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 and Contacts 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, column headings described as follows:
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Activity Type can be either Task or Event.
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Subject should identify the Task or Event you are creating; in the same manner it serves when creating a calendar activity manually.
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Task Dependency allows the current Activity to be scheduled dependent on the selection in the droplist. See this article for more details on dependency.
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Days Before or After will determine the Activity due date and represents the number of days before or after the Activity Plan Start Date. A positive integer represents Days After, a negative integer represents Days Before.
Example: The plan's Start Date is 11/10/2020, an entry of 5 in this column will schedule the Activity for 11/15/2015. An entry of -5 will schedule the Activity for 11/5/2020, five days before.
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Start Time and Duration are only needed for Events. The duration value should be in minutes.
- Assigned To represents the individual or user to which the Activity will be scheduled. This user can be determined in one of two ways.
- Specify a User from your organization's User list. If the specified user entry is left blank (in the template) this entry will default to the current (or running) user when a new Activity Plan is created.
- Choose a User Field from the record the Activity Plan 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.
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Category is an optional selection for Task activities. This field updates the Task Type field.
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Priority is required for Tasks. The default selection is Normal. Other optional values are Low, Medium and High.
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Send Email when checked will send (via the platform settings) a new task assignment email to the Assigned User when the new Task is created.
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Reminder when checked will enable a reminder 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 leftmost column.
- Click the Save button to save your Activity Plan.
When planning dependencies, consider 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.
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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).
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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 has the potential to fall on a non-business day. In those cases, the following options instruct the Action Plan how to adjust the activity date.- Allow Non-Business Day
- Select Following Business Day
- Select Preceding Business Day
Business Days can be determined by:
- Your Organization's Business Hours
When a new Activity Plan is created, the default business hours configuration is determined using these global options. Users have the option to override the default at the Action Plan level.
- Standard weekdays (Monday through Friday)