Latest revision as of 14:45, 29 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 as 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) Desktop 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.

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 Filter 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 the examples accompanying 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 Filters rule row.

d) The look of the rest of the new Conditional Import Filters rule 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 row, 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 Filters 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:

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. In this case, you may 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, or Delete Rules that may exist.

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 be asked to select a field from your Microsoft Excel source plans 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 Filter Existing Rule in the Conditional Import Rules Form.

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

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

A Simple Example Using Conditional Import

In this section and the one to follow, we’ll provide a couple of examples of a workflow that you might find most useful. First we’ll provide a simple example and then extend it to a more advance use of the workflow.

Setup

1) Suppose you have a situation where you want to focus the attention of your audience on a particular set of tasks that have the following attributes:

a) Where tasks/milestones start on or after October 1, 2015 but no later than December 31, 2015.

b) Where swimlanes represent the Phases of the project

c) Where the two additional text columns represent the Start Dates and the Finish Dates of each displayed task respectively.

d) And where the Legend is organized by Resource Name.

2) Let’s further suppose that we are going to use the BlueGrass Project 2J-303-PMO Microsoft Excel source plan as input to OnePager Express and we want to use the Single Project View Gantt View – Detailed Template.

3) To begin with, the source plan will look like this:

4) Before we launch OnePager Express Desktop, the Main tab of the Template we will use for this example looks like this

5) If we launched OnePager Express Desktop from the desktop icon with the above Template as the current Template, the tasks and milestones included in the project view would be those associated with Yes in the Show It1 field in the source plan above. This is not what we want so we first have to change the task and milestone selection criteria using the Conditional Import Filters feature as we’ll show next.

Changing the Task and Milestone Selection Criteria

6) With the conditions established in the sub-section above, let’s go ahead and launch OnePager Excel Desktop the desktop icon which will bring up the OnePager Start form as shown below:

7) Next, we’ll click the NEW button which will bring up the OnePager Choices (OPC) form shown here:

a) Click the Select… button which brings up the Windows Open form.

b) Use the Open form to select the Microsoft Excel source plan you need and click Open in the Windows Open form.

c) OPX Desktop will retrieve the selected source plan where you can fill in the required fields of the OPC form so that it looks like the form shown here:

8) We’ve gone ahead and confirmed that we have the correct source plan and we’ve filled in the Title of New Project View. We see that the Task Selection criteria will be based on the contents of the Show It1 field, and we don’t want this field to be used. We have two ways to invoke the Conditional Import Filters feature and we’ll explain each below:

Using the OnePager Choices Form to Create Conditional Import Filters

9) For this first technique, click on the Select tasks by custom filter radio button, which brings up the Conditional Import Rules form as shown below:

10) Next, we’ll enter the two Conditional Import Filters we specified in the previous subsection and make sure the All of the following are true radio button is selected so the Conditional Import Rules form will look like this when we are done:

11) From here we could go ahead and click the OK button on the Conditional Import Rules form and, once back at the OPC form, go ahead and create the project view. However, before we do that we want to show the alternative way to enter Conditional Import Filters rules.

Using the Template to Create Conditional Import Filters

12) To illustrate this second technique let’s roll back to the OPC form we saw above and notice that the checkbox labeled Show field mappings is checked and the button below the checkbox is called Next>. Now click the Next> button which takes you to the second page of the OPC form which looks like this:

13) Next, click the Edit current template… button which will bring up the current Template as shown below. Then, navigate to the Main tab as we have done here and note the button titled Add/edit conditional import filter…:

14) When the Add/edit conditional import filter… button is clicked, the Conditional Import Rules form will appear and you can enter the two rules we specified in for this example as we’ve shown below:

Creating the Project View

15) After entering the two Conditional Import Filters rules, as shown above, click the OK button on the Conditional Import Rules form and then the Save and Use button at the bottom of the Template form.

`6) These actions will take you back to the second page of the OPC form, shown earlier; where you can click the Create new project view button and OnePager Excel will create the project view as shown here:

Editing the Project View

17) Finally, we need to add the two additional text columns specified to show Start and Finish dates.

18) This final requirement is implemented by using the Additional Text Column feature (insert link here). When these actions are taken the project view will look like this:

An Advanced Example Using Conditional Import

The advanced workflow example presented in this section on Conditional Import Filters rules is a continuation of the example in the previous section.

If you haven’t read or reviewed the simple example, we suggest that you do so before reading on in this section.

Continuation of Simple Example

1) What we intend to show you in this section is how to proceed from the creation of the project view in the previous section through successive edits and replacements to get to a project view that will be perfect for a specific schedule conversation.

2) To set the stage, let’s establish some further guidance for the final visual presentation:

a) It needs to be focused on the apparent trouble spot; say with the High and Medium Risk tasks just for example.

b) There needs be as few tasks as possible so as to keep the audience’s focus on the real project management issue.

c) The presentation of the schedule issues needs be on one page.

3) Given the above guidance, we need to restructure the project view from the previous section. Of course, we want to do this in the most efficient way so that it what we will describe in the next sub-section.

Using Conditional Import Filters to Update a Project View through Replacement

4) Looking back at the project view from the previous sub-section, we see that it contains tasks from all the Risk Categories during the time interval we specified in the original set of Conditional- Import rules. Our guidance says that we want to focus more on the High and Medium Risk tasks. So, we’ll use the Conditional Import Filters feature to refine our import criteria and replace the project view with tasks/milestones that meet the Start criteria and the High and Medium Risk criteria we need.

5) To modify the Conditional Import Filters rules we will do the following steps:

a) First we go to the project view and bring up the PVP form at the Main tab.

b) Next, we click the Add/edit conditional import filter… button to bring up the Conditional Import Rules form.

c) Then, we use the Add Rule button to make a row for the third rule and compose the third rule to specify Resource Names in the Field column, an equal sign in the Operator column, and the word Prime in the Value column.

d) When you are done adding the new (third) rule, the forms will look like this:

6) Now do the following steps:

a) Click the OK button on the Conditional Import Rules form. This will close the form and take you back to the PVP form’s Main tab.

b) Here, click the Apply button only. This will apply the change to the project view but keep the PVP’s Main tab open.

c) Before doing anything else, go to the Project View Editor’s (PVE) tool bar and select the Data tab. When you are finished with these steps, the PVE and the PVP Main tab will look like this:

7) The last step in this workflow is to click the Replace Snapshot button which is the left-most button on the Data tab tool bar. This is the action that tells OnePager Express to update the project view by re-importing the source data with task selection controlled by the three rules now active in the Conditional Import Rules form.

8) When the OnePager Express replace process completes, the project view will be honed to not only restrict the start dates but also to the tasks that are High and Medium Risk in the chart, like this:

Summary of First Project View Replacement Iteration

9) To summarize what we’ve done we’ve accomplished the following:

a) Used the original project view in conjunction with the Conditional Import Rules form to specify an additional rule that further narrows the tasks in the chart.

b) Used the Replace Snapshot button to tell OnePager Excel display only this refined set of tasks.

Second Project View Replacement Iteration

10) The project view we created above still isn’t quite ready for our schedule conversation. Looking at it closely, we probably don’t need to focus on any tasks/milestones that with High and Medium Risk that are nearly completed. So, in this next iteration let’s modify our Conditional Import Filters to just bring in those tasks/milestones that are less than or equal to 50 percent complete.

11) We’ll use the same sequence of steps that were used in the first replacement iteration we described above.

a) In the open PVP form, click the button to bring up the Conditional Import form and add a fourth rule restricting to tasks/milestones that are less than or equal to 50 percent complete. The form will look like this when we are done adding the rule:

b) With the above rule added, click the OK button in the Conditional Import Rules form and after it closes, click the Apply button on the bottom of the PVP form’s Main tab.

c) The appearance of the PVE will be like this:

d) The last step is to click the Replace Snapshot button on the OnePager Express Data tab tool bar. OnePager will perform the snapshot replacement and the project view will look like this:

Summary of Second Project View Replacement Iteration

12) The project view in the illustration above now meets all the Start, Category, and % Done criteria to support the schedule conversation.

13) This was all done by an iterative workflow that couples updates to the Conditional Import Rules with the Replace Snapshot button on the OnePager Excel tool bar’s Data tab.

14) All that needs to be done now is to copy the project view into the media to be used for the schedule conversation.

Some Additional Comments on this Workflow

15) It’s important to remember for this workflow that you always want to REPLACE the single snapshot in the project view. We advise against ADDING a snapshot as you refine your rules because this can result in empty rows for tasks that were present under a previous set of rules but are now absent.

16) If you want to begin the workflow by OPENING a previously-created project view, it is essential, as mentioned above, that there is a clear and viable path from the project view to its source plan(s). You can confirm this and fix any problems by clicking the Selected Files button on the Data tab.

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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