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Planning

The Planning screen is the project's Gantt view: this is where you build the structure of tasks and milestones, set their dates and dependencies, and assign resources. You reach it from the Planning menu in the project sidebar.

Depending on project type
  • Gantt (planned) — the screen offers a full planning experience: WBS, dependencies, constraints, auto schedule, baselines.
  • Kanban / Scrum — the screen is still available. For these projects, day-to-day work is rather driven from Card & Story.

Anatomy of the screen

The screen is made of three areas:

  • The toolbar at the top — add, edit, move, zoom, filter and export
  • The task grid on the left — the task tree and its columns
  • The Gantt chart on the right — time bars, dependencies, baselines and resources

A side edit panel opens when clicking a task to edit its attributes without leaving the screen.

Planning overview: task grid, Gantt chart and edit panel

The toolbar

Planning toolbar with the "+ Task" button and the editing actions

Create and edit

  • + Task — main button to add a task or a milestone (context menu on click)
  • ✏️ Edit the selected task — opens the full editor
  • 🗑️ Delete the selected task (confirmation required beyond a single task)
  • ⬆️ / ⬇️ Move the task up or down in the list
  • ⬅️ / ➡️ Indent / outdent the task (create or break a subtask)

Organize the planning

  • ⏭️ Shift the project — shifts every task by setting a new project start date
  • Run auto schedule — applies the auto schedule to the relevant tasks (shown when at least one manual task needs to be recomputed)
  • ☁️⬇️ Import tasks from a template — inserts the content of a template project into the current project
  • 🔁 Refresh the planning data
  • 📋 Copy tasks — opens a dialog to copy one or several tasks (with their allocations, comments and linked documents) into the current project or to another project → see Copy tasks
  • 🔽 Bulk import of tasks — tabular entry to create many tasks at once
  • ⬆️ Import an MS Project file (.mpp, .xml, .mpx, .mpd)
  • 🔍 Search / filter a task — drop-down listing every task in the project
  • ↶ / ↻ Undo / Redo — revert the last changes (tasks and assignments), then replay them → see Undo and redo

Alert indicators

On the right side of the toolbar, FoxPlan shows alert badges about task health:

  • ⚠️ Tasks to close — tasks whose end date has passed and that are not done
  • ⚠️ Late tasks — ongoing tasks whose expected start or progress is not met
  • 🔖 Tasks with a remaining workload (RAF) to refresh

Alert badges: tasks to close, late tasks and remaining workload to refresh

Clicking a badge opens the detail of the matching tasks.

Detail of tasks in alert (deadline and delay)

Zoom and visualization

  • Zoom — switches the time scale: Year / Quarter / Month / Week / Day
  • 🪪 Resources panel — opens a side panel to drag and drop resources onto tasks
  • 🗺️ Planning view — toggles between Gantt and resources view
  • 👥 Performance mode — hides resources to speed up the display of very large plannings
  • 👁️ Show / hide the chart — only displays the task grid
  • 📅 Display period — limits the Gantt view to a date range
  • Fullscreen
  • ⚙️ View settings — columns, baselines, display options (see below)

Zoom selector and visualization icons (critical path, resources, fullscreen, settings)

The "More" menu

The More button gathers the secondary actions:

The "More" menu: baselines, actual, week number, expand/collapse and exports

  • Expand all / collapse all — unfolds or folds the task tree
  • Export PNG, PDF, Excel, CSV
  • Office Timeline export
  • MS Project export (dynamic or static)

Favorites

The Favorite selector on the far right lets you save a combination of filters, columns and zoom to replay it in one click.

Create tasks and milestones

When clicking + Task, a menu offers:

  • Add a task — planned item with start, end, duration and resources
  • Add a milestone — checkpoint without duration

When creating / editing a task, you fill in among others:

  • Name (required)
  • Start date, end date, duration
  • Progress (% or actual / remaining)
  • Assigned resources and allocations (% or man-days)
  • Predecessors (dependencies) and link type (FS, SS, FF, SF) with lag
  • Scheduling constraint (see Project management)
  • Deadline, priority, status, description

Task edit panel: dates, progress, owner and scheduling constraint

Dependencies

Dependencies are created visually in the Gantt (drag between two bars) or via the edit panel. FoxPlan supports the four classic links:

LinkMeaning
Finish → Start (FS)The next task starts when the previous one is finished (default)
Start → Start (SS)Both tasks start at the same time
Finish → Finish (FF)Both tasks end at the same time
Start → Finish (SF)The end of the next is tied to the start of the previous

A lag (positive or negative, in days) can be applied to each link.

Assign resources

Three ways to assign a resource to a task:

  1. From the task edit panel, add an allocation and enter a percentage or a number of man-days
  2. Drag and drop from the Resources panel (🪪 icon in the toolbar) onto a Gantt bar — a small form then asks for % / man-days and the budget to charge against if several are available
  3. Bulk assign on several selected tasks via the context menu

The resources panel shows for each member their workload percentage over the visible period, with a color code (under-load / load / over-load).

Auto schedule

Auto schedule automatically recomputes the task dates while respecting their dependencies and constraints. It is enabled task by task, in the Other section of the edit panel.

When a change triggers a pending recompute, a ✅ Validate and ❌ Cancel button appear on the right side of the toolbar: you preview the effect before saving.

The "Auto Schedule" checkbox in the Other section of the task edit panel

The default settings (auto-schedule on or off for new tasks) are configured under Definition & Members at the project level.

Project definition Advanced tab: default "Auto schedule" option

View settings

The ⚙️ icon opens a dialog with three tabs:

Columns

Selects the visible columns in the left grid (Name, Start, End, Duration, Progress, Resources, Budget, custom fields, etc.). Order and width are memorized and can be saved in a favorite.

Baselines

A baseline is a snapshot of the planning at a given point in time, useful to compare the initial planning with the actual.

  • Show / hide the active baseline in the Gantt
  • + Add a baseline — label + date
  • Choose the baseline visible at portfolio level (radio)
  • 🗑️ Delete a baseline

Baselines dialog: adding a baseline with a label and a date

Baselines displayed under the Gantt bars to compare with the actual

Visualize

Toggle the display of:

  • Actual — overlay of real progress on the bars
  • Critical path — highlights the sequence driving the project end date
  • Week number in the time scale
  • Avatar of resources on the bars
  • Alerts (delays, missed deadlines)
  • Search by task name in the toolbar drop-down
  • Advanced filters via favorite: by owner, by status, by period, by custom field
  • Display period (📅 icon) — restricts the visible time window
  • Indicators ⚠️ — a click isolates tasks in alert

Jira synchronization

For a project linked to Jira, a Start sync button shows in the toolbar. It triggers a two-way import / export of tickets and their status.

Permissions

Editing the planning follows the member's role in the project:

RolePlanning edition
Project Admin✅ Full edit
Project Leader✅ Full edit
Reader👁️ Read-only
Resource👁️ Read-only (can update progress on their own tasks if the workspace allows it)

Full details in Project members.

See also

Good habit

Before a major milestone, take a baseline: you will then be able to objectively measure the slippage and explain it at the steering committee.