Tracking Due Dates and Filtering Out Expired Entities

Sometimes you may receive a warning that your work is overdue and should have been finished by the current day or several days ago. Targetprocess can be configured to point out expired items.

The recommended solution can be implemented with the following steps:

1. Set planned end dates for your work items
2. Add planned end date unit onto cards or planned end date column into lists
3. Set up indicators for expired items. Two different approaches are supported here:
   • Set color indication for items that exceeded planned dates limit
   • Filter out only items that match some criteria. For example, let the view show you expired items only.
4. Build a report showing planned end dates and actual end dates

Set Planned End Dates

Every work item and most other entity types in Targetprocess can have a planned start and end date.

It is possible to update a planned end date for an individual entity in its detailed view:

See and Set Planned Dates with a Roadmap View

It is possible to manage planned dates with Roadmap Views as well. Roadmap mode is recommended to see actual vs planned progress. If you take a look at the Roadmap view, you'll see planned dates being shown with a dotted line, and the space between actual dates will have either white (open work) or grey (completed work) background.

In Roadmap views, you can adjust planned end dates with drag-n-drop mouse action.

• Drag the left card border to update Planned Start Date
• Drag the right card border to update Planned End Date
• Drag the whole card to update both the dates (duration will not change)

Drag-n-drop from Backlog to Roadmap

You can move cards from Backlog to the Roadmap by drag-n-drop. When a card is moved to a Roadmap this way, the initial Planned Start and End dates are set automatically. The entity takes about 30% of the Roadmap`s length.

In order to quickly reset planned dates for an entity, either drag it back into 'Backlog' column or make a right-click with your mouse and select 'Unplan' context action.

Add Planned End Date Unit onto Cards or Planned End Date Column into Lists

Customize Cards in order to add a Planned End Date unit or column to your views. You can also sort your entities by their Planned End Date.

It is also possible to add a unit showing the Planned End Date of the parent entity using the Parent Entity Planned End Date unit Mashup (add-on), for example:

• Feature Planned End Date unit for a User Story card
• User Story Planned End Date unit for a Task card
• Release Planned End Date for a Feature or User Story card

Install the Parent Entity Planned End Date unit Mashup to make these units available.

Visual Encoding

It is possible to add a visual indication that planned entities are not being completed on time. Use Visual Encoding filters to color cards based on the difference between the Planned End Date and Today as shown below.

Advanced Filters for Planned End Dates

We recommend assigning different colors to a card depending on the nearness of its “planned date”. Here are some examples of smart Advanced Filters for Views and Visual Encoding setup. Assignable entities are work items such as User Stories, Bugs, Tasks, Features, Epics, Requests, Test Plan Runs, Test Plans. Filters below work for any of these types of entities selected as cards:

If you do not want to see Done cards at all - you can get rid of them completely using filters.

More examples

The filters for due date can be effectively combined with the following filters based on current state or progress of your entities. To combine filters, use the AND, or OR operators with brackets. Find more useful examples of Advanced Filters in the dedicated article that describes Filters by dates.

Build a Report Showing Planned End Dates and Actual End Dates

There are two approaches to compare Planned End Dates with actual information. It is possible to create a report with Planned End Dates and Actual End dates for your entities using the following features:

• Export Filtered View
• Custom Report with selected columns and filters. You can display and compare fields including Planned End Date vs End Date (actual), Planned Start Date vs Start Date (actual) and much more.

Filter out stuck entities

Do you want to filter your cards by the date of their last state change? Starting from version 3.9.1 you can use the LastStateChangeDate field for filtering and visual encoding.

For example: Let's say you want to see bugs or user stories which have been stuck in the 'In Dev' state for more than 2 weeks. Just use

?LastStateChangeDate < Today - 14(days) and EntityState.Name == 'In Dev'

Set Up an Alert / Alarm / Reminder / Custom rule

Alerts, alarms, and reminders for due dates do not exist in Targetprocess as of now. Please upvote a topic in our public backlog if you would like to see this capability added in the future.

There is a custom rule for the User Story entity you can activate - "Move a User Story to “Planned” state when its Planned Start Date is set".
Currently, this is the only entity type with this rule available.

Mass update Planned Dates

It is possible to update the planned start date and planned end date for multiple cards altogether. For this purpose, use the board view. Select 'PlannedStartDate' or 'PlannedEndDate' as column axis. Mark columns for 'source' and 'target' dates with checkboxes in headers. Press the' Focus' button. Then select multiple cards in a source column, drag'n'drop them to the target column.

To see a long range of available future dates apply the following filter to the column axis:

?it is None or it >= Today

To select columns in the future, use 'left' and 'right' buttons to switch across pages.

See Also

• Tracking Deadlines and Service-Level Agreements for Work Items