Get going with LYNX-X: a walkthrough from Home to a running project

Summary: A picture-by-picture walkthrough of LYNX-X. Find your way around, build a small project plan, release it to your team and follow it on the fever chart.

Applies to

Property	Value
Product	LYNX-X
Version	28.10.9877.0
Required permissions	Create projects in the space; to release, a space owner, or a project manager when the space lets project managers release projects
Last updated	2026-11-09
Owner	Support

Before you start

You can sign in to LYNX-X and you are on Home: Starting and signing in to LYNX-X.
Not planning projects yourself? The first part, Find your way, is for everyone; then go to Learning path: Your first day in LYNX-X.

What you will build

LYNX-X is the next generation of A-dato's software. Besides improvements in design, usability and performance, it brings together the two worlds of LYNX Scheduler and TameFlow to deliver better flow.

In Build your first plan you build one small project: Design, then Build, then Test, with Manual written alongside Build. LYNX-X finds the critical chain: the sequence of tasks that determines when the project can finish, given its dependencies and available resources (here Design, Build and Test, outlined in red). A project buffer at the end of the critical chain protects the project end date. A feeding buffer sits where a non-critical chain joins the critical chain (here after Manual) and protects the critical chain from delays in that feeding chain.

The finished example plan, with the critical chain, the feeding buffer and the project buffer marked

Procedure

Find your way

Home

Home gives access to the three areas of LYNX-X. Focus holds your own tasks and your team's cards. Portfolio holds all projects of the space, their active tasks and the reports. Configuration holds how the space is set up. The house icon at the top left returns to Home from anywhere.

Home with its Focus, Portfolio and Configuration cards

Focus: your own work

Focus > My activities lists the tasks you work on or report on, in the order to work on them. Started tasks come first, then the tasks that are ready to start, then the tasks that are not ready to start yet. Within each group, LYNX-X orders the tasks by their CCPM priority, which it calculates from progress and buffer consumption. Focus > TameFlow shows the cards your team works on, in the columns of their workflow.

My activities and the TameFlow board

Portfolio: every project

Portfolio > Project list shows the projects of the space. Use the filters Show all, Not started and Released to narrow the list. In the Performance column each gauge is one buffer of the project: the top bar shows how much of the chain it protects is complete, the bottom bar how much of the buffer is consumed. The box at the top right chooses which buffers the gauges show: the most critical buffer of each project, or all buffers. With all buffers, T1 in the picture shows its two milestone buffers, Build Prototype and Installation, and its project buffer. Portfolio > Active tasks lists the active tasks of the released projects only, from all of them, not only yours.

The Project list with its filters, and Active tasks

Before you plan: skills and resources

A plan asks for skills, and resources have them. A skill is a capability a task needs; several resources can have the same skill, and one resource can have several skills. A resource is what does the work: a person, a machine or other equipment. Both live in Configuration: open Skills to see each skill with the resources that have it. If yours are not there yet, see Adding a skill and a resource.

Configuration with Resources and Skills, and the Skills list

Build your first plan

Create the project

Go to Portfolio and open the Project list tab.
Select New project. The Project properties dialog opens.
On the General tab, enter a Project ID and a Description: the project's name. In the pictures that follow, the example is built in a project called Sample Project.

New project, then the General tab with an ID and a name

On the Project dates tab, under Project end date, choose Fixed date and pick a date in the future: the date you have promised.
On the Scheduling tab, leave Activate CCPM schedule engine ticked.
Select OK.

The Project dates tab with a fixed end date, and the Scheduling tab with the CCPM schedule engine on

Open it

In the Project list, select the Not started filter. A new project waits here until you release it.
Double-click the project. It opens in its own tab in the top bar.

The Not started filter and the project to open

The project window

Tasks are on the left, in the task grid, and their bars on the right, in the Gantt chart. The green vertical line in the chart is today. Select a task and then one of the tabs at the bottom (General, Assignments, Predecessors and so on) to see and change its details. Save at the top of the left rail is active while there are unsaved changes. Release project at the top right is for later.

The project window, with the task grid, the green line, the task panel tabs and Save

Add the tasks

In the empty plan, select Click here to add the first task. Type Design and press Enter.
Select New task for each next task: Build, Test, Manual.
A new task starts at 1 day. Double-click its Prj. duration, type the number of days (5, 10, 5 and 5), and press Enter.

The tasks are not linked yet, so they all end on the same date.

The first task from the empty plan, then four tasks with their durations

Link the tasks

Link each task to the one it waits for.

Tick Design and Build in the grid.
Open the arrow next to Connect and choose Finish->Start, or press Ctrl+L. Build now starts when Design finishes.
Do the same for Build and Test.

Two tasks ticked, and the Connect menu

To link Manual, which runs alongside Build, use its task panel:

Select Manual, open the Predecessors tab and select Assign. The Drag & drop to task panel opens on the right, with the tasks of the project.
In that panel, select Design and choose ← Predecessor: Manual starts after Design.
Select Test and choose Successor →: Test waits for Manual.

The Predecessors tab, Assign, and the panel with Design selected

Now Design comes first, Build and Manual run side by side, and Test waits for both.

Give each task its skill

Select Design, open the Assignments tab and select Assign. The Drag & drop to task panel opens on the right, on its Skills list.
Select Designer and choose Add item(s), or double-click the skill.

The skill appears on the task with the resource LYNX-X proposes for it, and the duration shows in brackets: [5 days].

The Assignments tab, the Skills list and the skill on the task

Give the other tasks their skill the same way: Build Engineer, System Tester, Report Writer.
To choose who reports progress on a task, open the Taskmanagers tab and select Assign: the panel shows Task managers. Select the user and choose Add item(s).

The Taskmanagers tab with the task manager

Check the load

Select Res. load in the left rail of the project window. The Resource load window opens. It shows each skill's work week by week against its capacity, so you can spot an overload before you commit to dates. The red line over a skill marks its work on critical chain tasks: here Build Engineer and Designer, but not Report Writer, whose Manual task is not on the chain. Close the window with ×.

The Resource load window of the example

Add the buffers

In the toolbar above the task grid, in the CCPM group, select the first icon. The Recalculate buffers dialog opens.
Keep Insert feeding buffers, Insert milestone buffers and Insert project buffers ticked, with their sizes, and select Create buffers, then Close.
Select Save.

Two rows appear: [FB] Manual, the feeding buffer where the Manual chain joins the critical chain, and Project buffer at the end of the critical chain. After Save, every task has its ID.

Recalculate buffers, and the plan with its buffers and IDs

If LYNX-X says the project is scheduled before its start date, the end date you chose is in the past: change it in Properties > Project dates and create the buffers again.

Check the plan

Select the check icon, the last one in the CCPM group of the toolbar. CCPM compliance checks lists what it checked: a project buffer is part of the plan, every task leads to one end point, and every task has a skill or a resource. It ends with All criteria are met.

CCPM compliance checks with all criteria met

Release and run

Release it

Select Release project at the top right.
Read the message and select Release.

The project is now Released: its tasks reach your team in My activities, the project opens in Schedule view, and a Buffers column appears in the grid.

You can also release from the project's properties: select Properties in the left rail, set Status to Released on the General tab, select OK, then Save.

Release project, the message, and the released plan

Work the tasks

Whoever works on a task reports progress in Focus > My activities. As project manager you can do the same in Portfolio > Active tasks, shown here:

Go to Portfolio and open the Active tasks tab.
Select the task.
In the Update block, set Status to Started when the work begins. LYNX-X fills in the ETTC with the time the task was planned to take.
Keep the ETTC (estimated time to complete) up to date: the working time still needed to finish the task, not a percentage done.
Select Post at the top right, then Save.

A task set to Started, its ETTC, and Post

Track the project

In Portfolio > Project list, select the Released filter, then Fever in the left rail.
Set Vertical range to 100% for a closer look.

Each released project is a point. Across, the chart shows how much of the project's longest chain is complete; up, how much of its buffer is consumed. Read together, they tell you whether a project consumes its buffer faster than it progresses. The zone a point sits in says how much attention and priority the project needs: in green, the project is progressing as expected for the buffer it has used; in orange, and more so in red, it has used more buffer than its progress justifies. Use the chart to see at a glance which projects need attention first. The new project starts at the bottom left: nothing done yet and no buffer consumed.

The Project list with Released and Fever, and the fever chart

Expected outcome

You know your way around Home, Focus, Portfolio and Configuration. You have a project with linked tasks, skills, a task manager and buffers that protect its end date, released to your team. Your team updates its tasks, and you follow the project on the fever chart.

Additional information

Your next steps, by job: Learning path: Plan and release your first project, Learning path: Your first day in LYNX-X.
Why LYNX-X plans with remaining time and buffers: How LYNX-X plans your work.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	What to do
After creating buffers: "Project is scheduled before the project start date"	The project end date is in the past. Change it in Properties > Project dates, then create the buffers again.
Release project is not there	The project is already released: see Releasing a project.

Revision history

Version	Date	Author	Changes
1.0	2026-11-09	Support	New article.

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