Revision as of 14:57, 17 May 2017

Overview

An overview article with examples is available at: Conditional Import Filters for OnePager . The article is recommended reading before you advance to this article or any other of the product specific articles in this series.

The Conditional Import Filters feature supports imports from all locations and configurations of Microsoft Excel source plans including those from your computer, a single source plan, a single source plan with multiple project or multiple separate Microsoft Excel source plan packages.

This article provides details on the use of the Conditional Import Filters feature for OnePager Express (OPX) Add-in edition.

(1) First, we’ll provide information on how to create Conditional Import Filters rules using the Conditional Import Rules form.

(2) Then, we'll cover a couple of examples on how you might use the Condition Import Filters feature in your every day use of OnePager in preparation for your schedule presentations and discussions.

(3) Finally, we’ll provide details on how Conditional Import Filters works with (a) multiple Microsoft Excel files in one source plan and (b) with Microsoft Excel source plans consisting of several separate files.

Adding a Filter Rule to the Conditional Import Rules Form

1) The Conditional Import Rules form resembles to the Conditional Formatting form in look and function. In this form you can add, copy, change, and delete Conditional Import Filters rules. The form is accessed from the OnePager choices (OPC) form as shown below:

a) The Conditional Import Rules form is shown in its initial blank state above. The rules entered become part of any project view subsequently created or updated and are saved with the project view. If you later, create or update a snapshot using a flag field, OPX will save the flag field and clear the Conditional Import Filters rules.

b) Conditional Import Filters rules are typically entered when a project view is first created in the NEW workflow.

c) After a project view is created, rules may be added later for the UPDATE workflow via the OnePager Choices form invoked either from the OnePager Start form or the Project View Editor (Custom Update… button. These workflows are described later in this article.

2) With the Custom Import Rules form visible and blank, click the Add Rule button to create a new empty row as shown below:

a) There are five cells shown for the new rule row above. The first two cells are used as follows:

i) The first two cells are used as selection cells.

ii) The first left-most cell, when clicked, allows you to use the Copy Rule(s) or the Delete Rule(s) buttons.

iii) The second cell from the left is a checkbox used to allow you to activate or deactivate the rule. If the checkbox is unchecked, OPX will not apply the rule when performing the import function.

b) The Field cell of a row (third from the left) has a dropdown menu that allows you to select a Microsoft Excel source plan field to use in creating the selected criterion. When the dropdown menu is selected, the Field cell will look something like this:

c) When a Microsoft Excel source plan field is selected, the name will be displayed in the Field cell of the new Custom Import rule row.

d) The look of the rest of the new Conditional Import Filters rule row depends on the type of the Microsoft Excel source plan field selected. These types are discussed next.

3) Date and Numeric Fields – When Microsoft Excel date or numeric types are selected in the Field cell of the rule row, the Operator field dropdown will provide the options shown below:

a) These are the conventional six (6) logical operators used consistently in OPX for date and numeric types. They are the same Operators used in OPX for Conditional Formatting. See the article at Conditional Formatting Overview-OnePager Express for complementary details on the use of these logical operators.

b) When the logical statement evaluates to TRUE on the selected Field in a Microsoft Excel source plan row, the row is imported. Otherwise it is skipped.

4) Text Fields – When Microsoft Excel text types are entered in the Field cell of the Conditional Import Filters rule, the Operator field dropdown will provide the options shown below:

a) These are the conventional four (4) logical operators used consistently in OPX for the text type. They are the same Operators used in OPX for Conditional Formatting. See the article at Conditional Formatting Overview-OnePager Express for complementary details on the use of these logical operators.

b) When the logical statement evaluates to TRUE on the selected Field in a Microsoft Excel source plan row, the row is imported. Otherwise it is skipped.

5) Boolean Fields – When Microsoft Excel Boolean types are entered in the Field cell of the Conditional Import Filters rule row, the Operator field dropdown will provide the options shown below:

a) These are the two (2) conventional Boolean logical operators used consistently in OPX for the Boolean type. They are the same Operators used in OPX for Conditional Formatting. See the article at Conditional Formatting with Boolean Fields for OnePager Express for complementary details on the use of these logical operators.

b) Boolean types are a special case as the operator and the value in OPX are combined into one cell of the Conditional Import Filters rule row - the Operator cell.

c) When the selected Field is TRUE (or Yes) in a Microsoft Excel source plan row, the row is imported. Otherwise it is skipped.

6) Text Type Fields used as Flags – OPX treats Microsoft Excel Text type fields as flag fields to control row imports. Accordingly, when text type fields are used for Conditional Import Filters rules, OPX makes the import decisions based on whether the cell either contains or does not contain to required Value cell’s content as shown below:

a) In the case shown above, Microsoft Excel source plan rows will be imported only if the row contents of the Shot It1 Microsoft Excel source plan field contain a Yes.

b) You may also use the equal or not equal Operators being careful that the Value contents in the Conditional Import Rules form row is exactly as specified in the Microsoft Excel source plan row.

c) We want to emphasize the flexibility that Conditional Import Filters adds to the way you can import rows from your Microsoft Excel source plan. You can, therefore, formulate sets of Conditional Import Filters rules to controls imports using all available types of Microsoft Excel fields.

d) For the logical statement to be TRUE, hence cause OPX to import the corresponding Microsoft Excel source plan row, the contents of the Operator cell in the Conditional Import Filters rule row must match the type and value in the Microsoft Excel source plan. Additionally, the logical relationship must be TRUE to make OPX act on the condition.

7) Boolean and Numeric Types Used as Flags in OnePager Express - OPX also recognizes Microsoft Excel Boolean types and Numeric types with 0 or 1 contents as Boolean types as well within the Conditional Import Rules form.

a) OPX treats such Microsoft Excel Fields as Boolean types in the same way as described in the previous sub-section. When these Microsoft Excel types are entered in the Field cell of the Conditional Import Filters rule row, the Operator cell dropdown will provide the options as shown above.

b) There are the two (2) conventional Boolean logical operators used consistently in OPX for the Boolean type. They are the same Operators used in OPX for Conditional Formatting. See the article at Conditional Formatting with Boolean Fields for OnePager Express for complementary details on the use of these logical operators.

c) When the selected Field is TRUE (or Yes) in a Microsoft Project source plan row, the row is imported. Otherwise it is skipped.

8) We want to emphasize the flexibility that Conditional Import Filters adds to the way you can import rows from your Microsoft Excel source plan. You can formulate sets of Conditional Import Filters rules to controls imports using all available types of Microsoft Excel fields and use operators that let you select ranges of values and more complicated combinations of criteria.

Editing an Existing Filter Rule in the Conditional Import Rules Form

9) Suppose you’ve composed several Conditional Import Filters rules in an open Conditional Import Rules form as shown below:

a) Now further suppose, after reviewing these two rules, that you realize that you may not be able to capture any tasks/milestones that happen to Start on 12/31/2015 because the current rule is based on the less than logical Operator.

b) To make the change in the Operator cell, click on the cell’s contents which will highlight the cell in blue and reveals the dropdown menu button which you should click. When you do the Conditional Import Rules form should look like this:

c) To change the rule, click the desired Operator in the dropdown menu, in this case the less than or equal Operator, and it will be displayed in the Operator cell of the second rule as shown here:

d) Any Field, Operator, or Value cell may be edited in this way. Additionally, the On cell may be toggled to control the Conditional Import rule's participation in the import process. Finally, you may switch between the two radio buttons at the top of the form in order to change the relationship among the rules from OR to AND or vice versa.

e) The edits described above may be made to the Conditional Import Rules form regardless of the OPC mode in which you are working (i.e., NEW and UPDATE). Also, you may bring up the Conditional Import Rules form from the OPC form as many times as needed to accomplish your presentation goal. OPX saves the content of the last edit you make to the Conditional Import Rules form.

f) When satisfied with the structure of your import rules, click the OK button at the bottom of the form to return to the OPC form. Now you are ready to create a new project view.

Copying an Existing Filter Rule in the Conditional Import Rules Form

10) The Copy Rule(s) button is provided in the Conditional Import Rules form to facilitate the creation of additional rules.

a) To copy a rule to create a new rule, first select the rule row from which you wish to copy as shown below:

b) Once the desired row is selected, clicking the Copy Rule(s) button will copy the contents of the rule selected as indicated by the highlighted left-most cell in the desired rule as shown below:

c) At this point you may edit the copied row in the manner described previously. When you are finished, the new set of three rule rows may look like this:

d) When satisfied with the structure of your import rules, click the OK button at the bottom of the form to return to the OPC form. Now you are ready to create a new project view.

Deleting an Existing Filter Rule in the Conditional Import Rules Form

11) There are times when a particular Conditional Import Filters rule will no longer serve its purpose. You can select the rule row to be deleted and click the Delete Rule(s) button.

a) The process for deleting a rule parallels the process for copying a rule row in that the you must select the desired row to delete by clicking the left-most cell in that rule’s row.

b) Once the selection is made, click the Delete Rule(s) button and OPX will first put up a warning message asking if you really want to delete the rule row as shown below:

c) If you select the No option, OPX will abandon the rule deletion operation and the warning message will disappear leaving the selected rule row still selected.

d) If you select the Yes option, OPX will remove the warning message, delete the selected rule row, and leave the Conditional Import Rules form showing the remaining rule rows, if any.

e) When satisfied with the structure of your import rules, click the OK button at the bottom of the form to return to the OPC form.

Switching from Flag Fields to New Conditional Import Filters Rules

12) When you click the NEW button, the OPC form will appear as shown below. The process for building a new project view with Conditional Import Filters is the same with the exception that instead of using flag fields from your Microsoft Excel source plan you will, instead, invoke the Conditional Import Rules form from the OPC form as shown below:

a) In the illustration above, in the Task Selection section of the form, the Select task by custom filter radio button is clicked. This action brings up the Conditional Import Rules form also shown above.

b) At this point you may Add Rules to the form, Copy Rules, Delete Rules or edit existing rules.

Switching from Conditional Import Filters Rules to Flag Fields or Selecting all Tasks

13) If you subsequently decide after composing one or more Conditional Import Filters rules and clicking OK on the Conditional Import Rules form that you want to use flag fields instead, you may revert back to either of the two other Task Selection options provided in the OPC form shown above.

a) To do this, click either of the other two radio buttons to Select all tasks, or Select task with ‘Yes’ in field:

b) When you click the Select all tasks button there is no further action you need to take on the OPC form.

c) However, if you click the Select tasks with ‘Yes’ in field: you will need to select a field from your Microsoft Excel source plan as shown below:

d) In these circumstances where you’ve switched from using Conditional Import Filters rules to either selecting all tasks, or selecting tasks using a flag field, OPX will discard any Conditional Import Filters rules associated with the project view.

Adding, Editing, Copying, and Deleting Conditional Import Filters Rules

14) Managing Conditional Import rules was discussed in previous sub-sections of this article. Please follow the reference links provided below for details on adding, editing, copying, and deleting of Conditional Import rules:

a) Adding a new rule: Adding a Filter Rule to the Conditional Import Rules Form.

b) Editing an existing rule: Editing an Existing Filter Rule in the Conditional Import Rules Form.

c) Copying a rule: Copying an Existing Filter Rule in the Conditional Import Rules Form.

d) Deleting a rule: Deleting an Existing Filter Rule in the Conditional Import Rules Form.

A Simplified Workflow Example Using Conditional Import Filters Rules

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An Advanced Workflow Example Using Conditional Import Filters Rules

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Using Conditional Import with a Microsoft Excel Source Plan with Multiple Projects

1) A Microsoft Excel source plan may be structured such that multiple projects/spreadsheet can be processed by OPX as a single entity.

a) When a flag field is used to control the import of rows from a Microsoft Excel source plan containing multiple projects, that flag field is applied to every single project in the Microsoft Excel source plan.

b) When Conditional Import rules are being used to control the import of a Microsoft Excel source plan containing multiple projects, the defined Conditional Import Rules form controls the import of rows from that single Microsoft Excel source plan.

2) As a refresher please consult this article for information on how OPX builds graphs from multiple projects in a single Microsoft Excel source plan at: Handling Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets Containing Multiple Projects .

3) The instructions provided in this article for single Microsoft Excel source plans with respect to the OPX modes of NEW, UPDATE, and OPEN apply to import from a Microsoft Excel source plan containing multiple projects/spreadsheets.

Using Conditional Import with Multiple Separate Microsoft Excel Source Plan Packages

1) Microsoft Excel source plans that are grouped into packages for processing by OPX are treated as a single source plan entity from the perspective of import to OPX.

a) When a flag field is used to control the import of rows from multiple, separate Microsoft Excel source plans grouped by OPX into a package, that flag field is applied to every single multiple Microsoft Excel source plan uniformly in the package.

b) When Conditional Import rules are being used to control the import of separate Microsoft Excel source plans grouped by OPX into a package, the defined Conditional Import Rules form controls the import of rows from each of the separate Microsoft Excel source plans in turn.

2) As a refresher please consult this article for information on how OPX builds graphs from multiple separate Microsoft Excel source plans at: Making Multi-Project Graphs from Separate Microsoft Excel Plans .

3) The instructions provided in this article for single Microsoft Excel source plans with respect to the OPX modes of NEW, UPDATE, and OPEN apply to import from separate multiple Microsoft Excel source plans.

Related Links

Basic Workflows (Portal)

Conditional Formatting (Portal)

Using the OnePager "Data" Tab's "Selected file(s)" Button

OnePager Express Import of Data from Microsoft Excel

Message to Assist with Setting Import Flags When No Data Are Imported

Understanding Project Views and Snapshots for OnePager Pro

Understanding Project Views and Snapshots for OnePager Express

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