Claire,
Thanks for the excellent clarification. You'd be amazed at how many
times I have to ask for more information when people post. You get a
gold star!
OK, that was the good news. Let me respond directly to your paragraphs.
Yes, I admit it seems like she's being difficult and I know I have some
wiggle room but at a certain point she'll tell me that it's not close enough
and she'd just rather do it herself with her crazy Excel spreadsheet.
I know it may seem "crazy" but in her mind it makes sense. Most people
are much more comfortable with Excel than Project, and for good reason -
Excel is more intuitive and user friendly. However, Excel is mediocre at
best for scheduling.
So, I'll try to clarify. As I understand it, my resource pool is the best
place to do this because that's what everything is tied to and I can display
the Project name for multiple projects and then see the tasks assigned across
multiple projects. So I open the resource pool, I open Resource Usage view.
I've added a column for Project name and sorted by that. I also have Group by
Assignments keeping outline structure. So now I have the following - columns
separated by | :
Project Name | Resource Name (with tasks indented underneath) | Work Hours
Actually in a Usage view what you see is assignments, not tasks. It's a
fine distinction but it is good to know that Project has three major
components - Tasks, Resources and Assignments. The latter is the bridge
between the other two.
Then on the right side of the split I have a window (don't know what it's
called) that has Details, dates organized by 1 week running across the top,
and in each individual cell that corresponds to a task there is the time
assigned for that task - like 8H.
We've had some discussion recently among the MVPs as to exactly what the
right side of the Usage view should be called. I say its a "sheet"
because of its similarity to a worksheet. Other's say it is, well, they
didn't really say.
So, in the report that she creates in Excel, it's this:
Project | Dates organized by week running across the top
Then in the cells for each date, usually starting with Monday, she has the
name of the person assigned in that row (usually starting in the Monday cell)
and then an arrow running across to the end of the week or number of days
they're assigned. She doesn't really care about the individual tasks because
she already has a general idea what they're doing and she's just looking for
gaps and overlap in assignments. We also have generic resources entries of
"Carpenter 1, Carpenter 2, etc." and then while looking over this list she
fills in the available carpenters and replaces those placeholders.
So, can I somehow display something other than 8H in the week/day cells on
the Resource Usage view? The other thing I was trying to get to is that the
tasks do display in the resource pool when I'm in the Resource Usage view but
not in the Task Usage or Gantt tracking views. And I think she'd be ok with
the bars that indicate time span in the Gantt tracking instead of her arrows
and I might get her to accept that better but the tasks from the other
projects don't display there. Can I get them to display? Or can I have the
window on the right of the Resource Usage view display more like a Gantt
chart?
In answer to your first question, no, the data displayed in the cells is
strictly limited to the type of data displayed - it is not user
definable. On your second issue, "tasks" do not display in the resource
pool because normally a resource pool file has nothing but resources
(i.e. no tasks). And that's the whole point - it is a resource pool
only. So, you will not be able to display tasks from all sharer files,
(that's what the files that use a resource pool are called), in the
resource pool file. However, you can get the equivalent by creating a
master file. Use the following steps.
1. Open a new blank project file.
2. Go to Insert/Project
3. In the Insert Projects window that appears, select all sharer files
and hit "insert". During the process you will probably get a message
asking if you want to open the pool file. Say "yes".
At that point you will have a master file with all the tasks from each
of the individual projects. You can add the Project field and filter or
group as desired. However, remember that what you see in any task view
(e.g. Gantt) are tasks, not assignments. If your resources are assigned
individually to each task at 100%, then the Gantt bars will in effect
represent the assignment period of that resource. However, if you have
multiple resources assigned to any given task or the assignments are not
over the full task span, then no task view is going to show the data
your boss wants to see, that is, the assignment period of each resource.
It's quite possible that this just doesn't work that way and I'm going to
have to get her to be more flexible for the ease of use Project provides for
me and the rest of her staff. I just didn't want to give up without checking
with the experts. I hope I made more sense this time around.
You opened the door that perhaps your boss may have some flexibility. In
that case, if she can be specific on what she needs, and I'm talking
about a "need" not a desired format, then there are definitely one or
more approaches that can be used. For example, there is a field called
Remaining Availability. That can be displayed in the Resource Usage view
in tabular form on the right side of the screen. It seems to me that
that is the data your boss may really want. That data can even be
exported to Excel (from the pool file) by using the utility "analyze
timescale data in Excel" found on the "Analysis" toolbar.
John
