Contents
The purpose of this document is to describe the features of LibrePlan and provide user information on how to configure and use the application.
LibrePlan is an opensource web application for project planning. Its main goal is to provide a complete solution for company project management. For any specific information you may need about this software, please contact the development team at http://www.libreplan.com/contact/
Company overview
As can be seen in the program's main screen (shot given previously) and the company overview, users can see the list of planned projects to find out about the company's overall situation in relation to orders and the use of resources. The company overview contains 3 views:
Planning view: View that combines two points of view:
- View of orders and the time taken: Each project uses Gantt charts, which indicate the start and end date of the project. This information is combined with the chart showing the agreed deadline and then a comparison is made between a percentage of progress and time that is actually dedicated to each project. This information gives a clear picture of how the company is doing at a given time. This view is the program's opening page.
- Graph showing the company's use of resources: Graph that searches for information on the allocation of resources to projects, which also gives a summary on the entire company's use of resources: Green indicates that the allocation of resources is under 100%, the black line shows the available load of resources and yellow indicates that allocation of resources is above 100%. It is possible for allocation to be less than available resources and to have over allocation for specific resources at the same time.
Resource load view: Screen that shows the list of workers in the company and the load of specific allocation to tasks or generic allocation as the resource fulfils a list of criteria. See the following image. You need to click on Overall load of resources to access this view.
Orders administration view. Screen that shows the list of company orders, where the user can carry out the following operations: filter, edit, erase, visualise planning or create a new order. You need to click on Order list to access this view.
Resource overview
Work Breakdown Structure
The view management commented on previously for the company overview is very similar to the management planned for a single project. A project can be accessed in several ways:
The program has the following views for an order:
LibrePlan is an application that has been developed as a general purpose planning tool. It is based on a series of concepts discovered by analysing problems in industrial project planning that were not fully covered by any existing planning tool. Also the motivations for the development of LibrePlan were based on providing a free software alternative, and completely web, for existing privative plannig tools.
The essential concepts used for the program are as follows:
On top of the functions offered by the program, there are other features that make it stand out from similar programs:
Before describing the various functions associated with the most important modules, we need to give a general explanation on how to browse and the forms.
Essentially, there are 3 kinds of editing forms:
The program will have content editing and administration forms, which will be represented by graphic components based on tabs. This method is used to organise information from a comprehensive form into different sections that can be accessed by clicking on the names of the different tabs, the others keeping their status. In all cases, the save and cancel options affect the group of sub-forms on the different tabs.
The program contains components that provide additional descriptions about the element when hovering over them for one second. The actions the user may carry out in the program are stated on the button tabs and in the help texts about them, the browsing menu options and the options on the context menus that open out when right clicking on the planner area. Furthermore, short cuts are given for the main operations by double clicking the listed elements or by associating key events with cursors and the enter key, which is how to add elements when moving through the forms.