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NKumar2010
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Joined 4 years ago
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A Pop up for Impacted Milestones
Hi, I have a project file with over 2000 lines of interlinked tasks and milestones. The milestones are spread across those 2000 lines. A top summary task of "Milestones" is created, which is a group of milestones. These milestones links to individual milestone in detailed schedule. Two questions: 1. Is there a way that Top section milestone task automatically gets marked 100% when the respective milestone in detailed schedule below gets marked complete ? 2. When the dates in detailed schedule changes, I want to see if there is an impact on the milestone (s). Since milestones are spread out or are at the top of the file, it's not always feasible to scroll & check if there is an impact on milestone (i.e. it's highlighted). Every time if there is an impact on the milestone, If a window pops up, telling which milestones are impacted, it would be great. How can this be achieved? Is there any other simpler way of knowing the impacted milestone without too much of scrolling ?Solved710Views0likes3CommentsRe: Gantt Chart for only few tasks
Hi John, It is a single large file with multiple "project" summary lines. Setting up a flag field occurred to me too, but every time I need the view, I will have to put up the filter. I was wondering if there is a permanent view which always list only the dependencies. How can I create a custom view, just for showing dependencies ? Also, is there is a way to display custom filed text on gantt chart ?1.2KViews0likes1CommentGantt Chart for only few tasks
Hi, I am working on a program schedule which has many projects in it. Every project has dependencies and schedules. Dependencies of a project links to dependencies of another project, i.e. dependencies for a project are external dependencies for that project. Structure can be seen below: Program Schedule Project 1 Schedule External Dependencies (Project 1 ) Schedule (Project 1) Project 2 Schedule External Dependencies (Project 2) Schedule (Project 2) .... Project n I want to create a gantt chart or something similar, which shows only the dependencies (i.e. I don't want projects appearing in the gantt chart). The idea is to show interdependencies in a graphical form so that impact of movement of one dependency can be seen on all other downstream dependencies. I thought of cross-referencing tasks (like in excel using =") but MS Project does not supports cross- referencing. Any thoughts on how this can be accomplished ?1.3KViews0likes3CommentsMaking a roadmap diagram
Hi, I often have a need to create a roadmap view of my schedules in powerpoint for executives. Neither the gantt chart nor the timeline view is presentable enough. Of course I can manually take the data from MS Project file and put in excel and draw out charts, but it's very time consuming process. I am after a tool which takes MS project as input file and generates a roadmap view, which can be copy pasted in ppt. A bit of googling gave http://officetimeline.com , but it's paid tool. Is there a similar tool, but free ? Even if there is a template in which I copy paste schedule from .mpp file and the template generates a presentable roadmap view is good enough. Thanks.1KViews0likes1CommentIn Project Online, Finish Date not adjusting as per remaining effort
Hi, I am facing an issue in Project Online, where the Finish date is not getting adjusted automatically based on the remaining work. I'll explain wrt desktop project. Consider a project in which a resource TOM is allocated for 10 days on a task, Start 19/07 , Finish 01/08 (Ref. image 1) Let's say, TOM worked for 3 consecutive days (8 hours per day), on 19/07, 20/07 and 21/07. The Finish date is 01/08 and is unchanged. (Refer image 2) Now, consider a situation, where 3 days on which TOM has worked is not consecutive. He still works for 3 days, but those 3 days are not consecutive. Refer image 3. In this case, the Finish date changes to 04/08 to accommodate for the non-consecutive nature of effort spent. How do I achieve this functionality in Project Online? We have Project Online set up in which resources fill their actual hours on the task. These actual hours are not consecutive, but the finish date does not gets adjusted. See the image 4, in which only 1 week is remaining (blue highlight on top), but the project is expecting 135.5 hrs (black highlight) to be recorded in the last week, which is incorrect and illogical. Any thoughts ?630Views0likes0CommentsRe: Merging two schedules
Hi John, Organizational milestones are not blocking for contractor's tasks. It's more like A, B and C are done, then contractor milestone M1 is achieved. In most cases, Contractor does not wait for the approval, and if there is an approval for which contractor has to wait, it's modelled in contractor's schedule too. The challenge is that A, B, C blows up and creating dependencies with other X, Y, Z . So in order to have the correct M1 and M2, I need to manually trace every dependency across all tasks in contractor's schedule. Are there any plug ins or any best practices available, which can make life easy ?2.5KViews0likes1CommentRe: Merging two schedules
Hi John, Yes, contractor's plans are also in Project. I am not too sure of the version, but I reckon, the solution can be independent of the version. The tasks in the contractor plan are also shown in my plan. My plan has many phases and contractor's plan is included in one of the phases (say, construction phase). There are some organizational milestones within the construction phase, so I can't directly copy paste entire contractor's schedule inside construction phase. Its like within construction phase, a set of tasks from contractor's schedules, then few organizational approvals & milestones, then a few more of contractor's schedule and then a few more organizational approvals. This cycle repeats until construction phase is over. Mostly each contractor's schedule is independent of other contractor's schedule. Hope this provides some more clarity to the situation2.7KViews0likes3CommentsInternet calendar does not sync
Hi, I have outlook 365 installed on my laptop in which I have multiple email accounts configured. Some of these emails are O365 based official email ids which others are Gmail email ids. I have subscribed google calendar in outlook as per the instructions given in https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/see-your-google-calendar-in-outlook-c1dab514-0ad4-4811-824a-7d02c5e77126 However, the google calendar does not synchronize or at best is erratic. No amount of refresh and outlook restart helps to synchronize gmail calendar with other devices. I observed that the issue is coming in following scenarios: 1. When I add an appointment in gmail calender on outlook, which never shows up in my phone. Often, these entries disappear entirely from outlook calendar. 2. When I add an appointment on phone, sometimes it shows up on outlook but later it disappears. I even tried replacing htts:// with webcal:// while adding internet calendar, but it did not solve the issue. Any solutions? Thanks,689Views0likes0CommentsMerging two schedules
Hi, I maintain a large program schedule (superset) in MS Project. The program has multiple contractors, each having their individual schedules (subset) & these schedule form a subset of the larger program schedule. A large part of my work is to keep the program schedule (superset) in synch with contractor's schedule (subset). Even though the scope for contractor work remains the same, often new tasks, new relationships, etc. are created in contractor's schedule, which I need to integrate into program schedule. This is very manual and tedious process, where every task and its predecessor from contractors' schedule is mapped to program schedule. The end objective is to get the dates in program schedule align with dates in contractor's schedule. Is there a more efficient way to merge these two schedules? I tried copy pasting contractor's schedule into program schedule, but it messes up the program schedule and getting it right is a bigger problem than manually integrating contractor's schedule. I use Gantt Chart Format -> Task path -> Driving Predecessor but that still manual and does not show very accurately.2.9KViews0likes5CommentsOutlook calendars getting mixed up
Hi, I have multiple emails (office365, gmail, yahoo etc) configured in my outlook. A few of them are business and others are personal ids. Office 365 email ids are business email ids, which respective business domains. Off lately, I have observed that any meeting invite being sent on a personal gmail id (say, mailto:email address removed for privacy reasons), gets added into the calendar of a business O365 email id (say, mailto:email address removed for privacy reasons). I am not sure if my business calendar could be seen by my colleagues or not, but still, I would not like to get my appointments mixed up like above. Any thoughts on why are they getting mixed up and what could be done to sort this out ? Thx, Nk955Views0likes0CommentsExcluding Tasks from Critical Path Calculation
Hi, I have a detailed program schedule with following hierarchy Work Packages, Sub Work packages, WBS tasks Milestones There are about 15 work package and the structure repeats for every work package. One of the last work packages has a Go-Live milestone. WBS Tasks are linked across different work packages to create a path from start to Go-Live Now if I plot the critical path, I get a huge list of small WBS tasks. This is good for actioning, but for reporting to executives, this is of little value. Executives want to see critical path at Work Package level, Sub-Work Package level and milestones level. Is there a way to select which tasks would be included / excluded into critical path calculation ? It's important to note that predecessors are identified at WBS task levels, not at sub-work package or work package level. If I exclude, WBS list from critical path calculation (I am assuming, I can), how does the linkages precipitate up to summary tasks ?3.9KViews0likes1CommentRe: Alternative to Timeline View
Thanks John. I know this can certainly be created in a excel. I want to know if community already has a template which can address this use case. The use case is a very basic use case and was hoping if someone already has any template / link etc why they r using. Would save re-inventing the wheel1.7KViews0likes0CommentsAlternative to Timeline View
Hi, I am using Timeline View to show progress on a lot of tasks. These tasks are high level summary tasks. The timeline view plots Finish date (i.e. forecasted finish). I need to plot Baseline Finish date in addition to Finish date on Timeline. The idea is to show how much progress has happened against baseline plan and what is the forecasted finish date. Timeline view does not supports plotting of Baseline Finish date (I mean the Timeline checkbox in View menu, not Gantt timeline) One work around I can think of is to duplicate the tasks to be plotted and manually enter Baseline Finish date in Finish date and mark these tasks as milestone and plot them on same timeline. This works but is very inefficient. Is there another work around outside of MS Project to plot timeline view, which shows both Baseline Finish and Finish. An excel template or a webpage, where I copy paste data from mpp, and it plots a Timeline like view with both Baseline Finish and Finish ? I just need any indication (eg. a diamond) on the bar to show Baseline Finish. I also color the bar to show RAG for that work item. The timeline view has few milestones plotted at the bottom too. The bars has the name of the task, and I can change the font color of text.1.8KViews0likes3CommentsRe: Baseline Finish on Timeline
Hi Dale, By Timeline I mean the Timeline View, not the Timeline shown in the Gantt Chart view. The timeline which is shown by clicking the check box "Timeline" in View menu. I understand that in Timeline view, baseline finish can't be shown. But if I create a custom timeline view, is there a way to show Baseline Finish in a custom timeline view at least ?2.5KViews0likes1CommentBaseline Finish on Timeline
Hi, How do I add baseline finish information on timeline view ? On the timeline view, by default the "finish" date appears, which is the forecasted date to finish a task or reach the milestone. On timeline, if I have to show both (A) the baseline finish date for task / milestone and (B) the forecasted date for completing the task / milestone , how do I do this ? One crude way I can think of is to have a separate block of task / milestones and hardcode the baseline finish dates in Finish column and add these tasks to timeline. But this would mean duplicating a lot of key tasks/milestone and manually maintaining it. Is there a better way to show baseline finish data on timeline ? Thanks.Solved2.7KViews0likes3CommentsCritical Path for a Subset of Schedule
Hi, Can critical path be seen for a subset of schedule instead of entire schedule ? I have a program schedule, which runs for over 3 years. The entire schedule is broken down into sizeable "Work Packages" and there are deliverables & milestones for every work package. The future work packages are just place holders and the work packages which have their deliverables in the next 4 months are active work packages. There are multiple active work packages and they do not link to each other i.e. they are not dependent on one another. Only for these active work packages, detailed tasks are identified and their dependencies are linked to the work package's deliverables & milestones etc. These active work packages are not linked to each other. Also, often these work package's has their 1st task to start on a particular date i.e. they have "Must start on" constraint and then the subsequent tasks are identified and linked to each other. Now I need to find the critical path for these individual work packages i.e. which of the tasks within the work package when delayed will delay the milestone of that particular work package. Critical path filtering & highlight feature works when the entire schedule is linked and these give the critical path for entire schedule. But how do I find the critical path for a subset of schedule i.e. in my case, critical path of the work package(s) ? One crude way is to copy paste a work package on another .mpp file, and use filter / highlight critical path feature. Another way is to make each work package as a sub-project with independent .mpp file and have a master schedule linking all sub-projects. I don't want to do both of these due to level of complexities involved. So how do I find a critical path for a work package alone ? Any thoughts please ?2.6KViews0likes3CommentsRe: Updating Baseline Finish Dates in MS Project
Thanks John, The "wrong baseline dates" were based on the dates from an upstream vendor. They provided the "corrected dates", which we need to align our plan to. It has been discussed & agreed that it is not the new baseline date as the final release is still intact. But yes, the manual edit of baseline date would work. thanks. I somehow assumed that since these are "baseline" dates, the Baseline Finish column could not be edited. Thanks.3.1KViews0likes1CommentAuto RAG in Timeline Bar
Hi, I have a custom column, in which I have traffic lights (Red, Amber, Green) displayed depending on the number it has. The task is added to a timeline view (custom view, created based on timeline screen). Is it possible to automatically color the bar in timeline view as per the RAG for the task ? As of now, I manually select each bar (& there are about 100 of them 😞 ) and change the color to match the task RAG, but was hoping if there could be a more efficient way. May be a macro or a hack ? Any thoughts ?Solved971Views0likes1CommentUpdating Baseline Finish Dates in MS Project
Hi, I have created a schedule and created the 1st baseline ("Baseline Finish" column) based on an overall program plan. The task tracking has begun and Finish column now shows the forecasted finish date. Now I've been told that a lot of dates in the original program plan were incorrect and have been given a new set of "corrected initial baseline dates". Therefore I need to update the Baseline Finish column. How do I do that ? Even if I clear the existing baseline and set a new baseline the dates in Finish column would become the new baseline. So how do I modify / edit dates in Baseline Finish Col ? For Eg. In the attached image, Corrected Baseline Date is a text col, whose dates need to come in Baseline Finish Column. How do I change the dates in baseline finish ? Any thoughts ?Solved3.3KViews0likes3Comments
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