Overview

This article covers operations in Activity Center that help you make your work as comfortable and efficient as possible. Here's a list of sections in the article that will save you time while reading the article.

• Hierarchical vs flat layout
• Showing completed projects & activities
• Project & activity counter
• Reordering columns
• Freezing columns
• Unfreezing columns
• Column sorting
• Adjusting column width
• Reordering activities (WBS only)

You can turn off the display of project level data, switch from hierarchical to flat view, change the order and width of the columns to display in Activity Center, as well as "freeze" them so that they are grouped to the left and do not move as you scroll to the right. You can hide unwanted columns and add ones needed at a particular time, and much more. The main operations for customizing your Activity Center are described below.

Hierarchical vs flat layout

Activity Center can display the project and activity list as a tree, i.e. a structure where a parent-child relationship is shown using indents and expanded () or collapsed () list buttons.

Fig. 1 Hierarchical list                                                   Fig. 2 Flat list

By default, hierarchical view is enabled. Its primary benefits are:

• Allowing you to see the relationships between activities in terms of child and parent.
• It supports drag-n-drop, whereby you can change the order of activities on the list by simple drag-n-drop. NB: This option only works with WBS sorting on.

To enable flat view:

1. Click More actions ().
2. Click the Flat view switch to turn it on.

Showing/hiding completed projects and activities 

You can quickly enable showing or not showing completed projects or activities in Activity Center. To do so:

1. Click .
2. Use the Show completed projects switch to toggle between showing and not showing projects with a treat-as-completed status.
3. Use the Show completed activities switch to toggle between showing and not showing activities with a treat-as-completed status.

Project & activity counter

You can see anytime how many projects and activities are currently on display in the Activity Center. To enable the project/activity counter, do the following:

1. Click.
2. Use Show Projects/Activities counter to toggle between showing and not showing the counter.

The counter appears in the bottom row of the Activity Center grid, as shown.

Reordering columns

You can easily change the position of a column on Activity Center.

1. Hover the mouse pointer over the Category column header, keeping away from the More actions button () that pop-ups on the hovering action.

2. To position a column Category between columns Status and Type, press the left button as if 'grabbing' the column by its header and drag to the right until a blue line positions itself between the above columns, and at that moment release the button.

3. As a result, column Category is now between Status and Type.

Freezing columns

The functionality makes it possible to fix a column in place, so it remains visible no matter how far beyond the normal width of the screen you are scrolling while browsing Activity Center columns — since the number of columns visible on Activity Center can be much more than the width of your monitor can display at a time.

To freeze a column:

1. Hover over the column header.
2. Click the More action button ().
3. Select Freeze column.

As a result, the column will move to the left. If you now consecutively freeze more columns, they will all congregate on the left, fixed in place as you scroll Activity Center to the right.

Unfreezing columns

This is an action that cancels column freezing.  

To unfreeze a column:

1. Hover over the column header.
2. Click the More action button ().
3. Select Unfreeze column.

Column sorting

You can sort data in select columns in ascending or descending order. To differentiate between project sorting and activity sorting, different sets of indicators are used:

• Single upward black arrow — — to denote ascending order of sorting of projects 
• Single downward black arrow — — to denote descending order of sorting of projects 
• Single upward gray arrow — — to denote ascending order of sorting of activities 
• Single downward black arrow — — to denote descending order of sorting of activities 

There are two methods which are complementary to each other. In other words, use whichever is handier to you.  

Method 1

1. Click Sort on the Activity Center toolbar.
2. Select a sorting option separately for projects and activities.
3. The selected options take effect immediately.
4. As a result, the sorted column header will be labelled with a sorting indicator (,,,). See above for an explication.

Method 2

1. Hover the pointer over the header of the column you want sorted.
2. Click the More actions button ().
3. Select Sort A->Z or Sort Z->A.
4. As the screen refreshes, the column header will have an indicator of the selected sorting (,,,).

Adjusting column width

You can adjust the width of any column. 

To make a column wider or narrower:

1. Hover over the column header.
2. Position the pointer on the right border of the header. The pointer will change shape to a broken two-way arrow () and the right border — transform to a thick blue line.
3. Press the left mouse button and drag the border right or left to widen or narrow the column, respectively.

Reordering activities (WBS only)

With WBS sorting enabled, rows representing activities can be reshuffled using drag-n-drop.   

To move an activity up or down the list:

1. Make sure WBS sorting is enabled. For how sorting works, see above.
2. Hover over the cell with the name of the activity to be moved.
3. As a "handle" () appears close to the left border of the cell, "grab" it by pressing the left mouse button.
4. Drag the row to the desired position, and once a blue thin line marks the insertion point, drop it there by releasing the button.