Timeline

[Project Manager in PA]

I think Microsoft is really missing a lot of its potential market by limiting
the timeline to 1984 forward. I am a project manager, and I find this
program extremely limiting because I cannot also map out a sequence of events
to a client, journalist, attorney, or new hire to show them how we got where
we are.

Historians, journalists, lawyers, detectives, anthropologists, astronomers,
geologists, and novelists all need a way to plot out a sequence of events
throughout history.

Why not let the user select the entire time period and divide it up as he
sees fit, ie millenia or hours? How hard is that? We have computerized
calandars already which cover an etremely wide time frame.

Sure, we have all been using Excell since the 1980's to do this, but why
learn a new software like Project with a more limited functionality. I do
not want to invest a lot of time learning a specialized product which I will
only use occasionally. I need a historical view as frequently as a future
view.

----------------
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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...951d-06cef1718c5e&dg=microsoft.public.project

 

[Rob Schneider]

I think Microsoft is really missing a lot of its potential market by limiting
the timeline to 1984 forward. I am a project manager, and I find this
program extremely limiting because I cannot also map out a sequence of events
to a client, journalist, attorney, or new hire to show them how we got where
we are.

Historians, journalists, lawyers, detectives, anthropologists, astronomers,
geologists, and novelists all need a way to plot out a sequence of events
throughout history.

Why not let the user select the entire time period and divide it up as he
sees fit, ie millenia or hours? How hard is that? We have computerized
calandars already which cover an etremely wide time frame.

Sure, we have all been using Excell since the 1980's to do this, but why
learn a new software like Project with a more limited functionality. I do
not want to invest a lot of time learning a specialized product which I will
only use occasionally. I need a historical view as frequently as a future
view.

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...951d-06cef1718c5e&dg=microsoft.public.project

While Project *can* plot a timeline, it would be a poor plotter of a
timeline. It's a tool for computing project schedules, and then
assisting with managing the information related to tracking that project
as the project progresses.

I've had two occasions to use MindManger for this purpose, once with a
journalist and once with a lawyer. Worked well. Allowed us to focus on
the issue/opportunity, and not on drawing pretty pictures. MindManager
took care of the latter quite satisfactorily.

 

[JD]

I agree with both you and Rob. The 100 year timespan is a kind of ridiculous
limitation that MS never bothered to fix, but that is not the reason I
wouldn't use it to plot timelines. It just isn't very good at them. Each
activity is on its own line. Drawing a schedule in Powerpoint gives much
more freedom in mapping events and highlighting the important ones.

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Jim Aksel]

I believe a Visio Timeline might be more convenient here as well.

 

[Steve House]

Contrary to what some believe, Project is not a documenting tool, business
graphics tool, or a reporting tool. That is, its purpose is not to document
a timeline that has been created elsewhere, whether it is the boss figuring
out the work schedule for an upcoming project by the seat of his pants
methods and then expecting his assistant to use MS Project to create a
snazzy project timeline graphic of his plan to post on the project office
wall, or to document the timeline of a sequence of events that has occured
at some time in the past. It is focussed on *creating* schedules whose
component task starting and ending dates are NOT already known - Project
itself determining what the timeline ought to be - for a sequence of events
to occur in the future. As I like to put it, you don't tell it the schedule
you plan to do, it tells you the schedule you can expect to be *able* to do.
Its reporting facilities are pretty strongly oriented to reporting on the
results of its calculations. If your primary need is to draw a Gantt chart
type graphic consisting of coloured bars with predetermined or known start
and ending points on a timeline background, frankly Project is a very poor
choice for that purpose as that's simply not what it's designed to do and a
dedicated graphics tool such as Visio would be a far better option.