Getting Started with OnePager Pro Version 5.3 Desktop

Overview

As mentioned in the article What's New with OnePager Release 5.3? Version 5.3 of OPP can be launched from a desktop icon as well as from within Microsoft Project.

This article covers the “Getting Started” process when you launch OPP from the desktop.

The article which provides Getting Started guidance when launching OPP from Microsoft Project is at Getting Started with OnePager Pro Version 5.3 Add-in.

Launching OnePager Pro for the First Time from the Desktop

1) OPP version 5.3 may be installed so that it can be launched either from Microsoft Project’s Add-in tab on its tool bar or from a desktop icon or both. Additionally, you may also locate and double-click a .TAM file to bring up the desktop OPP version 5.3.

2) The desktop icon for launching OPP version 5.3 looks like this:

3) Before you launch OPP from the desktop, it is a good idea to unhide the flag column you intend to use in your Microsoft Project source file. (Note that when you unhide a column in Microsoft Project, that column may now appear in some of Microsoft Project’s standard reports. Do not forget to hide the column again before generating such reports if you do not want the column to appear in those reports.) The selected flag column allows you to control which tasks get graphed and to store those choices in Microsoft Project for future use. An example of the use of a flag field (e.g., Flag20) is shown below:

4) To control which tasks get graphed, specify the flag column (e.g. Flag1, Flag2 … Flag20) that you wish to use. Number fields may also be used the same as the flag fields where a 1 in a Number field indicates Yes and a 0 in a Number field indicates No. Unhide that column in Microsoft Project by right-clicking in the column header area and selecting Insert Column:

5) Now put a Yes in this flag column for any task that you want to graph:

a) When making your first project view, we strongly recommend that you mark 50 or fewer tasks with Yes.

b) Please note that OPP is shipped with a number of fully populated templates that are based on the Microsoft Project file used in the tutorial also shipped with the product – BlueGrass Project 2J-303.

c) Starting in Microsoft Project 2010, there is a Manual Scheduling mode that allows you to leave dates blank in your schedule. However, behind the scenes, these dates are still being automatically assigned to the project Start Date, or to Today's Date if the project Start Date is not defined. Even though the dates appear to be undefined, they are defined behind the scenes, and are being passed to OPP. Because Today's Date often equals your Snapshot date, it is not surprising to see all of these dateless tasks appearing near the time cursor.

d) There are two solutions to this issue: (1) Define the dates for your tasks and milestones in Microsoft Project. This will overwrite any default dates that Microsoft Project is assigning, and will make your project schedule more consistent with your OPP timeline. (2) Remove the dateless tasks from your OPP graph. You can leave them in project, but by removing them from the OPP graph, you won't have to explain why certain tasks/milestones are appearing in weird places when they really should not. As a rule of thumb, we recommend defining dates for all tasks and milestones, especially when it comes to graph generation.

6) Clicking the OnePager Pro icon on the desktop will first display a splash page and then take you to the Project View Editor (PVE).

7) The OnePager Pro Start form provides you with three options:

a) NEW Clicking the NEW button will bring up the OnePager Pro choices (OPC) form.

b) UPDATE Clicking the UPDATE button will allow you to BROWSE FILES for an existing project view file or select a recently-opened project view file.

c) OPEN Clicking the OPEN button will allow you to BROWSE FILES for an existing project view file or select a recently-opened project view file. Once selected and opened, the project view is available for editing.

Creating a New Project View

8) Clicking the “NEW” button brings up the “OnePager choices” form as shown below:

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Options on the New OnePager Choices form

9) We’ve enhanced the “OnePager choices” form to give you more options for selecting source files as input to OnePager Pro. The illustration above shows that OnePager Pro was initiated from the desktop icon with no Microsoft Project source file specified. The “Select” button gives you the capability to select the Microsoft Project source file or files that you want to use to create a project view.

a) Clicking the “Select” button displays a dropdown menu with a BROWSE FILES option as well as a list of recently accessed Microsoft Project source files as shown here:

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b) If you select the BROWSE FILES option, a Windows “Open” form appears from which you can select the desired Microsoft Project source file for OnePager Pro to use as shown below:

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c) When you select the Microsoft Project source file and click the “Open” button on the Windows “Open” form, OnePager Pro loads the Microsoft Project source file selected and expands the “OnePager choices” form as shown below:

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10) At this point you have additional options with respect to the expanded of the “OnePager choices” form specifically the “Add/Remove” button. The “Add/Remove” button gives you the capability to add more files to the source file “package” or, for multiple file packages to remove files if desired.

a) Clicking the “Add/Remove” button brings up the “Data source selection” form as shown below:

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b) The “Data source selection” form displays the current source file that was loaded with Microsoft Project when you clicked the “OnePager Pro” button on the Microsoft Project tool bar. This form lets you Add more source Microsoft Project source files to create a multi-project project view, Remove a file from a multi-file source package, or Preview a Microsoft Project source file within Microsoft Project if you added a new source file to the package. These options are detailed below.

Adding a New Source File

c) Add a new source file to the list. When you click the “Add” button, OnePager Pro will give you the option to bring up a Windows “Open” form when you select the “BROWSE FILES…” option as shown here:

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i) Clicking the “BROWSE FILES…” option will display a Window’s “Open” form from which you may select a Microsoft Project file to add to the source file package. A sample “Open” form is shown below:

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ii) When you select a desired Microsoft Project source file and click the “Open” button as shown above, OnePager Pro will add the file to the package and display it in the “Data source selection” window as shown below:

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iii) The selected file is added to the source file package as shown above. For convenience, OnePager Pro shows the path name of the files in the window if you hover the mouse over the file name.

iv) If you select a recently used file from the drop down menu displayed with the “Add” button is clicked in the “Data source selection” form, OnePager Pro will add that file to the source file package.

Removing a Source File

d) Remove source from list. The “Remove” button allows you to remove a source file from a source file package if that file is not needed to create the NEW project view. To remove a file first select the file in the “Data source selection” form’s window so that it is highlighted in blue then click the “Remove” button as shown in the sequence below:

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Other Choices to Make

11) Moving on to the other sections of the “OnePager choices” form, you are asked to confirm a few things before you build the project view. OnePager Pro will make good guesses for each of these choices, but you can change any of them:

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a) Starting Template: The current template determines which columns get imported from Microsoft Project and how the initial project view looks. OnePager Pro ships with many sample templates, but you can also customize your own templates. To choose which template to use in building your project view, click the “Change…” button in the top group of the “OnePager choices” form. For now, just stick with the default template entitled “Single Project Gantt View – Detailed,” but you can always use a different template to get a different type of project view.

b) Title of the New Project View: This is the title of the graph and also the suggested name of the file in which it will be saved, though you can change the file name when you actually save it. We recommend that you enter a title that helps you identify the view later on. For each project view that you create, OnePager remembers colors, titles, legends, font sizes, and all other graph properties so that your work is saved for future use. Later, you can update the project view with a snapshot of how the project looks on a different date. Then you can browse through the snapshots to see how the project is changing over time. OnePager Pro Version 5.3 also saves the path name associated with the file (.TAM). Path names are not available in .TAM files produced with previous version of OnePager Pro.

c) Task Selection: This is how you tell OnePager Pro which tasks from your Microsoft Project plan to include. Either click the “Select all tasks” radio button to graph everything or choose a flag column. You can make several project views from a single Microsoft Project plan, each using a different flag or number column. In OnePager Pro Version 5.3 if no flags are set to “Yes,” OnePager Pro will provide the user with a warning message.

d) Snapshot Date: This is the date of the report and lets you keep track of how schedules change over time. Each project view can have several snapshots.

12) Since the “Show column mappings” button near the bottom of the screen is checked in the “OnePager choices” form above, you will now have a chance to review and change the Microsoft Project column mappings to OnePager Pro before you make your first project view. To do this, click the “Next>” button. You now see the following form:

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13) Notice in the form above that OnePager Pro has relied on the current template to make some guesses on what Microsoft Project plan columns should be used in making the graph. You can easily change any of these column mappings by making selections from the drop-down lists. For example, we show below how to change the “Finish Date” for tasks:

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Making the Graph

14) Once you are satisfied with the column mappings, click the “Create new project view” button to import your selected data into OnePager and create a project view from it. After a second or two you will see a screen that looks like this:

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15) Note that each task or milestone was color-coded based on the value in the “Resource Names” column, as is detailed in the legend. The legend contains an optional diagram near the bottom, explaining that the bars inside the Gantt bars represent percent complete extracted from Microsoft Project. Percent complete comes from a Microsoft Project plan column that you specified in the column mapping screen. Also note that the template that is active when you press the “Create new project view” button is the template for how things look in the new project view. The template’s “Task Bars” tab showing where the color control is located is shown below:

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Opening a Project View

16) The right-most button on the “OnePager choices” form is the “OPEN” button. Clicking the “OPEN” button displays the same dropdown menu that you saw with the “NEW” and “UPDATE” buttons as shown below:

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a) Clicking the BROWSE FILES option will bring up a Windows “Open” form from which you can select a .TAM file that you want to open. Selecting the desired .TAM file will cause OnePager Pro to display the selected project view in the Project View Editor. From this position, you may edit the project view, save it, or share it with others.

b) Clicking any of the RECENT Project views in the dropdown menu above will cause OnePager Pro to load the associated .TAM file into the Project View Editor where you may also edit the project view, save it, or share it with others.

Updating a Project View with Changes Made to the Microsoft Project Source File Data

17) Suppose after examining the project view you created before you realize that it would be best to show more task bars. This, you think, would greatly improve the schedule discussion you are about to have on the project. Updating the project view at this point is a simple matter with OnePager Pro Version 5.3. Recall that OnePager Pro is active and the Project View Editor is displaying the current project view you want to update with changed Microsoft Project source file data. Additionally, the Microsoft Project source file and the application are active. The original project view looked like this:

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a) Since Microsoft Project is still an active program in your computer and the Microsoft Project source file you are using is still being displayed, go back to the Microsoft Project application and change the “Flag20” column setting for the rows in the source file you want to now display from “No” to “Yes”. A section of the Microsoft Project source file where this is done is shown below:

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b) Once you’ve made the “Flag20” changes lines 7 through 15 in the Microsoft Project the source file will look like this:

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c) With the Microsoft Project source file updated, go back to the OnePager Pro project view editor and navigate to the “Data” tab on the ribbon where you’ll see several buttons. To update your project view to now show the additional rows from your Microsoft Project source file you will need to click the “Replace Snapshot” button as shown below:

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d) When you click the “Replace Snapshot” button, OnePager Pro Version 5.3 desktop will go back to the associated Microsoft Project source file that you just changed, bring in all the rows that changed, and update your project view visible in the OnePager Pro Project View Editor.

e) At the conclusion of the operation, the updated project view will look like this:

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18) The example above is just one of many uses of the “Data” tab’s “Replace Snapshot” button when you need to update a project view with data that changed in your Microsoft Project source file. And, you can do this as many times as necessary until the project view is the way you need it to be with respect to the information being brought in from the source file. In addition to adding and removing rows by changing the “Flag20” field, you may need to change Start Dates, Finish Dates, or Percent Complete in the Microsoft Source Project source file and display these data changes in the project view. Using the procedure above you can do this very efficiently.

19) At this point you may save the project view by giving a file name. When you save the project view in OnePager Pro Version 5.3, OnePager will save the .TAM file (the data representation of the project view) and within will save the Microsoft Project file name and path information. This is useful when you want to further update the project view or when you want to add a snapshot later on as your project proceeds. In the examples below we will assume that the project view was saved as “BlueGrass Project 2J-303-Revised”.

Adding a Snapshot to a Project View

20) The power of OnePager Pro is illustrated when, after a period of progress on the project, it is time to produce another project view, with the same look and feel, for a new status date. Assuming that the Microsoft Project plan was updated with actual start and finish, percent complete, and other relevant data during the reporting interval, OnePager Pro can easily generate a new snapshot. Launch OnePager Pro either from Microsoft Project or from the desktop icon and click the “UPDATE” button on the “OnePager Start” form that appears. Doing so will bring up the following “OnePager choices” form:

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a) In the “OnePager choices” form select the “NEW snapshot at date:” as shown above. You will want to select a current date for the snapshot so that this snapshot will represent the project at the status date point in time. To see which snapshot dates already exist, just position your mouse over the “NEW snapshot-date:” box to see a list of the existing dates. Use the built in calendar drop down button or type in the new snapshot’s month, day, and year in the window provided as shown below:

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b) Uncheck the “Show column mappings” box if you want to use the same mappings as you used before. The bottom of the screen now looks like this:

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c) Pressing the large “New” button creates a new snapshot for the project view, showing how the project changed from the previous snapshot date to the date entered for the current snapshot. The project view opens at the new snapshot. The color, fonts, title, and swimlane assignments are consistent between the two snapshots:

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d) You can go back and forth between the two snapshots by using the snapshot forward/backward buttons on the “View” tab as shown above:

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Editing the Project View

21) Sooner or later, most of you will edit the font sizes and text position to optimize readability. To do this, hold down the left mouse button and “drag” a selection box that encloses many tasks/milestones at once:

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a) When you release the mouse, the enclosed tasks/milestones will all be selected:

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b) Click the “Increase Font Size” button on the tool bar shown below:

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c) The project view will now look something like this:

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d) Repeating this operation for the remaining tasks/milestones (we could have done “Select All” and done it all at once!), we obtain a project view with larger fonts on all the tasks/milestones:

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22) Another common editing task is to move the task names from their current position, centered on the task, to a position left or right of the task. To do this, select a set of tasks/milestones as before, but this time click one of the text-positioning buttons on the tool bar:

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a) Doing this on several batches of tasks/milestones results in the following edited project view. (We have also dragged the legend to a new position and have adjusted some of its font sizes):

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b) In case you change your mind about the last editing action you took, you can UNDO the last editing action by clicking the UNDO button above the OnePager tool bar. Successive clicking the UNDO button will undo editing actions in the reverse order that they were applied.

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23) Save the edited project view by pressing the save button above the tool bar next to the UNDO button. All of the font-size changes, text-position edits, and the new legend position are now saved in the file structure in case you need to update this project view with new data at a later time.

Copying the Project View to PowerPoint

24) Finally, copy the current snapshot of the project view to the clipboard by pressing the “Copy” button on the tool bar. Then paste the graph into a PowerPoint slide, as shown below:

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25) That’s it! You’ve now created a professional 1-page schedule summary from a complex Microsoft Project plan schedule and have copied it into a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. You can also print the graph by selecting File…Print. OnePager has other features that let you move tasks vertically to different “rows and swimlanes,” change the number of swimlanes, add swimlane titles, show dependencies among tasks, change task colors, hide tasks, add floating comment boxes, and standardize on graph styles across organizations. To learn more about these features, read about the specific workflows in this Wiki.

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