Can Custom Fields be made to appear in "available fields"

[Dave]

Hi,
With MSProject 2002 Standard, can anyone tell me if it is possible to make
custom fields appear in the “available field†dialogue when generating
reports and in the resource usage right hand side table (right mouse button).
I have created 3 custom cost fields and want these to appear in reports etc.
I’m trying to create various spend profiles for labour and material over
time.

 

[John]

Hi,
With MSProject 2002 Standard, can anyone tell me if it is possible to make
custom fields appear in the “available field†dialogue when generating
reports and in the resource usage right hand side table (right mouse button).
I have created 3 custom cost fields and want these to appear in reports etc.
I’m trying to create various spend profiles for labour and material over
time.

Dave,
Unfortunately the answer is "no" and that is true for all versions of
Project. Many of the built-in reports and both Usage views display
time-scaled data. Project can generate time-scaled data with the
standard fields because those fields have a well defined format and data
structure and interact with other basic fields. Spare fields on the
other hand are independent and can have a wide range of format and data
structure as determined by the user. Therefore, Project has no basis for
"knowing" how to time-scale these fields.

User-defined time-scaling of spare fields CAN be done but it will
require the use of VBA and export of the data to another application
such as Excel. For example, some users need to create a time-scaled
equivalent headcount. A VBA macro can generate this data and export it
to Excel along with other basic time-scaled Project fields.

John
Project MVP

 

[Dave]

John,
Thanks for the prompt feedback. I now understand reason.
For the record I was using Project as am estimating tool to work up standard
company costs required for presentation to various review panels as part of a
process in generating a Customer Quotation. The advantage of using project
for estimating of course is that a Schedule is produced at the same time,
this has profound advantages over estimating with a spread sheet. Perhaps I
could contribute to the wish list:

Estimating is probably standard across many companies, the three basic costs
I needed to produce and created custom fields for were:

Material Cost = Cost1 = ([Fixed Cost]*C1)*[Number1]

Where:
C1 is a constant defining material handling charge
Fixed Cost is the unit material cost.
Number1 is the material quantity column

Works Cost Labour = Cost2 = [Cost]-[Fixed Cost]
NB Standard company labour rates are entered in the resource sheet

Overall Price = Cost3 = [Cost1]+([Cost2]*C2)

Where C2 is a constant defining company overhead rate. There are differenet
rates for different areas within the company.

I now have a work around in that I generate a number of identical projects
with different labour rates and putting the full material cost in the Fixed
Cost field.

It would be nice if Project had the ability for the user to create basic
custom fields where the field creation was limited to the use of just
constants such that the time-scaled data could be created.