User Guide 3 – Activities

This guide covers the Activities section: building activity plans, adding modules, managing approvals and budgets, and linking documents, indicators, stakeholders and sites to your activities. Each section ends with a short exercise.

The Activity Plan

The Activities section lets you build activity plans, assign tasks and approvals to team members, link documents, update your workspaces as they progress and visualise tasks in a Gantt chart.

1. Create an activity plan

1. Select the workspace you are working on from the drop-down menu and open the Activities tab in the left-hand navigation panel. To add a new activity, click the green Add new activity button.
2. Enter the name of your activity or task and click Save.
3. Your new activity appears at the bottom of the list. Drag and drop it to change its order.

Exercise A

• Add three activities to your activity plan.
• Drag and drop them to change their order.

2. Add modules to your activities

1. Click the name of an activity to add more information. In the Details section you can:

• Assign a staff member responsible for the activity
• Update its progress
• Add a status colour
• Link the activity to a workspace phase
• Add a start and end date
• Add a description, which can include text, images and hyperlinks

2. To add more modules to your activity, click the + symbol next to the Details tab. From the drop-down you can add approvals, budget information, stakeholders, documents and sites, and link the activity to indicators.

3. Approval workflows

1. The Approvals module keeps you up to date with the approvals required for your workspaces, with an auditable trail of assigned approval tasks and the date and outcome of each decision.
2. To add an approval, first add the Approvals module to your activity: click + and select Approval from the drop-down.
3. Select the approval type, the user you want to assign it to, and add any notes. “Approval type” is a configurable field set by your Org Admin. If the drop-down list is empty, ask your Org Admin to add values in the Admin Console. If you are the Org Admin, see the Admin Guide to configure approval types.
4. Once you have added the relevant information, click Save.
5. Only the user the approval is assigned to can enter a decision. The decision is saved with the user’s name and the date, creating an auditable record of approvals.
6. To review all approvals for a workspace, open the Approvals tab. A list shows each approval and the current status of its decision.

Exercise B

• Add a new approval.
• Assign the approval to a team member.
• Check the approval workflow.

4. Managing activity budgets

1. The Budget module helps you keep track of your workspace’s spending.
2. To add a budget, first add the Budget module to your activity: click + and select Budget from the drop-down.
3. Click the green Add budget button to start entering your spending information.
4. Enter a description, the budget amount and the amount spent, then click Submit.
5. Repeat this step to add more budget items. You can return to the Budget module at any time to update the amount spent.
6. All budget items entered at activity level are aggregated and shown on the workspace overview, so you can see the total spent against the remaining budget.

Exercise C

• Add two budget items.
• Review the overall budget information on the workspace details page.

5. Linking documents to an activity

1. You can link documents and files from cloud storage such as Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox, or link to the URL of any online document or website.
2. To link documents, first add the Documents module to your activity: click + and select Documents from the drop-down.
3. Choose to add a file from Google Drive, or click Add URL to add a link from any other file server.
4. To link from Google Drive, locate the file you want and click Save.
5. To add a URL, paste it into the URL box and add a document name.
6. To unlink a document, click the trash can icon.

Exercise D

• Link one document from your Google Drive to your activity.
• Link one document by URL to your activity.

6. Linking indicators to an activity

1. Linking indicators to activities shows your team clearly what is being done and what is being measured.
2. To link indicators, first add the Indicators module to your activity: click + and select Indicators from the drop-down.
3. Click Assign indicator and select the relevant indicators from the drop-down menu.
4. To unlink an indicator, click the unlink icon on the right-hand side.

Exercise E

• Link two indicators to your activity.
• Unlink one of these indicators from your activity.

7. Linking stakeholders to an activity

1. The Stakeholders module lets you attach stakeholders to an activity to keep track of which organisations are involved.
2. To link stakeholders, first add the Stakeholders module to your activity: click + and select Stakeholders from the drop-down.
3. You can add an existing stakeholder or create a new one.
4. To add an existing stakeholder, click Add existing stakeholder and select the stakeholders from the drop-down.
5. To add a new stakeholder, click the green Add stakeholder button and enter the name, role, type and country. Stakeholder type is a configurable field set by your Org Admin. If the drop-down is empty, contact your Org Admin. If you are the Org Admin, see the Admin Guide to configure this field.
6. Once you have entered this information, click Submit.
7. To unlink a stakeholder from the activity, click the unlink icon.

8. Linking sites to an activity

1. The Sites module lets you attach the sites where the activity takes place.
2. To link sites, first add the Sites module to your activity: click + and select Sites from the drop-down.
3. You can add an existing site or create a new one.
4. To add an existing site, click Add existing site and select the sites from the drop-down.
5. To add a new site, click the green Add site button and enter the site name, type, office, status and location. Site type is a configurable field set by your Org Admin. If the drop-down is empty, contact your Org Admin. If you are the Org Admin, you can add site types in the Admin Console; see the Admin Guide.
6. Once you have entered this information, click Submit.
7. To unlink a site from the activity, click the unlink icon.

Exercise F

• Add a new stakeholder to your activity.
• Add a new site to your activity.

9. Where to get more help

• In-app guides: click the Guides button in the bottom left-hand corner for step-by-step guides to all TolaData features.
• Live chat: click the Help button in the bottom left-hand corner to speak with our User Support team.
• Knowledge base: find all our user guides, best practice guides and product release notes at toladata.com/docs.
• Videos: watch tutorials on our TolaData YouTube channel.
• Email: contact our support team at support@toladata.com.