Manipulating the diagram

Zooming and panning

Diagrams can contain hundreds of nodes and it can become impossible to make all of the nodes information readable. To overcome this issue, you can easily use zooming and panning to navigate the diagram and focus on the parts you're most interested in.

To zoom in to a specific location, bring the mouse pointer to the location you would like to zoom, and then either use the mouse wheel, or double-click. Zoom out by rolling the mouse wheel in the opposite direction, or by holding the Shift key while double clicking.

Panning can be made to scroll over the canvas area by left-clicking and holding on an unoccupied part of the diagram, and then moving the mouse around.

Performing actions on a node

To perform actions on a specific node, such as adding a link from it, or calculate the remaining time to it, you must first select it. A node is selected by clicking on it. When selected, a node becomes pale blue and its border gets bolder.

Once a node is selected, you can perform different actions on it. The following table summarizes the possible actions on a node and how to perform them.

Operation	Tooltip button	Cog menu item	Shortcut key	Description
Add link		N/A	a	Adds a link from the selected node to another node. Click on the target node to add link.
Highlight critical path to issue		Show selection path	p	Highlights the critical path (the longest path in terms of remaining time) to complete the selected issue.
Move issue	N/A	N/A	N/A	Drag node with the mouse to the desired location.
Navigate to issue page	Issue Key	N/A	N/A	Navigate to JIRA page of the issue, giving further details and allowing its edition.
Unselect issue	N/A	N/A	N/A	Click on the selected node.

Finding critical paths

The Critical path method is a well-known algorithm that allows finding paths in a graph that indicate the minimum time required to complete a project, or a specific goal in a project. Pathfinder allows you to easily highlight and calculate the time of critical paths in a diagram. Even though this functionality is available no matter what type of link is selected, it is only meaningful when links represent inter-dependencies between issues. For instance: A blocks B and B blocks C or A is a dependency of B, etc. Pathfinder (or JIRA) does not have any knowledge of the meaning of various types of links. It is up to the user to use critical paths on diagrams with link types that make sense.

Pathfinder will let you find critical paths in two ways:

• Finding the critical path to a specific issue, which is the longest path in terms of remaining time among the displayed issues to the selected issue.
• Finding the overall critical path of the displayed issues, which is the longest path in terms of remaining time among all possible paths in the diagram.

In both cases, critical paths time are calculated in hours, based on the remaining time estimates of the issues, or their original estimates if no remaining time is specified. The critical path time is simply the sum of the remaining times of all issues in a path.

Nodes that are part of the calculated path are highlighted. The figure below shows an highlighted critical path to a selected issue.

Critical path to issue ABC-7

Overall critical path

The overall critical path can be obtained when no issue is selected, either by selecting the Show critical path item in the cog menu (at the top right of the parameters panel on the right), or by hitting the 'p' shortcut key. The figure below shows an highlighted overall critical path of a set of issues.

Overall critical path of the selected set of issues