Track progress and collaborate#

Once a schedule is built and sound, the job changes from planning the work to running it: recording what has actually started and finished, and keeping everyone on the project on the same page. Owl PM does both on each activity. Select it, record its real dates, leave a comment, and your teammates see it right away.

Note: Progress and comments live on each activity, not on the plan as a whole. Marking an activity started or complete records what actually happened next to the planned dates; it doesn't rewrite the plan underneath.

Open an activity's details#

Select an activity and press Space, or double-click its row or its bar. The details pane opens along the bottom of the schedule and holds everything about that one activity: its dates and progress, its logic, resources, fields, notes and the guardrails it breaks.

The pane follows your selection. Click another row, or press J and K to step down and up through the activities, and the pane shows each one in turn. Space again closes it. See Keyboard shortcuts for more.

123451Select an activity, then press Space or double-click it.2The pane's tabs: Status & dates, Logic, Resources, Fields, Notes, Guardrails.3Actual start and Actual finish: the dates work really began and ended.4The status button: Mark started, then Mark complete.5Actual, early and late dates side by side.

Mark an activity started or complete#

Under the summary on the left is one button that follows where the activity stands. Clicking it records today's date:

• Not started → Mark started (Mark reached on a milestone). It sets the actual start to today.
• Started → Mark complete. It sets the actual finish to today.
• Both recorded → the button reads Completed with the date.

If the work started or finished on another day, type the date into Actual start or Actual finish on the Status & dates tab. The same tab has % complete, the Expected finish, and the duration panel: original, actual, remaining and at completion.

To status several activities at once, select them, right-click, and choose Mark 3 activities as started or Mark 3 activities as finished. These set each actual date to the planned date, but never later than the data date.

Leave a comment on an activity#

Open the Notes tab in the details pane. On the left is the activity's Description; on the right, the Activity feed lists every comment on the activity with who wrote it and when. Type in Add a comment… to flag a blocker, note a field condition, or ask a question. The image button attaches a photo.

1231The Notes tab.2The Activity feed: every comment, with who wrote it and when.3Add a comment. Your teammates see it in their Inbox.

See what your team is doing — the Inbox#

When a teammate comments on an activity or changes its status, it lands in your Inbox. Open it from the Inbox button at the top right of the project; it opens as a tab.

123451The Inbox button opens the Inbox.2Show Unread or All.3A status change: the activity, what changed, and who changed it when.4A comment. A dot marks it unread; click a row to open that activity.5Mark all read clears the dots.

Each row shows the activity code, the update, and the person behind it. Unread rows carry a dot. Click a row to open that activity in its own tab, with its dates, progress, description and resources; or click Mark all read to clear the dots.

What to do next#

• Keep the plan honest — as progress comes in, compare actuals against the plan on the Project Health dashboard to see whether you're ahead or behind.
• Record the update you submit — name the version in Schedule history once a monthly update is in, so you can find it and compare against it later.
• Explain a slip — when actuals drift from the plan, the delay-analysis workflows turn what happened into a report you can submit.