Activity Plans represent a series of Activities grouped by virtue of a common time-line objective. Activity Plans are most commonly used in conjunction with Matter-centric workflow however Accounts, Contacts or any other object with activities enabled may also take advantage of Activity Plans. For the purposes of this discussion we will be will be in conjunction with Matters.
If you haven't already familiarized yourself with Activity Plan Templates, please be sure to start here first.
Creating a New Activity Plan
There are many ways to assign Activity Plans to matters. A common method is to use the Add Activity Plan button found at the top of the Matter Detail page. In addition to the manual method AdvoLogix has provided API calls to assign an Activity Plan from within custom automation processes.
For more information on automation techniques see theses articles: Creating an Activity Plan Via Code and Creating an Activity Plan Via Process Builder.
General Information
As depicted above, the Information section of the Activity Plan just has two entries and both are important:
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Activity Plan Name will be used to identify this Activity Plan in various Activity Plan views.
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Plan Start Date is the base date for the Activity Plan. This entry is extremely important for establishing the plan's timeline. All Activities will be scheduled to fall either before or after this date. A change to the Start Date of an existing Activity Plan will reschedule the Activities assigned in the Activity Plan. When creating a new Activity Plan, the Plan Start Date is defaulted in one of two ways:
1) If a Date Field was specified in the template, the plan Start Date will be defaulted to the value currently in the date field specified in the Activity Plan Template.
2) Otherwise the Plan Start Date will default to the current date.
These rules apply to the ability to change the Activity Plan's Status Date when activities within the Activity Plan have already been completed.
Activities List
From left to right, the column headings are described as follows:
The activity type can be either a task or an event.
The subject should identify the task or event you are creating in the same manner it serves when creating a calendar activity manually.
Dependency allows the current activity to be scheduled depending on the selection in the drop-down menu. This article provides more details on dependency.
Days Before or After will determine the activity due date and represent the number of days before or after the Activity Plan Start Date. A positive integer represents Days After, and a negative integer represents Days Before.
Example: The AP's Start Date is 11/10/2020; an entry of 5 in this column will schedule the activity for 11/15/2030. An entry of -5 will schedule the activity for 11/5/2030, five days before.Set the Start Time for the event.
The duration is the length of the event in minutes.
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Assigned To represents the individual or user to which the activity will be scheduled. This assignee can be determined in one of two ways:
Specify a User or a Queue from your organization's user/queue list. If the specified user entry is left blank (in the template), it will default to the current (or running) user when a new AP is created.
Choose a User Field from the record where the AP is being created. Should the field be blank when the plan activities are created, the new activities will be assigned to the current (or running) user.
Type is an optional selection for task activities. This field updates the Task Type field.
Priority is required for tasks. The default selection is normal. Other optional values are Low, Medium, and High.
Show Time As allows you to set your availability to Busy, Out of Office, or Free.
When checked, Send Email will send (via the platform settings) a new task assignment email to the assigned user when the new task is created.
When checked, the Reminder will enable a reminder notification when the new task is created.
Comments may be optionally included.
Navigating the Activity List
- Use the Add New Activity Link to continue adding Tasks and Events to your Activity Plan.
- To remove an Activity, use the x icon located in the left-most column.
- Click the Save button to save your AP.
When planning dependencies, consider that changes to the parent date will also change dependent activity dates, regardless of their status (i.e., Completed).
Counting by Business Days or Calendar Days
Activity dates may be determined by Calendar Days or Business Days.
Business Days: Adding or subtracting by Business Days is the process of deriving a result date by adding (or subtracting) a given number of business days to/from the start date (or dependency date).
Business days can be determined by:
Your Organization's Business Hours
When a new activity plan is created, business days are determined using these global options.Standard Weekdays (Monday through Friday)
Calendar Days: Adding or subtracting by Calendar Days is the process of deriving a result date by adding (or subtracting) a given number of days to/from the start date (or dependency date). All days on the calendar are counted without regard to business hours.
When counting by Calendar Days, the resulting date can potentially fall on a non-business day. In those cases, the following options instruct the activity plan on how to adjust the activity date.
Allow Non-Business Day
Select Following Business Day
Select Preceding Business Day
