Deadlines (OnePager Express)

About Modifying Deadlines

Deadlines indicate the deadline date for a task or milestone. Just to illustrate with a simple example, consider the Microsoft Excel plan given below which has three tasks with Start and Finish dates, a deadline date, and the Microsoft Excel “Show It” column set to “Yes” so that OnePager imports the data for all three tasks:

Displaying Deadline Properties

When deadlines are turned on, they appear (by default) as red arrows next to each task bar:

1) To display deadlines for tasks, navigate to the “Task Bars” tab. To display deadlines for milestones, go to the “Milestones” tab.

2) Click on the “Gantt Bar Label Properties” button for bars, or “Milestone Label Properties” button for milestones.

3) Check the “Deadline markers” box to ensure that deadlines are showing. By default, deadlines are mapped to the “Deadline date” column you selected in your Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Modifying Deadline Properties

4) To change the global format of deadlines, click on the “Deadline Properties” button, to bring up the “Set date label properties” form shown below:

a) Deadline Shape, Fill, Position, Transparency, and Color Controls: As stated previously, many of the controls in this group of the “Set deadline properties” form are standard.

b) Position of the deadline has a unique meaning. Deadlines are always associated with a task/milestone and may be to the left, within, or to the right of the task/milestone itself depending on your Microsoft Excel plan data for the Task’s Start, Finish and deadline dates. The position in this context is about where within the task/milestone’s area vertically the deadline should be placed. There are three available positions for the placement of the deadline with respect to the task: (1) centered in the task , (2) above the task/milestone, or (3) below the task as shown below:

c) Height: The height of the deadline , which is a percentage of the total height of the task/milestone itself is covered elsewhere and behaves in a standard way. Similarly, the “Transparency” control for the deadline operates in the same way as transparency controls for other objects. The higher the value in the selection box, the greater the transparency. Conversely, the low the value in the selection box, the more solid the deadline appears.

d) Custom Color: The “Use custom color” check box may be checked when it is desired to select a color for the deadline other than the color for its parent task/milestone. When the “Use custom color” check box is set, the “Custom color” drop down is activated and clicking the drop down button will show the standard “Color Chooser” form.

e) Connections: The central group of the “Set deadline properties” form deals with “Connecting Lines”. The controls available are shown below:

The form above shows the extent of control that you have over the lines that can be used to connect a deadline to its parent task/milestone. These include the specification of a custom color, line width and line style.

f) Setting Date Labels for Deadline: The lower group of the “Set deadline properties” form holds the controls for turning on and positioning the date labels for deadlines. This group of the form looks like this:

The form above shows the extent of control that you have over the display of date labels for deadlines. These are the same controls as for other date specifications and include the specification of date format, the use of the fiscal year feature, the positioning of the date label text, and the font attributes for the date label test. The illustration in the following sub-section shows an example of a deadline Date labels which are positioned below their respect deadline.

g) Showing Deadline Delays: When the global “Color-code delays” check box is checked, OnePager will use the selected “Delay color” (determined by the selection of the delay color from the “Color Chooser” form to show deadlines that have been missed:

h) The deadline-delay feature follows this logic:

i) The deadline will be set to the selected “Delay color” if, for any deadline, the “Color-code delays” box is checked, the deadline date is earlier than the current snapshot date AND the percent (%) complete for the parent task/milestone is less than 100%

ii) If any of the conditions stated in the previous paragraph are NOT met, the color of the deadline will be set to the default color, unless a custom color is otherwise specified.

iii) This section will illustrate the use of the deadline “Color-Code Delay” features. To set the stage, suppose we have a project of three tasks with the following initial conditions:

• Project Start Date – 10/1/2015
• Project Finish Date (Estimated) – 10/16/2015
• First Status Date – 9/11/2015
• Task A Deadline Date – 10/10/2015 (Task A Finish projected before deadline)
• Task B Deadline Date – 10/10/2015 (Task B Finish beyond deadline date)
• Task C Deadline Date- 10/1/2015 (Task C Start beyond deadline date)

i) With these initial conditions, the Microsoft Excel plan looks like this:

j) Creating the project view of the above schedule with OnePager Express you’ll see the following:

k) Moving forward in time to the next status date of 10/5/2015 we can suppose that the percent (%) complete data for the three Tasks A, B, and C are 50%, 25% and 0% respectively. As a result of this progress, the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet plan looks like this:

l) Performing the Update function with OnePager Express Release 5.0 we get the following snapshot for 10/5/2015:

m) Again, moving forward in time to the next status date of 11/10/2015 we can further suppose that the percent (%) complete data for the three Tasks A, B, and C are now 100%, 75% and 100% respectively. As a result of this progress, the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet plan looks like this:

n) At this point, all deadlines for all three tasks are exceeded. Performing another Update with OnePager Express, we get the following snapshot for 11/10/2015:

(10.10)