When you first log on to a Ketura system, your browser displays a personalized Home Page. This page acts as the starting point for everything you wish to do with the system. It contains links to the various parts
of the system to which you have access, and also lists any issues that are currently awaiting your attention.
Wherever you are in the system, you can always return directly to the Home Page by clicking the Home tab near the top left of each page.
The right hand side of the banner at the top of the Home Page contains some useful links, including one to report a new issue. Other pages also contain relevant links here.
Personalized ‘to do’ list for every userKetura provides a personalized Pending and In progress task list on each user’s Home Page. Together, these show all the tasks assigned to the user for which managers of the projects in the system wish work to be undertaken.
Why two lists? Tasks that have been planned for a user appear automatically in the Pending list, sorted by the project manager’s desired implementation order. But, for complicated projects, the list of pending tasks could be very large. A user can therefore select just a few tasks to work on at a time from the Pending list and transfer them to their In progress list, where they can focus upon them and switch between them with ease.
Ketura has another feature to prevent users from being overwhelmed by a huge number of pending tasks: for each project, a project manager designates one particular milestone as being current. Only incomplete tasks from issues in each project’s current milestone, and those preceding it, are shown in the pending list. Thus, users are typically shown only those outstanding tasks from the current milestone of each project. This has the further advantage that no user is tempted to begin work on milestones later than the current one.
When a user starts work on a task, he or she clicks the Start button next to that task. To stop timing, the user clicks the Stop button for that task, or simply clicks the Start button for another task (which will stop the timer for the first task). The system thus records how much time is spent by each user on each task.
When work is recorded for a task, the system automatically adjusts the work remaining estimate for that task accordingly. Users can update this estimate to reflect a change in their expectations at any time.
Work journal
The Home page also contains the user’s Work journal. An entry is created in the journal every time the user starts timing work for a task. The journal is therefore a historical
record of the work effort spent by a user on individual tasks. Users are also able retrospectively to create entries to record
work on particular tasks using their personal Work journal, which can be useful if a user forgets to stop or start timing work for a task at the right time, or if the user has spent
time out of the office and has been unable to log in to Ketura.
Each work journal entry consists of:
A non-modifiable view of a work journal is also displayed on each task and issue page, showing the associated work entries.
The work done figures for tasks, issues, milestones and projects are derived from information in users’ work journal entries.
