Setting up a project Status field in Web Access Views

[Jesper Elkjær]

To get an overview of the progress of the projects in my portfolio, I would
like to set up a view in Web Access that tells me if a project is: On
schedule, A little late, Very late or Complete. The status of the projects
should be indicated via Graphical Indicators (green, yellow, red, check
mark). These Graphical Indicators should be visible both at project level
and task level.

In Project Professional there is a standard field called "Status". This
field has a lot of the functionality that I am looking for in Web Access. As
this field is a calculated field and therefore doesn't exist in the database
you can't just put the "Status" field into an Enterprise Custom field and
put Graphical Indicators on that.

How the "Status" field is calculated:
- If the task is 100 percent complete, then Microsoft Office Project 2003
sets the Status field to Complete.
- If the task start date is greater than the status date, then the Status
field contains Future Task.
- If timephased cumulative percent complete is spread to at least the day
before the status date, then the Status field contains On Schedule.
- If the timephased cumulative percent complete does not reach midnight on
the day before the status date, then the Status field contains Late.

My question is how you program these different if statements into an
Enterprise Custom field and convert the value into a format that makes it
possible to set up Graphical Indicators on it.

My idea:
To evaluate if a task is late or not, I was thinking that you could convert
the "% complete" value to a date by using the Start date and then compare
the calculated date to the "status date". And then evaluate on the variation
between these to dates. But how do you do this with an Enterprise Custom
field?


As I find this issue to be a general one, I hope that there are others that
have a solution to this issue.

Regards,
Jesper

 

[Sumit]

Dear Jesper,

To calculate the project status normally we compare the Actual dates with
Baseline.

To set a formula in Enterprise Global:
1. Open Project Prof connect using an Admin Account
2. Click Tools > Enterprise Options > Open Enterprise Global
3. Click Tools > Customize > Enterprise Field
4. Under Custom Field choose Task field and select Type (based on the output
of ur formula)
5. Rename the Field and then click on Formula where you can write the
required formula based on ur requirements.
6. To show graphical indicaors hit the graphical indicaors button and equate
the output of ur formula to the required indicator.

To create an indicator at project level under step 4 select the Project
Field and u can still use the formula u wrote in step 5.

PS: Do backup the Enterprise Global before doing anything, also don't click
on any cell in the Gantt Chart view while the Ent Global is checked out.

You need to insert these field in the required view in Project Center View
to display them.

Hope this helps.
Regards,
Sumit.

 

[Jesper]

Thanks for you reply. Unfortunately this doesn't help me much.

The problem is that I want to compare the actual progress (start date + (%
complete x duration)) to the current date (status date). This is what the
built in field in Microsoft Project calculates and shows as (On schedule,
Late, Future task, Complete).

Regards,
Jesper

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

Jesper:

Sumit explained exactly how to do this. You can create any variance measure
you like, but why not use the ones that the system provides? Variance is
calculated in the system through the use of baselines. You can set any
measures you like in your formula using system calculated variance.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the book on Project Server
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

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