Getting Started with OnePager Pro

OnePager Pro Icons

OnePager is an add-in to Microsoft Project, which automatically displays the “OnePager” icon once OnePager is installed. That tool bar looks like this:

Clicking the “OnePager” icon button will generate the graph. Clicking the “Templates…” button will let you edit the templates for your graphs. For now, it is simplest to use the default template, but you can learn how templates let you customize and standardize graph features later in this document.

Step 1: Prepare Your Microsoft Project Plan for OnePager Pro

Before you launch OnePager, it is a good idea to unhide the “flag” column you intend to use. Note that when you unhide a column in Microsoft Project, that column may now appear in some of Microsoft Project’s standard reports. Do not forget to hide the column again before generating such reports if you do not want the column to appear in those reports.The selected “flag” column allows you to control which tasks get graphed and to store those choices in Microsoft Project for future use. An example of the use of a “flag” field (Flag20) is shown below:

To control which tasks get graphed, specify the flag column (e.g. Flag1, Flag2 … Flag20) that you wish to use. Number fields may also be used the same as the Flag fields where a “1” in a Number field indicates “Yes” and a “0” in a Number field indicates “No.” Unhide that column in Microsoft Project by right-clicking in the column header area and selecting “Insert Column”:

Now put a “Yes” in this flag column for any task that you want to graph:

a) When making your first project view, we strongly recommend that you mark 50 or fewer tasks with “Yes.”

b) Please note that OnePager Pro is shipped with a number of fully populated templates that are based on the Microsoft Project file used in the Tutorial also shipped with the product – BlueGrass Project 2J-303.

c) Starting in Microsoft Project 2010, there is a "Manual Scheduling" mode that allows you to leave dates blank in your schedule. However, behind the scenes, these dates are still being automatically assigned to the project Start Date, or to Today's Date if the project Start Date is not defined. Even though the dates appear to be undefined, they are defined behind the scenes, and are being passed to OnePager Pro. Because Today's Date often equals your “Snapshot date”, it is not surprising to see all of these "dateless tasks" appearing near the time cursor.

d) There are two solutions to this issue: (1) Define the dates for your tasks and milestones in Microsoft Project. This will overwrite any default dates that Microsoft Project is assigning, and will make your project schedule more consistent with your OnePager Pro timeline. (2) Remove the dateless tasks from your OnePager Pro graph. You can leave them in project, but by removing them from the OnePager Pro graph, you won't have to explain why certain Tasks/Milestones are appearing in weird places when they really should not be. As a rule of thumb, we recommend defining dates for all tasks and milestones, especially when it comes to graph generation.

Step 2: Launch OnePager Pro

To launch OnePager and make a project view, click the “OnePager Pro” button on the Microsoft Project tool bar or “Add-ins” tab, which brings up the “OnePager Pro Start” form:

The “OnePager Pro Start” form provides you with three options:

a) NEW: Clicking the “NEW” button will bring up the “OnePager Pro choices” form for creating a new project view.

b) UPDATE: Clicking the “UPDATE” button will allow you to BROWSE for an existing project view file or select a recently-opened project view file so that you can add or replace a snapshot in it.

c) OPEN: Clicking the “OPEN” button will allow you to BROWSE for an existing project view file or select a recently-opened project view file. Once selected and opened, the project view is available for editing.

A Note

The "OnePager Pro Start" form has a "Help" button in the upper right corner. Clicking this button provides you with access to the following form:

The buttons on this form provide you with access to Help information such as videos, tutorials, OnePager Documentation, and access to the standard licensing system.

Making a NEW Project View

Clicking the “NEW” button brings up the “OnePager choices” form as shown below:

This “OnePager choices” form asks you to confirm a few things before you build the project view. It will make good guesses for each of these choices, but you can change any of them:

a) Starting Template: The current template determines which columns get imported from Microsoft Project and how the initial project view looks. OnePager ships with many sample templates, but you can also customize your own templates. To choose which template to use in building your project view, click the “Change…” button in the top group of the “OnePager choices” form. For now, just stick with the default template entitled “Single Project Gantt View – Detailed,” but you can always use a different template to get a different type of project view.

b) Title of the New Project View: This is the title of the graph and also the suggested name of the file in which it will be saved, though you can change the file name when you actually save it. We recommend that you enter a title that helps you identify the view later on. For each project view that you create, OnePager remembers colors, titles, legends, font sizes, and all other graph properties so that your work is saved for future use. Later, you can update the project view with a snapshot of how the project looks on a different date. Then you can browse through the snapshots to see how the project is changing over time.

c) Task Selection: This is how you tell OnePager Pro which tasks from your Microsoft Project plan to include. Either click the “Select all tasks” radio button to graph everything or choose a flag column. You can make several project views from a single Microsoft Project plan, each using a different flag or number column.

d) Snapshot Date: This is the date of the report and lets you keep track of how schedules change over time. Each project view can have several snapshots.

Changing the Microsoft Project Column Mapping

Since the “Show column mappings” button near the bottom of the screen is checked, you will now have a chance to review and change the Microsoft Project column mappings to OnePager Pro before you make your first project view. To do this, click the “Next>” button. You now see the following form:

Notice in the form above that OnePager has relied on the current template to make some guesses on what Microsoft Project plan columns should be used in making the graph. You can easily change any of these column mappings by making selections from the drop-down lists. For example, we show below how to change the “Finish Date” for tasks:

Step 3: Create a NEW Project View

Once you are satisfied with the column mappings, click the “Create new project view” button to import your selected data into OnePager and create a project view from it. After a second or two you will see a screen that looks like this:

A Note

Note that each task or milestone was color-coded based on the value in the “Resource Names” column, as is detailed in the legend. The legend contains an optional diagram near the bottom, explaining that the bars inside the Gantt bars represent percent complete extracted from Microsoft Project. Percent complete comes from a Microsoft Project plan column that you specified in the column mapping screen. Also note that the template that is active when you press the “Create new project view” button is the template for how things look in the new project view. The template’s “Task Bars” tab showing where the color control is located is shown below:

Step 4: OPEN an Existing Project View

Once you see the OnePager graphics, you often want to change the Microsoft Project plan since the graph can show project schedule problems that were not obvious before. To do this, save the project view, make the changes to your Microsoft Project plan and re-launch OnePager. When the “OnePager Pro Start” form appears, click the “OPEN” button which offers you the option to BROWSE or select a recently opened project view as shown here:

a) Clicking any of the “RECENT Project Views” will display that project view on the screen.

b) Clicking the “BROWSE…” selection will bring up the Windows “Open” form as shown here:

Step 5: UPDATE a Project View

However, if you want to update your snapshot, click the “UPDATE” button and the “OnePager choices” form for updating a project view will appear as shown below:

Notice that the Project View to Update group has the project view file name displayed in the window. The “Snapshot Date” group gives you two choices:

a) NEW: This lets you create a new snapshot, showing how the project view looks on a different date. Progress data are imported from your Microsoft Project plan under this choice. Under this choice, the snapshot may include tasks/milestones that were NOT in previous snapshots if you have changed some of the selections in your Flag/Number field.

b) REPLACE: This lets you replace tasks or add tasks that you did not previously have in the snapshot. When you click the radio button, you see an expanded set of choices as shown below:

Next, select the “Dates and progress” button in the “Replace mode” group. Click “Next>,” go past the “OnePager choices” form column mapping form, and OnePager will update the snapshot to with the new data from the modified Microsoft Project.

In the rare case when you want to update the task names from new values, choose “All properties” or “All properties (confirm).” The latter lets you confirm each task name that is being changed.

The power of OnePager Pro is illustrated when, after a period of progress on the project, it is time to produce another project view, with the same look and feel, for a new status date. Assuming that the Microsoft Project plan was updated with actual start and finish, percent complete, and other relevant data during the reporting interval, OnePager can easily generate a new snapshot. Simply retrieve the project view as shown in the above example and select the “UPDATE” radio button. Doing so will bring up the following “OnePager choices” form:

a) Select the “NEW snapshot at date” as shown above. You will want to select a current date for the snapshot so that this snapshot will represent the project at the status date point in time. To see which snapshot dates already exist, just move the mouse cursor over the “NEW snapshot-date” box to see a list of the existing dates. Use the built in calendar drop down button or type in the new month, day, and year in the window provided as shown below:

b) Uncheck the “Show column mappings” box if you want to use the same mappings as you used before. The bottom of the screen now looks like this:

c) Pressing the large “New” button creates a new snapshot for the project view, showing how the project changed from the previous snapshot date to the date entered for the current snapshot. The project view opens at the new snapshot. The color, fonts, title, and swimlane assignments are consistent between the two snapshots:

d) You can go back and forth between the two snapshots by using the snapshot forward/backward buttons on the “View” ribbon as shown above:

Step 6: Edit Your Project View

Sooner or later, most of you will edit the font sizes and text position to optimize readability. To do this, hold down the left mouse button and “drag” a selection box that encloses many tasks/milestones at once:

a) When you release the mouse, the enclosed tasks/milestones will all be selected:

b) Click the “Increase Font Size” button on the tool bar shown below:

c) The project view will now look something like this:

d) Repeating this operation for the remaining tasks/milestones (we could have done “Select All” and done it all at once!), we obtain a project view with larger fonts on all the tasks/milestones:

Another common editing task is to move the task names from their current position, centered on the task, to a position left or right of the task. To do this, select a set of tasks/milestones as before, but this time click one of the text-positioning buttons on the tool bar:

a) Doing this on several batches of tasks/milestones results in the following edited project view. (We have also dragged the legend to a new position and have adjusted some of its font sizes):

b) In case you change your mind about the last editing action you took, you can UNDO the last editing action by clicking the UNDO button above the OnePager tool bar. Successive clicking the UNDO button will undo editing actions in the reverse order that they were applied.

Save the edited project view by pressing the save button above the tool bar next to the UNDO button. All of the font-size changes, text-position edits, and the new legend position are now saved in the file structure in case you need to update this project view with new data at a later time.

Step 7: Share Your Project View

Finally, copy the current snapshot of the project view to the clipboard by pressing the “Copy” button on the tool bar. Then paste the graph into a PowerPoint slide, as shown below:

That’s it! You’ve now created a professional 1-page schedule summary from a complex Microsoft Project plan schedule and have copied it into a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. You can also print the graph by selecting File…Print. OnePager has other features that let you move tasks vertically to different “rows and swimlanes,” change the number of swimlanes, add swimlane titles, show dependencies among tasks, change task colors, hide tasks, add floating comment boxes, and standardize on graph styles across organizations. To learn more about these features, read about the specific workflows in this document.

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