Core concepts

Activities and tasks

What an activity is (its ID, team, owner, duration, predecessors and whether it is required), how sub-activities work, the statuses an activity shows, the five task types, and who can do what.

Everyone

A project's plan is a list of activities: pieces of work such as "Market research" or "Stability study", each owned by one person from one team and lasting a number of days. Activities wait on each other through predecessors, which is how Srishti works out every date.

Each activity holds one or more tasks that tell its owner exactly what to do: upload a document, tick a checklist, fill in fields, or review someone else's document. When every mandatory task is done, the activity completes and the work after it can start.

What an activity is

ID: A number such as 7, or 3.2 for a sub-activity. Predecessors refer to activities by ID.
Name: What the work is.
Team: The team that does the work. Only an active member of this team can own the activity.
Owner: One person from the activity's team, shown under Assigned to. The owner finds the activity in My Activities.
Duration: Whole calendar days, at least one. See Schedule, float and the critical path.
Predecessors: The activities that must finish before this one can start.
Required or optional: A required (mandatory) activity counts towards % complete and must be done for the project to be complete. An optional one may or may not happen.
Tasks: What the owner has to do. Every activity needs at least one.

Activities come from the project's activity template and are adjusted while the project is created. Once the project runs, its PM can still add, change and remove them; see Run a live project.

IDs and sub-activities

Top-level activities are numbered 1, 2, 3 and so on. An activity can be split into sub-activities, numbered after their parent: 3.1, 3.2, 3.3. There is only one level: a sub-activity cannot have sub-activities of its own.

A parent is the sum of its parts. It has no team, owner or tasks of its own. Its duration is the span of its sub-activities, from the first start to the last finish.
A parent completes by itself when its required sub-activities are done (or all of them, if none is required).
Waiting is inherited. A sub-activity with no predecessors of its own waits for whatever its parent waits for. An activity that names a parent as its predecessor waits for all of its sub-activities.
New activities get the next number. An activity added to a running project becomes a top-level activity numbered one after the highest existing number. A running project holds at most 100 activities, sub-activities included.

Predecessors and link types

Srishti has one link type: finish to start (FS). The activity starts after its predecessor finishes. A link can add a lag, a number of whole days to wait after the predecessor finishes. Links are written as the ID, the type and any lag: 3 FS+2 means "start two days after activity 3 finishes". An activity with several predecessors waits for the last of them.

Activity 1 starts the project, so it has no predecessor; neither does its first sub-activity.
An optional activity cannot be a predecessor, because it may never happen.
A parent and its own sub-activity never depend on each other.
No loops. Srishti refuses a change that makes activities wait on each other in a circle, and names them, for example "Circular dependency: 2 → 3 → 2."
An activity cannot be its own predecessor, and a lag cannot be negative.

An activity opens for work only when all its predecessors are complete. Until then its owner sees it under UPCOMING and cannot complete its tasks: Srishti answers "This activity is not open for work yet."

Activity statuses

Like a project's status, an activity's status is worked out by Srishti, never set by hand. The rules are checked in this order and the first that fits wins:

Status	When
Ahead	It is complete and finished before its baseline end date.
Complete	It is complete (on or after its baseline end date, or it has no baseline).
Delayed	Today is past its planned end and it is not complete.
Critical	It is on the critical path and less than 20% of its duration is left before its planned end.
Near critical	It is not on the critical path, but its float is 5% or less of the project's length.
In progress	Work has visibly started: a task is done, or it is being worked on, reviewed or approved.
Not started	None of the above.

The Activities tab. Critical-path activities have a red edge and 0 CP in Float.

Every activity in the plan, with its duration, predecessors, dates, status, float and owner.
Click a row to open its side panel: Details, Tasks and Action log.
Worked out from dates, float and tasks.
On the critical path. Other rows show their float in days.
The arrow shows or hides an activity's sub-activities. They start hidden.

Start or end dates later than the baseline are shown in an alert colour. The side panel shows each date beside its baseline date, with shifted when they differ, or "No baseline (added after creation)" for an activity added later.

Tasks

Tasks are set up in the activity template and while the project is created, or on the + Add activity row for a new activity. There are five types:

Type	Shown on the project as	What the owner does
Document Upload	Upload	Uploads one file for each document the task names. Each document is filed in the project's document storage.
Checkbox	Checklist	Ticks the items. Every mandatory item must be ticked.
Field Input	Field input	Fills in the fields. Every mandatory field needs a value.
Check / Reject	Check	Reviews a document uploaded earlier in the plan: checks it, or rejects it with a comment.
Approve / Reject	Approve	Approves or rejects a document, after its check if it has one.

Mandatory tasks decide completion. When the last mandatory task is done, the activity completes on its own. Optional tasks never hold it up.
A completed task is final. It cannot be changed afterwards. Save progress keeps a half-done checklist or form without completing it.
A rejection sends work back. Rejecting a document reopens the activity that uploads it (or one before it), so a corrected file can be uploaded and reviewed again. Everyone on the reopened activities and the PM are notified.
Tasks are fixed once an activity exists. Nobody can add or remove tasks on an existing activity of a running project, because people may already be working on them.

How to finish each type, step by step, is on Complete your tasks.

Who can do what

To do this	You need to be
See all of a project's activities	Anyone with Projects: View or Action
See your own activities and their tasks	The activity's owner, in My Activities
Complete an activity's tasks	The activity's owner, or the project's PM
Add an activity, change its duration, owner or predecessors, Mark as done or Delete	The project's PM, while the project is running
Change durations, predecessors or owners through a new baseline	The project's PM, with a baseline approver's approval
Approve or reject an activity that needs a sign-off	The approver named on it, with the Approver flag

Mark as done lets the PM complete an activity with work still open. Srishti lists what is still open and asks for a reason: Task no longer required, Merged with another activity, Scope removed by management, Completed offline — documentation follows, or Waived by project sponsor. Marking a parent done completes its open sub-activities with it. A completed activity is locked and cannot be edited.

Activity approvals are explained on Approvals.