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Display Baseline

6 replies [Last post]
Craig Adams
User offline. Last seen 12 years 19 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 71
Hello Fellow Planners,

Forgive my ignorance, can anyone tell me how I display baseline 1 start & baseline 1 finish in the spreasheet columns?

Other question, summary Bars displayed on the one line, when you then cascade to the next level it appears they sort themselves into cronological order, anyone know how to stop this?

Thank you for you patience.

Kind regards,

Craig Adams

Replies

Mike Testro
User offline. Last seen 1 week 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Dec 2005
Posts: 4418
Hi Craig

With that number of remote sites you need to upgrade to PowerProject Enterprise where with about 10 licenses and a central server your remote sites can be allowed limited access to software for weekly updates and other tasks such as lookahead programmes

Last year I set up an enterprise system for Suffolk County Council road maintenance where there were about 40 remote users on anything up to 150 concurrent projects.

Even with a stand alone system it is possible to monitor your sites using the Excell system - different calendars are not a problem.

The trick is to make sure that the excell sheets line up EXACTLY with chart columns.

I do this with a combination of filters and saved views.

I set up a filter that only shows work tasks that need a % progress entry (Milestones should limited as you cannot paste data onto them)

I remove the Show Summary Options becasue this clutters up the copy paste operation.

Instead I set up excell columns to the left of the task descritions and fill these with location data - State - Mager - Project - Stage - Level - Room etc etc and then set up User Fields for each category and copy paste the excell data into the userfields.

I save all this in a Project Views called Progress for each project.

I am assuming that all your projects are under one file - 18meg is not too big just don’t try the Reschedule All button or you will be waiting for a minute or two - and that all individual projects are in their own chart - not just a summary.

You can set up a series of project views for each project progress entry using leading numbers to get the sort order correct ie:

01 State .02 Manager Name .03 Project >

01 NSW
01.01 Bruce Drongo
01.01.01 Spring Alice Estates

then you can pick out the progress view from the drop down within seconds and copy the excell data into the progress column - altogether 10 seconds max - per site per week - your secretary could do it.

A usefull add in is to set up a Red Amber Green token that can be preset to show the difference between planned progress and actual progress Red=Behind Amber=Close so watch it Green=On or ahead of progress.

These show at every programme level so if you have a Red showing at NSW level you can drill down to find the task(s) that are actually causing the problem.

A side benefit is that if Bruce Drongo "forgets" to set up his progress % then his tasks will show red.

I think thats enough to be going on with.

Best regards

Mike Testro.
Craig Adams
User offline. Last seen 12 years 19 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 71
Hello Mike,

Mike how many sites do you run at a time in this fashion.

Worried I will spend too much time processing data, I’m struggling at the moment to get exisiting myriad of schedules in order.

I’m looking at about 10 - 15 projects in each of our states - maybe up to 60 projects. If I can ensure this process is farmed out with the simplest of interfaces I’m hoping I will only have to worry about tweaking schedules when needed and filtering the required informaion out of them.

With file structure, started with all projects one file seperated into 4 states (NSW, Victoria, QLD & WA). Came to conlusion this is problematic because each use slightly different work calendars and worried it would get too big- now 18meg.

Know you can assign a calendar to a project but found overall file properties requires a calendar then you get everiding holidays applied to summary tasks.

Will send you my file to review if you’d be so kind.

Regards,

craig Adams
Mike Testro
User offline. Last seen 1 week 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Dec 2005
Posts: 4418
Hi Craig

I have the "Site Progress" software which was designed to work with the Task Per Line Mode of programming where a sort of pre-programmed macro transferred the data (you can’t copy / paste directly to the chart speadsheet in this mode - even in expanded view).

When I bought it the idea was that the remote data taken on site could be emailed to me but the data had to be transferred from the hand held device to the server by direct link - ie cable or blue tooth - this may have changed now but it was no use to me then - check before you buy.

I now use an Excell spreadsheet for the site guys to fill in the task % complete which I copy directly to the progress column - seemples!

Best regards

Mike Testro
Craig Adams
User offline. Last seen 12 years 19 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 71
Thanks Bo & Mike,

Sorted now.

Another one for you though.

Have either of you guys used the site progress software yet.

Where you get site personel to update task progress?

Am hoping to do this with an Iphone connectivity, main aim is to keep site guys out on site rather than in office.

Your thoughts???
Bo Johnsen
User offline. Last seen 8 years 3 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 28 Feb 2006
Posts: 119
Hi Craig,

Further to your question 1, this following is taken from the "Help"-manual:

""
How do I reference spreadsheet columns to a baseline?

Right-click the spreadsheet column that you want to reference to a baseline and select Table Definition. The Table Definition Properties dialog appears. This dialog lists all the columns in the spreadsheet.

Click the column you want to reference to a baseline in the Token field.

Select the baseline from which you want to display information in the column in the Data field. You can select a specific baseline, or select Current Baseline to display information from the baseline that is defined as being current.

Click Close to return to the project. The column now displays information from the selected baseline.

You can compare information in the live data with the corresponding information in a baseline by displaying a variance token in a spreadsheet column, then selecting the baseline against which you want to compare in the Data field. The variance column displays the difference between the values in the live data and the selected baseline.

""

Hope it helps.


Best regards,

Bo
Mike Testro
User offline. Last seen 1 week 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Dec 2005
Posts: 4418
Hi Craig

Question 1
Goto Format > Barchart > Baseline and tick the box that says "Show Baselines on their own lines".

Question 2
The tasks under a summary bar will normally display in "natural order" ie going weith the logic flow.
You can sort them into whatever order you want by selecting the tasks and using the Sort tab. But be careful thatwhen you open other Summary Bars - hey may have followed suit.

Best regards

Mike Testro