Guys,

I am trying to work out how I can create activity sets, where the tasks are numbered so they appear in order.

I am trying to use the main index number as the milestone, say 2. Concept Creation, and then 2.1, 2.2 etc will be the tasks associated to these milestones.

When I number then, they appear what seems randomly in the projects Progress tab, and I cant see how they can be ordered.

Will we be able to start allocating individual activity sets to individual project process stages, as we could then create milestones to work against.

Many thanks,

Charlie

I think the best way to do what you want is to create pipelines, where each stage in the pipeline becomes your milestone. They are a great way to track progress because they are graphical and completely customizable.

While you could still work with Activity Sets, they are meant to automate repetitive tasks, not stages in a progression.

I suggest you use the pipeline to track your milestones and activity sets to help you keep on top of the tasks necessary to reach each milestone.

Well, here's what I'm looking for: The ability to link an activity set to a pipeline stage. Is this possible? That way when you were in the pipeline view, you would only see the tasks which related to that phase of the project. In essence, stages would become sub-projects, and the tasks would be linked to the sub-projects when in the "progress" view, and listed universally when in the "activity" view.
Does this already exist?

Currently you can't link activity sets to pipeline stages. It has been a highly requested feature though and our plan is to look at it for a future version of Daylite. Unfortunately I can't provide a timeframe.

Thx,

You could create different Activity Sets for each Pipeline Stage, then activate the appropriate Set when you reach it's Stage. It's just that it wouldn't happen automatically as you move to the next Stage. So let's say that you move to Stage 2, when you move to the Stage, you'd have to click on the Project and do Create>Activity Set for... and choose the Activity Set that corresponds to Stage 2.

Hope this helps,
Cynthia

This is a very good idea that effects a decent workaround. I was in communication with Marketcircle, and apparently many people have requested this, so they're considering it in a future release.

I guess what I'm really after is the ability to assign individual tasks to a particular stages in the pipeling (and not only activity sets). That way, if one moved on to the next stage but still had an incomplete task from the prior stage, it could remain in the list.

In the last analysis, it works pretty well.
Thanks for your suggestion!
Andrew

I'm so glad this came up. I'm having trouble understanding how to use activity sets properly. We are in the lending industry and most of our projects follow the same pipelines. What I've tried to do was link the activity sets to each stage of the pipeline but I can't figure this out. Can somebody please steer me in the right direction. I've probably put 30 hours into this already and I can't find the answer.

Hi David,
Welcome! You said that you made different Activity Sets for your different Pipeline Stages... can you tell us which part is giving you trouble?

Take care,
Cynthia

Unfortunately activity sets cannotbe linked to specific pipeline stages. We'll note this additional request in our system; we've gotten a lot of feedback on this issue.

Thx!

Thank you for your quick reply. My current project has a pipeline with 15 stages. I created different activity sets (with 1-4 activities) to correspond with each. When I'm in the projects, activities window all that show up are the stages of the pipeline. Where can I find the activity sets so I can perform them before changing to the next stage?

David,
Ah, looks like you defined the Activity Set but didn't apply it to the Project. Click on the Project from the list of Projects and choose: Create>New Activity Set for [projectname]**. Choose the appropriate Activity Set from the list provided, adjust the End Date field if necessary, click Create. Now you can see these items in either the Activity section (make sure your Show pulldown is set to Everything), or you can see them in the Progress section.

**If you have your Contextual Menu Project preference set up to include Activity Sets, you can also right-click on the Project and choose New Activity Set for [projectname].

Hope this helps,
Cynthia

Personally, I don't see much use for for a pipeline if you can't link tasks to each stage and view them as the tasks for that stage of the pipeline. Otherwise, the pipeline seems just like a pretty graphic without specifics.
Very open to being enlightened!

Right now I think workflow is pretty much crippled one way or the other in Daylite. Activity sets should be able to be linked to stages of a pipeline, optionally automatically created, and have to be completed before the stage can be changed.

I am currently evaluating Daylite and I find myself struggling with trying to use either:

1) groups and sub groups for modeling state change (1 subgroup per stage) manually moving links around in the sub groups

2) using project instances with pipelines (and smartlists for each stage of the pipeline)

3) or just use activity sets with task smart lists per stage.

They all have issues. I recently created a best practice discussion that parallels this discussion nicely.

I am desperately looking for an answer.

So found out an interesting thing... in the Progress pane of the Project view under the Task Column you can drag and drop tasks and make them grouped ... so you can have it look like this:

- 1 • Cold Call
--- Prep call
--- Make call
--- Log call
- 2 • Other stuff
--- Step 1
--- Step 2

Cool right. A way to group tasks by pipeline by stage. So I quickly went over to the activities set pane under prefs to see if I could create a hierarchical set of tasks!

Unfortunately once again defeated by the system. Activity sets are flat lists.

UGH! So close.

Agreed ... not being able to work with activity sets as entities assigned to each pipeline stage sort of sucks.

I tried to setup something similar to what Andrew was doing with the subtasks so I could have a hierarchical view based on activity sets for each stage of the pipeline. Then I tried to do the same thing with the appointments pane and it didn't work out.

I'm thinking that maybe I should just model activity sets using (sub-)tasks in the Tasks and Appointment views and then drag/drop the subtasks and appointments to the pipeline view. This just seems way too convoluted and labor intensive; it's almost counterproductive to use pipelines to manage the projects for my floor company. I'm sure that like most other small business owners the big question is what happens when I actually have to teach someone else how to do this?