Show only one "Level" in reports…?

[Gavin Lawrie]

I would like to produce a report that limits itself to reporting one line for each activity a team member is due to carry out during a coming period (e.g. month / two weeks etc.).

I have worked out how to filter the data to give this information in a view / workspace.  But I cannot work out how to 'turn off' all the hierarchical information - most of the activities in this project are at "Level 6" - how do I tell Merlin not to show Levels 1-5?  

More generally, it would be better if I could tell Merlin to only show lines for Activities - skipping hierarchical elements, and showing Activities whatever 'Level' they are on.

Is this possible?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Vicky Stamatopoulou]

I think this would be indeed easier to do by report.
Have you already checked
File > New Report > Next Due Activities
Use the options to define the duration and the resource (in case you want to report by resource)?

In case you try to do this in Merlin views, what about using utilization view,
expand all assignments of your resources,
do an advanced search for expected start within the specific range
and if require the report by resource, add a criterion for "title" contains the name of your resource.

Now you can print the utilization view showing only the filtered tasks.

Best regards, Vicky

[Gavin Lawrie]

Helpful - but how do I get set a style for the ‘user’ name that appears as a ’twisty’ above the assignments?  

Currently this is greyed out, but I can’t work out which of the myriad styles applies to this (i.e. Tried loads but not found the right one so far).  

Ideally it would be helpful to put each resource’s commitments on a separate page with headers / footers and so on around it - i.e. Produce a report I guess.

As it is, if this is the best we can do, can I change the colour of the text on the twisty row, and can I remove the (?meaningless?) date from the When? Column (i.e. Date when activity is scheduled).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Gavin

[Gavin Lawrie]

Hi

Been playing with this some more, and encountered an odd problem.

We've attached comments to activities in the plan in the Additional Title and Notes fields.

When I create a report using the Utilisation view as a base as you suggest, none of these notes show up.  It took me a while to work out why, but it seems each assignment of an activity to an individual is treated as a separate # item in the database.  

Is there a way to configure this type of utilisation view to show the fields associated with the activity rather than the person / activity pairing?  So the Additional Title / Notes entry showing against each user in this report are the same (and the same as that which shows in the Activities view)?

Thanks in advance etc.

Gavin

[Vicky Stamatopoulou]

HI Gavin,

in the utilization view you see resources and their assignments.
Just create an empty project with one task and one resource.
Being in the 'Activities' view notice that your project has 2 rows, top most row, row 0 with the project info
second row, row 1 with the task.
Now assign the task to a resource, expand the activity and see your project has 3 rows:
Row 3 is the assignment of this resource to that task.

If you now switch to the utilization view and enable the column "#" you will see the assignment rows are transferred not the tasks. That's how this is defined to work.

So, additional titles, or notes entered on the task's row won't be viewed in the utilization, if they are not entered on the assignment rows.

>Is there a way to configure this type of utilisation view to show the fields associated with the activity rather than the person / activity pairing? So the Additional Title >/ Notes entry showing against each user in this report are the same (and the same as that which shows in the Activities view)

This is not possible. Sorry.

You would need to report this in a separate window.
For example in the "information" report, which reports all informations in a project.

If you want to modify the "information" report further, for example to output not all tasks but only those with notes, feel free to use the attached template "information report (plus)"

Best regards, Vicky

[Gavin Lawrie]

Thanks Vicky.

Clearer, but not much good for what we need.  The value of the additional information fields is to explain to those assigned to the activity more detail of what is required.  These notes are general concerning the activity, not an individual's role in the activity.  So (for example) the note "this meeting is in room 418, get the key from the front desk" needs to be seen by all those participating in an activity, ideally in their simple report on what they have to do in the two weeks ahead.

Creating a report that contains all the additional notes in isolation is not helpful (for any purpose) as far as I can see.

You asked about what we found frustrating with this product.  This limitation is a very good example.  We keep finding instances where it simply doesn't do things in a way that is useful (to users).

[Vicky Stamatopoulou]

I had created a report which lists resources, their assignments, expected work in time.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/merlin2users/F5q-al9lTlk/GhLlOQ_syvkJ

I would suggest you check this report screenshot and tell me which columns are you missing.
Maybe I could implement a new version of this report to show the desired columns.

Best regards, Vicky

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[Vicky Stamatopoulou]

I have modified a report to output resources and their assignments in a specific duration.
It shows optionally notes and/or notes entered on the tasks and the project's title (that's needed when using this report on a master)

Here a screenshot of an output sample

and a screenshot of the report options.

To install:
• Extract the zip first
• place the contained mrept package under the following path of your mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Merlin/Reports
• (in case you have no “Reports” folder please create it first and pay attention to name it exactly as “Reports”)
• restart your Merlin and
• call File > New Report… to find the new report called “Assignment report”.

Options:
• output either expected work or actual work / remaining work
• select a duration for the report to show only uncompleted assignments on that period
• output project names (if in a master project)
• output notes
• output additional titles

Please let me know if it helps you further.

Best regards, Vicky