Patent ID: 8082274
Filing Date: 2011-12-20
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method of creating a project plan on an electronic computing device, the method comprising: receiving instructions at the electronic computing device to create a task for the project plan, the project plan having a plurality of tasks, the project plan comprising a plurality of rows and columns, each row of the project plan corresponding to a unique task, each row of the project plan including a designation field, a start date field and a completion date field, the designation field comprising one letter character that designates a task as being either a freeform task or a structured task, the designation field being set to a “Y” for a freeform task and to a “N” for a structured task, at least two of the columns corresponding to attributes for the plurality of tasks, the designation of a task as a freeform task permitting the attributes for the task to be either freeform attributes or structured attributes, the designation of a task as a structured task requiring each attribute for the task to be a structured attribute, a freeform attribute being capable of accepting freeform input, a structured attribute requiring structured input, two data fields being associated with each freeform attribute, the first data field of the two data fields storing a freeform representation of the freeform attribute, the second data field of the two data fields storing a structured representation of the freeform attribute, the designation field permitting a freeform task to be changed to a structured task by changing the designation field from a “Y” to a “N”, the change of the freeform task to a structured task requiring that all freeform attributes for the freeform task be converted to structured attributes, the created task being a freeform task, the freeform task having a plurality of attributes; generating a first data field at the electronic computing device for each of the attributes of the freeform task; obtaining a designation for each attribute of the freeform task at the electronic device, including obtaining a designation of a subset of the attributes of the freeform task as freeform attributes and a designation of the remaining attributes of the freeform task as structured attributes; and generating a second data field at the electronic computing device for each of the freeform attributes of the freeform task and associating each of the second data fields with the first data field of the respective freeform attribute, the second data field storing a structured representation of the data in the first data field.