MSP2007std. Multi bar and stacked resource histograms? How to?

A

adidistyle

Hello all,

One of MSP's low cost competitors (Project Commander) has a very nice
feature that displays multibar Resource Graphs. See this at:
http://www.projectcommander.co.uk/Word docs/Screenexamples.doc Pages 1 & 6

This is very handy because you can see at a glance the demands on all or
part of your resources, and quickly guage the overall "overload" situation by
assessing the "amount" of red displayed. The individual resources can also be
identified as each has different coloured bars. The timeframe can be daily,
weekly, monthly etc. This graph can also be displayed in a split window below
the gantt chart, so can easily see which projects/tasks are causing overloads.

This is much easier to use than Resource Usage table.

I have looked at this and thought it would be a very handy tool for our
sales and estimating team, to quickly experiment with adding proposed
projects to the production schedule. The results are visual and not too much
skill is required.

Does this sound like something that can be achieved in MSP2007? I realize it
is not out of the box but could it be achieved with Pivot Tables or VBA?
Which is the easiest choice whilst staying inside MSP?. I would prefer not to
export to Excel and do it there as that slows down the "suck and see"
process. I am hoping that someone can guide me on the best method, and the
where to aquire the skills required!

PS: A high degree of accuracy is not required. We schedule pretty roughly,
and are really most interested in keeping the workload realistic, rather than
in tight control. Some early failures with MSP's levelling suggests to me
that quick and dirty scheduling may be more effective for us, as we have a
flexible workforce that can take up some overallocation via overtime.

All comments and advice welcome.

Thanks

Adam
 
J

Jan De Messemaeker

Hi,
Stacked histograms are available in Project Server, but not in the desktop
product, sorry.
You will indeed need exporting if you absolutely want this.
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf
 
A

adidistyle

Thanks Rod,

At least now I can see the total overload without going to Excel.
A multi bar would have told me which resource to focus on first.

Regards, Adam
 

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