From IMPACT 17 have the Follow-up tab been reworked and added new functionality to the IMPACT product line to enhance its time visualization capabilities.

The Gantt chart in the Follow-Up has been reworked to incorporate support for multiple projects, custom activities, comparison against historical data, and better overall visualization of the existing project planning data. These features combined with personal data filters and settings will make a tool for project planning that covers many needs.

Follow up tab

As shown in the picture above, you can see the tools you have at your disposal in the follow up tab. 

We will take a look at each section and break it down to get a better understanding of how it works

Data

You can have 2 types of filter types and multiple filters under each type.

The types are: 

• Personal
• Shared

If you want to switch between filters you press the funnel and select the filter you want to use.

If this is the first time Follow up is used the list will be blank and you have to start creating your own.

To do so, or if you want to manage these filters you press the funnel and select 'Manage filters', and you will get a pop-up window.

Press the plus sign to create your filter.

First, you give the filter name and you select if you want your filter to be a personal or a shared one, in my case I want to have it as a personal one for the time being.

Under Project, you can select if you want this filter only to apply for this particular project or up to 10 specific projects, which could be the 10 most recent projects.

You can also specify if the filter should apply to specific Building/Floor/Phase/Factory/Element type or set it as I did so it applies for all in this specific project.

For activities, you can select what planning data you want to show in this filter,

And lastly, you set up the visual structure for the Gantt chart

Press ok and you have your filter, now you can press Refresh and your Gantt chart will appear.

The last option under data is the settings for the Gantt chart, here you can select what columns you want to be shown, what is the active days and colors.

Under Color activities, you can have the chart be determined by the Element status or Activity status

Visibility Range

Visibility range is how you see the whole chart, you can change the start and end dates by selecting different dates but it has to be in the range of the project or projects time frame that is given in this filter. Note that the dates are the dates based on the planning data given in the project, if there is no planning data you do not have anything to display in the Follow up.

Navigation

In the Navigation you can set how you want the calendar to be displayed, that is if you want to have it compact or in high detail.

Under the slider, you can select Current Day/Week/Month and that is the interval for the arrow buttons if you want to jump back/forth in the calendar when it is zoomed in.

Custom Activities

Custom activities can be added to the project, and are also shown in the Gantt chart. Custom activities can be fx Crain.

Press add and you will get this pop up window.

Let's say that you have 2 cranes in your project, one for the first floor and another one for the second floor.

In my project i have the name for the Crain as the title, both cranes are in the category 'Cranes'.

I added some description and as you can see this crane is automatically linked to the project, and then I have linked it to the building and floor 2

Last you add the duration if it is a one-day event or over a  longer time.

Custom activities will be shown as white bars in the chart since I have my settings as element status.

Notice that floor, building, and the project all are set to white color when I added the cranes, that is because bars are set to adapt to the lowest status linked to the activities and i linked the cranes to the floors and building and automatically they are linked to the project.

History

Gives you the possibility to see if there have been some changes in the planning, and you can compare the chart based on a date.

When you do that you will be presented with an old and new chart as shown below.

In this project, there is nothing to compare at the moment but in the settings (under Data), you can define the colors to use.

Utilities

Here you can print your chart or make export for MS Project.