Categorising tasks

In project management it is often useful to categorise tasks for reporting and referencing purposes. A common method of categorising tasks is to assign colour and pattern codes to them. For example, you could set up a colour and pattern code for each department in your organisation, then assign the appropriate code to each task in the project. This helps you to interpret your plan, as you can see at a glance which tasks are the responsibility of which department.

In Asta Powerproject, you can create an unlimited number of codes and assign them to bars, tasks and allocations. If you allocate codes to bars as well as tasks, you can choose to make tasks display the codes that have been assigned to the corresponding bar instead of their own codes.

When you print a project plan, the printout includes a key that helps you interpret the codes that you have used.

In addition to helping you interpret a project, you can also use codes as a filter mechanism. For example, if you have a code that represents contractors, you could filter for tasks that have been assigned that code to display only tasks that are carried out by contractors.

You can also sort and group bars and tasks by parameters including their start date, their amount of float, their amount of work, their cost and their percentage complete. For example, you could list tasks in order of their cost, starting from the task with the highest cost and finishing with the lowest.


Structuring projects	Working with resources