We are excited to introduce the Task Timeline in the Project Details. With the new Task Timeline, you will be able to visualize tasks from external tools directly in Meisterplan to bridge the planning gap between your teams' Agile backlog and your Portfolio Roadmap. With this view, you can see what is planned in your external tools as well as inter-team dependencies so that you can adjust big-picture plans when day-to-day tasks move off track.
- How the Task Timeline Can Help You
- How the Task Timeline Works
- Future Development of the Task Timeline
- Questions and Feedback
How the Task Timeline Can Help You
- View a project's Jira tasks in chronological sequence, grouped by resources, teams, and roles across the project's timeline.
- Switch between viewing your tasks organized by sprints or by task date.
- Display further details such as dependencies and task status, and apply filters to see only what is relevant.
- See at-risk dependencies between tasks at a glance.
How the Task Timeline Works
The Task Timeline is a read-only view that displays the tasks from connected tools per resource, team, and role, grouped by sprints.
Prerequisites
- Beta access must be enabled both for your system in general (by an admin) and in your user profile.
- The project must be connected to an Epic or any other issue (by JQL) in Jira using our Jira Connector. Other tools connected via the Task Connector will work in a later stage of the beta.
- The project's task must be assigned to sprints in Jira, and the sprints need to have a start and a finish date. Tasks not assigned to sprints or assigned to sprints without dates will be listed as backlog tasks.
- You need to have the Link Projects and View Task Details via the Task Connector right.
Where to Find
Select a project that is connected to a tool such as Jira, open its Project Details and select the tab Task Timeline.
Which Information Is Displayed
Above the grid, you can see the project bar with the milestones from Meisterplan. The task details displayed below are imported from the connected tool.
Toolbar
In the toolbar, you can apply filters to see only tasks with at-risk dependencies, or open or closed tasks. You can also hide or show unscheduled tasks and dependencies between tasks.
Unscheduled Tasks
When you click Show Unscheduled Tasks in the toolbar, an additional column will show all tasks per resource, team, or role that are not assigned to a sprint in Jira, independent of their status (Open/In Progress/Closed).
List of Resources, Teams, and Roles
Each resource, team, and role that is assigned to a task in Jira will be displayed in the Task Timeline, provided they can be matched to a resource, team, or role in the Resource pool. Below each resource's, team's, or role's name, you can see how many of their tasks are not scheduled (i.e., not assigned to a sprint, or to a sprint without start and end date).
By clicking the arrow after the name, you can collapse a resource's row to display only minimal information.
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.
Displayed Tasks
In the timeline, all tasks are grouped in sprints for each resource, team, and role. A red button with an arrow in it indicates how many at-risk dependencies there are in this sprint's tasks.
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 Jira is displayed and summed at the top of the sprint grouping. If at least one task in Jira is planned in Story Points, all effort in the Task Timeline will be displayed in Story Points. If all Jira tasks are planned in hours, the Task Timeline will display either days or hours, depending on the Allocation Unit setting in the Portfolio Designer.
Dependencies
When you click on a sprint grouping, all groupings of this sprint in all resources, teams, and roles will show how many tasks block others, and how many are blocked by other tasks. Additionally, arrows will display dependencies between tasks:
You can also click on a task to focus only on its dependencies. When you hover over a task and click the square icon, you can open the task in the external tool.
Future Development of the Task Timeline
We are continuously improving the Task Timeline. Planned updates include:
- Switch between viewing tasks in sprints and by task dates. This update will enable you to view tasks from other tools such as Microsoft Project Planner Premium (formerly Project for the Web) or Asana.
Questions and Feedback
For questions on this beta feature, please contact us at support@meisterplan.com. If you have feedback on the Task Timeline, please leave a comment in our Product Roadmap.