching out

I believe the below custom Rule set up might help you out here:

Rule 1:
Trigger: + Task added to Section (Column)
Action: Set due date (in 14 days)

Rule 2:
Trigger: Task is overdue
Acton: Add comment → “This task is overdue!” for example.

This setup with create a due date for 2 weeks time when you move a task to a specific section. Once 2 weeks passes and the task has not been completed, a comment will be added to notify the assignee that the task is overdue

You would need to create Rule 1 for each Section (Column).

I hope this helps!

[Scott_Murray]

Thanks. I could see some use cases for rules, but in my case, this wouldn’t maintain the Instagantt view, since there aren’t start/end dates attached to each phase/column. I am hoping for the best of both worlds!