Traffic Lights

[Steve]

Hi All

I guess this must be a most basic question, however I am struggling to find
the answer.

I am new to project and currently building a plan for my company.

I have worked out the traffic light warning system for tasks at risk, on
target etc, but can only update them manually.

What I would really like to do would be for example if a task was 100 days
long each day would equate to 1% so if by day 20 only 5% work had been done
ie 5 days then that should automatically change traffic light colour to red
for behind schedule.

If this is not possible, is there a way to automatically flag up if a task
is behind schedule, I guess there will be 200+ tasks on a very important
project and I would hate to miss one because I didn't notice it.

Thanks in advance


Steve

 

[Karl Kill]

Steve,

There are many examples in this discussion group and also in Professional and Server discussion group, most on under custom fields. Try that search.

I will try to answer your question. First, I think you are mixing duration and work in your question so I am not sure if you want which one. I will answer both. This will set a simple variance % or days slippage. You Must Baseline Your Project for this to Work.

You can create a custom field(s) using Tools > Customize > Fields. I use the Task Number fields.
1. Rename the field, click Rename button
2. for Work variance, I would use a % of the Baseline Work
3. click on Formula, enter a formula like:
IIf([Baseline Work]=0,0.5,[Work Variance]/[Baseline Work])
this formula will set a the % of work to the baseline and if no baseline then set to 50%
4. click Use Formula for Rollup
5. click Graphical Indicators buttons and enter what you want for indicator to be set.
Remember that it stops at the first true statement. So in order to have the following >25% red, >10% < 25% yellow, <=10% green; it must be in this order.
is greater than .25 Red indicator
is greater than .10 Yellow indicator
is greater than or equal to .10 Green indicator
6. click OK
7. Go to a view you want to add the new column to, Right click on column header
8. Insert column, find the new column name, click ok
9. Make sure it works.
10. Now you probably want to create a custom view and table and make them available to all you projects
11. go to View>Table> More Tables
12. Click on Copy button, this makes a copy of the current table with the new column
13. Rename, click on show in menu
14. OK, click apply
15. go to View>More Views
16. click on Copy button, this makes a copy of the current view
17. Rename the view
18. select table, you new table, group, and sort
19. Click OK
20. click Apply
21. now to make available to all projects. go to Tools>Organizer
22. click on table tab, find new table in right side list, select
23. Copy to Left side list
24. do the same for the new View
25. Click Close

You can do the same process for schedule. Note, Finish Variance is in minutues so you need to divide by 480 to get days for 8hour/day schedule.

Sorry this is so long but there is a lot to it. Please try searching on "custom fields." As your project management mature you can use Earned Value as the variable to report on which is much better but does take some in-depth knowledge.

Hope this helps,
Karl

 

[JackD]

There are a large number of ways to do this.
Probably the easiest is to use one of the built-in filters.
Go to the project menu / filters / more filters and look at the choices you
have there. There is one for late tasks, slipping tasks etc.
You can stick with those or edit them to fit your needs.

If you are really set on traffic lights, then go to the insert menu, select
column, pick one of the text fields (say text1 in this case)
After it is inserted and visible, right click on the column header and
select customize.
Click on the formula button and build a formula which reflects what you
want.
Then click on the "graphical indicators" Button and set it up the way you
like. It will change color based on the values that the formula returns.

If you need help writing the formula, post back to this newsgroup with the
general formula you want to use and someone will likely be able to tell you
how to write it so project understands.

-Jack

 

[Steve]

Excellent replies thank you very much

I will be working on this again over the next couple of days, so if I get
stuck I will come back to you

Thanks again

Steve