A way to have a custom field across time?

[Al Himler]

I have a project where there is a Task - text custom field that simply has
possible values of Red, Yellow, and Green from a Value List. The PM can then
subjectively (no formula involved) select what they deem to be the "health"
of each task.

What I've been asked to investigate as an enhancement is whether, the
"health" field can be an array (or some other structure) so that they can
change the color associated with the health on a month by month basis.

Has anybody dealt with this type of need and have any hints on how to
approach it?

Thanks,

Al

 

[John]

I have a project where there is a Task - text custom field that simply has
possible values of Red, Yellow, and Green from a Value List. The PM can then
subjectively (no formula involved) select what they deem to be the "health"
of each task.

What I've been asked to investigate as an enhancement is whether, the
"health" field can be an array (or some other structure) so that they can
change the color associated with the health on a month by month basis.

Has anybody dealt with this type of need and have any hints on how to
approach it?

Thanks,

Al

Al,
The simple answer is sure, just change the "health indicator" as the
task progresses. However it sounds like you want to change the indicator
but also retain the "health history". For that you can designate a
series of spare fields (e.g. Task Textn - one for each month) and then
fill in the data on a monthly basis. Note: there are 30 spare task text
fields.

Another option is a little more sophisticated. It might involve a VBA
macro that exports the health indicator to another application (e.g.
Excel), where it can be plotted or simply stored in a worksheet table.

John
Project MVP

 

[Al Himler]

John, thanks for the reply. Based on the fact that we are already using
about 25 of the custom text fields, and that we do want to be able to view
the history of the colors over time, I think that we need to write a script
to pull this data out. Since the projects are stored on Project Server 2003,
I think that we'll need to do this on at the Project Server level and store
the data into a table there.

Thanks,

Al

 

[John]

John, thanks for the reply. Based on the fact that we are already using
about 25 of the custom text fields, and that we do want to be able to view
the history of the colors over time, I think that we need to write a script
to pull this data out. Since the projects are stored on Project Server 2003,
I think that we'll need to do this on at the Project Server level and store
the data into a table there.

Thanks,

Al

Al,
You're welcome. Since you didn't ask an additional question, it sounds
like you know what you need to do. However if you plan to use VBA and
need additional help, please post to our sister newsgroup,
microsoft.public.project.developer. Or, if you think you can do this in
Project Server without the need for VBA but still have some questions,
please post to our sister newsgroup, microsoft.public.project.server.

John
Project MVP