Manage a Change Activity Plan
After you create a plan, you need to manage the plan. The Change Activity Plans page displays a table of plans, along with their status and progress. It is the place to manage a plan once a plan is activated.
Using the manage capabilities of Change Activity Planner, you can:
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View all activated plans; cancel activated plans.
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Drill into the plan and get more details and manage individual tasks. This helps you to identify any issues that may delay the activity plan completion deadline.
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View the audit trail on who made changes to the plan and what changes were made to the plan.
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View and update links. Links associated with the plan during creation can be viewed during plan management. Plan owners and privileged users can update existing links.
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Reassign a plan to a different plan owner; reassign a task to a different task owner.
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Change the scheduled end date of the plan.
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Manage tasks
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Manually update task status to: acknowledged, in progress, or cancelled.
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Update status to completed for manual tasks.
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Maintain audit trail on who made changes to the plan and what changes were made to the plan.
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View dependent tasks.
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To manage a plan, on the Change Activity Plans page, highlight a plan that has been activated and click Manage or click the plan name.
The Manage Plan page provides the following features to help you manage your plan:
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Provides an overall summary of the plan's status including the status of tasks and plan summary.
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Enables you to manage all the plan's tasks. Tasks can be updated individually or in bulk.
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Enables you to view the audit trail to determine who made changes to the plan and what changes were made to its tasks.
Summary Tab
The Summary tab provides an overall summary of the plan's status. The following information is provided:
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Overview - Shows the progress that has been made in the accomplishment of the plan. Plan details are also included: status, scheduled end date, priority, owner, and links.
The estimated end date is the maximum scheduled end date of all the tasks that make up the plan.
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Plan Summary - Visual depiction of the task definitions and task groups that make up the plan. Dependencies are indicated by arrows between the objects in the plan and show the order in which tasks should be performed.
You can view the Plan Summary in either graph or table format. The topology graph (and alternate table view) show all the task definitions and task groups that make up the plan and the order in which the tasks should be executed.
The task definitions and task groups all have an associated status, indicated by an icon. The status is determined by the status of the tasks that make up the task definition or task group.
Example: If a task definition has four associated Tasks: Task 1 is Unacknowledged, Task 2 is Complete, Task 3 is In Progress and Task 4 is Canceled, then the task definition status will be In Progress.
Table View
In Table view, there are counts associated with each Task Definition / Task Group. Clicking the links displays the Tasks tab which automatically adds search filters to allow you to see details on that task definition / task group based on the link you clicked. For example, when you click the Overdue link, the task tab displays with the task name set and the Overdue flag checked (in requires attention). You will then see all overdue tasks outstanding for the task definition you were looking at in the table.
From the Table view of the Plan Summary, you can Print and Export the plan.
Graph View
When using the graph format, you can choose the graph format to be either top-down or left-to-right. You can opt for the following annotations to be displayed on the graph: Scheduled Start Date, Scheduled End Date, or Total Tasks.
In graph view, arrows will be drawn between task definitions that have a dependency relationship. Arrows will point from a task definition that needs to be completed first, toward a task definition that must wait for its completion.
Task groups are drawn as an encompassing box around other task definitions.
Hover over a task definition name and the resulting arrow to display information about the tasks created as a result of this task definition.
Right-click on an empty area of the graph to bring up a menu that allows you to switch the orientation of the graph, or print the contents of the graph.
The Display option allows you to toggle between the Graph and Table views.
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If a plan is not yet completed, you can change its scheduled end date by clicking on the calendar icon next to the Scheduled End Date in the Overview section.
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You can view the task completion trend by clicking on the line chart icon next to the Progress(%) in the Overview section.
Tasks Tab
Use the Tasks tab to manage all the plan's tasks. Tasks can be updated individually or in bulk.
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Status of Tasks
Pie chart breakdown of the plan by task status.
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Views
This section provides quick links to allow you to quickly find tasks that require attention. The supported views are: Unassigned Tasks, Unacknowledged Tasks, Overdue Tasks, Due Within One Week Tasks, and All Active.
All Active shows all open tasks. There is also a Show All link that shows all plan tasks, including completed and canceled tasks.
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Tasks
This section displays a table of tasks and allows you to search, view and update the plan tasks. The Actions menu and table buttons provide bulk task update support for operations like setting dates, changing task owners, acknowledging and canceling tasks. By default, the tasks are filtered to show only open tasks.
Select a single task to see and update task details or select multiple tasks, and use the bulk operation buttons at the top of the table, and in the table's Action menu.
The plan task view automatically filters out closed tasks but search filters can be set by expanding the search section, or using the View Links.
Single Task
When a single task is selected, you can view and edit task information using the General tab, for example, target name. You can add task comments and use the Comments and Audit Trail tab to determine who made changes to the plan and what changes were made to the plan. The information is specific to the task you are looking at. Therefore it tracks all changes made to that task including comments that were manually added.
Multiple Tasks (Bulk Operations)
When multiple tasks are selected, you can perform the following:
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Acknowledge a task. Acknowledging a task means you have seen the task but have not started working on it. The only users who can set a task to Acknowledged are: the task owner, the plan owner, and super administrator. When a user is assigned a task, he is allowed to see the plan that contains the task.
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Cancel a task
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Set scheduled start and end dates
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Change owners
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Submit a job. You can submit a job only if the tasks are part of the same task definition.
- Associate with existing job execution. Choose an existing job execution to associate with all the selected tasks. Note from engineer: Didn't have time to implement the bulk case.
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Create a patch plan. A patch plan can be created when patch plan-based tasks are selected. The tasks must be part of the same task definition. Use the Patches and Updates page to deploy the patch plan.
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Associate with existing patch plan. Note that when the patches in the patch template for the task definition have been applied to the task's target, the task will close automatically whether or not a patch plan is associated with the task.
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Associate with existing procedure run. This option is enabled for tasks in the same task definition. Once you create the association, use the Deployment Library page to launch the deployment procedure.
The task table also supports Export and Print of the task list. Use the Action menu for these operations.
Requiring Attention
When you click the Requires Attention icon in the table, the General tab and the Comments and Audit Trail tabs appear. Study the available information to determine what you should do next. For example, if the plan is overdue, determine what task is causing the delay.
You can study the audit trail for a particular task, for example, dates, whether dependencies exist, and owner or status of the task changes.
Changing Owner
One especially helpful thing you can do is change the owner. This is particularly useful when job responsibilities change and user roles change. Change Owner shows you a list of users; select the new user.
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