This plugin is aimed to make project planning easier using Redmine. While Redmine possesses many functions to update and relate issues, they are not easily usable when making an extensive planning. Creating relations and moving issues has to be done on the corresponding issue page, which can take a long time when updating many issues.
Additionally, constraints are only somewhat enforced but no critical path analysis is performed and it is unknown what limits are available for start and due dates.
The redmine_planning plugin makes this process easier. A tiny update upgrades the existing Gantt chart to make the issues drag-and-droppable. Each issue can easily be rescheduled this way, but no relation checking is done.
The major part of this plugin focuses on a new addition to the project pages, the 'Plan' page. On the Plan page a HTML5 canvas is used to draw the issues and relations and to make it very easy to resize and move issues. In this process, the limits are also taken into account by a critical path analysis. When moving an issue, dependent issues will be moved along until their respective limits are reached to avoid postponing the entire planning.
$ cd /path/to/redmine/plugins
$ git clone https://github.com/MadEgg/redmine_planning
$ <restart web server>This plugin uses no additional tables so no database migration is needed. You do, however, need to give the plan and reschedule permission to users that you want to be able to use this plugin. This plugin cannot be enabled or disabled for specific projects but instead hooks into the existing issue tracking project module.
All strings have been localized and currently an English and a Dutch translation is available. If you would like your language supported, use the files in config/locales/ as a starting point for translation and submit a pull request when you're done. I'd be happy to merge it in.
Hit the 'Plan' button next to the 'Gantt' button in any project that has Issue management enabled.
You can use the 'Back' and 'Forward' to move in the planning chart. You can also drag the canvas which will move it around. You can also use the scrolwheel to scroll horizontally and vertically. If you hold the Control-button down while scrolling, the chart will zoom in and out to give more overview. Additionally, since browsers sometimes force zooming when holding down Control while scrolling even though the JavaScript requests it not to, Alt+Scroll will also zoom the chart.
The left side of the screen will show a list of issues. Issues are indented to show their hierarchy. Issues are grouped by their parent task and sorted by their starting date. You can double click on an issue in the list of issue on the left side. This will center the issue in the screen. You can either scroll in the planning chart or in the list of issues, both views are synchronized.
The list of issues can be resized by dragging the right edge of the list. Performance of this is currently quite poor in Firefox, Chrome seems to do it properly. Future updates hopefully may improve performance in Firefox.
Redmine supports four types of relations:
Click on any of the 'Add relation' buttons to enable relation-creation mode. In this mode, you can create a new relation by first clicking the from issue, the issue preceding / blocking / duplicating / relating / copying another, and then clicking the to issue, the issue following / being blocked / being duplicated / being related / being copied to by the first issue. Once you click on the first issue, the mouse cursor will reflect the target state: if it's a + sign, this is a valid target for the relation. If it's a forbidden sign, this relation cannot be created due to the schedule.
If you want to cancel the relation-creation, you can go back to 'Move' mode by clicking on the Move button in the toolbar.
Redmine allows just one relation between two issues. If, for example, a 'copied_to' relation exists, you cannot add a 'precedes' relation. If you attempt to create such a relation, you will be notified of the relation that is conflicting and suggested to remove that relation first.
You can delete relations by first clicking the 'Delete' button and then clicking on the relation. When you are in relation-deletion mode all the lines of the relations will be twice as thick to make them easier to hit. Once you hit it, a popup will ask you to confirm the deletion. To cancel 'Deleting'-mode, click the 'X' button again.
You can move issues by clicking on the text or the rectangle and dragging it.
When you start dragging the lower and upper limits of the selected issue will be determined by a critical path analysis. This is visualized by two red lines (if applicable) where the first one indicates the minimum starting date and the second one indicates the maximum due date for the issue. Dragging is not allowed past these dates. If you drag the issue and as a result of this related issues need to move as well they will be moved along automatically. This also includes maintaining the delay in 'Precedes' relations.
When you hit the left or right edge of the rectangles the cursor will indicate the resizing capability. By clicking and dragging you can make the issue shorter or longer. During resizing, the critical path analysis will be updated to reflect the changes resulting from the resize of the issue. This is mostly relevant for Blocks relations because an issue with an incoming Blocks relation will be able to start sooner if the duration of the issue is longer.
Copyright 2014 Egbert van der Wal
This file is part of redmine_planning
redmine_planning is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
redmine_planning is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with redmine_planning. If not see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.