Customising Gantt Bar appearances based on milestone they fall in

[Nifta]

I have four milestones dates defined for my project.

I'd like to have some way of displaying which milestone a task is completed
during.

My preferred way would be to change the colour of the Gantt bar (or the task
name) depending upon which Milestone it completes during.

I have no idea how to do this (I'm very new to Project)

Any help appreciated

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Not sure I follow, but a variation of this (somewhat older blog post) might
be appropriate.

http://evildoctorporkchop.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!88E61D218103A246!1431.entry

 

[Nifta]

Thanks Andrew. Your post give useful info, but it's not quite what I'm
looking for.

Let's imagine I have four phases on my project. The phases are just a range
of dates, e.g Phase 1 = Feb 10 - Feb 20, Phase 2 = Feb 21- March 10th etc.
etc.

At the moment I have these phases shown as sequential zero-day-task
milestones (using the Phase end-date as the Milestone date)

I have all of my tasks entered into my Project file, each with an end date.

What I want to do is have some graphical means of representing which Phase
each of the tasks concludes during. i.e. if a task concludes on Feb 16th
it'll appear in some way that shows that it's delivered in Phase 1 (Maybe its
gantt bar is shown green, disintuishing it Phase 2 tasks that might be
coloured red).

Basically, I want some way of scanning quickly through the task list and
seeing which Phase each task is concluded during, without the need to look at
each end date.

The link you sent gives me a way to manually associated each task with a
phase. I want to do the reverse, where each task becomes associated with a
phase (by nature of its end date).

Hope that this clarifies things.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

If that's the case, what I would do is create a flag field for each phase of
the project. Call them Phase I, Phase II, etc. Then go through and manually
set the flags to yes for the appropriate tasks.

The Gantt Chart bars can be controlled using the flag field. Right click on
the Gantt Chart, select Bar Styles, and take a look at how it is set up. You
should see a "Normal" task. Take that and copy it a couple of times, then
change the color for each new item, and set the criteria to:

Normal, Flag1
Normal, Flag2...

For each flag field you set out in your phase structure.

Does that work for you?

 

[Nifta]

Thanks Andrew, that's useful info, but I wanted to kind of do the reverse of
that.
Your method would allow me to assign tasks to a phase, which would be great
if I had a desired set of deliverables for each phase.

What I want to do is to have Project tell me which phase each task gets
delivered during (i.e. it scans through the tasks, looking at each one's
completion-date, and flags it with a colour based on the phase it falls
under).

There isn't a desired set of deliverables for each phase (so I don't want to
assign each task to a phase). Each phase is just a period of time and I want
to easily see what gets delivered during each phase.


Things I'd like to be able to do once this was in place;
Change the date range of the phases and easily see what effect that has on
the deliverables for each phase.

Change the task order and easily see how that effects what gets delivered in
each phase.

I hope that makes sense

 

[Rob Schneider]

I think I know what you are asking for; what puzzles me why you need this?

In any event ...

Since there are no deliverables in a phases phases seem to be only
blocks of time on the calendar, picking upon Andrew's idea you could
write a formula for a custom field that does something like (this is
psuedo code -- convert to VBA):

if ( 1/1/2010 < [FINISH] < 2/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="A" else
if ( 2/15/2010 < [FINISH] < 4/20/2010 ) then [PHASE]="B" else
if ( 4/20/2010 < [FINISH] < 6/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="C" endif

Display the computed field ... could even then group by this field for
more visualisation of the information.

You could pick another data field than [FINISH] in case you are checking
against another date, e.g. one of the milestone dates or something.

What you are doing is not something that is faciliated by the built-in
tools of Project as it's probably an unusual way of looking at the plan.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

I agree with Rob, unless you're doing some kind of Agile methodology where
we're trying to map deliverables to timeboxes, developing Phases without
defined deliverables doesn't make much sense. Even the PMBOK defines phases
as "A series of related tasks usually culminating in the creation of a major
deliverable."

So in this case, I would more or less follow Rob's suggestion, which is to
modify the flag fields we discussed previously to flag only if the Finish
date is greater than a specific Phase I start date, or less than a Phase
1 finish date.

You'd probably have to hard code the dates into the formula unless you want
to use cross task links (i.e. the paste-special-link function) which I would
only recommend for single tasks - not for every task in the schedule. If
you had Project Server, I think you could use project level fields to capture
the phase dates, and then refer to them in the task level formulas.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

I think I know what you are asking for; what puzzles me why you need
this?

In any event ...

Since there are no deliverables in a phases phases seem to be only
blocks of time on the calendar, picking upon Andrew's idea you could
write a formula for a custom field that does something like (this is
psuedo code -- convert to VBA):

if ( 1/1/2010 < [FINISH] < 2/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="A" else if (
2/15/2010 < [FINISH] < 4/20/2010 ) then [PHASE]="B" else if (
4/20/2010 < [FINISH] < 6/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="C" endif

Display the computed field ... could even then group by this field for
more visualisation of the information.

You could pick another data field than [FINISH] in case you are
checking against another date, e.g. one of the milestone dates or
something.

What you are doing is not something that is faciliated by the built-in
tools of Project as it's probably an unusual way of looking at the
plan.

--rms

www.rmschneider.com

Thanks Andrew, that's useful info, but I wanted to kind of do the
reverse of
that.
Your method would allow me to assign tasks to a phase, which would be
great
if I had a desired set of deliverables for each phase.
What I want to do is to have Project tell me which phase each task
gets delivered during (i.e. it scans through the tasks, looking at
each one's completion-date, and flags it with a colour based on the
phase it falls under).

There isn't a desired set of deliverables for each phase (so I don't
want to assign each task to a phase). Each phase is just a period of
time and I want to easily see what gets delivered during each phase.

Things I'd like to be able to do once this was in place;
Change the date range of the phases and easily see what effect that
has on
the deliverables for each phase.
Change the task order and easily see how that effects what gets
delivered in each phase.

I hope that makes sense

 

[Nifta]

Thanks Rob, this is exactly what I'm looking for.

I know it's an odd way of doing things, and it's frustrating. I'm inheriting
an old mpp that's not arranged in a nice way (but I've no time to recreate
it, especially as I'm new to this package), plus the requests I'm receiving
aren't really examples from the 'good practice for project management' book!
I've been given some dates that I need to make deliveries at and I need to
know what can be done by that time.

Thanks for the pseudo code. Are you (or anybody else) able to give me some
pointers on how this should be converted into Project formulae? I afraid I
really am a hopeless noob when it comes to this. (I'm using Project 2007 if
that makes a difference).

I think I know what you are asking for; what puzzles me why you need this?

In any event ...

Since there are no deliverables in a phases phases seem to be only
blocks of time on the calendar, picking upon Andrew's idea you could
write a formula for a custom field that does something like (this is
psuedo code -- convert to VBA):

if ( 1/1/2010 < [FINISH] < 2/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="A" else
if ( 2/15/2010 < [FINISH] < 4/20/2010 ) then [PHASE]="B" else
if ( 4/20/2010 < [FINISH] < 6/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="C" endif

Display the computed field ... could even then group by this field for
more visualisation of the information.

You could pick another data field than [FINISH] in case you are checking
against another date, e.g. one of the milestone dates or something.

What you are doing is not something that is faciliated by the built-in
tools of Project as it's probably an unusual way of looking at the plan.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

Thanks Andrew, that's useful info, but I wanted to kind of do the reverse of
that.
Your method would allow me to assign tasks to a phase, which would be great
if I had a desired set of deliverables for each phase.

What I want to do is to have Project tell me which phase each task gets
delivered during (i.e. it scans through the tasks, looking at each one's
completion-date, and flags it with a colour based on the phase it falls
under).

There isn't a desired set of deliverables for each phase (so I don't want to
assign each task to a phase). Each phase is just a period of time and I want
to easily see what gets delivered during each phase.


Things I'd like to be able to do once this was in place;
Change the date range of the phases and easily see what effect that has on
the deliverables for each phase.

Change the task order and easily see how that effects what gets delivered in
each phase.

I hope that makes sense

.

 

[Nifta]

Thanks again for replying Andrew. Are you able to give me any pointers as to
how Rob's formula should look in Project? I've found where to enter formulae,
but don't know the function names and the syntax for Project formulae at all.
I realise that's a big ask, but I'm really up against it from a timescale
point of view and will have to go do my learning later. Many thanks for any
help that anyone can offer

I agree with Rob, unless you're doing some kind of Agile methodology where
we're trying to map deliverables to timeboxes, developing Phases without
defined deliverables doesn't make much sense. Even the PMBOK defines phases
as "A series of related tasks usually culminating in the creation of a major
deliverable."

So in this case, I would more or less follow Rob's suggestion, which is to
modify the flag fields we discussed previously to flag only if the Finish
date is greater than a specific Phase I start date, or less than a Phase
1 finish date.

You'd probably have to hard code the dates into the formula unless you want
to use cross task links (i.e. the paste-special-link function) which I would
only recommend for single tasks - not for every task in the schedule. If
you had Project Server, I think you could use project level fields to capture
the phase dates, and then refer to them in the task level formulas.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

I think I know what you are asking for; what puzzles me why you need
this?

In any event ...

Since there are no deliverables in a phases phases seem to be only
blocks of time on the calendar, picking upon Andrew's idea you could
write a formula for a custom field that does something like (this is
psuedo code -- convert to VBA):

if ( 1/1/2010 < [FINISH] < 2/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="A" else if (
2/15/2010 < [FINISH] < 4/20/2010 ) then [PHASE]="B" else if (
4/20/2010 < [FINISH] < 6/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="C" endif

Display the computed field ... could even then group by this field for
more visualisation of the information.

You could pick another data field than [FINISH] in case you are
checking against another date, e.g. one of the milestone dates or
something.

What you are doing is not something that is faciliated by the built-in
tools of Project as it's probably an unusual way of looking at the
plan.

--rms

www.rmschneider.com

Thanks Andrew, that's useful info, but I wanted to kind of do the
reverse of
that.
Your method would allow me to assign tasks to a phase, which would be
great
if I had a desired set of deliverables for each phase.
What I want to do is to have Project tell me which phase each task
gets delivered during (i.e. it scans through the tasks, looking at
each one's completion-date, and flags it with a colour based on the
phase it falls under).

There isn't a desired set of deliverables for each phase (so I don't
want to assign each task to a phase). Each phase is just a period of
time and I want to easily see what gets delivered during each phase.

Things I'd like to be able to do once this was in place;
Change the date range of the phases and easily see what effect that
has on
the deliverables for each phase.
Change the task order and easily see how that effects what gets
delivered in each phase.

I hope that makes sense

:

If that's the case, what I would do is create a flag field for each
phase of the project. Call them Phase I, Phase II, etc. Then go
through and manually set the flags to yes for the appropriate tasks.

The Gantt Chart bars can be controlled using the flag field. Right
click on the Gantt Chart, select Bar Styles, and take a look at how
it is set up. You should see a "Normal" task. Take that and copy
it a couple of times, then change the color for each new item, and
set the criteria to:

Normal, Flag1
Normal, Flag2...
For each flag field you set out in your phase structure.

Does that work for you?

:

Thanks Andrew. Your post give useful info, but it's not quite what
I'm looking for.

Let's imagine I have four phases on my project. The phases are just
a range of dates, e.g Phase 1 = Feb 10 - Feb 20, Phase 2 = Feb 21-
March 10th etc. etc.

At the moment I have these phases shown as sequential zero-day-task
milestones (using the Phase end-date as the Milestone date)

I have all of my tasks entered into my Project file, each with an
end date.

What I want to do is have some graphical means of representing
which Phase each of the tasks concludes during. i.e. if a task
concludes on Feb 16th it'll appear in some way that shows that it's
delivered in Phase 1 (Maybe its gantt bar is shown green,
disintuishing it Phase 2 tasks that might be coloured red).

Basically, I want some way of scanning quickly through the task
list and seeing which Phase each task is concluded during, without
the need to look at each end date.

The link you sent gives me a way to manually associated each task
with a phase. I want to do the reverse, where each task becomes
associated with a phase (by nature of its end date).

Hope that this clarifies things.

:

Not sure I follow, but a variation of this (somewhat older blog
post) might be appropriate.

http://evildoctorporkchop.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!88E61D218103A24
6!1431.entry

:

I have four milestones dates defined for my project.

I'd like to have some way of displaying which milestone a task is
completed during.

My preferred way would be to change the colour of the Gantt bar
(or the task name) depending upon which Milestone it completes
during.

I have no idea how to do this (I'm very new to Project)

Any help appreciated

.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

This will work for the Flag fields:

IIf([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/11"),No,IIf([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/10"),Yes,No))

Note that I used 1/1/10 for the phase start and 1/1/11 for the phase end.
Sub in whatever dates make sense for each phase.

Then you'll want to sort out if you need to color code the summary tasks
as well. I'd also point out that this uses the Finish field and not the
Baseline Finish field - which would be the original target date for the phase.
You may wish to consider swapping Finish out with Baseline Finish.

Hope that helps.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

Thanks again for replying Andrew. Are you able to give me any pointers
as to how Rob's formula should look in Project? I've found where to
enter formulae, but don't know the function names and the syntax for
Project formulae at all. I realise that's a big ask, but I'm really up
against it from a timescale point of view and will have to go do my
learning later. Many thanks for any help that anyone can offer

I agree with Rob, unless you're doing some kind of Agile methodology
where we're trying to map deliverables to timeboxes, developing
Phases without defined deliverables doesn't make much sense. Even
the PMBOK defines phases as "A series of related tasks usually
culminating in the creation of a major deliverable."

So in this case, I would more or less follow Rob's suggestion, which
is to modify the flag fields we discussed previously to flag only if
the Finish date is greater than a specific Phase I start date, or
less than a Phase 1 finish date.

You'd probably have to hard code the dates into the formula unless
you want to use cross task links (i.e. the paste-special-link
function) which I would only recommend for single tasks - not for
every task in the schedule. If you had Project Server, I think you
could use project level fields to capture the phase dates, and then
refer to them in the task level formulas.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

I think I know what you are asking for; what puzzles me why you need
this?

In any event ...

Since there are no deliverables in a phases phases seem to be only
blocks of time on the calendar, picking upon Andrew's idea you could
write a formula for a custom field that does something like (this is
psuedo code -- convert to VBA):

if ( 1/1/2010 < [FINISH] < 2/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="A" else if (
2/15/2010 < [FINISH] < 4/20/2010 ) then [PHASE]="B" else if (
4/20/2010 < [FINISH] < 6/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="C" endif

Display the computed field ... could even then group by this field
for more visualisation of the information.

You could pick another data field than [FINISH] in case you are
checking against another date, e.g. one of the milestone dates or
something.

What you are doing is not something that is faciliated by the
built-in tools of Project as it's probably an unusual way of looking
at the plan.

--rms

www.rmschneider.com

On 17/01/10 14:58, Nifta wrote:

Thanks Andrew, that's useful info, but I wanted to kind of do the
reverse of
that.
Your method would allow me to assign tasks to a phase, which would
be
great
if I had a desired set of deliverables for each phase.
What I want to do is to have Project tell me which phase each task
gets delivered during (i.e. it scans through the tasks, looking at
each one's completion-date, and flags it with a colour based on the
phase it falls under).
There isn't a desired set of deliverables for each phase (so I
don't want to assign each task to a phase). Each phase is just a
period of time and I want to easily see what gets delivered during
each phase.

Things I'd like to be able to do once this was in place;
Change the date range of the phases and easily see what effect that
has on
the deliverables for each phase.
Change the task order and easily see how that effects what gets
delivered in each phase.
I hope that makes sense

:

If that's the case, what I would do is create a flag field for
each phase of the project. Call them Phase I, Phase II, etc.
Then go through and manually set the flags to yes for the
appropriate tasks.

The Gantt Chart bars can be controlled using the flag field.
Right click on the Gantt Chart, select Bar Styles, and take a look
at how it is set up. You should see a "Normal" task. Take that
and copy it a couple of times, then change the color for each new
item, and set the criteria to:

Normal, Flag1
Normal, Flag2...
For each flag field you set out in your phase structure.
Does that work for you?

:

Thanks Andrew. Your post give useful info, but it's not quite
what I'm looking for.

Let's imagine I have four phases on my project. The phases are
just a range of dates, e.g Phase 1 = Feb 10 - Feb 20, Phase 2 =
Feb 21- March 10th etc. etc.

At the moment I have these phases shown as sequential
zero-day-task milestones (using the Phase end-date as the
Milestone date)

I have all of my tasks entered into my Project file, each with an
end date.

What I want to do is have some graphical means of representing
which Phase each of the tasks concludes during. i.e. if a task
concludes on Feb 16th it'll appear in some way that shows that
it's delivered in Phase 1 (Maybe its gantt bar is shown green,
disintuishing it Phase 2 tasks that might be coloured red).

Basically, I want some way of scanning quickly through the task
list and seeing which Phase each task is concluded during,
without the need to look at each end date.

The link you sent gives me a way to manually associated each task
with a phase. I want to do the reverse, where each task becomes
associated with a phase (by nature of its end date).

Hope that this clarifies things.

:

Not sure I follow, but a variation of this (somewhat older blog
post) might be appropriate.

http://evildoctorporkchop.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!88E61D218103A
24 6!1431.entry

:

I have four milestones dates defined for my project.

I'd like to have some way of displaying which milestone a task
is completed during.

My preferred way would be to change the colour of the Gantt bar
(or the task name) depending upon which Milestone it completes
during.

I have no idea how to do this (I'm very new to Project)

Any help appreciated

.

 

[Rob Schneider]

I took Andrew's fine code and tweaked it to assign to Task Text Field 1
which you can rename to "Phase". It is testing the [Finish] date, but
as Andrew also says, other dates may be more appropriate for your need.
I have three phases defined. Put in as many as you want, starting
with the farthest out first and the moving back in time.

IIf([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/12"),"Phase
C",Iif([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/11"),"Phase
B",IIf([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/10"),"Phase A")))

You will get an interesting visualisation of the project if you group by
this new field.

You say that your problem is to "know what can be done by that time".
To do that, it may be prudent to forget about all this phasing
computations and instead take the time now build a good schedule and
plans so as to increase the odds that you can actually do the "what" and
do it "on time". Or even better, use the schedule developed now to help
you understand which "whats" are not likely to be done "on time" based
on the current thinking.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

Thanks Rob, this is exactly what I'm looking for.

I know it's an odd way of doing things, and it's frustrating. I'm inheriting
an old mpp that's not arranged in a nice way (but I've no time to recreate
it, especially as I'm new to this package), plus the requests I'm receiving
aren't really examples from the 'good practice for project management' book!
I've been given some dates that I need to make deliveries at and I need to
know what can be done by that time.

Thanks for the pseudo code. Are you (or anybody else) able to give me some
pointers on how this should be converted into Project formulae? I afraid I
really am a hopeless noob when it comes to this. (I'm using Project 2007 if
that makes a difference).

I think I know what you are asking for; what puzzles me why you need this?

In any event ...

Since there are no deliverables in a phases phases seem to be only
blocks of time on the calendar, picking upon Andrew's idea you could
write a formula for a custom field that does something like (this is
psuedo code -- convert to VBA):

if ( 1/1/2010< [FINISH]< 2/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="A" else
if ( 2/15/2010< [FINISH]< 4/20/2010 ) then [PHASE]="B" else
if ( 4/20/2010< [FINISH]< 6/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="C" endif

Display the computed field ... could even then group by this field for
more visualisation of the information.

You could pick another data field than [FINISH] in case you are checking
against another date, e.g. one of the milestone dates or something.

What you are doing is not something that is faciliated by the built-in
tools of Project as it's probably an unusual way of looking at the plan.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

Thanks Andrew, that's useful info, but I wanted to kind of do the reverse of
that.
Your method would allow me to assign tasks to a phase, which would be great
if I had a desired set of deliverables for each phase.

What I want to do is to have Project tell me which phase each task gets
delivered during (i.e. it scans through the tasks, looking at each one's
completion-date, and flags it with a colour based on the phase it falls
under).

There isn't a desired set of deliverables for each phase (so I don't want to
assign each task to a phase). Each phase is just a period of time and I want
to easily see what gets delivered during each phase.


Things I'd like to be able to do once this was in place;
Change the date range of the phases and easily see what effect that has on
the deliverables for each phase.

Change the task order and easily see how that effects what gets delivered in
each phase.

I hope that makes sense



:

If that's the case, what I would do is create a flag field for each phase of
the project. Call them Phase I, Phase II, etc. Then go through and manually
set the flags to yes for the appropriate tasks.

The Gantt Chart bars can be controlled using the flag field. Right click on
the Gantt Chart, select Bar Styles, and take a look at how it is set up. You
should see a "Normal" task. Take that and copy it a couple of times, then
change the color for each new item, and set the criteria to:

Normal, Flag1
Normal, Flag2...

For each flag field you set out in your phase structure.

Does that work for you?

:


Thanks Andrew. Your post give useful info, but it's not quite what I'm
looking for.

Let's imagine I have four phases on my project. The phases are just a range
of dates, e.g Phase 1 = Feb 10 - Feb 20, Phase 2 = Feb 21- March 10th etc.
etc.

At the moment I have these phases shown as sequential zero-day-task
milestones (using the Phase end-date as the Milestone date)

I have all of my tasks entered into my Project file, each with an end date.

What I want to do is have some graphical means of representing which Phase
each of the tasks concludes during. i.e. if a task concludes on Feb 16th
it'll appear in some way that shows that it's delivered in Phase 1 (Maybe its
gantt bar is shown green, disintuishing it Phase 2 tasks that might be
coloured red).

Basically, I want some way of scanning quickly through the task list and
seeing which Phase each task is concluded during, without the need to look at
each end date.

The link you sent gives me a way to manually associated each task with a
phase. I want to do the reverse, where each task becomes associated with a
phase (by nature of its end date).

Hope that this clarifies things.




:

Not sure I follow, but a variation of this (somewhat older blog post) might
be appropriate.

http://evildoctorporkchop.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!88E61D218103A246!1431.entry

:

I have four milestones dates defined for my project.

I'd like to have some way of displaying which milestone a task is completed
during.

My preferred way would be to change the colour of the Gantt bar (or the task
name) depending upon which Milestone it completes during.

I have no idea how to do this (I'm very new to Project)

Any help appreciated

.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

From one ex-Buckeye to another ex-Buckeye, good collaboratin' with you....


- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

I took Andrew's fine code and tweaked it to assign to Task Text Field
1
which you can rename to "Phase". It is testing the [Finish] date, but
as Andrew also says, other dates may be more appropriate for your
need.
I have three phases defined. Put in as many as you want, starting
with the farthest out first and the moving back in time.
IIf([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/12"),"Phase
C",Iif([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/11"),"Phase
B",IIf([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/10"),"Phase A")))

You will get an interesting visualisation of the project if you group
by this new field.

You say that your problem is to "know what can be done by that time".
To do that, it may be prudent to forget about all this phasing
computations and instead take the time now build a good schedule and
plans so as to increase the odds that you can actually do the "what"
and do it "on time". Or even better, use the schedule developed now
to help you understand which "whats" are not likely to be done "on
time" based on the current thinking.

--rms

www.rmschneider.com

Thanks Rob, this is exactly what I'm looking for.

I know it's an odd way of doing things, and it's frustrating. I'm
inheriting an old mpp that's not arranged in a nice way (but I've no
time to recreate it, especially as I'm new to this package), plus the
requests I'm receiving aren't really examples from the 'good practice
for project management' book! I've been given some dates that I need
to make deliveries at and I need to know what can be done by that
time.

Thanks for the pseudo code. Are you (or anybody else) able to give me
some pointers on how this should be converted into Project formulae?
I afraid I really am a hopeless noob when it comes to this. (I'm
using Project 2007 if that makes a difference).

I think I know what you are asking for; what puzzles me why you need
this?

In any event ...

Since there are no deliverables in a phases phases seem to be only
blocks of time on the calendar, picking upon Andrew's idea you could
write a formula for a custom field that does something like (this is
psuedo code -- convert to VBA):

if ( 1/1/2010< [FINISH]< 2/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="A" else if (
2/15/2010< [FINISH]< 4/20/2010 ) then [PHASE]="B" else if (
4/20/2010< [FINISH]< 6/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="C" endif

Display the computed field ... could even then group by this field
for more visualisation of the information.

You could pick another data field than [FINISH] in case you are
checking against another date, e.g. one of the milestone dates or
something.

What you are doing is not something that is faciliated by the
built-in tools of Project as it's probably an unusual way of looking
at the plan.

--rms

www.rmschneider.com

On 17/01/10 14:58, Nifta wrote:

Thanks Andrew, that's useful info, but I wanted to kind of do the
reverse of
that.
Your method would allow me to assign tasks to a phase, which would
be great
if I had a desired set of deliverables for each phase.
What I want to do is to have Project tell me which phase each task
gets delivered during (i.e. it scans through the tasks, looking at
each one's completion-date, and flags it with a colour based on the
phase it falls under).

There isn't a desired set of deliverables for each phase (so I
don't want to assign each task to a phase). Each phase is just a
period of time and I want to easily see what gets delivered during
each phase.

Things I'd like to be able to do once this was in place;
Change the date range of the phases and easily see what effect that
has on
the deliverables for each phase.
Change the task order and easily see how that effects what gets
delivered in each phase.

I hope that makes sense

:

If that's the case, what I would do is create a flag field for
each phase of the project. Call them Phase I, Phase II, etc.
Then go through and manually set the flags to yes for the
appropriate tasks.

The Gantt Chart bars can be controlled using the flag field.
Right click on the Gantt Chart, select Bar Styles, and take a look
at how it is set up. You should see a "Normal" task. Take that
and copy it a couple of times, then change the color for each new
item, and set the criteria to:

Normal, Flag1
Normal, Flag2...
For each flag field you set out in your phase structure.

Does that work for you?

:

Thanks Andrew. Your post give useful info, but it's not quite
what I'm looking for.

Let's imagine I have four phases on my project. The phases are
just a range of dates, e.g Phase 1 = Feb 10 - Feb 20, Phase 2 =
Feb 21- March 10th etc. etc.

At the moment I have these phases shown as sequential
zero-day-task milestones (using the Phase end-date as the
Milestone date)

I have all of my tasks entered into my Project file, each with an
end date.

What I want to do is have some graphical means of representing
which Phase each of the tasks concludes during. i.e. if a task
concludes on Feb 16th it'll appear in some way that shows that
it's delivered in Phase 1 (Maybe its gantt bar is shown green,
disintuishing it Phase 2 tasks that might be coloured red).

Basically, I want some way of scanning quickly through the task
list and seeing which Phase each task is concluded during,
without the need to look at each end date.

The link you sent gives me a way to manually associated each task
with a phase. I want to do the reverse, where each task becomes
associated with a phase (by nature of its end date).

Hope that this clarifies things.

:

Not sure I follow, but a variation of this (somewhat older blog
post) might be appropriate.

http://evildoctorporkchop.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!88E61D218103A
246!1431.entry

:

I have four milestones dates defined for my project.

I'd like to have some way of displaying which milestone a task
is completed during.

My preferred way would be to change the colour of the Gantt bar
(or the task name) depending upon which Milestone it completes
during.

I have no idea how to do this (I'm very new to Project)

Any help appreciated

.

 

[Nifta]

Many thanks Andrew, you've been a big help (and you too Rob!)

This will work for the Flag fields:

IIf([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/11"),No,IIf([Finish]>ProjDateValue("1/1/10"),Yes,No))

Note that I used 1/1/10 for the phase start and 1/1/11 for the phase end.
Sub in whatever dates make sense for each phase.

Then you'll want to sort out if you need to color code the summary tasks
as well. I'd also point out that this uses the Finish field and not the
Baseline Finish field - which would be the original target date for the phase.
You may wish to consider swapping Finish out with Baseline Finish.

Hope that helps.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

Thanks again for replying Andrew. Are you able to give me any pointers
as to how Rob's formula should look in Project? I've found where to
enter formulae, but don't know the function names and the syntax for
Project formulae at all. I realise that's a big ask, but I'm really up
against it from a timescale point of view and will have to go do my
learning later. Many thanks for any help that anyone can offer

I agree with Rob, unless you're doing some kind of Agile methodology
where we're trying to map deliverables to timeboxes, developing
Phases without defined deliverables doesn't make much sense. Even
the PMBOK defines phases as "A series of related tasks usually
culminating in the creation of a major deliverable."

So in this case, I would more or less follow Rob's suggestion, which
is to modify the flag fields we discussed previously to flag only if
the Finish date is greater than a specific Phase I start date, or
less than a Phase 1 finish date.

You'd probably have to hard code the dates into the formula unless
you want to use cross task links (i.e. the paste-special-link
function) which I would only recommend for single tasks - not for
every task in the schedule. If you had Project Server, I think you
could use project level fields to capture the phase dates, and then
refer to them in the task level formulas.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm
I think I know what you are asking for; what puzzles me why you need
this?

In any event ...

Since there are no deliverables in a phases phases seem to be only
blocks of time on the calendar, picking upon Andrew's idea you could
write a formula for a custom field that does something like (this is
psuedo code -- convert to VBA):

if ( 1/1/2010 < [FINISH] < 2/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="A" else if (
2/15/2010 < [FINISH] < 4/20/2010 ) then [PHASE]="B" else if (
4/20/2010 < [FINISH] < 6/15/2010 ) then [PHASE]="C" endif

Display the computed field ... could even then group by this field
for more visualisation of the information.

You could pick another data field than [FINISH] in case you are
checking against another date, e.g. one of the milestone dates or
something.

What you are doing is not something that is faciliated by the
built-in tools of Project as it's probably an unusual way of looking
at the plan.

--rms

www.rmschneider.com

On 17/01/10 14:58, Nifta wrote:

Thanks Andrew, that's useful info, but I wanted to kind of do the
reverse of
that.
Your method would allow me to assign tasks to a phase, which would
be
great
if I had a desired set of deliverables for each phase.
What I want to do is to have Project tell me which phase each task
gets delivered during (i.e. it scans through the tasks, looking at
each one's completion-date, and flags it with a colour based on the
phase it falls under).
There isn't a desired set of deliverables for each phase (so I
don't want to assign each task to a phase). Each phase is just a
period of time and I want to easily see what gets delivered during
each phase.

Things I'd like to be able to do once this was in place;
Change the date range of the phases and easily see what effect that
has on
the deliverables for each phase.
Change the task order and easily see how that effects what gets
delivered in each phase.
I hope that makes sense

:

If that's the case, what I would do is create a flag field for
each phase of the project. Call them Phase I, Phase II, etc.
Then go through and manually set the flags to yes for the
appropriate tasks.

The Gantt Chart bars can be controlled using the flag field.
Right click on the Gantt Chart, select Bar Styles, and take a look
at how it is set up. You should see a "Normal" task. Take that
and copy it a couple of times, then change the color for each new
item, and set the criteria to:

Normal, Flag1
Normal, Flag2...
For each flag field you set out in your phase structure.
Does that work for you?

:

Thanks Andrew. Your post give useful info, but it's not quite
what I'm looking for.

Let's imagine I have four phases on my project. The phases are
just a range of dates, e.g Phase 1 = Feb 10 - Feb 20, Phase 2 =
Feb 21- March 10th etc. etc.

At the moment I have these phases shown as sequential
zero-day-task milestones (using the Phase end-date as the
Milestone date)

I have all of my tasks entered into my Project file, each with an
end date.

What I want to do is have some graphical means of representing
which Phase each of the tasks concludes during. i.e. if a task
concludes on Feb 16th it'll appear in some way that shows that
it's delivered in Phase 1 (Maybe its gantt bar is shown green,
disintuishing it Phase 2 tasks that might be coloured red).

Basically, I want some way of scanning quickly through the task
list and seeing which Phase each task is concluded during,
without the need to look at each end date.

The link you sent gives me a way to manually associated each task
with a phase. I want to do the reverse, where each task becomes
associated with a phase (by nature of its end date).

Hope that this clarifies things.

:

Not sure I follow, but a variation of this (somewhat older blog
post) might be appropriate.

http://evildoctorporkchop.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!88E61D218103A
24 6!1431.entry

:

I have four milestones dates defined for my project.

I'd like to have some way of displaying which milestone a task
is completed during.

My preferred way would be to change the colour of the Gantt bar
(or the task name) depending upon which Milestone it completes
during.

I have no idea how to do this (I'm very new to Project)

Any help appreciated

.

.