Custom Reports

[Colleen]

Hi, my group utilizes the information listed below for their weekly
reporting. However, they are doing this report manually by copying and
pasting from the project plan I send them into an Excel spreadsheet that has
formulas to calculate and get these results. Can you give me some tips on
custom reporting that can be automated in MS Project that would give me these
same results? It seems so manual how they are doing it now and it seems like
there must be a way to have this information in custom reports run directly
from the project plan. They have been doing this for years and no one seems
to use MS Project reports and I think there must be an easier way to automate
this. Thanks.

1) Baseline comparison calculation from Day 1-100 of project
i) 100 Day % Complete
ii) Baseline % Complete today
iii) Actual % complete today
iv) Variance
v) Work last week
vi) Actual Work
vii) Remaing Work
2) Lagging Tasks This Week vs. Last Week
3) Upcoming Tasks This Week vs. Last Week

 

[John]

Hi, my group utilizes the information listed below for their weekly
reporting. However, they are doing this report manually by copying and
pasting from the project plan I send them into an Excel spreadsheet that has
formulas to calculate and get these results. Can you give me some tips on
custom reporting that can be automated in MS Project that would give me these
same results? It seems so manual how they are doing it now and it seems like
there must be a way to have this information in custom reports run directly
from the project plan. They have been doing this for years and no one seems
to use MS Project reports and I think there must be an easier way to automate
this. Thanks.

1) Baseline comparison calculation from Day 1-100 of project
i) 100 Day % Complete
ii) Baseline % Complete today
iii) Actual % complete today
iv) Variance
v) Work last week
vi) Actual Work
vii) Remaing Work
2) Lagging Tasks This Week vs. Last Week
3) Upcoming Tasks This Week vs. Last Week

Coleen,
It looks like you are using the timescaled data from the Resource or
Task Usage views. There is a built-in utility called "Analyze timescaled
data in Excel" that might help. It can be found on the Analysis toolbar
and will export timescaled data. You will still have to do some
manipulation of the data once it is in Excel and the export will be a
little different depending on which view is active when the export is
initiated.

If you are willing to learn some VBA or hire someone to write some code
for you, the whole process can be fully automated. This method has the
most flexibility and can be structured to give any format you need, all
with the "push of a button".

Project 2007 has added some needed flexibility with its Visual Reports
feature. You might want to read more about it on Microsoft's Project
website.

The bottom line is, yes, there are much better ways than copy and paste
to prepare your reports.

John
Project MVP

 

[Tim Peterson]

It's suprising that earlier versions of MS Project do not have better custom
report buiding tools, especially considering custom reporting is generally
needed for database applications. If you have someone in your company who
knows MS Access, you can save the Project file as a database (MDB or MPD
file), process data and create reports without extensive knowledge of VBA.
Regardless whether you choose VBA or Access, an understanding of the database
format (projdb.htm) will help.