2		Getting Started with Gemini 5	projects templates
2.5.1		The Grid	Excel
2.5.2		The Planner
2.5.3		Activity Page	time
2.5.4		Timeline Page	time
2.5.5		Roadmaps and Changelogs	time
2.5.8		The Calendar	projects add-ons time plugins ms-outlook
2.5.9		Burndown and Burnup Charts	time reporting
3		Creating and Managing Tasks
3.2		Rapid Planning (Creating Multiple Tasks)	projects templates
3.3		The View Item Page	projects sentry
6.1		Introduction to Sentry	testing sentry
6.2		Test Cases	testing sentry
6.3		Test Plans	testing sentry
6.4		Test Runner (Executing Tests)	testing sentry
6.5		Test Run History	testing sentry
10.5.16		Patterns	projects
10.7.2		Recording Time

18 documents found.

Gemini’s visual planner has all of the functionality you could want for any planning exercise, combined with the most intuitive User Interface possible. Drag-drop for instant update of your data, individual lane scrolling, colour coding by a wide variety of fields, cross-project analysis, our superfast filter and much more.

By default the Gemini Planner is called ‘Planner’ on the menu, though because you can rename all of the Gemini menus on each project template you might be using it (as in the screenshot below) to represent a “Wall” or “Scrum Board” etc. Whatever nomenclature you use, you will have the same class-leading functionality.

The Gemini Planner as it appears on the menu when setting up the Project Template (here renamed “Wall")

Functionality in the Planner

Filtering

Immediately below the Menu Bar is the Project Attributes filter. This area contains all of the fields, both standard and custom, that are used by the Template that your project is built from.

Click on any of the attributes and you will get a drop-down list with the ability to select one or more values to filter by. In certain circumstances Gemini will display the meta filter “Any” to allow you to select all values against that particular attribute.

Gemini’s super fast filters run on every click so the cards in your planner instantly reflect what you requested.

Filters are cumulative, which means that filtering on Priority:High and Severity:Major will only return items that have a Priority code of High AND a Severity rating of Major.

Meta filters and filter options, which are used in the Grid view, are less relevant and do not apply in the Planner.

Instant Data Updates

Drag a card from one column to another in Gemini and you will see the values change in real time. If you move a card from a column with Status X to Status Y then the data in the database and on the card is rewritten instantly. Reassign tasks between resources just by dragging and dropping tasks under their names (we always provide unassigned tasks for you under a resource named ”!”).

Inline Editing of values and Instant card creation

Right mouse click on any item in the planner and Gemini will popup an Inline Editing Control to let you:

• View- Open the item in the View Item page
• Comment- Add a comment with the ability to specify comment visibility
• Edit- Change item values immediately
• Delete- Delete the item if you have permissions to do so and this does not break data integrity rules.
• New – Select “New” and  Gemini will create a new task in the exact position in the Planner in which you insert it, using default project values!

Zoom Levels and Color-coding – finding the things you are interested in

The Gemini Visual Planner has 5 levels of zoom, which is particularly useful if you are trying to identify tasks with specific characteristics, such as “High Priority” or “Assigned to XYZ”, since you can color-code a variety of Gemini fields. Zoom out to get a picture of the workload, select the field color you wish Gemini to use, and zoom in to the specific task(s) you need to work with. Fast, efficient, easy!

Fig 1.0 showing a card at 3 different levels of zoom.

Axes – slice and dice your data anyway you want

Gemini lets you pick from a wide variety to place on the X and Y axes of the grid. If you wish, you can simply nominate a field for the X axis and leave the Y axis as “Nothing”, giving you a 2-dimensional board, rather like a whiteboard. Whatever field you pick and regardless of whether you are using one axis or two axes, Gemini dynamically creates rows and columns to represent the number of separate values in your database with no practical limit. If you view your plan by Resources and you have 50 developers then Gemini will instantly render 50 columns for you. If you the wish to plan by Resources and Priority and you have 3 different Priority levels, Gemini will instantly build you a 50 x 3 matrix. #

Gemini will let you toggle axes with a single click so that in the example above, you could flip between a 3 x 50 matrix of Priority Levels by Resource and a a 50 x 3 matrix of Resource by Priority Levels with a single click. Each axis can be separately ordered ascending or descending by clicking on the Up and Down arrows on the axes control (see below).

Figure 2.0 Gemini’s dual axis selector with the toggle axes button in the middle.

Swim Lanes – Moving through cards with ease

Gemini’s Planner gives you the ability to completely control the size and nature of your planning exercise and provides a brilliantly simple way of navigating through the cards. The Limits Selector (see below) lets you set limits on the number of tasks that can appear in any single lane. This does not affect the total number of cards that will be brought back, only the number of cards (irrespective of zoom level) that will be shown in any lane before the lane starts to scroll. Set a limit of 10 and no more than 10 cards can be shown in any lane. If a lane has 25 cards say, then Gemini will automatically generate paging icons (to page up and down) and keep a track of where you are on the page with a page count indicator e.g. 11/20 of 25. Gemini lets you page through individual swim lanes without affecting any other lane(s) so that you can go through tasks of a specific status without having to scroll the whole planner view up and down.

To set the overall scope of your planning exercise, Gemini has Card Limits. You may limit the total number of cards that will be brought into the plan by the Item Count (the absolute number of cards), Points (Gemini lets you allocate points to tasks) and Effort (Gemini lets you associate man hours with tasks). Scrolling through the next 1,000 man hours of work for your team, paging through what each team member has assigned to them 10 at a time, allocating and reallocating tasks as you go, is now a trivial exercise.

Summary Counts and Tooltip Hover Notification

If you let your mouse hover over a column heading, Gemini will show you a summary of data concerning the tasks in that lane. Similarly, if you pick up a card from a lane, you will always get a tooltip hovering over every lane that you move to, advising you of what that lane represents. This means that even if you have scrolled your browser so that you cannot see the column headings you will always know exactly where you are dropping a card.

Sorting

To sort the cards in the Planner, click on the Card Sorting icon . Gemini will display a drop down list of fields and let you choose which fields you want to order by and whether it should order ascending or descending. You may choose two fields for the Order By, for example you might instruct Gemini to order first by Effort (Man Hours) Descending and then by Points Ascending. This ordering is in addition to the ordering that is imposed when you group a selection of tasks in ascending or descending order using the Axes Selector.

View Persistence

Unlike the vast majority of visual planning tools, Gemini has persistence in the Planner. Wherever you put your cards, Gemini stores their relative positions so that you can log out or move to another part of the application secure in the knowledge that when you log back in your plan is exactly where you left it and not in some system-defined order. 

Collapse Filter

If you wish to increase the number of cards that can be viewed on the page you can click on the Collapse Filter icon and Gemini will collapse the Project Attributes Filter region and dedicate the resulting space to additional cards in the view. No matter what space is available, Gemini will not show more cards than specified by the Lane Limits.

The Planner layout and key controls

Fig 1.0 AppNav, menu Bar, Attributes and Planner Cards in Swim Lanes

Fig 2.0 Zoom Levels, Axes, Limits, Sorting, Colors and Collapse