Can I get MSP layouts look like Primavera P3?

Member for

21 years 3 months

Sukumaran,

Zhang is right, You can format your summary bar by modifying bar style.

As all other friends are expressing their views about this creativity work is fine. We are not comparing here MSP with P3, we just want to find a solution to help some one who want to do some thing with MSP. Niek is correct, it is really difficult to manage so many custom fields in complex project.

Member for

20 years 5 months

HI Guys and Girls,

This is my Opinion,

Generally This is very creative / knowlegable for users to do presentation but for monitoring and scheduling it may be risky / tedious... just a guess.



1. It could make your PC slow with this graphic.

2. Your file will hang if the file using very Big byte.

3. It takes time to update or doing changes and will make u busy on doing this layout.



just for discussion....




Member for

20 years 7 months

I don’t want to be the one to spoil this party because the creativity is well appreciated; however I would like to add some remarks.



1) the same do’s and don’ts as mentioned earlier still apply



2) There is no integrity check on the overall code mask, because you now revert to individual fields that have a singular value list at best. This implies that you can create code combinations that do not exist. For instance, if you group by country and then by city you can end up with Tokyo in the USA and London in Tanzania.



3) Data entry is going to be very tedious because you need to enter/maintain all individual fields separately and maintain the integrity.



4) If you want to edit or change activities you’ll need to revert to the regular summary task view, losing sight of what you were doing. In large schedules this is not a workable situation.



So without degrading this creativity in any way, be careful what you are doing, it is not P3 (or any other Primavera software).

Member for

20 years 3 months

Hello everyone,



Maria, my sincere apology for jumping into conclusion.



Suku, that’s GREAT.



I LOVE THIS THREAD.



This only show how to come up with solution in an evironment of open mind and ingenuity.



Once again, my sincere apology to all.

Member for

24 years 5 months

Hi Maria,



I would like to clarify on your statement



"But I can not see an easy way to save this "layout" or view. If I change in one view it follows in to the other view. This causes extra work when it is needed to show different views to different people.

Does anyone know how to work effectively with views while using groups and filters in different ways? "



Have you change the groups and filters everytime you save a view? Try changing it everytime you want to have a new layout as called in P3, in MSP it’s called views.



Cheers,

Se

Member for

20 years 8 months

Guys,



Attached is the image for your review:





As you can see the summary bars appear on each band. In P3 we can hide or show the summary bars for each band. Any facilities in MSP.



Raj,

I didn’t click the "show summary tasks". It appear automatically when I do grouping.



Regards.

Member for

20 years 5 months

Hi Guys,

Its Very Intresting to follow up your Post, Its very creative, Congragulation!!!

Maybe I can Say MSP = Making Software Primavera.

Sorry Guys..But its really Intresting and Creative.

Cheers

Member for

21 years 3 months

Sukumaran,

When you create group don’t click on "show summary tasks" then you define your view using that group. That view will not show summary tasks. If you don’t want to show only few of them, then use filter for selected summary tasks. I hope this will work.

Member for

20 years 8 months

Zhang,



Yes, using custom fields the activities can be grouped and arranged on hierarchical basis. But when I create a few levels then extra summary bars appear on each level. Any idea how to remove the unwanted summary bar on each level.



I don’t have this problem when use outline number. It all in order.



Regards.

Member for

20 years 6 months

Hi,



custom fields are non-hierarchical,but you can make it hierarchical.

e.g. text1.text2.number1 or, text2.text1.number1



It’s more flexible than outline

Member for

21 years

Hi Maria,



This bunch of encules, they have given you a run for your money - they are male chauvinists, ignore them and send me the problem, I will try to help out.

Member for

20 years 7 months

That’s because a view is associated with a table, and the same table can be used in different views.



What you need is a proper manual. (I can recommend Using MS Project 2003 from Tim Pyron, QUE series)

Member for

21 years 5 months

If I create a group and uses group by for ex. outline level 1, and then group by outline level 2, I get some sort of unflexible summarization in the way I choose. This could be hierarchial. I can not say it works smoothly, but it works.



But I can not see an easy way to save this "layout" or view. If I change in one view it follows in to the other view. This causes extra work when it is needed to show different views to different people.

Does anyone know how to work effectively with views while using groups and filters in different ways?

Member for

20 years 7 months

Text fields are more flexible and do not require you to define a mask.



If you want to use a text field for grouping activities I would nonetheless recommend you to create a mask. (called value list in custom fields) This to avoid typo’s, etc.



They do however not support hierarchical structures so you can’t roll up (i.e. summarise) your categories when you use custom fields.

Member for

21 years 5 months

Are there any advantages using text fields instead of outline codes? From what I can see it looks the same, but does it work the same way?


Member for

20 years 7 months

Maria,



Please be aware that there are quite some do’s and don’ts around outline codes in MSP.



For instance, don’t change the code mask unless you want to purge your existing outline codes in that group.



You can’t insert activities in outline mode and dragging doesn’t work either.



Be aware that outline codes also work on summary tasks so they can conflict with the tasks underneath. You need to guard that integrity.



In other words: it looks like P3 but it does not match P3.



Hope this helps,



Niek.