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Siebez's avatar
Siebez
Copper Contributor
Feb 16, 2023

Generating scheduling reports for individuals

Hi all,

Every monday morning we have a planning-meeting for this department, and want to show people neatly what tasks they'll be working on for the upcoming 4 weeks. They might be working on several tasks over several projects at once that take upwards of 20-60 hours, spread out over a couple of weeks. I have attached a link to a conept I drew up that displays pretty much what I want to see.

 

https://imgur.com/a/yCG74W2

 

I am aware that you can use the resource usage tab for this, pretty much, But my boss does not like the way it looks, and also, you cannot filter out tasks easily that do not occur within the next 4 weeks, so it clutters your overview.

I tried making visual reports with pivottables in Excel but it does not allow me to take all of the data with me because MS Project has the nasty design problem where it seperates the task and resource data sheets, even if you are only using 1 file. I've tried using a macro to circumvent this,one that shares custom fields of task data into the resource data, but by default if you create visual reports it will not take along custom fields into the pivottable. Does anyone have any clue's on how to grab all of data and proccess it easily and neatly into a spreadsheet/table, or get around the problem that I described?
Any help would be very much appreciated.

  • Siebez --

    Use the Resource Usage view and apply the Date Range... filter. Enter your date range in the filter dialog and you should see the tasks of interest. Hope this helps.
    • Siebez's avatar
      Siebez
      Copper Contributor
      Hi Dale, thank you for your reply.
      This does indeed work, but unfortunately, I cannot apply both the filter of looking at 1 particular person/resource, and the date range filter at the same time. Editing the date range filter in the resource usage screen also does not provide me with the option to include a resourcename, otherwise I could have easily made an edited filter with daterange+resource, and do this for each person on the team (it's only 7 people). Do you have any suggestions as for a way around this? I've found that Project can often do a lot but has some funky limitations that CAN be worked around, but requires some fuzzing with custom fields and macro's.
      • Siebez --

        Display the Resource Usage view and apply the Date Range filter. In the Resource Name column, click the AutoFilter pick list button. In the AutoFilter dialog, deselect all resource names and select only the name of interest. Click the OK button to display the planned work for that one resource. You can continue using the AutoFilter pick list in the Resource Name column to display each resource individually. Hope this helps.
  • John-project's avatar
    John-project
    Silver Contributor

    Siebez

    Is your goal to have a separate sheet for each resource's assignments over a 4 week period? That appears to be what your concept drawing shows.

     

    Dale's suggestion for using Using the Date Range filter on the Resource Usage view is a quick and easy way to meet the intent of what you want. If that is acceptable to your boss, then great, you're done. However if it is still not acceptable and you want a more isolated view like your concept drawing, you'll need a macro to create that report in Excel. If you are interested, let me know.

     

    John

    • Siebez's avatar
      Siebez
      Copper Contributor

      John-project 

      Hi John, 


      It is indeed the idea to have a more isolated view and I'd be very much interested in such a macro, especially if it could be setup as easy that my boss would have to take a minimal amount of steps to generate the report. Bonus point if we can set it up by default to be pleasing to the eyes and neatly printable.

      Something like:

       

      >Activate macro/report

      >Select resource>[Resourcename A]

      >Enter week range (for example:) Week 40-44
      >generate report

      >Badabing, badaboom.

      >ctrl-p to print

       

      If this is possible I'd sure be glad to have it. Can I contact you privately anywhere for further discussion?

       

      With kind regards,

       

      Siebe 

      • John-project's avatar
        John-project
        Silver Contributor

        Siebez 

        Yeah a macro can do everything you want except for one thing. The Project object model does not support the badabing and badaboom properties of the resource object. I've been meaning to submit a request for that functionality to the Project developers for a while but just haven't gotten around to it. Do you happen to have a round to it, all my to it's are square.

         

        Had enough? Okay, down to the nuts and bolts (no washers). I've written a lot of macros that export Project data to Excel and create custom reporting. I probably have something close enough to what you want ,(except for the above of course), that can be tweaked to produce a "boss friendly" report. You can contact me at the address below. I will ask some questions.

         

        And yeah, if you want to work with me you are gonna have to put up with more of the above. It's just the way I roll.

         

        John

        jmacprojataticlouddotdotcom

        (remove obvious redundancies)

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