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

[Mark Durrenberger <m durrenberger comcast net>]

Lincoln, that is such a great Idea I wish I had thought of it...

The MS Project crowd is regularly reminded to "save a backup" before 
changing something. - essentially a "snapshot"

How about "Revert to most recent" (sort of like a whole bunch of Undos)

Mark



At 07:19 AM 5/5/2004, you wrote:


> 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.
>
>
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