You're welcome sdc. My comments are inline.
Julie
sdc said:
Thanks for the reply Julie.
I've added a couple of follow-on questions. Thanks - your help is
SOOO
appreciated!!
JulieS said:
Hello sdc,
My comments are inline.
sdc said:
I need help with 2 reports that I am working on:
1) The first report is quite simple and just lists the tasks
that
have
completed milestones. The report generates perfect, BUT I can
not
get it to
sort in order of the most recent milestones completed to the
oldest
milestones. In the section of the report where one defines
the
sort
criteria and order (ascending or descending), MPP seems to
ignore
this. The
report lists the task name (milestone) and finish date in order
of
the month
they were completed (just as I would like), but I can't get the
reverse
order. What am I doing wrong?
[Julie] I don't think you are doing anything "wrong". A couple
of
assumptions -- you are using a custom crosstab report and on the
definition tab have the "Months" period selected. I believe
using
that the months setting overrides the sort order -- it will
always
list in Jan, Feb, Mar, order. Changing the sort order to Finish
in
Descending order does sort in reverse order in within the month,
but
does not reverse the months.
[sdc] I am hoping that there is a way to show separated by month
the
completed milestones by 'reverse month' if one changes the
definition tab to
'entire project.' I can view this in reverse order, but I loose
the
break-out titles by month. Is there a way to add / modify some
programming
to get these titles back in?
[Julie] Sorry, no, not to the best of my knowledge. Have you
considered applying the filter to the Gantt chart view, sorting and
then just printing the sheet (left side) of the view?
2) I would like to create a report that shows all tasks with
predessor tasks
that are great than 1 task ID away. (I hope this makes sense.)
How can I do
this?
[Julie] This is a bit more challenging because there are several
variables in the predecessor field such as different link types,
lag
or lead, or multiple predecessors that keep the data from just
being
a simple number that you can compare to. I'll keep playing with
this one but depending upon how many tasks are in your schedule,
using one of the spare Flag fields, setting the tasks in question
to
"yes" manually, may be faster.
[sdc] I was hoping that there could be a cleaner solution, but if
a flag is
the only option that you can think of that may work - well ok.
However, this
is more "manual" that I had hoped for
) Let me know if you come
up with
any other idea.
[Julie] You can get partially there by using a custom field but if
there are multiple predecessors, it gets messier. Try putting the
following formula into a Flag field:
IIf([Predecessors]-[ID]>1, "yes", "no")
That should set the flag to "yes" for any task whose predecessor is
more than one greater than its ID. However, as I noted, you'll see
incorrect information if there are modfications to the predecessor
field (lead/lag, different link types, multiple predecessors). You
could use two Flag fields -- one with the formula to capture the
"easy" ones and use another Flag field to set manually to catch the
ones that don't work correctly. To make it easier to find the
incorrect ones, add a number field with the simple formula:
[Predecessors]-[ID] -- where you see #error is where the formula is
not working correctly.
