Re: [Planner Dev] Suggestion for project tracking planned v. actuals using Phase as a commit/restore tag.

["lincoln phipps openmutual net" <lincoln phipps openmutual net>]

Hi all,

Had some thoughts on this bugzilla,

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140676

and I suggest the following is done to effect this feature
and well as make Planner really fancy on experimenting with
different scenarios.

For a project we add a new depth (of node) in the XML file
and call it <snapshots> under which there is a <snaphot ...>
with attributes of (my suggestions),

current-project = YES|NO,
default-baseline = YES|NO,
keyed-on PHASE|DATE,
saved-phase = "phase",
saved-date "a date"

and then under that <snapshot ...> is the current tasks,
resources and assignments; same as today only down a depth in
the tree.

We then offer dialogs to,
 - Save Snapshot  (options of key-on phase or date so as to replace
	and existing snapshot thus creating a unique key (tuple))
 - Delete Snapshot,
 - Make Snapshot current project (my favourite),
 - Make Snapshot default Baseline.

Thus the workflow is that you open Planner as normal and work as
normal. Saving a project simple saves the current project as normal
with the current tasks, resource and assignments being saved to a ...

<snapshots>
  <snapshot ...>
  <tasks>
  </tasks>
  <resources>
  <resources>
  <assignments>
  </assignments>
  </snapshot>
<snapshots>

with the current-snapshot=YES and keyed-on=PHASE (which could be
NULL). No change there and if no one want to use snapshots to play
with different scenarios or for baselines they wouldn't notice
Planner had changed i.e. this feature is not forced onto you.

Then if you want to you can change the phase and then when you save
it and it will save a project snapshot to a different phase and make
that the current project. Again no real change.

Now the neat stuff- you could open the Make Snapshot Current Project
and then pick a previous snapshot and effectively rollback (or roll
forward) to that Phase (or date if you saved keyed on date).

This is a lot more powerful (and quite simple) a feature. I could
thus create two completely different project scenarios
e.g. SCENARIO-QUICK, SCENARIO-CHEAP with different resources and
tasks and switch between the two to experiment as to which is the
"best" project all within one planner file.

In the future we would also compare snapshots with the baseline
(which is just a snapshot in its own right but flagged as being the
"default-baseline") or with other snapshots e.g. rank by costs or
end dates or similar or trend costs (if you snapshotted by date
you could thus trend the project by date).

Hows that for a great way of implementing this and it isn't really
that much trouble I think to do this in this way.

Rgds,
Lincoln.