Some nifty tricks 

  • If you need to bulk select - either to delete (by pressing delete on your keyboard) or to copy (by pressing ctrl+c on your keyboard) or to move - simply hold down shift on your keyboard and draw a box around the activities you wish to select. When doing this we'll ask if you want to modify the linked work items as well. 
  • Each of the modes in Edit Plan (i.e. select, activity, cluster, outcome) has a corresponding keyboard shortcut ('s', 'a', 'c' and 'o' respectively) - this can be a quick way to shift between them. Use 's' when panning around the plan to ensure you don't accidentally create unwanted activities or clusters.
  • It's possible to undo and redo using your keyboard too - the usual ctrl+z/ctrl+y.
  • If you're struggling to get the outcome flag to "hook onto" a node, try looking for the moment it changes colour to a paler grey - this means it has correctly anchored to the node and when you click, it will create the outcome.
  • Lost your place or cannot find the plan? Go to the Project Overview page and you can either click on an outcome in the top right or an activity (from the list of activity updates on the right below the outcomes) to re-focus on the plan. 


...and some things you might not know about Sharktower's Plan feature

  • When you only have one workstream in the plan, every activity will inherit that workstream's properties.
  • If you use the "plus" method to create a new activity (i.e. clicking the node at the end of one activity to create one which follows on from it), the new activity will inherit the previous activity's workstream.
  • If you are clicking the plus on a node which has multiple activities leading into it, the new activity will arbitrarily pick the workstream of one of the activities leading into it.
  • Outcomes don't appear on the Overview or in the Objectives area until the plan has been published.
  • You don't have to be in cluster mode to resize or rename/delete a cluster.


    And if you're more of a visual person - why not try our Plan Walkthrough video to see it in action?


Some useful timings to know:

00:19 - Creating clusters

00:29 - Moving clusters

00:34 - Resizing clusters

00:39 - Renaming or changing the colour of a cluster

00:54 - Creating activities (by clicking on the canvas)

01:14 - Creating activities (by clicking on an existing activity node)

01:22 - What are workstreams?

01:34 - Where else are workstreams used? (Answer: the Overview and the Kanban)

01:56 - Renaming and editing other properties of workstreams 

02:09 - Creating new workstreams

02:23 - Deleting workstreams

02:37 - Extending and shortening activities

02:54 - Disconnecting activities

03:03 - Undoing

03:10 - Copying and pasting patterns of activities

03:23 - Bulk deleting activities

03:33 - Bulk moving activities

03:45 - Creating project milestones

04:13 - Publishing your plan