Summary Information

[curriekd]

I am trying, with much frustration to be able to create a view or report that
will display a list of summary tasks/deliverables followed by list of
resources assigned with effort by month Similiar to the standard Resource
Usage Summary but putting the deliverable dimension first. Has anyone done
this before or can lead me in the right direction. My Project plan has
deliverables at various summary levels in the plan and I see no means, other
than setting up a flag, to mark which items are deliverables for the
view/report. Also need to make this part of the global template so don't
have to do for every project so how to that would be great as well.

 

[JulieS]

Hello curriekd,

I'm not 100% clear what you need but I think you are on the right
track. Instead of the Resource Usage view, have you considered the
Task Usage view -- it is already organized by tasks and shows the
assignments.

You could then add the Flag field and set both the Task and
assignment rows to "Yes". Create a custom filter or use autofilters
to show only those where Flag = "Yes".

To provide a more automated method, create a view with the custom
filter applied as part of the view. Set the zoom on the timescaled
portion to months -- print the view.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information about Microsoft Project

 

[Rob Schneider]

I am trying, with much frustration to be able to create a view or report that
will display a list of summary tasks/deliverables followed by list of
resources assigned with effort by month Similiar to the standard Resource
Usage Summary but putting the deliverable dimension first. Has anyone done
this before or can lead me in the right direction. My Project plan has
deliverables at various summary levels in the plan and I see no means, other
than setting up a flag, to mark which items are deliverables for the
view/report. Also need to make this part of the global template so don't
have to do for every project so how to that would be great as well.

When you say "putting the deliverable dimension first", I'm not exactly
sure what you mean.

What if you used one of the custom Text fields to define the deliverable
name. Then start with the Resource Usage View and filer the task
records to only show summary tasks. Then apply a Group definition to
group by the custom field which holds deliverable name?

 

[curriekd]

Hi Julie,

Not quite there. I would like the total resource hours for each resource
assigned to the summary task/deliverable to be totaled. The Task usage view
displays the tasks/summaries and then the breakdown of resources but what I
would like to have is a summation by resource for all effort by month for
all tasks under the summary or deliverable line item. Does that help to
explain?

IE Deliverable X - Resource A Hrs by month
Resource B Hrs by Month
Deliverable Y - Resource A hrs by month
Deliverable Z - Resource B Hrs by month

 

[curriekd]

Note quite -- will investigate the group definition since I am not familiar
with that. Would like this outputted to an excel spreadsheet as well. See
reply to Julie as well.

 

[JulieS]

Does the right hand side not show that information for you if you
change the timescale to show months?

I can create a view which shows
Summary Task
Deliverable (Flag set to "yes")
Resource Assignment1
Resource Assignment2

on the left and then in the timescaled (right side) hours for each
assignment per month.

There isn't a view/report that shows it all in one side. If you are
using Project 2003, you might try exporting the timescaled
information to Excel but it will still need modification. If you
are using Project 2007 one of the visual reports may get you close.

It's hard to "read" with the limited formatting available on the
newsgroup -- but it will take a fair amount of "tweaking" --
probably in Excel -- to get the exact format you note below.

Julie

 

[Rob Schneider]

Note quite -- will investigate the group definition since I am not familiar
with that. Would like this outputted to an excel spreadsheet as well. See
reply to Julie as well.

I think Grouping will give you a lot of what you want ... but since you
want to put output to Excel, why not use Excel as the "engine" to do
this sort of sophisticated reporting? Export the raw data and do what
you want in Excel. Excel is designed to do this sort of thing (it's a
blank sheet of paper when you start); whereas Project has a lot of
built-in capability but not absolutely everything everyone would want is
built-in. Could also put the raw data into a database tool which also
could provide the reporting like this relatively simply.

 

[curriekd]

Hi Julie, I can get the same view it is just not presenting the numbers right
since I only want one line for each resource with total hours by month
regardless of number of tasks or if there are multiple resources on a task. I
have looked at the group by method as well and seem to get close but not
quite. Is the Flag field different in the resource view versus task view.
Reason I ask is if I display the Flag 1 column on the gantt or task usage
fields it has the deliverable flagged for filtering but when I go to the
resource usage view it is set to no on everything?

Obviously not understanding something here since I would have thought this
was easy thing to do ... I could try and extract the data to a spreadsheet
but that is a pain to do everytime ....

Thanks

 

[curriekd]

Hi Julie,

If I filter on deliverables and then do a group by with task name and then
resource name I get close except when there is tasks with multiple resources
because it separate these and does not do a total by resource effort. IE if
task 1 has resource A and task 2 has resource B and task 3 Has resource A,B
then it create three totals one for A, one for B and one for A,B. Any ideas?

 

[JulieS]

Hi,

Make sure when you group by Resource that you select group
assignments. That should then show each resource listed
individually.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information about Microsoft Project

 

[curriekd]

Sorry Julie - tired that and it still presents a separate line with Resource
A, Resource B on it separate from a Line Resource A. If it didn't do that
then that would be great. Thjere is a difference I am noticing between task
and resource views when selecting columns. The task view has Resource_Names
and a column selection that shows separate lines depending on one or more
resource combos. The Resource view has a different column Resource_Name which
onl displays the resource once, which is what I want, but unfortunately this
is not available in the task view and the text and flag columns in the
resource view are empty.

I also looked at extracting the project data directly to excel but cannot
get that data correct either since I cannot see how I can get effort by
month. If I could get the assignment table to produce effort by month as well
as display the text 1 column from the task view that would be perfect as
well.

I will continue to figure this out but there must be a different way of
doing this since it really is just a resource usage summary but with the
sums being broken down by deliverable. Unfortunately I can setup tasks to
mark them with text 1 as a comon deliverable name so they can be summed that
way but that is not carried to the resource view for some reason.

Any more help would be appreciated.

 

[JulieS]

Hi,

There is no view in Project that is going to combine the task
information (Deliverable) with both assignments (Resource Names) on
the same line.

Again, to get exactly what you want, you are going to have to export
to Excel and then format from within Excel. It will likely take
several exports to put it all together. The only other option I can
suggest it to get the Task Usage view as close as you can to what
you want and then **very** carefully copy and paste each side of the
view into Excel.

There is a large difference between Task and Resource Views. Both
the Task usage and Resource Usage view shows assignment
information -- Task Usage organized by Task and Resource Usage
organized by Resource. When grouping the Task Usage view to get the
assignments show a single line for each resource and not the
combination multiple resources, you need to ensure that you've
selected the option "Group assignments" and selected Resource Name
and Assignment as the field type.

When you set a flag or text in a task view, it is *not* the same as
the same named field in the Resource View. See FAQ 51 at
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for additional details.

Julie