Managing Hidden Tasks and Milestones Using "Where's My Stuff?!"

About "Where's My Stuff?!"

“Where’s My Stuff?!” is a OnePager feature that helps you locate tasks and milestones that cannot be easily seen. Additionally, the feature helps you understand why tasks/milestones are not appearing and provides you a means to repair the project view so that tasks/milestones are again visible.

When you are trying to locate a task/milestone and do not wish to cause all hidden tasks/milestones, rows, and swimlanes to be made visible, go the OnePager “Home” tab and click on the “Show/Hide” drop down as shown below:

Clicking the “Where’s My Stuff?!” option will bring up the “Where’s My Stuff?!” form shown below which will provide you with the name of each task/milestone that is not showing and a check (X) in the column(s) appropriate for why the task/milestone is not visible:

a) The matrix above shows a red “X” in the column representing the reason that the task/milestone, designated in the row of the Task name column, is not visible.

b) There are seven reasons that a task/milestone, row, or swimlane may not immediately be visible in the graph:

• Hidden Tasks/Milestones: The task/milestone is hidden (e.g., manually hidden, incorporated into a Virtual Summary Task, or Absorbed into another task).
• 'De-Flagged Tasks/Milestones: The task/milestone was not flagged (e.g., Flag20) by you for import from Microsoft Project for the specific snapshot being viewed, but it was flagged and imported on other snapshots.
• Date out of Range: The dates on the task/milestone (Start and/or Finish) are out of range relative to the date range established for the project view.
• Hidden Row: The row containing the task/milestone is hidden, either directly, or because the parent swimlane is hidden.
• Buried Item: The task/milestone is buried (i.e., z-ordering level on the screen) beneath one or more other tasks/milestones.
• Absorbed Item: The task/milestone is not visible because it has been absorbed into another task.
• Virtual Summary Task: The tasks/milestones are hidden because they are now part of a Virtual Summary Task.

If you need additional explanation on what the different reasons mean, you may click the “Help Me” button. This will pop up the form below which will give a detailed explanation for each reason:

Using the information (X’s in rows) in the “Where’s My Stuff?!” form, you will first know why the various items (rows, tasks, milestones, or swimlane) are not showing and have the option to go back to the project view and make the changes you desire manually. Second, you have the option to let OnePager make the fixes for you using the “Fix Selected” button. The process for having OnePager perform the “fix” is as follows:

a) Check the check box (on the left of each row) for each hidden item that you want OnePager to fix.

b) You have the option also to select all rows in the “Where’s My Stuff?!” form by clicking the “Select all” button or you may click the “Clear selections” button to un-select all previously selected actions.

c) When your selections are complete, just click the “Fix Selected” button and OnePager will make the selected items visible.

d) Additionally, OnePager will provide a list of the actions taken in the “INFORMATION AREA” of the “Where’s My Stuff?!” form as shown above.

e) As an example, suppose we select the top four rows to be fixed as shown below:

f) When the “Fix Selected” button is clicked, the “Where’s My Stuff?!” form will respond as shown below:

g) Upon performing the “fix” action described above, the project view is updated to reflect the changes made.

h) The changes made by clicking the “Fix Selected” button as described above are subject to the UNDO/REDO functions using the associated buttons on the OnePager tool bar.

Managing the “Where’s My Stuff?!” form’s columns

For your convenience in using the “Where’s My Stuff?!” form we’ve added three features to help you manage the columns within the “Where’s My Stuff?!” form:

a Rearranging Columns: The columns within the form may be rearranged left to right by left-clicking the column header and dragging it to the left or right This feature is quite convenient for grouping form columns together for the purpose of identifying and fixing issues. The column positions after dragging and dropping are not permanent. Below is a sequence of illustrations showing first the original arrangement of columns and second the column positions after the “Hidden row” column is moved all the way to the left:

Before Dragging “Hidden row” column to the Left-Most Position After Dragging “Hidden row” column to the Left-Most Position

b) “Where’s My Stuff?!” Column “Sorting”: To sort the tasks on the values in the column, left-click the column header. For example, if the “ID” column were selected, all the rows will be sorted in numerical order from lowest to highest. In a similar way, sorting the “Task name” column will cause the rows to be sorted such that they are arranged in alphabetical order (A-Z) based on the content of the “Task name” column. The following example is a sort the “Task name” column showing the before and after illustrations:

Before Sorting the “Task name” Column After Sorting the “Task name” Column

c) “Where’s My Stuff?!” Frozen Columns: The select “Task name” column is frozen so that it does not scroll out of view scrolling left or right via the horizontal scroll bar.

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