In the Task Timeline tab, you can see tasks from external tools directly in Meisterplan to understand at a glance what is planned in your external tools as well as inter-team dependencies.
The Task Timeline is a read-only view that displays tasks from connected tools per resource, team, and role, grouped by sprints or task date. Find out more on how to connect Meisterplan with external tools in the articles Jira Connector - Overview and Task Connector - Overview.
Required User Rights
To access the tab and its content, your user group needs to have the Link Projects and View Task Details via the Task Connector right.
Which Information Is Displayed
If you have connected a Meisterplan project with a project in an external task or project management tool such as Jira, the Task Timeline will display the tasks from the connected project. The view is read-only, i.e., you cannot edit any data in the tab. You can configure what is displayed in the toolbar, for example, via filters or the zoom level (day, week, month).
The project bar above the grid is based on data from Meisterplan: start date, finish date, and milestones.
Unit for Effort Displayed
The effort displayed in the Task Timeline is imported from the connected tool and is displayed either in days or hours, depending on the Allocation Unit setting in the Portfolio Designer.
Exception: If at least one task in the connected tool (esp. Jira) is planned in Story Points, all effort in the Task Timeline will be displayed in Story Points.
When you hover over a task and click the square icon, you can open the task in the external tool.
List of Resources, Teams, and Roles
Each resource, team, and role that is assigned to a task in the connected tool will be displayed in the Task Timeline if matching was configured in the Jira Link or via the Task API and if they can be matched to a resource, team, or role in the Resource Pool.
By clicking the arrow after the name, you can collapse a resource's row to display only minimal information.
Below each resource's, team's, or role's name, you can see how many of their tasks do not have dates configured. To display unschedules tasks, click Show Unscheduled Tasks in the toolbar.
If a task has no assignee in Jira, or the assignee could no be matched to a resource, team, or role in Meisterplan, the tasks are displayed under Unassigned.
By Sprint Date/By Task Date
On the left side of the toolbar, you can select whether to display the tasks in the timeline by sprint or by task date. If the connected tool does support sprints, no tasks will be displayed under By Sprint Date.
The settings in the toolbar and the selection of tasks remain when you switch between the display options.
By Sprint Date
Tasks are grouped by sprints for each resource, team, and role. At the top of a sprint grouping, you can see the sprint's start and end date, and the number of tasks assigned to the respective resource, team, or role in this sprint. For each task, the planned effort from the connected tool is displayed and summed at the top of the sprint grouping.
A red button with an arrow in it indicates how many at-risk dependencies there are in this sprint's tasks, i.e., how many tasks block others, and how many are blocked by other tasks.
When you click on a sprint or task in it, all dependencies to and from the task are displayed with arrows.
By Task Date
Tasks are displayed according to their start and end date for each resource, team, and role. For each task, the planned effort from the connected tool is displayed and summed at the top of the sprint grouping. A red button with an arrow in it indicates how many at-risk dependencies there are in this sprint's tasks, i.e., how many tasks block others, and how many are blocked by other tasks.
If several tasks have the same start and end date, they are summarized when resource rows are collapsed.
When you click on a task, all dependencies to and from the task are displayed with arrows.
Filters
In the toolbar, you can apply filters to see only tasks with at-risk dependencies, or open or closed tasks.
Showing Unscheduled Tasks
When you click Show Unscheduled Tasks in the toolbar, an additional column will show all tasks per resource, team, or role that do not have dates and/or a sprint in the connected tool, independent of their status (Open/In Progress/Closed).
Showing Dependencies
In the toolbar, click Show Dependencies to display all dependencies between tasks. The dependencies are visualized with arrows:
Red arrows indicate at-risk dependencies, i.e., the task that should be finished first is placed after the second task.
To see only dependencies of one task or sprint, click on the task or sprint in the timeline.