Master plan reports

[Magda]

Hello,

I've created a master plan, inserted projects, created a resource pool, and
it's all rocking. Now I'm trying to generate meaningful reports for my team
leads and my manager. What I'm looking for is an easy, visual way for
displaying tasks by group (all resources have been assigned to a group in the
resource pool file). I'd like to do this in the calendar view, as that would
be easiest for a quick view. I find the calendar view very limiting (is there
a way of forcing ms project to show all tasks in the calendar view, no matter
how cramped they are?).
If there is a better way of showing tasks by group, please let me know.

Thank you!

 

[John]

Hello,

I've created a master plan, inserted projects, created a resource pool, and
it's all rocking. Now I'm trying to generate meaningful reports for my team
leads and my manager. What I'm looking for is an easy, visual way for
displaying tasks by group (all resources have been assigned to a group in the
resource pool file). I'd like to do this in the calendar view, as that would
be easiest for a quick view. I find the calendar view very limiting (is there
a way of forcing ms project to show all tasks in the calendar view, no matter
how cramped they are?).
If there is a better way of showing tasks by group, please let me know.

Thank you!

Magda,
OK, here's a dumb question. If the Calendar view could be "forced" to
show all tasks, no matter how cramped, how can that be easiest for a
quick view? That's the main reason I never use the Calendar view. It may
look familiar to those used to seeing the calendar on their wall or
desk, but for Project Management, the Calendar view is not the way to go.

There are several built-in reports under View/Reports although I'm more
of a proponent of creating desired reports by customizing Project's
basic views or if necessary, using VBA to export the data to another
application (e.g. Excel), where there is much more flexibility for
manipulating and formatting data.

Project's Grouping feature (Project/Group By) can also be very useful
for grouping data for reports. Then of course there is also basic
filtering that can be very useful.

There are many options for getting the data you need for reports, but in
my opinion, the Calendar view ain't one of them.

John
Project MVP

 

[Magda]

hehe... I agree, the calendar view is not useful for me (PM), ghantt charts
are preferred. but my team leads are not PMs and I'd like to produce
something easy for them to follow (ghantts aren't).

i find the pre-set reports to be quite useless, for eg. who-does-what-when
report groups tasks by a resource but it fails to identify the project that
the tasks belongs to. is there a way to customize the view to achieve that?

Thanks for your answer John!

 

[John]

hehe... I agree, the calendar view is not useful for me (PM), ghantt charts
are preferred. but my team leads are not PMs and I'd like to produce
something easy for them to follow (ghantts aren't).

i find the pre-set reports to be quite useless, for eg. who-does-what-when
report groups tasks by a resource but it fails to identify the project that
the tasks belongs to. is there a way to customize the view to achieve that?

Thanks for your answer John!

Magda,
Just a suggestion. If the team leads are going to be managing their
stake in the overall project maybe it would be a good idea for them to
learn more about project management (e.g. how to interpret and use Gantt
Charts).

I agree about the built-in reports. That's why I suggest customizing one
of the standard views to meet your needs. For example, the "Who does
what when" report is essentially the same as the Resource Usage view.
The Project field can be added to the Resource Usage view and then the
view can be filtered for that field. Unfortunately that useful field
cannot be added to the noted built-in report.

John
Project MVP

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Magda,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #24 on customizing reports, at this site:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc or this:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23
(Perhaps you'd care to rate the article before leaving the site,
Thanks.)

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Magda]

Thank you John, this was very helpful!

Magda,
Just a suggestion. If the team leads are going to be managing their
stake in the overall project maybe it would be a good idea for them to
learn more about project management (e.g. how to interpret and use Gantt
Charts).

I agree about the built-in reports. That's why I suggest customizing one
of the standard views to meet your needs. For example, the "Who does
what when" report is essentially the same as the Resource Usage view.
The Project field can be added to the Resource Usage view and then the
view can be filtered for that field. Unfortunately that useful field
cannot be added to the noted built-in report.

John
Project MVP

 

[Magda]

This forum should have a spam warning button

Hi Magda,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #24 on customizing reports, at this site:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc or this:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23
(Perhaps you'd care to rate the article before leaving the site,
Thanks.)

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[John]

Thank you John, this was very helpful!

Magda,
You're welcome and thanks for the feedback. By the way, Mike Glen is one
of our most prominent Project MVP's and he is NOT trying to sell you
anything - he is just trying to be helpful like all of us.

John