Crit Paths FAQ

Introduction

Why is this needed?

Critpaths is a collection of tools that will help us organize our lives.

One important tool we have is a Telegram bot. https://t.me/critpathbot

You can chat with this bot and feed it various activities you are setting out to do. You can then ask it to figure out from that set of activities which would be the ones that are on the critical path. If you do not want to use the Telegram bot -- as it may be clumsy to send commands to it using a cha interface -- you can execute the same commands from the web too: https://app.critpaths.com/commands

What is the "Critical Path" ?

When we want to reach some goal, we need to carry out some activities, right? Initially some may think that a set of different activities need to be done one after another. That may be true if you are the only person doing those activities. But if you think a bit more and especially if you have people to delegate work to, you will find that you can get a few activities to be done in parallel.

But then you also would realize that some activities can ONLY be done if some important activity earlier is completed. For example; in construction I cannot make the plinth of a building BEFORE the foundations were ready.

Hence a network diagram is used to capture how these activities are done one after another or in parallel, and which activity is dependent on which previous one, etc. It also would show how much time is allotted for each activity to be done

In that diagram, there would be one sequence of activity which weaves what is called a critical path That means the activities on that path has consumed their entire allotted time and even if any of the activity stretches out in time, it would delay the entire project.

Therefore a calculation of a critical path in a network of activities is extremely useful and is always done when managing projects.

This was inspired by this Youtube video that explains the algorithm we used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDLMs11Exs

Usage

How do I start?

Each tool we have here has its own method to start. You need not use all the tools together. The first one is a neat Telegram BOT. Just connect to https://t.me/critpathbot and just click on the /start button there

This bot accepts a set of commands. You can learn all of them in about 15 minutes. Just navigate to the commands page here and read! https://app.critpaths.com/commands/

Once you /start with the bot; it will give you an Account ID. Copy and keep that ID safe. Don't reveal that to anyone. Use that Account ID in the commands page. But if you were entering the commands in the telegram BOT itself, you need not give the ID because it will cleverly figure it out for itself.

Pricing

How do I pay?

All the tools here can be paid for using our simple "Koyns" currency. Explained below. All the tools here are charged as per usage (i.e. it is elastic!) Moreover, in most of our tools we have given ample trial Koyns too for you to try them out.

What are Koyns?

It is a term we use for the internal currency that our company uses in all our offerings. Think of it like the tokens you purchased as a kid to feed into a video game machine at a game parlour. You fed the tokens into a slot on the machine and played for sometime. To play further, you asked your parent/guardian to buy you more tokens -- and you returned back to put those into the slot. In case of the tools we provide here; you would usually give a "command" to credit your account with the Koyns you purchased.

Koyns work the same way. You can buy any number of Koyns at our payment gateway https://pages.razorpay.com/koyns Our payment gateway accepts most currencies. But final settlements are done in Indian rupees.