Plans and schedules in PRO-dela: how to plan your week and not lose tasks

A plan in PRO-dela is not a task status or a project stage, but a separate, third layer: a personal or project schedule for a specific period — from a day to a year — that is assembled from existing tasks and organizes them into draggable column sections. The plan has its own status (draft, active, on hold, completed, canceled), its own logic for carrying over unfinished tasks from the previous period, and its own ability to link a week to a month, and a month to a quarter.

This article covers how PRO-dela handles creating personal and project plans, sections and task cards within them, selecting tasks without changing their real status, live progress calculation, deadline hints, carry-over of unfinished tasks, linking a plan to a larger period, and project or stage references — and, separately, an honest breakdown of what it is not.

Personal and project plans — two different scopes

A plan in PRO-dela has a visibility — personal or project. A personal plan belongs to a specific user and is visible only to them — even the company owner or project administrator cannot see someone else's personal plan, because the access rule for personal plans is strictly defined: only the creator can see and edit the plan. A project plan, on the other hand, is tied to a specific project and is accessible to anyone who can see that project.

On the "Schedule" page, both scopes are separated into tabs — "Mine" and "Project" — with a separate counter for each, and are additionally filtered by plan status (all, active, drafts, completed). Plan cards within a tab can be dragged to change their display order; the order for personal and project plans is stored and sorted separately from each other.

Plan period and what's inside: sections and task cards

When creating a plan, you first choose the period type — day, week, month, quarter, half-year, year, or custom range — and for all types except custom, PRO-dela automatically fills in the start and end dates (for example, for a week — from Monday to Sunday) and suggests a name based on a template, which you can rewrite manually at any time.

Inside, the plan is structured like a board: sections are columns with their own name and optional color, which you invent yourself according to your logic ("Monday", "Priority", "Later", whatever), not a fixed list like project stages. Tasks within sections and the sections themselves can be dragged with the cursor or keyboard — within one section and between sections — and if the order-saving request fails, the board rolls back to the state before the drag. It's important not to confuse this with project stages: a plan section is a temporary organization of a specific schedule, while a stage is a permanent part of the project's structure itself, detailed in the article "Projects and stages in PRO-dela".

How a task gets into a plan — and what happens to its real status

Tasks are added to a plan through a separate selection: search by name (starts searching from three characters), switching between "All tasks" mode and "Project and stage" mode with a filter by specific stage and status — and by default, the list shows only unfinished tasks until you explicitly select a project and status to see completed ones too.

Here's the key point to understand in advance: adding a task to a plan creates a lightweight link to the task within a section, with an optional note and sequence number, and by itself does not change the task's status or assignee. The real status of the task — the same lifecycle "pending → in progress → under review → accepted" described in the article "Tasks in PRO-dela" — is managed independently of how many plans mention that task.

However, at the moment of adding, you can optionally select the "Status when adding" option and immediately apply one of the project statuses to the task — but only if the task already has an assigned assignee, and only as a separate, explicit action: the field defaults to "Don't change status". Removing a card from a plan works symmetrically: only the link within the section disappears, while the task itself, its history, and status remain untouched. You can open the full task — with its complete card, status, attachments, and discussion — directly from the plan, in the same modal window used by the task page.

Plan progress: a percentage that is recalculated, not stored

Plan progress is not a separate field that someone updates manually, but a value that the platform recalculates based on the actual state of linked tasks each time it is requested: how many cards are completed (task closed or its status is "Done"), how many are in progress (task has an assignee and process, but is not finished), and how many are still pending. The final percentage is the share of completed out of the total number of cards in the plan.

On the open plan page, this is not just a one-time snapshot: while you are viewing the plan, the platform subscribes to changes for each linked task and updates progress automatically as soon as someone's status changes in real time. In the plan list on the "Schedule" page, each card shows a compact version of the same progress and a preview of the first three tasks with a note of how many more are hidden behind the counter.

Deadline hints: tasks not yet in the plan

A separate "Suggestions" panel on the plan page shows tasks whose due date falls within the dates of this plan but have not yet been added to it. This is not automatic addition, but a list for manual selection: you can check the desired tasks with checkboxes, choose the destination section, and add the selected ones in one action — the plan does not change until you confirm each task yourself.

Carry-over of unfinished tasks: how it actually works

Carry-over is the transfer of unfinished tasks from your previous plan to the current one, and it has specific rules, not a general phrase like "we carry over leftovers". The source is not necessarily "last week's plan" in the calendar sense, but the nearest earlier plan of the same period type, same visibility, and (for project plans) same project: that is, if the previous week did not exist as a separate plan, PRO-dela will take the nearest plan of the same type that was created earlier.

An "unfinished" task is one that has no closure mark and whose status is not "Done"; exactly such cards from the first section of the old plan are copied to the first section (or to a new "Carried over" section if the plan has none yet) of the current plan — along with the note, but without preserving the original layout across sections. Tasks already in the current plan are not duplicated.

This is an action, not a background process: when opening a draft or active plan, a banner with "Transfer" and "Skip" buttons is shown once, and the same transfer is available again from the "Suggestions" panel at any time. If there is no suitable previous plan or it has no unfinished tasks left, the platform says so — instead of silently doing nothing.

Part of a larger plan: from day to week, from month to quarter

A plan can be explicitly linked to a plan of a larger period — this is a separate, optional feature, not a hierarchy that builds itself. The correspondence is strictly defined: a day links to a week, a week to a month, a month to a quarter, and a quarter or half-year to a year; a custom period has no such link at all.

You can link a plan in two ways: choose among suitable existing plans of the same period type, visibility, and owner (or project) whose dates fully cover your period, or create a plan of the required larger period in one action and immediately link to it — PRO-dela will align the dates to calendar boundaries (for example, a month — from the first to the last day) and provide a clear name. The link works as navigation "this week is part of this month", not as data merging: opening the parent plan simply redirects to its page, tasks and sections remain separate between plans, and the platform will not allow linking a plan to itself through a chain of parents.

Plan references: linking to a project or stage as context

In addition to tasks, a plan can be marked with "references" — links to a specific project or a specific project stage with an optional note, which are displayed on the plan page as separate tags and can be removed at any time. This is not importing tasks from that project or stage into the plan, but a lightweight contextual tag: for example, a personal weekly plan can be marked as "mostly about the testing stage of project X" without dragging any tasks there automatically. Only projects and stages that the user can already see are available for linking.

Plan status itself: a separate axis from the status of tasks inside it

The plan has its own lifecycle status — draft, active, on hold, completed, canceled — with a limited set of transitions: from draft you can only go to active; from active — to on hold, completed, or canceled; from on hold — back to active. A completed or canceled plan has no further transitions.

This is the status of the plan as a container, not a summary status of the tasks inside it: a plan can be active while some of its tasks are still unassigned, some in progress, and some already accepted, and conversely, a plan can be moved to "completed" even if not all cards are formally closed — the platform does not link these two statuses automatically.

Who can see and edit a plan

A personal plan is visible and editable only by its author — with no exceptions for roles and no exceptions for the company owner. A project plan is softer in this sense: anyone who can see the project itself can view it, but only the creator or a participant with project editing rights can edit and delete it; mere view access to the project is not enough to edit the plan.

How a plan relates to the active company

The list on the "Schedule" page adapts to the active company in the same way as for other work sections: project plans in the list are limited to projects of the currently selected company. Personal plans are an exception: they remain visible regardless of which company is active, because they are not tied to a company at all, but belong directly to the user — in this sense, they are organized like notifications or the general chat list, for which the active company is also not a unit of separation.

What plans do not have yet

It's worth immediately setting expectations that easily arise from the word "schedule". In PRO-dela, a plan is a board of sections and cards for a selected period, not a Gantt chart or a calendar timeline with dependencies between tasks: the "part of a larger plan" link is navigation between plans, not a visualization of a time scale. There is also no synchronization with external calendars (Google Calendar, Outlook, and the like) — the plan exists only within PRO-dela.

Carry-over of unfinished tasks and deadline hints are actions you need to trigger yourself: the plan does not send separate reminders that the period is ending soon or that there are leftovers in the previous plan. If it's important not to miss a task deadline, the platform's separate notification system handles that, not the plan itself — it is covered in the article "Notifications and reminders in PRO-dela". The plan for the next period is not created automatically either: even the "week — part of a month" link creates only a plan for a larger period, not the next plan of the same type.

How to start: from the first personal plan to a project schedule

1. Decide on the scope: a personal plan for your own list for a period, a project plan when the schedule should be shared by the project team.
2. Choose the period type — from a day to a year — and adjust the automatically filled dates and name if necessary.
3. Create sections according to your work logic: by days of the week, by priority, or simply "Now" and "Later" — there is no ready-made section template here, it's your organization.
4. Fill the plan with tasks via selection or deadline hints — without the risk of accidentally changing their real status.
5. At the beginning of the next period, check the carry-over of unfinished tasks so you don't lose what you didn't complete, instead of rebuilding the list manually.

If you are just setting up your first project and team in PRO-dela, the general order of first steps is in the article "Onboarding and first project in PRO-dela".

Frequently asked questions

If I add a task to a plan, will its status change?

The act of adding itself — no. The task's status changes only if you separately select it in the "Status when adding" field at the moment of task selection, and even then only if the task has an assignee. By default, the plan does not change anything in the task except the appearance of the link to it.

What happens to a task if I remove it from a plan?

Nothing — only the link within the plan section is removed. The task itself, its status, history, and attachments remain as they are and continue to live in their project.

Does carry-over happen automatically, without my involvement?

No. It is a manual action: the platform offers it via a banner when opening a plan or a button in the "Suggestions" panel, but transfers tasks only after you click — and only from the nearest earlier plan of the same period type and same visibility.

Can a project participant see my personal plan?

No. A personal plan is visible and editable exclusively by its creator, regardless of other people's roles in the company or project.

Is there a Gantt chart or external calendar synchronization in plans?

No, neither. A plan is a board of sections and cards for a period plus an optional link to a plan of a larger period ("part of a plan"); there is no time-scale visualization or export to third-party calendars in this feature today.

Start with one personal weekly plan

Register in PRO-dela and create your first plan — not necessarily a project one: a personal weekly plan is enough to understand how sections, task selection, and carry-over work in practice.

If you are already comparing pricing for your team, check the terms on the pricing page — scheduling is available on any plan with projects, without a separate add-on.