Mark up progress - Urgent

Bill,
It will take formulas in the customized fields to achieve what you need
a) Tools, Customize, Fields, Task fields, Indicators
Rename Indicator1 to 30% Complete
Write the following formula: Iif([%Complete]=30;Yes;No)
Same for Indicator2, change the %Complete value to 60
Click OK until you are back in the main screen
b) Select the Gantt Chart you want, maybe a copy of Tracking Gantt
Format, Bar Styles
Insert a new bar definition AFTER the "Complete" definition
Define the bar color and template the way you want,
Say the bar will represent tasks Normals,Indicator1 (add Critical if you need to distinguish Critical / Non Critical)
Same for Indicator2
That’s it, boy!
Alexandre

Alexandre

Cannot speak for Bill, but I do not quite understand the process.I did tools,customize,fields, task fields but there are no types called Indicators. I am using 2003.

Regards

Andrew

Andrew,
I am sorry, I have mistakenly translated the French "Indicateur" to "Indicator"; the actual word in English is "Flag"
on the left-hand side of the dialog box, select "Tasks", not "Resources"; then open the "Type" drop-down list and select "Flag"
Alexandre

Alexandre

Do not apologise, the fact that you can communicate in two languages so well puts me to shame. I have tried your formula, basically you are using the % complete to turn the flags on and off. I do not think that is what Bill meant. I think he wanted the first 30% of the bar to be pink on a certain date then the 60% to be green, ie in a 9 day activity the first 3 days to be pink and the following three days (6) to be green. I didnt think you could do that with MSP, which was why I was so interested in your post.

Regards

Andrew

Andrew,
thank you for congratulating me, I am happy enough to be at ease with languages
I think you are right when saying I didn’t answer 100% of Bill’s question
I didn’t try it, but I guess the only way to do exactly what you mentionned in your last post would be to use additionnal flags together with custom numeric flags and add new bars in a top-down order to superpose 90% complete to 60% complete to 30% complete
The key item is to insert the bars the Bar styles dialog box in the appropriate order, as the more specific bar will come after the less specific
Alexandre

Alexandre

or create a set of flag bars representing each % with a colour of choice. Each flag relative to a different start and finsh number Start1, Finish1 etc. Then on the bar you select the flag and input the new start and finish date for each section(%). As you rightly said each subsequent bar will overwrite the previous. You could go even further and add further text columns and add 30% etc.. to them and in the flag bar add the relevant text column inside the bar. Looks good but takes a long time. Im tired and I need a liedown now !!

Regards

Andrew

Andrew,
unfortunately, you will reach the point where MS Project is no longer able to upate the whole project by using the "artificial" %complete fields you are using to colour the bars
how would you pass the information from a text or numeric field disguised into a %complete field to the real and unique %complete field that MS Project really uses to compute the project progress?
Alexandre

Andrew,
unfortunately, you will reach the point where MS Project is no longer able to upate the whole project by using the "artificial" %complete fields you are using to colour the bars
how would you pass the information from a text or numeric field disguised into a %complete field to the real and unique %complete field that MS Project really uses to compute the project progress?
Alexandre

Alexandre

I absolutely agree with you. I have treated this as an excercise in graphics only. MSP has adequate facilities for properly reporting progress. However, this might be used as an as built presentation, ie as a one off to represent % value across the project at different time slices shown on one bar. My main interest was to see how you could colour up different sections of a bar at the same time.

Many Regards

Andrew

Bill,

One simple way you could do something similar without flags or anything "tricky" is as follows:

Add e.g. columns "Finish 1" for 30%, "Finish 2" for 60% and "Finish 3" for 90%. Leave them blank. Then in Bar Styles under the normal row for Progress add these 3 rows, but just in reverse order, i.e. first the bar style for 90% from actual start to finish 3, then for 60% and last 30%, all to be drawn in row 1. Apply colours and text as you prefer.

On the date you are 30% complete you write that date into "Finish 1" and so on for the activity in question. Actual progress (%) you can still write in as you normally do, however, it will only show if higher than 30%, 60% and 90% respectively.

The above is valid for actual progress. If you wanted for planned progress, you probably need to follow the way Alexandre and Andrew have suggested.

Regards,

Bo