Visio 2007 Timeline help please?!? Locking things together?

[jeraldjunkmail]

Hi there, Hope all that read this are having a great day!  I am new to Visio, and need a bit of help...  I am working on a Visio 2007 diagram that intends to model a government policy document.  I am trying to put together a timeline diagram.  It has overlapping timelines and so far I can get Visio to:

Have coexisting timelines (but expanded timelines, I have given up on them)
Get synchronized milestones to synchronize between the the two "separate" timelines.  So when I move a milestone on one, it moves on the other with coinciding dates.
Move the connection points of the connector lines so that they are not going into the center of the timelines...

I have so far TRIED the following:
Having multiple expanded timelines (these of course, will NOT overlap!)...  I have tried everything to make this work, and it simply will not.  It likes to have a second expanded timeline attach itself to the other expanded timeline.  While this would be useful in some applications, it is not very useful in my application.  I really have tried almost everything, and it has helped me learn a lot about Visio, but to no avail...

Played with intervals...  I think this is a good option, but it has to be workable.  Since my intervals will overlap, I have not been able to make this visibly apparent.  I would like to make the intervals have different colors or transparencies on the parts that overlap.

I would like to do the following:
I am looking for a way to link the milestones with the end points of each of the intervals, or failing that, link the separate timelines with milestones that actually rely on the date inputted into the milestones.  Would look like this:
0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0  and when I move the milestone, timeline would look like this:
0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-0 so would become a self appending timeline.

Failing that, I would simply like to "hard link" the milestones to each other, and make sure that the connector lines are solidly linked to my connector points.

For the bonus points, it would be nice to make these into "sliders" with the milestones as handles for the dates

Thanks in advance, Jerald!

[bobsupercow]

Jerald,

Seeing as how you're obviously working on a rather large project and have listed several requirements, it would be helpful to have a couple things.

1. Upload a copy of what your working on. Your description is great, but it's obviously a complex drawing so having a copy to view and get a handle on makes helping out much easier.

2. Understand that this forum is an excellent resource to help you learn to work with Visio and fix bugs, but it is not a resource that will provide you with entire solutions.

Best of luck and hope to see your drawing so I can help.

-TheCow

[jeraldjunkmail]

Lol, I have lots of time to work on this, so here is what i have come up with...

Also, I have not put intervals into this file because I couldn't get them to link to the milestones.  Kind of gave up, but if you know of a way to do so, I'd be a happy man!

However, just making it so that a "user" can't easily modify the synchronized milestones and connector lines would be a great addition to this drawing...

Thanks for the quick reply bobsupercow!  Looking forward to whatever suggestions you have...

PS, I am still very much noobish at this, so don't really understand how the code in the shapesheet works.  Trying hard to learn though...

[aledlund]

as an observation from the side, it might be more appropriate to use MS Project for this.
al

[jeraldjunkmail]

Yeah, project would be good too, but the learning curve would be a bit step since this is only a short term job (one more week to go)...  So I am happy with the diagram I posted here except that it could be a bit more "solid"...  Any suggestions on how to get it there?  I am aiming to make it "user proof"

Cheers, Jerald!

[wapperdude]

You can make it a little more foolproof if you open the shapesheet of each "interval" timeline and, then, in the User section, where it shows beginning and ending dates, enter a formula that pulls in the date of the appropriate milestone shape, e.g., GUARD(Cylindrical milestone.123!User.visMilestoneDate)

To get the ID of the milestone, and the shape name, go to menu bar > Format > Special.  At the top, you will see the info.

HTH
Wapperdude

Edit:  upon further investigation, there is more work needed.  The above will sync the begin / end dates to the milestones, but, it doesn't seem to force recalculation of the internal, incremental dates.  Oops!     Don't have time to investigate more.  Sorry.   

[jeraldjunkmail]

Thanks for the reply.  So as I understand it, this will make the secondary timelines sync with the milestones that are on the primary timeline.  They will append their end dates (or extend them?) based on the position of the primary timelines milestone?  That actually sounds like a decent outcome.

I haven't tried your suggestion yet because I am not totally clear about what it will do, and because you had to run off and deal with real life (hey no problem, I really appreciate your help, effort, and time...)

If you could reply to this to clarify the outcome of this change, i would really appreciate it.

Cheers, Jerald!

PS, I am just getting to the point where I am causing Visio to drill down to other pages on double-clicking...  NEATO!  Now I will start looking into creating a pivot diagram

[wapperdude]

Not sure when I can get to this...trying to get ready for vacation and have 3 major (independent) deadlines to deal with.

Part of the problem with the timeline shapes is that there is a lot of built-in code behind them.  When you start messing around with the shapes, either your changes get over-ridden (eventually), or, you break some desireable behavior.

This last outcome seems to be the issue.  The shape expects it's begin/end dates to come from the form, but the suggested change fetches the dates from the milestones on the primary timeline.  Consequently, whatever input triggers the increment calculations isn't getting triggered.  That probably means putting formulas in the  shapesheet to do the calcs ... certainly can be done, just takes a little time.

Perhaps someone on the forum will jump at the chance to do this before I can attend to it.

Wapperdude

[jeraldjunkmail]

Hey, no problem!  When I was looking at the (to me anyways) mind boggling shape sheet of the timelines, I did notice that they were pretty extensive for the coding.  Other simpler shapes are much shorter/less dense, so even having you help me this much is beyond my expectations.

As for anyone at Microsoft that happens to read these forums, and stumbles across this post:  Please improve the timelines and give the user a few more easy to access options, improve the lines and connection points so I can simply snap an extended timeline onto whatever timeline I choose and do away with limitations on parenting it to the nearest timeline...  I know that this should go in the features and improvements in a separate post but there are actually not too many posts about the timeline charts so this might get picked up by their dev team...

Anyhoo...  I have multiple things to work on with this project, so if you have some time, and feel like puttering, it is super appreciated, and might be helpful to someone else down the line.  Multiple timelines that connect = Feature request or customized shape...  Either is a tough one...

Cheers, Jerald!