Meetings in LiquidPlanner

There is not a direct way to schedule meetings for a specific date in LiquidPlanner.  We do hope to design a dedicated meeting feature, but in the meantime here are some options to consider.

In all cases, you would still use your office calendaring tool to schedule the specific day & time for each meeting independent of LiquidPlanner.      

Meetings as ongoing tasks

First, consider if you really need to represent each meeting individually in the plan. Typically that’s necessary when the meeting is a significant step in the plan or when it’s driving something else in the plan.  If that’s not the case, consider the Ongoing Tasks option.  This still ensures an accurate schedule and time tracking without the complexity of creating separate meeting tasks for every meeting and every person attending the meeting.    

Meetings as prioritized tasks*

If you must show each separate meeting in the plan, you'll have to create a separate task for each person attending the meeting.  Then, one option is to situate each meeting task in the appropriate priority order as best you can.  This allows you to easily see where upcoming meetings fall in your overall flow of prioritized tasks; but you’d have to be OK with the fact that the meeting dates won’t necessarily be accurate.  For some people that's not a problem, since you’re relying on Outlook to schedule the specific day & time anyway.

Meetings as delayed tasks*

If you’re required to show each meeting on the very precise date, you can create a ‘Meetings’ package at the very top of the Projects view.  Then, add each meeting task into that package and delay each meeting to the specific meeting date.   Be sure the meeting tasks are listed in date order.  Now, when the delay/meeting date arrives, the meeting task becomes your top priority active task and is thus scheduled for that day.  Until that date, it’s just sitting up above all of your other work on delay.  This option gives you accurate meeting dates, but you don’t have that natural visibility to where upcoming meetings fall in your overall flow of prioritized tasks.  

*Important Note:  if you go with separate meetings tasks for each person, bear in mind that the total remaining effort rollup for the project will be inflated until the meeting tasks are marked done.  Depending on the amount of time you spend in meetings, that could be either a negligible or a significant factor.