Custom Bar Styles

[dbsoccer]

I want to use Project for something that it was not intended for but should still work for. I want to create three custom bar styles: Shipping, Qualifying, Investigation. I want to define the span of all three bars with a start date and an end date. I want the colors to be different and need to have the ability to add text inside, etc.

I have been do this same thing thus far with a start date task of 0 days and an ending task of 0 days and then rolling this up to a summary task. The length of the summary automatically scales with my two dates and I can change the colors to meet my needs.



But for this application I'd like to create a custom template that has only these three types of task bars.

Is this even possible?

Thanks.

[JulieS]

Consider making a custom view with the custom bar styles included. The view can be saved in a template or copied to the global template through the organizer.

[dbsoccer]

Hi Julie,

A custom template makes perfect sense yet I am having trouble getting started.

For grins, I opened a new .mmp file, opened the Bar Styles dialog box, cut all of the existing rows and added a custom row. But now when I enter a task a gantt bar does not appear. Clearly what I did was wrong but the fundamental question I have is how do you get a task to use a custom bar style or any bar style for that matter? This confuses me in that the default bar style dialog has close to 40 different styles yet it is not clear how one is used over the other, how you change between the different styles or how you can tell which style is being used for any given task.

Could you help clarify?

Thanks.

[JulieS]

I would not suggest removing all of the existing bars styles as that leaves you very little to work from.

Each bar style relates to a specific property of a group of tasks (summary, milestone, critical, manually scheduled, etc.). You can use a couple of the spare Flag fields (Flag1, Flag2, etc) for your needs. For example, use Flag1 for Shipping, Flag2 for Qualifying, and Flag3 for Investigating. The default for all Flag fields is "no", change it to yes for each of the tasks corresponding to the categories.

Take the existing "Task" bar cut it and paste twice. Add "Flag1" to the "show for" to make that bar show for tasks you have tagged with Flag1=yes. Change color, size, etc as needed. Cut that bar and paste twice and make that the Flag2 bar and so on.

You can then set the Flags as you need to for the tasks. Once you have set up the tasks, you can remove the Flag fields from your view as they are only needed to set up the category when you create the task.

I hope this helps.

[dbsoccer]

Thanks Julie, I was head in the direction of using the flag field. This is working when I use Field1 but I can't get Field2 or Field3 to work.

In you instruction above you said to cut and paste twice. Why twice?

[JulieS]

A cut with two pastes gives two copies. Did you change the second bar style to point to Flag2? Did you set Flag2 to yes?

[dbsoccer]

With experimentation I am getting closer. Thanks. For my new tasks the only Show For information is just the Flag (e.g. Flag1 or Flag2) This seems to work. What I found however, is there seems to be a priority. I added three new columns (Flag1, Flag2 and Flag3) and create three new Bar Styles that have only Flag1, 2 or 3 in the Show For field.
If I set the Flag1 field to yes the bar style matches the Flag1 style I defined. But if I have both Flag1 and Flag2 set to Yes. It is the Flag2 style that is used. If I set all three to yes, the Flag3 bar style is used. I can deal with this.

New question. I want to set the bars length based on the start date and the end date. And I may need to change one of the these dates. But when I change the date I want the duration to change and not the other date. What I see now is I input start and end and the duration is calculated to be say 90-days. If I now change the start date, the duration stays at 90-days and the end date will also move. What do I need to do so that the duration will float as I change the dates?

[JulieS]

The bars defined in the Bar Styles dialog box over lay one another, with bars lower down in the list overlaying bars above it.

If the Flag2 definition is below the Flag1 definition and you have both Flag1 & Flag2 set to yes, the lower (Flag2) bar overlays the Flag1 bar. You can show multiple bars if you use the thinner bar shapes if you want a task to show for both Flag1 & Flag2. If you have kept the "Task" definition, make sure you change the Show For... section and add Not Flag1, Not Flag2, Not Flag3.