Baselines for Version 6.0 (OnePager Express)
About Modifying Baselines
Baseline property displays are driven by the baseline start and finish dates imported from the Microsoft Excel source plan. Not every task/milestone in a Microsoft Excel source plan has a designated baseline start and finish dates. A milestones’ start and finish dates are usually the same. When you desire to display baseline property information, it is essential that the associated data be properly represented in your Microsoft Excel source plan before the data are imported to OnePager Express (OPX).
Modifying All Task/Milestone Baseline Properties
All task and milestone baseline properties may be modified without changing the settings in the current Template by using the following steps:
1) Click the Project-View Properties (PVP) button on the Home ribbon in the Settings group.
2) Next, navigate to either the Task Bars or “Milestones tab as appropriate.
3) Ensure that the Baseline markers checkbox is checked as shown below:
4) Once the Baseline markers checkbox is checked, baselines may be customized by clicking the Baseline Properties button which brings up the Set Baseline Properties form shown below:
5) The following properties of baselines for tasks/milestones may be modified:
- a) Change Baseline Shape. The controls for changing the shape of the baseline are the same as for tasks/milestones discussed and illustrated above. The shapes available are the same as for tasks/milestones as shown in the Set baseline properties form below:
- When the selection is made, either continue to make additional properties changes or click the OK button to get back to the PVP form where all changes can be applied.
- b) Change Baseline Fill Pattern. In a fashion very similar to the way fill patterns are changed for tasks/milestones, once again access the Set baseline properties form as before, navigate to the Use custom fills checkbox, check it, and use the associated dropdown menu to make your selection as shown below:
- When the selection is made, either continue to make additional properties changes or click the OK button to get back to the PVP form where all changes can be applied.
- c) Change Baseline Height Percentage. This control, shown above, allows you to change the height of the baseline as a percentage of the total height of the parent task/milestone (task and baseline information included).
- i) The default setting is 30 percent (%). Increasing this value makes the baseline taller (higher) with respect to the task/milestone.
- ii) To change the value, navigate to the Height percentage control in the Specify how to display baseline properties group of the Set baseline properties form.
- iii) Change the value with the controls provided.
- iv) If you double the value to 60 percent, for example, the resulting baselines would look like this:
- d) Change Baseline Transparency. The transparency control makes the baseline less transparent when the value in the window of the form shown below is decreased (to 10% in the example below) and more transparent when the value is increased:
- i) For illustrative purposes, the portion of the project view shown below is using a flat fill pattern for both the tasks/milestones and the baseline and the transparency value for the baseline is set to 10% making the baseline almost solid:
- ii) Changing the transparency for the baseline to 90% produces the following result:
- e) Change Baseline Color You can also make the baseline a different color than the parent task/milestone. To do this:
- i) Go to the same Set baseline properties form as described above.
- ii) Check the Use custom color checkbox.
- iii) Then, click the dropdown to gain access to the Color Chooser form.
- iv) Finally, select the desired color.
- v) The form is shown below:
- vi) When the color is selected, the Color Chooser form will disappear and after clicking OK in the Set baseline properties form, the project view will look like this:
- f) Connecting baselines and actuals The Connecting Lines group in the Set baseline properties form control tells the OnePager whether you want to connect baselines to their task bars. This group is shown below with its controls labeled:
- i) Check the Connect baselines and actuals checkbox to activate the group and apply the default baseline connection settings.
- ii) To change the color of the connecting line, check the Use custom color checkbox. Then, click the color window dropdown button to show the standard Color Chooser. Making a selection will change the color of the connecting line. If you do not check this checkbox, OnePager will use the color of the task/milestone as the color of the connecting line segments.
- iii) To change the type of line segment (solid, dotted, dashed, etc.), click the Line style dropdown button and make your selection.
- iv) Finally, you may modify the width of the line by changing the value in the Line width control window.
- v) Click OK on the Set baseline properties form then click the OK button on the PVP form to see the baselines connected to their current schedule tasks/milestones as shown below:
- g) Showing baseline dates. OnePager can show the baseline dates near the baselines for a more detailed information of target dates:
- i) By checking the Show start date or Show finish date or both you can select the date format that OnePager uses in annotating the baseline date, including whether or not to use the fiscal year. If you choose to show both start and finish dates the same date format will be applied.
- ii) The controls in this group are very similar to the date controls associated with task/milestone date labels'.
- iii) A sample of the date formats from the Date format' dropdown menu is shown here:
- iv) To specify the location of the baseline (date) text, relative to the baseline, use the dropdown menu shown below from the Baseline dates group:
- v) The Use fiscal year checkbox in the Baseline dates group is an instruction, if checked, to OnePager to show the displayed baseline date in the fiscal year format in the project view’s time axis. OnePager will take the action only if the time axis is, indeed, displaying the time axis in a fiscal year format.
- vi) To select the font to use in displaying the baseline date, click the Date font dropdown button. This brings up the Font properties form. The controls in this form are the same as the controls for modifying any text font in OnePager. The Font properties form is shown below:
- vii) The project view below is an example of positioning baseline start and finish dates below the baseline:
Modifying Individual Task/Milestone Baseline Properties
The default settings for displaying baseline information for individual tasks/milestones can be modified by using the following steps:
1) You can select the task/milestone and right-click it to reveal the context menu with the Format… command or click the Format… button on the Home ribbon after selecting the desired tasks/milestones.
2) Either way, select the Baselines tab in the Change Marker Properties form which looks like this:
3) Go to the Baselines tab, shown above, which controls the display of the baseline dates and connectors for the selected task/milestone and the placement of the numeric text (dates) for baseline information:
- a) The Show Baseline Marker checkbox allows you to turn on and off the display of baseline information for the selected task/milestone.
- b) When the Show Baseline Marker checkbox is checked, you have the option to specify the display of the connector and the display of baseline start and baseline finish dates or both for the selected task/milestone.
- c) When the Show Baseline Start Date checkbox is checked or when the Show Baseline Finish Date checkbox is checked (or both) you have access to control over the date positions and font properties as discussed above related to modifying all task/milestone baseline information. Below is an example of a single task’s baseline information modified:
- d) There are no controls in the Baseline tab of the Change Marker Properties form to modify the properties of the connector line for an individually selected task/milestone.
(10.6.1-60)