Baselines (OnePager Express)

From OnePager Documentation
Jump to: navigation, search

About Modifying Baselines

Baseline property displays are driven by the Baseline Start and Finish dates imported from the Microsoft Excel plan. Not every task/milestone in a Microsoft Excel plan may have a designated baseline start and finish date. Milestones’ start and finish dates are usually the same. When you desire to display baseline property information in your project view it is essential that the associated data be properly represented in your Microsoft Excel plan before the data are imported to OnePager Express.

Modifying All Task/Milestone Baseline Properties in a Project View

All task and milestone baseline properties may be modified in a project view without changing the settings in the current “Template” by using the following steps:

1) Click the “Project-View Properties” button on the OnePager “Home” ribbon in the “Settings” group.

2) Then, navigate to either the “Task Bars” or “Milestones” tab as appropriate.

3) Ensure that the “Baseline markers” box is checked as shown below:

X52-10 6-(1)-06082015.png

4) Once the “Baseline markers” check box is turned on, baselines may be customized by clicking the “Baseline Properties” button which will launch the “Set Baseline Properties” form shown below:

X52-10 6-(2)-06082015.png

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 for baselines are the same as for tasks/milestones as shown in the “Set baseline properties” form below:
X52-10 6-(3)-06082015.png

When the selection is made, either continue to make additional properties changes or click the “OK” button to get back to the “Project-View Properties” 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” check box, check it, and use the associated drop down menu to make your selection as shown below:
X52-10 6-(4)-06082015.png

When the selection is made, either continue to make additional properties changes or click the “OK” button to get back to the “Project-View Properties” form where all changes can be applied.

c) Change Baseline Height Percentage: This control (shown above in the dark blue box) 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 we double the value to 60 percent, for example, the resulting baselines would look like this:
X52-10 6-(5)-06082015.png
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:
X52-10 6-(6)-06082015.png
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 are set to 10% making the baseline almost solid:
X52-10 6-(7)-06082015.png
ii) Changing the transparency for the baseline to 90% produces the following result:
X52-10 6-(8)-06082015.png
e) Change Baseline Color: You can also make the baseline a different color than the parent task/milestone.
i) To do this, go to the same “Set baseline properties” form as described above.
ii) Check the “Use custom color” check box.
iii) Then, click the drop down to gain access to the “Color Chooser” form.
iv) Finally, select the desired color.
v) The form is shown below:
X52-10 6-(9)-06082015.png
vi) When the color is selected in the “Color Chooser” that form will disappear and after clicking “OK” in the “Set baseline properties” form, the project view will look like this:
X52-10 6-(10)-06082015.png
f) Connecting baselines and actuals: The “Connecting Lines” group in the “Set baseline properties” form control tells the software whether you want to connect baselines to their actuals. This sub-section is shown below with its controls labeled:
X52-10 6-(11)-06082015.png
i) Check the “Connect baselines and actuals” check box 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” check box. Then, click the color window drop down button to show the standard OnePager “Color Chooser.” Making a selection will change the color of the connecting line. If you do not check this box, the software 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” drop down 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) Press “OK” and then press the “Apply” button on the “Project-View Properties” form to see the baselines connected to their current-schedule tasks/milestones as shown below:
X52-10 6-(12)-06082015.png
g) Showing baseline dates: OnePager can show the baseline dates near the baselines for a more detailed information of target dates:
X52-10 6-(13)-06082015.png
i) By checking the “Show start date” or “Show finish date” or BOTH you can select the date format that the software to use 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” drop down menu is shown here:
X52-10 6-(14)-06082015.png
iv) To specify the location of the baseline (date) text, relative to the baseline, use the drop down menu shown below from the “Baseline dates” group:
X52-10 6-(15)-06082015.png
v) The “Use fiscal year” check box in the “Baseline dates” group is an instruction, if checked, to OnePager to show the displayed baseline date in the fiscal year format in effect for the project view’s time axis. OnePager will take the action only if the time axis for the project view 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” drop down 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:
X52-10 6-(16)-06082015.png
vii) The project view below is an example of positioning baseline start and finish dates below the baseline:
X52-10 6-(17)-06082015.png

Modifying Individual Task/Milestone Baseline Properties in a Project View

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 OnePager “Home” ribbon.

2) Either way, select the “Baselines” tab in the “Change Marker Properties” form which looks like this:

X52-10 6-(18)-06082015.png

3) Go to the “Baselines” tab as 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” check box allows you to turn on and off the display of baseline information for the selected task/milestone.
b) When the “Show Baseline Marker” check box 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” check box is checked or when the “Show Baseline Finish Date” check box is checked (or BOTH) you have access to control over the date positions and font properties as discussed in the sub-section above related to modifying all task/milestone baseline information. Below is an example of a single task’s baseline information modified:
X52-10 6-(19)-06082015.png
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)