Create custom data column and display the view based on that data?

[Hannah]

Hello MVP, I would like your support to help me to get this implemented.
I have been using Microsoft Project for a few weeks and I know it will be
doing much more for my projects that I don't know of. Here is one of the
issues with me:

The business is a manufacturing process. All my tasks are integrated into
production processes and are listed with duration, start and finish date. I'd
like to separate each product into 3 stages: SMT, to be completed, and ship.
So the people just do shipping will only see what needs to be shipped. The
people who run SMT will know the SMT stages only.

One of my thoughts is to list 3 stages of that product with additional
column indicating the type SMT, to be completed or ship. Any report or view
is to generate just the tasks involved with SMT only or Ship only.
Any help to get that idea implemented?

Thank you!
Is it possible to

 

[John]

Hello MVP, I would like your support to help me to get this implemented.
I have been using Microsoft Project for a few weeks and I know it will be
doing much more for my projects that I don't know of. Here is one of the
issues with me:

The business is a manufacturing process. All my tasks are integrated into
production processes and are listed with duration, start and finish date. I'd
like to separate each product into 3 stages: SMT, to be completed, and ship.
So the people just do shipping will only see what needs to be shipped. The
people who run SMT will know the SMT stages only.

One of my thoughts is to list 3 stages of that product with additional
column indicating the type SMT, to be completed or ship. Any report or view
is to generate just the tasks involved with SMT only or Ship only.
Any help to get that idea implemented?

Thank you!
Is it possible to

Hannah,
It might help to know what "SMT" is, and the "to be completed" phase
sounds like it could apply to any task that is not finished. I assume
you are manufacturing several items such that there is more than one
"ship" task.

Nonetheless without knowing more details you should be able to designate
some spare fields (it could be 3 flag fields or 1 text field) to
uniquely identify tasks in each of the three stages. Then apply a filter
to isolate the tasks for any given stage. For example, you could set up
3 spare flag fields with Flag1 representing SMT, Flag2 representing "to
be completed" and Flag3 representing ship items. Or, you could just use
spare Text1 and write the stage name for each task. Then filter on Flag1
for SMT tasks, or Flag2 for "to be completed" tasks, and so forth.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[Hannah]

Hi John,
Thanks for the response. Since I am not using the Project for quite long, I
am pretty brand new with the software and I do not know how to create the
flag or spare text and filter them. Would you give me instructions or link me
to the page with instruction on how to?
I did some search at Project help but it did not come out anything with flag.
My next idea is to post on the Project Server. Is the Project Server
diplayed on the Internal website from Microsoft Windows (companyweb)?
Thanks!

 

[Hannah]

Hi John, I already figured out how to display from your suggestions and
thanks so much for the hint.

My next target is to identify the tasks that are past due, any indicators in
the Calendar view to uniquely show these late tasks?

Also, do I have to install Microsoft Project Server 2003 to upload all the
tasks on our server?

Thanks for the support, MVP team!!

 

[John]

Hi John, I already figured out how to display from your suggestions and
thanks so much for the hint.

My next target is to identify the tasks that are past due, any indicators in
the Calendar view to uniquely show these late tasks?

Also, do I have to install Microsoft Project Server 2003 to upload all the
tasks on our server?

Thanks for the support, MVP team!!

Hannah,
Good, I'm glad you were able to figure out how to use spare fields and
then filter on them.

Personally I have no use for the Calendar view but some users just love
it. There is a built-in filter called "slipping tasks" that you could
apply with the Calendar view. It may or may not meet the definition you
have for "past due tasks". Go to Project/Filtered For:Slipping
Tasks/More Filters/Edit to see the criteria used for that filter. If it
meets your needs, great. If not, you could create your own filter that
defines what you mean by "past due tasks" and then apply that. You could
also set up the Gantt bar format (perhaps using the Marked field) to
show those tasks in a different color.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by, "...upload all the tasks on our
server?" If you simply mean that you want to store your Project files on
a common server, you can do that with any version of Project. Just be
aware that in order to open those files, users will need to have Project
installed locally on their desktop PC. You could also use Project Server
but that application is a rather sophisticated version and I would not
recommend it to someone who is new to Project or only uses Project on an
infrequent basis.

John
Project MVP