Groups, Resources and Events explained...

Schedule it has 3 main data types that you will use for all your planning.

Groups and Categories

Groups and Categories are a collection of the resources you will plan. By grouping your resources they are easier for you to visualise and find. Groups can be added from the Data menu then Add New Group.

Resources

Resources are any item or thing you want to link to an event to help you see what it is and to create your custom views and reports in the future. A resource can be a job type, type of activity, a project name, staff, customers, clients, or any label or text you want to associate with an event that you pick from a list organized by your groups and categories. Resources can be added from the Data menu then Add New Resource.

Events

Events are the activity with a start and end and they define the entry in the schedule of each resource it is linked to. Events can be added from the Data menu then Add New Event, or by selecting directly in the graphical schedule.

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Example

Any type of activities, tasks, jobs, projects, staff, clients etc (all these are resources) can be planned with Schedule it. Events are then added to the calendar of any combination of these resources to visualise your data.

As an example we will use 'A day in your life' as a project or set of activities you wish to record. This activity is made up of many small events that mark out different parts of your day, and we will link each event to different resources so we can create reports and find any parts as you need.

Below are a list of events and the resources that each event is linked to...

Event 1, from 12am to 7am, linked to a resource called 'Me' and one called 'Sleeping'.

Event 2, from 7am to 8am, linked to a resource called 'Me' and one called 'Getting Ready For Work'.

Event 3, from 8am to 9am, linked to a resource called 'Me' and one called 'Travel To Work' and one called 'In Car'.

Event 4, from 9am to 5pm, linked to a resource called 'Me', one called 'At Work', one called 'Project 1', one called 'Training'.

Event 5, from 5pm to 6pm, linked to a resource called 'Me' and one called 'Travel From Work' and one called 'In Car'.

Event 6, from 6pm to 12am, linked to a resource called 'Me' and one called 'Relaxing'.

We can group our resources into groups like Staff, Work Tasks and Home Tasks:

Staff = 'Me'
Work Tasks = 'Travel To Work', 'In Car', 'At Work' 'Project 1', 'Training'
Home Tasks = 'Sleeping', 'Getting Ready For Work', 'Relaxing'

With all these different resources you can now customise all the views, create reports, costings and hourly reports, and much more for all events link to any resources you wis to view or report on. E.g. If you need a report on all time spent 'At Work' just filter events on the resource 'At Work' and all other events are hidden so you will only see the data for that type of event.

Last updated, 22 July 2013, 14:46