REPRESENTING your project plan in a graphical format can help others better visualize the project’s processes and structures you are trying to communicate. In Microsoft Project 2010, you use Gantt Chart and Network Diagram views to depict your project plan. By using the Microsoft Visio 2010 diagramming software, you can also represent the flows, concepts, structure, and organization involved with your project.
As a project management tool, Project 2010 calculates your task dates, determines resource usage, and maintains a database of the thousands of pieces of data that make up your project plan. Although Project 2010 produces graphical representations of your projects, Visio’s diagramming features can take information you select from your project plan and represent it in an easy-to-understand graphic that can clearly communicate project information to wider audiences.
Your favorite point of integration between Project 2010 and Visio is likely to be the visual reports feature. Choose a Visio-based visual report, and Project 2010 transfers the appropriate data to a Visio template, ready for viewing. The Visio templates include commands for configuring which results you see—an indispensable tool when stakeholders question you about different aspects of project performance.
In addition to visual reports, you’ll find other reasons to transfer data between Project 2010 and Visio. If the copy of Project 2010 that you requested for your birthday hasn’t arrived, you can start building projects using the Visio Timeline, Gantt Chart, and PERT Chart templates. When you switch to Project 2010, you can export your Visio timelines and Gantt charts and start up in Project 2010 where you left off in Visio. Sometimes, the easiest way to summarize project status or highlight problem areas is to export key project information to a Visio timeline or Gantt chart. However, you might not use Visio timelines as often now that Project 2010 includes its own Timeline view.
Note
For more information about the Project 2010 Timeline, see Highlighting Tasks with the Timeline.
You can exchange information between Project 2010 and Visio in several ways:
Use a visual report in Project 2010 to analyze data with a Visio PivotDiagram. Each visual report specifies the data to transfer for the report and the Visio PivotDiagram template to use to communicate project information. By letting you swap which fields you use to summarize or total results, Visio PivotDiagrams are perfect when you want to be ready to answer any questions that arise.
Import a Project 2010 file to a Visio timeline or Gantt chart. Importing a Project 2010 file into Visio is helpful when you want to take advantage of features in Visio to present project highlights.
Import a Visio timeline or Gantt chart into a Project 2010 file. You might not use this method as frequently as transferring information in the other direction, but it’s ideal when you want to bring an initial task list into Project 2010 for full-blown project management.
Visual reports, which were introduced in Microsoft Project 2007, use Microsoft Visio Professional 2007 or later or Microsoft Excel 2003 or later to transform Microsoft Project data into easy-to-understand, easy-to-manipulate charts and graphs. Microsoft Project 2010 comes with numerous built-in visual report templates for communicating task, resource, and assignment information.
A visual report assembles the data it needs and stores that data in a database. Then it applies a Visio 2007 or later (or Excel 2003 or later) template to the data to generate the report in a Visio PivotDiagram (or Excel PivotChart). Once you generate the visual report, you can configure the report by using Visio or Excel pivot tools to, for example, examine different fields over different time periods without generating a brand new report. You might begin by analyzing cash flow for each fiscal quarter and then later, when cash flow is tight, expand the report to view cash flow by week or further expand it to view cash flow by task.
If necessary, you can modify any of the existing visual reports or create your own report templates to do exactly what you want. You can add, remove, or rearrange the fields you want to analyze. In addition, you can publish your customized visual reports for team members or other project managers to use.
Note
For more information about creating a visual report in Excel, see Producing a Visual Report of Project Data in Excel.
Visio-based visual reports transfer data to a Visio PivotDiagram for analysis. For example, the Task Status report shows how much money has been spent and the percentage complete for the entire project. You can configure the report to analyze tasks at every layer of the work breakdown structure.
Note
For more information about using the traditional Microsoft Project text-based reports, see Working with Text-Based Reports.
To generate a built-in visual report for Visio, do the following:
In Project 2010, on the Project tab, in the Reports group, click Visual Reports.
To view visual reports that use Visio, clear the Microsoft Excel check box and be sure to select the Microsoft Visio check box. (See Figure 19-1.)
To view the visual reports that come with Project 2010, regardless of the category to which they belong, click the All tab.
Using the All tab is the easiest way to find the report you want, unless you have created many of your own visual report templates. To see only the reports in a specific category, select the tab for that category. For example, the Resource Usage category includes the Cash Flow Report template, and the Assignment Usage category includes templates for reporting baseline costs.
To specify the level of detail that Project 2010 transfers to Visio, click a time period (Days, Weeks, Months, Quarters, or Years) in the Select Level Of Usage Data To Include In The Report box.
Although any time period can work with any project, the Days or Weeks choices are better for shorter projects, whereas Months or longer periods provide faster reporting for longer projects.
If you want to save an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) cube of the data for the report, click Save Data.
Saving an OLAP cube makes generating additional reports faster because the step of gathering and transferring data is already complete, and the data is now saved in the OLAP cube.
To generate the report, click View.
Visio launches and creates a PivotDiagram that uses the OLAP cube of data transferred from Project 2010, as shown in Figure 19-2.
When a visual report first opens in Visio, the most detail you see is a box with data for the entire project. (See Figure 19-2.) The tools you need to view the data by different categories or with various calculations are all in the Visio PivotDiagram task pane. For example, you can change the category to view results by tasks, resources, or time periods, and you can add different totals (such as work or cost) or group nodes in different ways.
To modify a visual report to show different results, use any of the following methods:
Use a category to expand a node in the diagram. Right-click the node, point to Add Category on the shortcut menu, and then click the category you want for the next level on the submenu. (See Figure 19-3.) You can also click the category you want in the PivotDiagram task pane.
Filter the data that appears at a level. By default, a level in a PivotDiagram includes all the data in the OLAP cube. If you want to display information for only some parts of the project, right-click the Pivot Breakdown shape for that level (the small box that contains the category name, such as Task 2, shown in Figure 19-4) and click Configure Level on the shortcut menu. In the Configure Level dialog box (shown in Figure 19-4), in the Filter section, specify tests and values to filter the data.
Show different totals in nodes. The nodes for a visual report contain specific totals by default, but you can include other totals as well. In the PivotDiagram task pane, in the Add Total section, select the check boxes for the fields you want to total. (See Figure 19-5.)
Combine nodes in different ways. For example, to add the tasks for two summary tasks together, on the PivotDiagram tab, in the Arrange group, shown in Figure 19-6, click a command such as Merge, Promote, or Collapse.
Although the built-in visual report templates cover many aspects of project performance, from baselines and cash flow to resource availability and task status, you can edit a template to fit your specific requirements. You can even create a new custom visual report template from scratch, which involves only a few more steps than editing a built-in template.
When you choose a visual report template, you are, in effect, specifying the fields you want to work with and the type of data on which you want to report. Because Visio visual reports use PivotDiagrams, you can use pivot features to further fine-tune the report after it’s built in Visio.
To edit a built-in visual report template, do the following:
On the Project tab, in the Reports group, click Visual Reports.
Select the built-in visual report template you want to edit, and then click Edit Template.
The Visual Reports Field Picker dialog box appears.
To add fields to the OLAP cube for the visual report, in the Available Fields list, select the fields you want, and then click Add.
The fields appear in the Selected Fields list. Remove fields from the Selected Fields list by selecting the ones you want to remove and then clicking Remove. You can select multiple fields to add or remove by holding the Ctrl key and clicking the fields you want to select.
Click the Edit Template button.
Project 2010 builds the OLAP cube based on the fields specified and launches Visio with the built-in Visio template for the selected report.
Make the changes you want to the settings in Visio, and then save the Visio template.
To create your own template, do the following:
On the Project tab, in the Reports group, click Visual Reports.
Click New Template.
The Visual Reports - New Template dialog box appears with the three basic selections you must make to build a template, as shown in Figure 19-7.
To create a Visio-based report, select either the Visio (Metric) or Visio (US Units) option.
Under Select Data Type, choose the type of data you want to use as the basis for your report.
Visual reports are based on six different sets of information: Task Summary, Task Usage, Resource Summary, Resource Usage, Assignment Summary, and Assignment Usage. These data types determine the fields that Project 2010 adds to the OLAP cube, such as resource-related fields for resource reports. You can add or remove fields as well.
To modify the fields for the template, click Field Picker.
You can add or remove fields for the template just as you do for a built-in template, described earlier in this section.
Click OK.
Visio launches, opens a PivotDiagram with a node for the entire project, and sets up a few categories.
Configure the diagram by using the techniques described in the section Configuring a Visual Report in Visio.
When the PivotDiagram looks the way you want, on the File tab, click Save. In the Save As dialog box, navigate to the folder in which you want to save the template, enter a name for the template, and then click Save.
To see your custom templates in the Visual Reports dialog box list, select the Include Reports Template From check box, and click Modify to specify the path that contains your custom templates.
