Difference between revisions of "Deadlines for Version 5.3(OnePager Express)"

Latest revision as of 15:55, 15 March 2016

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 Project-View Properties' (PVP) Task Bars tab. To display deadlines for milestones, go to the PVP's Milestones tab.

2) Check the Deadline markers checkbox to ensure that deadlines are showing. By default, deadlines are mapped to the closest column name resembling a Deadline date column you specified in your Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Modifying All Deadline Properties

4) To change the format of all deadlines, click 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) The 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.

d) Similarly, the Transparency control for the deadline operates in the same way as transparency controls for other objects. The higher the value selected, the greater the transparency. Conversely, the low the value selected, the more solid the deadline appears.

e) Custom Color The Use custom color checkbox 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 checkbox is checked, the Custom color dropdown is activated and clicking the dropdown button will show the standard Color Chooser form.

f) 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.

g) 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:

i) The form above shows the extent of control that you have over the display of date labels for deadlines.

ii) These are the same controls as for other decoration 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 properties for the date label test.

iii) The illustration in the following sub-section shows an example of a deadline date labels which are positioned below their respect deadline.

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

i) 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 checkbox 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)

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

k) Creating the project view of the above schedule with OPX you’ll see the following:

l) 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 plan looks like this:

m) Performing the Update function with OPX we get the following snapshot for 10/5/2015:

n) 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 plan looks like this:

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

Modifying Individual Deadline Properties

Deadline properties may be set or changed for individual tasks. A prerequisite for modifying individual deadline properties is the necessity for deadline data to be imported by OnePager from the Microsoft Excel plan. Some individual task deadline properties may be changed by selecting the desired task or tasks with a left-click operation and then right-clicking one of the selected task to show the context menu below:

a) Select the Format… command which brings up the Change Marker Properties form. Then navigate to the Deadlines tab, which will display the deadline control options shown below:

b) From the Deadlines tab of the form above, you are able to turn the selected deadline off or on, show the deadline connector to the task and display or turn off the deadline date label.

(10.10.1-53)