Get oriented on the schedule

Every project, all at once, is the whole point and the whole problem

The schedule shows the firm's entire workload on one screen, which is exactly what you want when you're asking "what does everyone have on this month?" and exactly too much when your question is really just "where does Olive Street Apartments stand?" Monument doesn't solve that by giving you a second, smaller schedule. It gives you ways to narrow, regroup, and drill into the same one. That's this tour: how to find the work you actually came for, look at it from a couple of angles, and step back out to the full picture when you're done.

We'll use Olive Street Apartments as the project we zoom in on, on Meridian Studio's schedule.

Focus narrows the whole schedule, resource lanes included

The Project filter, along the top of the schedule, is the one you'll reach for most. Pick a project and Monument narrows the whole schedule to that project's work, the Gantt and the resource swimlanes both, so other-project allocations drop out of the lanes rather than staying visible in a quieter form. That's the right view for planning Olive Street Apartments' own week, but it also means a person's lane only shows what they're doing on this project while the filter is on. Clear it before you judge anyone's total load.

1. 1

   Open the Project filter along the top and choose Olive Street Apartments.

   
2. 2

   Every other project's work drops out of the Gantt and the resource lanes alike.

3. 3

   Click Clear filters to bring everything, and everyone's full workload, back.

One workload, three ways to group it

Underneath the Gantt sit the resource swimlanes, with workload rows for people and resource pools. How those lanes are grouped doesn't change any of the underlying hours, it just changes which question the lanes answer:

• By Resource: one lane per person, summing everything currently loaded on the schedule. With no Project filter, that's their true total load; filtered to one project, it's only that project's slice.
• By Track: each person's lane splits by the kind of work, so you see how their week breaks down across stages.
• By Project: each lane splits by which job the hours belong to, so you see how much of a week any single project is actually claiming.

Drill from the whole firm down to one stage

In the Gantt itself, a project starts life as a single bar. Expand it and its stages appear underneath, each one its own bar you can work with directly.

1. 1

   Expand Olive Street Apartments in the Gantt to reveal its stages.

2. 2

   Click a stage, Concept Design, and its property panel opens on the right with its dates, team, and budget.

That panel is where a stage's actual details live, but this tour only points it out. Changing a stage's dates, staffing it, and shaping its budget each get their own dedicated walkthrough.

Zoom to match the question you're asking

The timeline zoom sits at the top of the toolbar: Daily, Weekly, and Monthly. Switch to Monthly to take in the shape of a whole programme at once; drop to Weekly or Daily when the question is about one specific week.

Troubleshooting

• A project I filtered out has disappeared entirely, resource lanes included. That's intended, not a bug. The Project filter narrows the whole schedule, Gantt and resource lanes alike, down to that project's work; it removes other-project work rather than dimming it. Clear filters to bring everything, and everyone's true load, back.
• My swimlanes look different from a colleague's screen. You're likely grouped differently. Check whether the lanes are set to By Resource, By Track, or By Project.
• A stage seems to have vanished. Its project is probably just collapsed. Expand the project bar again and the stage reappears underneath it.

Where this fits next

Now that you can move around the schedule, it's the place the real resourcing work happens. Use it to plan with roles and tracks, hand role work to staff, and balance capacity in the swimlanes once someone is carrying more than they should.