How to customize Timeline values or labels?

[Geoff]

Hi, all.

In Project 2000 my client desires to add company specific time data to the
Project Timeline area (in a Gantt view)

I have the necessary calendar date to company date (a variant of the 13
period year) converter working in VBA, and have added that into a custom
text field which I can display as a column for each task

However, it will be much cleaner if the company date info could be palced
onto the timeline and be displayed either instead of or along with the
standard calendar timescale on the time line.

So far, I don't see any means of achieving custom timeline labelling, but
perhaps someone does have a method.

TIA
Geoff

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Geoff,

I don't believe this is possible. You could try posting on the developer
newsgroup. Please see FAQ Item: 24. Project Newsgroups. FAQs, companion
products and other useful Project information can be seen at this web
address: http://www.mvps.org/project/.

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[John]

Geoff,
No need to cross post. Those of us who respond generally check all
relevant newsgroups.

Mike is right using conventional wisdom. However I rarely accept a "no"
answer. Depending on what type of information your client wants to see
there may be a solution, although a bit unconventional. Using VBA,
Project data including a custom timeline can be exported to Excel and
displayed in any format you want. If the Gantt bar display itself is
important, that can be replicated using Excel's graphic capability - all
done via the VBA code. A similar thing could also be done by exporting
to PowerPoint although I believe the code would be more complex.

Never say die.
John

 

[Steve House]

And it might also be possible in Visio which has reasonable passable Gantt
chart and network diagram tools.

 

[Geoff]

Thanks, Mike, John and Steve.

I have since met with the client, reviewed what I had done, and it is
acceptable in the light of not being able to customise the Project timeline.
One specific reason they want to move from Excel to Outlook is to gain a
more professional and manageable tool.

I appreciate your responses and confirmation of my investigation.

Regards,

Geoff

 

[Steve House]

I'm truly perplexed at the "move from Excel to Outlook" comment. Project
is a work scheduling tool, Excel is a number crunching calculation tool, and
Outlook is an email communications and personal information managment tool
which includes to-do lists and appointment calendars. Certainly all three
are useful in a project management environment but they are fundamentally
different tools with fundamentally different functions. You could also
throw Visio, which is a decent-enough flexible business charting tool to use
once you have the data you want to diagram, into the mix to create visuals
that are fancier than possible with the built-in graphing tools in the other
applications. While you can kludge together some partially functional
crossovers, like building a representation of a Gantt chart in Excel, all of
the apps are each specialized in solving fundamentally different types of
problems. I'm especially perplexed how one could move numerical analysis
and modeling problems from Excel to an email communications and appointment
calendar application like Outlook and get anything useful from the result.

Why not suggest to your client that they take an integrated systems approach
and use all three or four of those applications, each for those specific
problem areas where their particular strengths are required? In their issue
of concern over getting a particular way of displaying dates in the Gantt
timeline, it sounds a little like they getting bogged down fiddling with the
frosting and decorations instead of focussing on the problems of getting the
cake itself right. After all, a date is just an arbitrary label for a
point in time whether you prefer to call it the 38th of Oknober, the 300th
Day of the Year of the Flea, or Stardate 143924.33 <grin>. What matters in
Project is what the resources need to be doing that day.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Geoff]

Oops, sorry - I meant Project not outlook....
It was late at night after a big weekend. They are using kludging gantt
charts in Excel and want to move to Project...