Splitting and Parsing Columns for Version 5.3 (OnePager Pro)

About Splitting and Parsing Columns

The column splitting feature allows you to duplicate tasks when a task in your Microsoft Project plan is assigned to multiple resources (or anything else). Because assignments from Microsoft Project often are comma-delimited, this feature enables OnePager to parse the comma-delimited list and create a unique task for each instance in the comma-separated list. Consider the following example.

Split Resource Names Example

1) Say you want to use color-codes on tasks/milestones based upon your Microsoft Project plan’s Resource Names column as shown below:

2) Some of the entries in the Resource Names column consist of multiple, comma-separated items and some of these are followed by percentages in square brackets. Without the column splitting feature, if we made a project view from these data and assigned task/milestone colors based upon the Resource Name column, we would get this result:

3) OnePager in this case treats the entire string as an individual Resource Name value. To give us more flexibility in displaying tasks that have multiple resources assigned, OnePager supports the concept of a split column. This feature recognizes comma-separated values in a designated column and creates a separate task for each of the comma-separated values.

Enabling Splitting

To access this feature, click the Templates… button on the Microsoft Project tool bar and navigate to the Other Columns tab page on the Template Properties form as shown below:

1) In the form above, the Enable splitting checkbox is checked and the Resource Names column is identified to participate in the column splitting process.

2) After making the above change and while still within the Template Properties form, navigate to the Task Bar or Milestone tab and go to the Gantt Bar/Milestone Fill Color group of this tab and note that the Color-code based on checkbox is checked and the dropdown window show that Resource Names (Split) is set as shown below:

3) Next, save the modified template.

Split Resources in the Project View

4) Now make a NEW project view using the modified template (and splitting of the Resource Names column). The project view will look as follows:

5) Note what has happened above.

a) There are now several more tasks on the Project View Editor (PVE) screen than there were before. The task Centrifugal Barrier has now been split into three separate tasks, one for each of the three resources that was assigned to this Task.

b) Each of the resources has a unique color assigned.

c) Each of the resources appears by itself in the legend.

d) The square brackets enclosing the percentage figures (%) are removed from the legend.

6) With this feature, you can use the split columns just like any other columns by using the dropdowns in the Template Properties form or Project View Properties (PVP) form to assign colors, label tasks and milestones, to define/label rows and swimlanes, etc.

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