Setting the starting date and the duration of an activity

First you have to determine the starting date of the activity. As with key moments, you have the choice between a date relative to another activity or key moment, or an exact date. The advantage of a relative date is that you can make clear that the first activity has to end before the second one can start (because you need the results of the first activity as an input for the second one). For instance, you want to cultivate new crops. But before you can start planting, you need to analyse the composition of the soil, to make sure your new crops will grow in that particular kind of soil. So the planting can't start before you have the results of the soil analysis. If the analysis takes longer, the planting moves forward in time too. You can achieve this by using relative dates:

1. Insert the number of days/weeks/months in the first field.
2. Select the time unit. You can choose between minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, trimesters, semesters or years.
3. Select whether this activity will start before or after the other activity.
4. Select the activity or key moment to which you want to make a reference. You can choose from any key moment or activity that you've defined, as well as the project's start or ending.

Alternatively, you can select any specific date using the date selector on the second line.

Next, you can determine the duration of your activity, in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, trimesters, semesters or years. If you want the activity to continue until the end of your project, first select the duration unit, and then check the Until end of project box. Logframer will then calculate the number of days/weeks/months... until the end of the project.

Once you've set the starting date and the duration of your activity, you can verify the exact starting and finishing date of your activity to the right.