Organising tasks into phases
Big projects are easier to read in phases. In Oakfield Villa Build, Groundworks holds Site clearance, Excavate foundations and Pour footings. A task that holds other tasks is a summary task.
How to make a phase (summary task)#
Add a task for the phase itself, for example Groundworks, and the tasks that belong to it underneath.
Select the tasks that belong to it. Click the first, then Shift+click the last.
Click Indent
on the ribbon, or press Alt+Shift+Right.
The tasks move one step to the right, under Groundworks, which turns bold and gets a small triangle. WBS numbers follow: Groundworks is 2, and its tasks become 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3.
Phases can hold phases, as many levels deep as you like.
To take a task back out of a phase, select it and click Outdent 
, or press Alt+Shift+Left. Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down move the selected rows up and down, as Move up and Move down do. These are the same keys as in Microsoft Project.
What a phase shows#
A phase’s figures come from the tasks inside it. You can’t type them yourself:
- Start and end: the earliest start and the latest end inside it.
- Duration: the working time between those two dates.
- % complete: the average of its tasks, weighted by how long each one is. A long task counts more than a short one.
- Costs and work: the totals of its tasks.
On the chart a phase is the long bar with turned-down ends.
You can still change a phase’s name, priority, notes and any of your own columns.
How to move a task up or down#
Select the task and click Move up 
or Move down 
. It swaps places with its neighbour in the same phase, and takes anything inside it along. Moving never takes a task out of its phase: use Outdent for that.
How to fold and unfold phases#
Click the small triangle beside a phase’s name to fold it away, and again to open it. Collapse all and Expand all, the minus and plus buttons on the view row, do the same for every phase at once.
From the keyboard, Alt+Shift+- folds the selected phase. With a task selected, it folds the phase the task is in, and the phase becomes the selected row. Alt+Shift+= opens the selected phase, and Alt+Shift+\* opens every phase. These are Microsoft Project’s keys.
Folding is a way of looking at the plan. It changes nothing, and it isn’t an undo step.
You can’t add a task inside a folded phase. Open it first. Desktop Plan reminds you if you try.
While a filter is on, every phase is shown open and the triangles are greyed. Clear the filter to fold or unfold again.
Things that can’t be done (and why)#
| You try to… | What happens |
|---|---|
| Indent the first task in a group | Nothing. There is no task above it to go under. |
| Indent a task under a milestone | Refused. A milestone can’t hold tasks. |
| Add, indent or move tasks while the list is sorted or filtered | Turned off, because "the row above" no longer means anything. Click Clear sort and filter first. Clicking the WBS heading clears a sort, but not a filter. |
| Turn a phase into a milestone | Refused. A phase gets its length from the tasks inside it. |
If indenting a task turns it into a phase, any link that a phase isn’t allowed to have is removed (see Linking tasks). Ctrl+Z brings it back.