Automatic Planning
One of the key features of JXCirrus Diary and JXCirrus Project is
their ability to plan out all of your jobs for the next year or
two. It does this by taking all of your tasks, looking at their
due dates and priorities, and fitting them in as best as it can.
What JXCirrus is trying to do is:
- Make sure everything is finished before its due date.
- Make sure the higher priority work is finished before the
lower priority.
Due date trumps priority - JXCirrus thinks finishing before the
due date is more important, and tries to fit in everything around
that.
The end result is a down-to-the-second plan for the next year,
hopefully with everything fitting in!
How to use it...
But, I hear you say... A down-to-the-second plan is just
ridiculous! Who needs that? Something will happen tomorrow that
will throw the whole thing into confusion.
Well, that is completely true. The down-to-the-second plan is not
the point. The down to the second plan is just the way that
JXCirrus answers 2 key questions.
- Can I fit everything in?
- What should I work on next?
That's it.
If JXCirrus only showed 2 pieces of information, those would be
it! (In fact, the summary view
tries to show you something along those lines).
The way JXCirrus answers these questions is to plan everything in
minute detail:
- Can I fit everything in? If our automatic plan can fit
everything in, then it will happily report that nothing looks
like going overdue, then the answer is "Yes". If some things
look like going overdue, then you need to fix things up.
- What should I work on next? That is easy... If I look at the
detailed plan, what is the next thing coming up? Work on that!
Now for a spot of life coaching from a user manual... Here is how
you could use JXCirrus to get your messy life under control.
- Enter all of your jobs and their due dates.
- Let JXCirrus make up its plan.
- If any jobs have any sort of alert, then you have a problem.
Go to step 5.
- If there are no problems showing up (nothing on the tree is
yellow, orange or red), the relax. Chill out. You are
done. (Well, it isn't a bad idea to keep an eye on
the system to see if anything goes yellow).
- Press the
button to go to the first task.
- Can you tackle that task? If yes, do the task, mark it as
complete, then go back to step 2.
- If no, look at why you can't tackle the task. Maybe set its
start date some time in the future when you can tackle it, or
make it dependant on some other
task that needs to be done first.
- Go back to step 2.
How it Plans
Here, roughly, is how JXCirrus does it...
- Look at your Work Hours to
see how much time you have.
- Subtract any appointments,
since you can't do tasks when you are at the dentist.
- Start fitting in the tasks,
with the higher priority tasks with due dates being placed
first, then the lower priority tasks with due dates, then the
high priority tasks, then the low priority tasks.
When it Plans
You can tell whether JXCirrus is planning or not. Look at the
symbol to the left of the date at the bottom of the main screen.
Means that the system is recalculating your plans (may take up to
several minutes). During this time don't believe any of
its plans.
Means that the data has changed, and the
system will do a full recalculate in future (but not now so as not
to make your computer permanently busy). Don't believe the plans
now. If you want it to do a recalculate now, then press the
button.
Means that the system has finished recalculating.
The system will update the plans whenever you:
- Complete a task.
- Set a manual plan.
- Adjust the start time, due date, duration, dependencies,
repeating task info or time type for any tasks.
It also recalculates about every 5-10 minutes, even if nothing
has changed.
How to see the plans
There are a few way to see what automatic plans JXCirrus has come
up with.
- Look at the day view, and check the plan entries (shown with
the
symbol).
- Look at an individual task using the item view, and it will show you
the time planned for the task.
You can also see the results of planning.
- Tasks that it is having trouble fitting in will be shown in
light yellow.
- Tasks that just cannot fit into the available time will be
show in orange (see alerts).
Limitations
JXCirrus cannot make up perfect plans... It tries its best, but
there are some situations it just can't figure out.
- If you have a lot of tasks that are just not going to fit into
the time available, it tries to shuffle them around to get them
to fit. This can take a lot of computer time, so it
usually stops after 10 seconds or so. This can end
up with some tasks that could possibly be finished on time not
quite fitting.