Improved Resource And Task Management With Orangescrum New Release

Hey Orangescrum’ers, September product update is here. We are pleased announce two significant feature resource and task management releases for our customers.

Optimizing team performance, productivity and enabling highly coordinated task management is at the core of Orangescrum project management tool.

Robust resource management features such as resource availability, allocation and utilization help our customers with efficient resource planning for their projects.

Hence, to streamline the overall resource and task management activities for project managers we have enhanced the way tasks are created and managed for your projects in Orangescrum.

• Action packed Sub-task Hierarchy View
• Create and assign tasks from the Resource Availability grid view

Before we dive into the specifics of how you get to use these new releases, let us take a quick look at their benefits.

Benefits of Subtask Hierarchy View

• All tasks are now arranged in a proper hierarchy i.e. Task Group > Parent Task > Subtask > Sub-sub task.
• You can perform all task actions from this view just as you do it today on the task list view.
• Bulk actions have been updated as well for status updates, copy, move & delete tasks and much more
• A tree or hierarchy view makes the task listing more meaningful and provides better clarity and relationships.
• Crucial task info in terms of assignee, estimated hours, due date, task type are visible upfront at a glance.

Benefits of Task Management from Resource Availability Grid

It is hard to visualize tasks in one place and the resource availability in another. Hence you can now

• View your resources availability and create tasks from the grid view itself.
• Time-consuming navigation between resource and task view is prevented.
• It is very easy and intuitive to see how resources are allocated and update task assignments as required.
• No more conflicts between task due dates and a resource’s availability.
• Re-prioritize and reallocate resources based on project requirements with negligible disruption to your planned delivery dates.
• Better control over your overall resource and project schedule.

So, here are the two major feature releases and how to use them within Orangescrum project management tool.

Create Task from Resource Availability

Now you can directly create tasks from the Resource Availability grid itself. There is no need to go to task list or Kanban view to Create Tasks. Here is how-

• Hover on Resource Management from the left main menu and click on Resource Availability. Resource availability will be available for owner and admin by default. However, you can provide access to the users using User role management feature
• Click on Available slots denoted by Green color. Green color in Resource Availability indicates that resource is available and you can assign task to the resource.
• Upon clicking on Green slots, you will find 2 options- Create Task & Submit Leave.
• If you want to assign task, then you can click on Create task. Or, if you would like to add leave, then click on Submit leave. I would like to assign Richard a task for 2 days. So I would click on Create task on 5^th October.
  
• Upon clicking, Richard is selected as assignee in Create task pop-up and the start date 5^th October is auto selected as well. Update important task info such as task title, estimated hours, priority etc. and save it.
  
• You will be able to see that task will be booked for Richard on 5^th October and 6^th October.
  
• That’s easy! Now you don’t have to check the resource availability and navigate to task list to assign tasks.Continue to optimize your task planning & resource assignments seamlessly from a single pane.

Improved Sub-task Hierarchy View-

Here is a Simple hierarchy structure of your tasks and sub-tasks. You can get your task, sub-tasks & sub sub-tasks in threaded structure. So you don’t have to roam around task list to get tasks arranged.

You can also perform actions same as task list. In order find the action menu, hover on a task. On hovering, you can find the task action menu.

From Sub-task view, you can perform the following actions-

• Change status of task
• Create subtask
• Convert task to sub-task or vice versa
• Time Entry
• Start timer
• Reply/ Comment on task
• Edit task
• Copy task
• Move task to another project
• Move task to project plan
• Delete  task
• Archive task

Similar to Task list in Orangescrum, we have also added Bulk actions. In order access the bulk action, you can select the specific tasks.

Now click on the bulk action icon and you can perform the required action-

• Change status
• Move tasks to project
• Copy tasks to project
• Move tasks to a task group
• Create project plan
• Archive multiple tasks
• Delete multiple tasks

It’s a Wrap!

Get going with a renewed focus on your task and resource management activities.

Benefit from detailed task breakdown with an insightful view that is easy for your teams to follow, plan and execute.

And at the same time, your project managers, team leaders and resource managers find it easy to answer the following questions on the fly:

• What are their resources up to?
• Who is available when?
• Which tasks need to be re-prioritized and re-assigned?
• How many resources are required for upcoming projects and planned tasks?
• Are there any sitting ducks on my resource plan?

Most, important of all, eliminate the most common yet disruptive resource management blind spots with enhanced resource management capabilities from Orangescrum.

What are you waiting for? Hop on to exciting project management times ahead! Signup Now!