How are phases and activities/the schedule related?
The goal of workflows is to plan (and keep track of) phases on the measure level. For this purpose, measures have the so-called process tab. It allows you to plan and track each phase individually.
Next to planning and tracking phases, Falcon allows for planning and tracking milestones/activities in the schedule tab at any level of detail. The scheduled activities correspond to the phases of a measure. That is, Falcon tells you in which phase activities are supposed to be finished (or finished, respectively).
How are the activities assigned to the phases?
Generally, the assignment of activities to phases is based on the start plan value of the phase.
Why is this the case? Usually, the plan values are fixed and are rarely changed during the project. The actual values typically change, often quite significantly. So that such changes do not constantly upset the "grid" of the phases, Falcon is using the planned value of the phase as a basis for this.
The start-actual value of the phases is primarily used to be able to check via the traffic light whether the plan could be met and serves secondarily as a backup for the assignment if no plan value is maintained.
On the activity side, the higher date, i.e. the date further in the future, is used for the assignment. Thus, activities are sorted into the higher phase if they are late, but remain in their planned phase if they are faster than planned.
If two phases have the same start-plan date, the higher phase is used for the assignment.
If an activity does not correspond to a phase because the end of the activity is before the start of the first phase, no phase is displayed on the Schedule tab.
Example
In this example, the measure has five phases.
The first 4 phases have already been started. The phases "HG2" & "HG3" were started late.
Phase "HG5" is scheduled to start on 10/09/2022.
The first activity (1) was not assigned a phase because it was already finished before the start of phase 1.
Activity 4 (2) was finished after the start of phase 3 and before the start of phase 4, so it is assigned to phase 3.
Activity 7 (3) would have fallen into Phase 4 according to its end-plan date, but because its end-actual/forecast date is delayed, it is assigned to Phase 5, which is scheduled to start on 10/09/2022.