Create a Project Summary Bar Reflecting Phases of Your Project

[ceekaytee]

Hi,

I am trying to create a single Project Summary bar that is segmented by
different colors to refelect the different phases of a project rather than
having a single solid color to represent the project. For example, I have a
project with 4 phases and I would like to show a single Project Summary bar
that can display the 4 phases by segmenting the Project Summary bar by using
a different color to represent each of the 4 phases. Can this be done using
Flags and Custom Fields or does it require additional development on my end?
Thanks!

 

[Dave]

Hi,

I am trying to create a single Project Summary bar that is segmented by
different colors to refelect the different phases of a project rather than
having a single solid color to represent the project. For example, I have a
project with 4 phases and I would like to show a single Project Summary bar
that can display the 4 phases by segmenting the Project Summary bar by using
a different color to represent each of the 4 phases. Can this be done using
Flags and Custom Fields or does it require additional development on my end?
Thanks!

If you have a summary bar for your project and summary bars for the
phases below that, you can select the "Roll up Gantt bar to summary"
option (double click on the task name and navigate to the General tab)
for the summary bars and their sub tasks. Then by double clicking on
individual bars that have been overlaid onto the summary bar you should
be able to adjust the appearance to give something approaching what you
want.

 

[JulieS]

If you have a summary bar for your project and summary bars for the
phases below that, you can select the "Roll up Gantt bar to summary"
option (double click on the task name and navigate to the General
tab) for the summary bars and their sub tasks. Then by double
clicking on individual bars that have been overlaid onto the summary
bar you should be able to adjust the appearance to give something
approaching what you want.

Just to clarify a bit. You can roll up non-summary tasks to summary
tasks through the "Roll up Gantt bar to summary" option that Dave
mentions. However, summary tasks do not roll-up to summary tasks, so
the ability to change summary task bars to roll up to the Project
summary task bar won't work. You can certainly format the individual
summary bars as you wish through Format > Bar and then display only
outline level 1 tasks, but I'm afraid that without some other
workarounds -- none of which are terribly appealing in my mind --
that's the closest you can get.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

 

[Dave]

Just to clarify a bit. You can roll up non-summary tasks to summary
tasks through the "Roll up Gantt bar to summary" option that Dave
mentions. However, summary tasks do not roll-up to summary tasks, so
the ability to change summary task bars to roll up to the Project
summary task bar won't work. You can certainly format the individual
summary bars as you wish through Format > Bar and then display only
outline level 1 tasks, but I'm afraid that without some other
workarounds -- none of which are terribly appealing in my mind --
that's the closest you can get.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

I am not sure I understand the issue here. It is true that my solution
will not roll up to the Project summary task so you have to insert
another summary line to encompass all the Project phases.

If you create a small test file with the following:
A summary line with 3 summary tasks representing the 3 phases beneath it
and with each of those phases containing a number of illustrative tasks,
you can then set all of the tasks to roll up to the summary level.

At this point, the individual tasks will appear overlaid on the summary
bar at both the phase level and also on the new project summary you
inserted.

You can format each of those overlaid bars to your hearts content.

If there are a lot of subtasks this may of course take some time.

 

[JulieS]

I am not sure I understand the issue here. It is true that my
solution will not roll up to the Project summary task so you have to
insert another summary line to encompass all the Project phases.

If you create a small test file with the following:
A summary line with 3 summary tasks representing the 3 phases
beneath it and with each of those phases containing a number of
illustrative tasks, you can then set all of the tasks to roll up to
the summary level.

At this point, the individual tasks will appear overlaid on the
summary bar at both the phase level and also on the new project
summary you inserted.

You can format each of those overlaid bars to your hearts content.

If there are a lot of subtasks this may of course take some time.

Hello Dave,

I hope I didn't offend -- it was not my intention.

My interpretation of ceekaytee's original post was that she wanted to
modify the colors of the summary task bars and have them roll up to
the Project summary task bar, with each section showing the different
colors coming from the *summary* task bars, not the rolled up bars.
Yes, rolling up the subtasks does show the rolled up bar to the
summary but the format of rolled up bars is controlled through the Bar
Styles command -- with only one definition for the rolled up bars.
Ceekaytee could create additional bars styles (most likely using Flag
fields) to change the color of each rolled up bar using the Flag
fields to differentiate between the colors for each section.

I would most likely not undertake that in a large project file as
working with outline level 1 tasks with different colors would suit my
needs. Clearly others may have a different opinion.

Julie

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

You could achieve more or less what the original poster wanted by exporting
the project to a Visio timeline.

Just open Visio, create a timeline, and import the project level 1 tasks.
Format as needed.

Saw that demo'd at the conference a couple of months ago, and thought it
was pretty neat. Nobody I work with has felt the same way unfortunately.

This of course assumes that you have a license to Visio.

-A

 

[JulieS]

You could achieve more or less what the original poster wanted by
exporting the project to a Visio timeline.

Just open Visio, create a timeline, and import the project level 1
tasks. Format as needed.

Saw that demo'd at the conference a couple of months ago, and
thought it was pretty neat. Nobody I work with has felt the same
way unfortunately.

This of course assumes that you have a license to Visio.

-A

<snip>

Thanks for the added information Andrew

Julie
Project MVP

 

[Dave]

Hello Dave,

I hope I didn't offend -- it was not my intention.

My interpretation of ceekaytee's original post was that she wanted to
modify the colors of the summary task bars and have them roll up to
the Project summary task bar, with each section showing the different
colors coming from the *summary* task bars, not the rolled up bars.
Yes, rolling up the subtasks does show the rolled up bar to the
summary but the format of rolled up bars is controlled through the Bar
Styles command -- with only one definition for the rolled up bars.
Ceekaytee could create additional bars styles (most likely using Flag
fields) to change the color of each rolled up bar using the Flag
fields to differentiate between the colors for each section.

I would most likely not undertake that in a large project file as
working with outline level 1 tasks with different colors would suit my
needs. Clearly others may have a different opinion.

Julie

I wouldn't undertake it either, but I don't know how much work the OP is
willing to put into it or how important it is.

Another approach would be to introduce some hammock tasks spanning each
of the phases (with no work assigned) and then roll those up to the
summary level for each of the phases and also to the 'artificial'
summary line you inserted. This would be a lot less work that rolling
up the individual 'actual' tasks', but is somewhat clunky.

However, having done that on an experimental file, it appears to work
quite nicely. In fact, if the hammock tasks are filtered out of the
view, the rolled up view works perfectly.

Perhaps the OP would let us know how they get on and what approach they
adopted.