Revision as of 20:02, 25 February 2016

Creating a NEW Project View via Pull Operation- OnePager Express for Version 5.3 (X53-7_13_1-12212015)

The purpose of these articles is to acquaint you with the new pull features of OnePager Express (OPX) and Pro (OPP)). There are eight (8) articles in this series, four (4) providing examples of the pull feature for OPX and four (4) for OPP. Please see the links at the end of this article to access other articles in the series.

Creating a NEW project view via pull is not the main reason why OnePager has pull operations. This workflow is most useful only when you want to fill an empty Project View Editor (PVE) by making a new project view. The real power of the pull operation is to let you do repeated snapshot REPLACE and snapshot ADD operations on an open project view. In other words, the pull operation’s main purpose is to let you update the on-screen project view as you edit its source file(s). The pull update operation is discussed in other articles in this series.

What is a Pull Operation?

A pull operation starts in the PVE. That is, you already have OnePager running and decide to update the open project view or (rarely) create a new project view. In contrast, a push operation begins in the OnePager Pro Start from which you make a new project view or update an existing project view.

We added the pull operation because we found that our users were often creating a project view, finding something in the source file that they needed to change, going back to the source file, making the change, and then re-launching OnePager to update the project view.

The pull update lets you open a project view and update it repeatedly as you edit its source file(s). After each set of changes to the source file(s), you can quickly see the effect on the screen by using OnePager’s new Data tab to pull the source file changes into the project view.

You’ll see this more when you read the articles REPLACING a Snapshot via Pull Operation - OnePager Pro for Version 5.3 and ADDING a Snapshot via Pull Operation - OnePager Pro for Version 5.3.

The example below illustrates creating a new project view.

Example

1) Let’s suppose you have a Microsoft Excel plan that you want to present to two different audiences – Your Project Management Office (PMO) and your customer. However, before the presentation you want to quickly examine the two project views made by OnePager side-by-side.

2) In preparation, you flag the rows to be shown to the PMO using Microsoft Excel’s Show It1 column and put a Yes in the appropriate rows of the Microsoft Excel plan. You also decide to use Show It2 to show those rows that you want to show in your presentation to the customer. You insert both the Show It1 and Show It2 columns into the plan as shown below:

Prepare First Project View

3) For the sake of this example, let’s first use the OnePager Express desktop application to access the Microsoft Excel plan using the Show It1 flag column shown above. Please see the article at Creating a NEW Project View via Pull Operation - OnePager Express for the remainder of the steps.

4) After the steps covered in the article above ( Creating a NEW Project View via Pull Operation - OnePager Express) are completed, OnePager will generate a project view with the title shown below, using the Show It1 column, and designating the snapshot with the date shown. The resulting project view will look like the following:

5) Since we are using the desktop application of OPX for this example it was not necessary to launch Microsoft Excel first. As long as you’ve properly prepared your Microsoft Excel plan source file just launching OPX from the desktop icon is basically all that is necessary to utilize the new pull feature.

6) At this point it is recommended that you save this first project view for access later.

Prepare a Second Project View

7) There are two ways of creating the second project view from the same Microsoft Excel source file:

a) After saving the first project view, close the OPX desktop application and repeat the above process by opening the second project view and then using Show It2 to select the tasks.

b) Remain in the current OPX PVE window and create a second new project view from there.

8) Here we will demonstrate the second method as it is more efficient.

9) With the above project view saved and visible in the PVEr window, click on the File tab on the ribbon and then click the New… tab on the page that appears:

10) When you click the New… button as shown above, OnePager will display the OnePager choices (OPC) form. You will now use to create the project view for the customer by giving the new project view a new name, specifying that the “flag” column to be used is “Show It2”, and specifying the appropriate snapshot date as shown in the sequence below:

11) When the file is selected, the OPC form will expand and provide you with the ability to uniquely name the new project view, specify the flag field to use, and specify the snapshot date as we have done in the illustration below:

12) With the new settings confirmed in the OPC form, click the Create new project view and OnePager will use your new settings to create the second project view and display it as shown below:

13) In this example, we used the OPX desktop application to create two project views from the same Microsoft Excel source file but using different flag columns. Now that the second project view is created, we recommend that it too be saved for future access.

Compare Results, Edit, Copy to PowerPoint

14) Once you are satisfied with your project view you may save them, copy them into PowerPoint presentations, or share time in other ways.

15) The 'pull feature is an easy, fast, and convenient way to create multiple project views which will make you more efficient.

Related Links

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