User manual

Plan User Manual
Page 7 of 21
FAST START TUTORIAL
This section describes, by way of an example, how to use the main features within Plan. It
includes an example of creating a plan, adding resources and tasks, and updating tasks.
Plan has many features and it is not possible to describe all of these features within a short
section such as this. This section includes enough to get you started, as you become more
familiar you may want to explore the rest of the manual to find out what else you can do with
Plan.
Creating a new plan
If Plan has not been installed then refer to the installation section before proceeding.
Ensure that you start this tutorial with a new empty plan file. To do this simply start Plan and
select the “New” button at the bottom left of the screen.
When creating a new file, Plan will create a plan containing a single default resource called
“Standard”. The working days for this resource will be set to default values. The following
tutorial assumes that the working days are Monday to Friday with Saturday and Sunday as
non-working days.
Plan will start up and display a Gantt view. This is one of the many different views available
within Plan.
Creating a new resource
Start by creating a new resource.
To do this, select the “Resource > New resource…” menu option.
Enter the initials and full name for the resource as “Res1”. Leave the other fields unchanged,
unless stated otherwise below. The maximum units value will default to 1, indicating that this
resource represents a single person. A resource may be used to represent a group by setting
the maximum units to a value greater than 1. Set the charge per hour to 5. Plan will calculate
the cost of the project using the resource charge rates as entered here.
Note that the “Work hours” tab shows the hours this resource works. Leave these at the
default of 8am to 5pm with 1 hour lunch break throughout the whole week, Monday-Friday.
Press “OK” and the resource will be created.
From the bottom toolbar select the button on the far right which looks like a calendar month
icon. This displays the holidays for each resource. Use the buttons on the toolbar to view the
holidays for each resource. These will have defaulted to the same holidays as the Standard
resource when the resource was created. The two buttons on the far right of the toolbar may
be used to move from one half year to the next. Single tapping on a day in the holiday view
toggles a day from a work to a holiday and vice versa. Leave all the holidays unchanged for
the time being.