New Style Programme Milestone Timeline

Started by Jedra, July 08, 2014, 11:42:43 AM

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Jedra

Hi guys,

So I have two very related problems. Basically, I've shot myself int he foot slightly, by creating a new style timeline in visio to track milestones across my programme. Management loved it! But I did it manually... and would rather not have to manually update and/or create this again and again. So the bare bones of the problem is that I want to create something like the attached picture from the attached Excel.

(If I can do something similar but not exactly the same that would be great too!)

The source data is simple:

An excel file with "Project", "Milestone", "Date" and "RAG" that will get weekly updates

From this I want to create:

1) A horizontal band/grouping for each project
2) A milestone within the band at the correct position for that date with:
     2.1) The day of the month (e.g. 7) inside the milestone
     2.2) The milestone name next to it
     2.3) Coloured according to the RAG status
3) If possible (definitely a nice to have) the dependencies between the milestones

I thought about doing this with timelines, but I need to be able to distinguish between the RAG status of milestones when they have the same date, and timelines kept scaling the milestone to fill up the whole band, so this didn't work for me. Not sure if this is an intrinsic problem or just my failing at life/Visio.

I would expect (but be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong) that any automation would likely still need some manual "tweaking" to get things to look nice and neat

So my questions:

a) Is this possible?
b) Is there a stock thing like this?
c) If not... How do I do it?

I should say, I at present have Visio Standard 2007. If this can be done I will be able to get Visio Pro 2007 as I know this is necessary for the data import side of it, but I haven't needed that feature until now.

Thanks for any help and guidance!

wapperdude

I think most of this is do-able.  It ought to be possible to import from Excel to get the desired info, not tried it though. 

The timeline shapes are grouped shapes, so you have to traverse downward thru the hierarchy to get to specific subshapes.  Easiest way is to use the Drawing Explorer Window (DEW).  Access it from menu bar>View. 

Perhaps the most difficult part is creating the horizontal band/grouping for each project.  Each milestone typically sits on the timeline, and so, belongs to it, not to the project.  So, I think that would take some creative effort.  My thought would be to try to do all of this in shapesheet.  Somehow, when a timeline is placed, the project name would key it to a particular group, and then set "bound" the vertical position based upon that group.  The horizontal position would still be tied to the timeline.  The other stuff shouldn't be to tough.  Not sure what you mean by <3> link the dependencies.  If milestone #2 occurs a month after milestone#1, and milestone #1 gets delayed by 3 months, then, milestone#2 gets pushed over by same delay?  Yeah, that could be done too.  I think that sort of thing would be more easily done in the Excel file and just refresh data.  But a relative dependency ought to be possible.

All of this will take some work.

I'm attaching a simple example that shows a milestone that can be dragged vertically from the timeline.  The milestone shape is set in shape.28.  The reference shape is the group shape, shape.27.

HTH
Wapperdude
Visio 2019 Pro

FlowerGirl

I am replying to this old topic hoping that wapperdude could chime in with an upgrade to his "Dragger" milestone.

Would you be able to work your magic so that I could connect a "Custom Callout" to the diamond shape?
That way when I move the shape vertically, the callout would move with it.

When I try to connect a custom callout to the current designed milestone, it snaps to the timeline and not the shape.
I generally use custom callouts instead of the typical text boxes that come with stock milestone shapes.

Thanks for any help you can offer

FG :-*