Redmine Planning plugin

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.

Highlights

Moving issues by dragging
Moving parent tasks with all children by dragging the parent
Resizing issues by dragging edges
Creating 'Blocks' or 'Precedes' relations by clicking on the issues
Remove 'Blocks' or 'Precedes' relations by selecting the 'X' tool and clicking on relations
Resize parent issues to contain child issues
Enforce end-to-end (blocks) relations and end-to-begin (precedes) relations
Interactive scrolling and panning
Configurable colors for leaf/branch/root issues, trackers and relations using Redmine plugin configuration
Fully localized, translations for English and Dutch available

Installation

$ 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.

Translations

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.

Short manual

Starting planning

Hit the 'Plan' button next to the 'Gantt' button in any project that has Issue management enabled.

Navigation

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.

Types of relations

Redmine supports four types of relations:

Blocks This relation type is represented as Blocks or Blocked by in Redmine, depending on from which side you look at the relation. This is an end-to-end relation that states that the Blocked issue cannot finish before the Blocking issue. This will result in the planning chart in an issue where the Blocked issue's due date must be before or equal to the Blocks issue.
Precedes This relation type is represented as Precedes or Follows in Redmine, depending on from which side you look at the relation. A delay in days is attached to this relation type. This is an end-to-start relation that states that the Following issue starts Delay days after the end of the Preceding issue. This maintains an equal distance between the two issues during planning.
Copied-to This type of relation is represented as "Copied from" or "Copied to" in Redmine, depending on from which side you look at the relation. This is basically just an administrative note that an issue has been copied to create a similar issue. The planning plugin doesn't do anything with this type of relation yet. It may be changed to at least receive this issue type from the server and otpionally visualize it. It does not influence the dependency checking.
Duplicates This type of relation is represented as "Duplicates" or "Duplicated by" in Redmine, depending on from which side you look at the relation. This is a reference that a newly reported issue is in fact a duplicate of an existing issue. Since this type of relation is usually used for issues that are created by end-users, it is not an integral part of the planning process. Therefore, it is currently ignored by the planning plugin. However, as with Copied-to and Relates, this may change in the future to optionally visualize these relations, but they will not be used in dependency checking.
Relates This type of relatio is represented as Related to in Redmine. There is no clear source or target issue with these relation. The merele specify that there is some kind of relation between the two issues. These relations are currently ignored by Redmine but this may change to be able to visualize them. They will not be used in dependence checking.

Creating 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.

Deleting relations

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.

Moving issues

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.

Resizing issues

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.

Known issues

The tooltip showing issue information may something get in the way many issues are close together. Planned fix: better placement / close button / to be determined.
Critical path analysis is not completely valid when resizing issues.
When an issue does not have a set due date, it will have an default initial size. However, resizing will not behave as expected. The workaroundis to do the resize in two steps: first just resize it to anything, release it to set the dates and then redo it to set the proper due date.

Planned features

Add new issues to the current project / subprojects
Add parent/child relations
Show progress in Gantt style
Optionally show a list of issues at the left side of the chart, Gantt style, to make it easier to find issues over a larger timespan
Export chart to SVG

Version log

0.7.5.1: Jun 3, 2014. Update on getting all related issues and another fix on configuration
0.7.5: Jun 3, 2014. Fix issue #14. Also improved performance of relation retrieval and will now load all related issues such as parents. Without this, the planning cannot be fully done properly.
0.7.4: May 27, 2014. Add zoom-in and zoom-out buttons
0.7.3: May 27, 2014. Fix placement of tooltip in fullscreen and fix tooltip not showing when no description is set.
0.7.2: May 27, 2014. Added support for progress visualization and manipulation
0.7.1: May 26, 2014. Bug in relation to viewbox calculation fixed and date selection is back.
0.7.0: May 25, 2014. Major refactoring of Javascript code: validation with JSHint and separating JS and Redmine-specific code.
0.6.7: May 23, 2014. Allow planning for all projects by going to /plan
0.6.6: May 21, 2014. Fix mouse cursor position calculation in Chrome (Webkit)
0.6.5: May 21, 2014. Fix translation issues and add done ratio to the issue tooltips.
0.6.4: May 21, 2014. Replace dependency on issue_relations_controller.rb with own relation creation function because it requires API authentication which is awkward.
0.6.3: May 21, 2014. Fix issue with adding new relations, add fullscreen function, improve button layout
0.6.2: May 19, 2014. Add support for copied-to, relates and duplicates relations and improve UI.
0.6.1: May 19, 2014. Add compatibility with Redmine 2.3.x
0.6.0: May 19, 2014. Fully localized plugin with initial translations in English and Dutch.
0.5.2: May 19, 2014. Fix accidental dependency on RbCommonHelper (from redmine_backlogs) in hook (issue #2)
0.5.1: May 19, 2014. Pass along Redmine root-URL to avoid depending on Redmine being installed in the webroot (issue #1)
0.5.0: May 17, 2014. Initial release
Pre-0.5.0: May 9, 2014. Pre-release development

License

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/.

bmalynovytch / redmine_planning Goto Github PK

redmine_planning's Introduction