Tasks Panel Limits?
Summary: Runcible can display a lot of information.
Runcible can display a lot of information. We knew the Workspace Panels were an innovative concept for this kind of application. And we wanted the rich context, provided by the panels. But that meant we needed to do a lot of work to keep performance within our desired targets. And we needed to prevent the user from requesting every task in an international organization. So here is how we did it:
Panels Use Pagination
If a lot of rows are present, like in the Activity stream, Runcible uses pagination to display only a little of the data at a time. Scrolling up or down the panel will load more data.
Panels Use Just in Time Rendering (Virtualization)
Runcible will render (Draw) only enough tasks to fill the visible workspace. When you scroll down, it will draw more and more tasks as you scroll. The tasks are loaded, but not drawn. This technique improves performance.
The Workspace Uses Websocket Updating (Pulses)
You might hear a "clicking" sound, and see a flash of color in the panels as you're working. That's the server sending updates to your browser. By sending updates to your browser you don't need to refresh to see changes.
The Tasks Panel Shows only Deliverables when Selecting at the Organization Level
In a large organization, if you had many tasks, and many projects, filtering by organization would quickly overload your browser, if not your computer.
Runcible will only display Programs, and sometimes Projects and Deliverables in the Tasks Panel until a you select at least one program. Once you select a Program Runcible will display the Tasks for it. In either case the quick report will show you accurate information.
This approach allows us to report on the organization level and drill down into the projects if needed, without overloading the workspace with tens of thousands of tasks.
Tidbit: We developed Runcible's predecessor over ten years in a business running 2000 projects per year. We used dummy data of the same scale to develop the product.
The Workspace has Practical Limits: How Many Tasks Can I Load?
It depends on which View you're using.
- The tables are very light weight and for all intents and purposes scale is unlimited. - The outline will comfortably work with a few thousand although you will begin to notice the performance penalty the more tasks you display at one time. - Depending upon which card size you use, the Board is a little heavier than the Outline view. - The Gantt Chart is the heaviest of all. But we have tested it with 10,000 records and it works fine.
If we were to suggest a good rule of thumb, it is to break your project into deliverables, phases, jobs, sprints, or iterations, or releases of one thousand tasks or less. And use the project panel to view subsets at a time.