Seeking Visual Reports bug work-around

[BF2K]

I appear to have discovered a bug in visual reports for consolidated projects.
(See thread in MS Projects general questions):
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...4a9e-4da3-952b-8f0ff97343bc&lang=en&cr=US&p=1

I'm wondering if anyone has seen this problem, and/or might be able to
suggest a work-around using VBA. What I'm trying to do is get into excel the
time-phased resource loading for a consolidated project, showing at least the
level of effort assigned to a resource by each project in the master project.
.... The pivot table produced by Visual Reports would be perfect, except that
it produces incorrect data.

Thanks

 

[John]

I appear to have discovered a bug in visual reports for consolidated
projects.
(See thread in MS Projects general questions):
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.publ
ic.project&tid=2688fb46-4a9e-4da3-952b-8f0ff97343bc&lang=en&cr=US&p=1

I'm wondering if anyone has seen this problem, and/or might be able to
suggest a work-around using VBA. What I'm trying to do is get into excel the
time-phased resource loading for a consolidated project, showing at least the
level of effort assigned to a resource by each project in the master project.
... The pivot table produced by Visual Reports would be perfect, except that
it produces incorrect data.

Thanks

BF2K,
This type of report can certainly be done using VBA. You could do it
yourself if you have some Project VBA experience or your could hire
someone to do it. I have done many similar macros for myself and others.
If you are interested, you can contact me direct at the address below.

However, before you decide to use a VBA approach let's exhaust another
possible solution. I haven't actually tried your example but you say
there is a problem and Julie confirmed it. Are the resulting values in
Excel always off by a fixed factor? If you can find a factor, or factors
(and it may be data dependent), then apply the inverse of that factor to
the Visual Reports data. It's certainly a less than perfect workaround,
but it may just get you the data you want in the quickest amount of
time. Anyway, it may be worth considering.

John
Project MVP
jensenj6atatcomcastdotdotnet
(remove obvious redundancies)

 

[John]

I appear to have discovered a bug in visual reports for consolidated
projects.
(See thread in MS Projects general questions):
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.publ
ic.project&tid=2688fb46-4a9e-4da3-952b-8f0ff97343bc&lang=en&cr=US&p=1

I'm wondering if anyone has seen this problem, and/or might be able to
suggest a work-around using VBA. What I'm trying to do is get into excel the
time-phased resource loading for a consolidated project, showing at least the
level of effort assigned to a resource by each project in the master project.
... The pivot table produced by Visual Reports would be perfect, except that
it produces incorrect data.

Thanks

BF2K,
Since typing my first response I had another thought. If you are trying
to get timescaled data of resources for each project and you are using a
common resource pool file, why not simply use Visual Reports from the
resource pool file. It does give the correct data.

John
Project MVP

 

[JulieS]

BF2K,
Since typing my first response I had another thought. If you are
trying
to get timescaled data of resources for each project and you are using
a
common resource pool file, why not simply use Visual Reports from the
resource pool file. It does give the correct data.

John
Project MVP

Hi John,

Sorry to say, the Resource Cost Summary Report is still off, even if
reporting from the pool file. It takes a far amount of tweaking
(changing time scale, showing resources) to get it correct. Even then,
if you play with it long enough you can get it to show completely
incorrect data.

By running the same report several times with the same pool file -- I
can get different answers.

Julie

 

[John]

Hi John,

Sorry to say, the Resource Cost Summary Report is still off, even if
reporting from the pool file. It takes a far amount of tweaking
(changing time scale, showing resources) to get it correct. Even then,
if you play with it long enough you can get it to show completely
incorrect data.

By running the same report several times with the same pool file -- I
can get different answers.

Julie

Julie,
Obviously you played around with it more than I did. Thanks for the
update.

John

 

[JulieS]

Julie,
Obviously you played around with it more than I did. Thanks for the
update.

John

You're welcome John. Honestly I just started playing around with it to
try to get it to work and then just kept hammering on it to see if I
could pick up a pattern to the oddities. The odd part is, sometimes it
does work -- sometimes it doesn't.

Julie

 

[John]

You're welcome John. Honestly I just started playing around with it to
try to get it to work and then just kept hammering on it to see if I
could pick up a pattern to the oddities. The odd part is, sometimes it
does work -- sometimes it doesn't.

Julie

Julie,
Yeah, I know how one little trail can lead to a whole new branch of
paths. By the way, did you report this bug to Eric?

John

 

[JulieS]

Julie,
Yeah, I know how one little trail can lead to a whole new branch of
paths. By the way, did you report this bug to Eric?

John

I logged it on the connect site but will drop it into the newsgroup for
Eric to evaluate. It appears as though the connect site is still also
logging issues so as I ran short of time I dropped it there first.
Julie