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Rolling up tasks to a summary task

6 replies [Last post]
Mon, 2006-11-13 08:30
Andrew Owenson
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Guys

I can roll up the tasks ok. My problem is that on a repetitive programme ie package procurement, I would like the individual package programme to be on one line. Each activity has a different colour/shape, so that the key at the bottom differentiates between the different activities. Everything works, except that if there is an overall summary bar, it is a mess it rolls up all of the packages below it, and if I wanted to add another package the summary will not automatically use the key shapes (created by using flag1, 2 etc for each activity.)I have got over the problem by doing one package and copying. But is there a way of doing this post programming ?

Andrew
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Replies

Tue, 2006-11-14 10:34
#1
Andrew Owenson
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James

Yes - you do make sense. I only use the rolled up effect on each package, not on an "overall summary" as that would be very busy. Each package is made up of end to end activitites, so that when I roll them up they work very well. I then have to double click on each segment of the rolled up summary bar to create a shape and colour which will represent each activity. When the bar is complete the activities are all on the one bar looks great. What I was really asking was, is there a way of creating the shapes and colours within the summary bar easily, after I have produced the programme without having to double click on each activity - say each package has 15 activities, and there were 50 packages - thats a lot of double clicking !!!. I can create a flag format for normal activities, so that if I tick the flag1 box every activity under that flag will be a certain colour and shape, however the summary bar does not reflect the format. As I said earlier I have created one package and copied it many times. This works well and I change each package as is needed . The problem has come to my attention as one of my colleagues has created a design programme on similar lines but had not formatted the summary bars before copying, and now wants to summarise the design elements into a smaller programme.
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Tue, 2006-11-14 10:10
#2
James Griffiths
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Andrew,

Dunno if it’s quite what you’re looking for – but on the overall summary bar, the one that all the packages are rolled-up to, you can hide specific portions of it. However, the messiness of the overall summary bar is dependent on how many sub-packages you have relative to it and running in parallel.

Essentially, within each sub-package, I’ve defined a few tasks and a few milestones. As you create each package, click the overall summary-bar “+” and the sub-package tasks roll-up into the summary-bar. Double-click on the overall rolled-up bar and you should get the window that allows you to define the shape and colour of the rolled-up bar. You then change the SHAPE to show a blank, for the long tasks but you leave the milestone portion of the bar. The result is that you can show just the milestones for each of the sub-packages.

Each time you add a new package you will have to go through the same process of making the rolled-up summary bar disappear because, when rolling-up, it overlays all of the rolled-up tasks on top of each other.

Does this make any sense?

James.
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Tue, 2006-11-14 09:07
#3
Andrew Owenson
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Alexandre

That VBA thing again !!. I guess that I am going to have to learn how to use VBA. Anybody got some good advice where I start ?

Regards

Andrew
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Tue, 2006-11-14 09:05
#4
Andrew Owenson
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James

I understand the "hiding" bit, but what do you mean by transparent

Andrew
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Tue, 2006-11-14 03:47
#5
James Griffiths
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Andrew,

On the overall summary-bar, have you tried hiding it - or turning it into a transparent bar?

James.
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