Note: In the original version of this article I was attempting to compare Task Days Elapsed to Duration but unfortunately these are counted differently – Duration in MindManager is based on counting workdays only whereas all the MAP extended properties are based on counts of all days. The three properties we are particularly interested in are Progress (#TPs), Task Days Elapsed (#TDE) and Days to Task Due(#DTE). Once these properties are created they remain in sync with the task information and timing. This includes all the standard task info properties like priority, Start date, Due date etc, but also calculated ones like Days to Task Start, Days to Task Due and Task Days Elapsed. Found in the Topic Properties tab, the Extended Properties command allows users to copy task information into topic properties. One of MAP’s many functions is Extended Properties. This is the crucial role of the MAP add-in. The first step is getting relevant task information into the task’s topic properties so that a number of formulae can be used compare and analyse the data. I’ll be using the following hypothetical project plan.

Obviously you will need both MM2018 and the latest version of MAP which can be obtained from Olympic Limited. More broadly this example demonstrates the extent to which the powerful new features in MM2018 and the MAP add-in can be integrated to provide additional tools for information analysis and presentation. In this post I’ll describe in more detail how this approach can be developed and how the resulting information can be displayed in a variety of ways. In my response to the query on the Mindjet forum I provided a brief example of how all this could be done using several new features in MM2018 and critically, a couple of functions in the MM MAP add-in. Neither of these addresses the broader issue of showing tasks which are either lagging or ahead of schedule at other times – or indeed those tasks which are exactly on track.

The at-risk indicator is applied when a task duration is more than 75% elapsed but progress is less than 75%, while the past due indicator appears when the due date has lapsed but the task is incomplete. MM actually already has a very simple version of showing lagging tasks in the form of the at-risk and past-due indicators. I was prompted to write this article by a query on the Mindjet Community Forum about whether it was possible in MindManager to highlight which tasks in a project are “On Track” – in other words, those tasks in which the proportion of each task completed matches the time elapsed since the task began. I’ve developed a workaround which is incorporated into this updated version.

Update: since posting the first version of this article I discovered that the MAP add-in Extended Properties feature which this approach relies on counts task days differently to MindManager.

Mindjet mindmanager 2018