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TRANSCRIPT
MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX
ADD-IN DOCUMENTATION
Copyright ©2008 by Michael L. McShaffry (dba MrMike) – All Rights Reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What Is MrMike’s Project Toolbox ? ........................................................................................................ 3
Installing MrMike’s Project Toolbox......................................................................................................... 4
Uninstalling MrMike’s Project Toolbox .................................................................................................... 6
Using Custom Fields ................................................................................................................................. 7
What to Put in the Category Field .................................................................................................... 7
What’s In MrMike’s Project Toolbox ........................................................................................................ 8
Copy Categories To Task Names ........................................................................................................... 8
Clear Categories ................................................................................................................................... 8
Export To XLS ....................................................................................................................................... 9
Using the PivotTable ........................................................................................................................ 9
Showing Percentages Instead of Actual Data .................................................................................. 12
Showing Remaining Work in Days .................................................................................................. 13
Copy Costs B and Copy Costs C ........................................................................................................... 14
Reset Contingency Acceptance And Final Polish.................................................................................. 15
Reset Milestone Deadlines ................................................................................................................. 15
Workflow For Scrum .......................................................................................................................... 16
Troubleshooting ..................................................................................................................................... 19
Common Problems and Solutions ....................................................................................................... 19
Contact Information & Feedback ........................................................................................................... 20
Credits ................................................................................................................................................... 20
WHAT IS MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX ? MrMike’ Project Toolbox was originally a free set of Microsoft Project macros posted on
http://www.mcshaffry.com in March of 2007. It had a number of useful things, most especially the Export
To XLS macro, which exported a Microsoft Project schedule to excel for easy publication and analysis.
Since macros are a little hard to deal with and install – Mike McShaffry and his associate, Quoc Tran,
worked to put these macros into an installable Add-in for Microsoft Project 2003 and 2007.
The MrMike’s Project Toolbox current has the following features:
Copy Categories To Task Names – copies the Category (Text1) and Subcategory (Text2) task fields into the
task name, which makes it much easier to identify a task in standard reports and group views. For
example, a task called “Test”, with category “Install Program” and subcategory “Install Directory” would
be renamed to “Install Program – Install Directory – Test”.
Clear Categories – reverses the above process, so “Install Program – Install Directory – Test” would
become, “Test” once more.
Export To XLS – exports the entire schedule in an easily publishable form, and also a PivotTable which can
be used to analyze your schedule
Copy Costs C & Copy Costs B – copies resource costs B or C to the A tab, making it easy to keep track of
internal costs versus billable costs, and publish either one accordingly.
Rest Contingency Acceptance and Final Polish – if at least two milestones have been defined for the
project (a kickoff and a completion date) this tool will analyze the schedule and for each resource that
worked the majority of a milestone it will add 5 days of contingency time and 5 days of acceptance time
for each milestone. The new tasks will be inserted just below the final milestone.
Reset Milestone Deadlines – this tool will set the Deadline field for each task to be the milestone deadline
in which the task falls. As the schedule is being tracked, tasks that fall out of their original milestone will
show up with the red warning icon.
Clear Project for Scrum – for those teams that use Scrum, but like to track story tasks in MS Project, this
macro clears custom data fields so when tasks are updated in the Scrum meeting they can later be
published.
Daily Scrum Notes – exports to Excel all the tasks that changed since the last time the project was cleared
for Scrum – this can then be exported to a team Wiki page.
INSTALLING MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX
If you downloaded the installer from the web site, double
click on the MrMikesProjectToolboxInstall.exe file.
If you received the software on a CD, put the CD in your
CD-ROM drive and the installation program should start
automatically.
If it doesn’t start automatically follow these steps:
o Go to Start->My Computer
o Find your CD or DVD drive’s icon and double click
on it.
o You should see the
MrMikesProjectToolboxInstall.exe file, double
click on it to start the installation process.
Keep your computer secure!
Depending on your security settings and operating system,
you may need to verify that you trust content from MrMike.
MrMike’s Project Toolbox is digitally signed with a secure
certificate from Thawte – you can check this by right-clicking
on the MrMike’sProjectToolboxInstall.msi file and looking on
the Digital Signatures tab. If this doesn’t exist – DO NOT
INSTALL THE FILE! You have received a hacked version of the
file. Go back to http://www.mcshaffry.com/mrmike, click on
Downloads, and get a good version of the file.
Once installation begins, you will see
a license agreement. Accept the
agreement by clicking next to “I
Agree” and click on the Next button.
Next, choose where you want to
install the files.
Start Microsoft Project.
When Microsoft Project starts, notice
a new Menu option, MrMike, which
contains all of the add-ins you have
installed from MrMike, which now
includes MrMike’s Project Toolbox.
UNINSTALLING MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX
Follow these instructions to uninstall MrMike’s Project Toolbox:
Exit from all Microsoft Office programs,
including Excel and Project.
From your Start Menu, select
All Programs->MrMike Project Addins-
>MrMike’s Project Toolbox->Uninstall
MrMike’s Project Toolbox
Select “Remove MrMike’s Project
Toolbox Add-in” and click on the Finish
button.
USING CUSTOM FIELDS If you’ve never used custom fields before, this section will teach you about them. Microsoft Project has
dozens of extra fields you can use to store special information unique to your organization or project.
They are usually hidden from view, so before you can enter data into them you must show them. Custom
fields exist for both Tasks and Resources.
MrMike’s Project Toolbox renames custom fields in order to describe what they are used for. When you
first open a file, MrMike’s Project Toolbox will examine the custom fields it needs to see if they have been
renamed. If the custom fields have not been renamed, and if it finds any data in the fields, you will see the
following dialog:
If you click on the checkbox and then click Ok, then MrMike’s Project Toolbox will reformat the Project file
so that its features can work properly. If you do not click on the checkbox, MrMike’s Project Toolbox will
not reformat your file, giving you the opportunity to save any data you need in another custom field.
WHAT TO PUT IN THE CATEGORY FIELD The Category custom field is used by MrMike’s Project Addins. Assigning categories to your tasks is
completely up to you – but there are some general guidelines:
Choose categories that are descriptive and relatively broad.
Choose short names.
Categories should be cross-discipline, and not include references to resource groups.
WHAT’S IN MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX
COPY CATEGORIES TO TASK NAMES
Adds the Category and Subcategory custom fields to the front of the task name, separated by hyphens.
You can do this multiple times, in case you change something in the extra text fields. If you run this tool
on this project:
You get this result:
CLEAR CATEGORIES
Effectively reverses the effect of Copy Categories To Task Names.
EXPORT TO XLS
This tool exports a Microsoft Project files task data to Microsoft Excel. It creates three spreadsheets:
Schedule Analyzer: A pivot table you can use to ask probing questions about your schedule.
Raw Schedule Data: The raw data that is used to create the pivot table.
YourFileName.mpp: A spreadsheet containing your schedule with the summary task hierarchy intact.
NOTE: For the Milestone field to work right in the PivotTable, you must first run the Reset Milestone
Deadlines tool before you run Export To XLS !
You will see the spreadsheet being built – sit back and relax because this process takes a while.
WARNING: Don’t touch Excel while this is happening – it will take your input and mess things up. A
dialog box with the message “Pivot table creation complete” will appear once exporting is finished.
You will then see this spreadsheet:
USING THE PIVOTTABLE
If you don’t have the PivotTable toolbar (above), go to Tools->Customize, click the Toolbars tab, and check
the PivotTable entry. The last button will hide and show the PivotTable Field List.
You can drag these columns into and out of various positions in the PivotTable to make different kinds of
reports.
The default report, shown on the previous page, shows who is working on what during what milestone,
and how many days of work is assigned.
If you drag all the columns out, and replace them with just Category and Subcategory, your PivotTable
should look like this:
Double click on any of the column headers, such as Category, and you will see this dialog box:
You can use this dialog box to add or remove various types of subtotals. Press the Advanced… button and
you’ll see the Advanced Options dialog:
You can use this dialog to sort your columns ascending or descending, if you wish.
SHOWING PERCENTAGES INSTEAD OF ACTUAL DATA If you double click on the “Sum of Work in Days” at the very top left of the
spreadsheet, you see the PivotTable Field options dialog box.
Drop down the “Show data as” box and choose “% of column”.
Your PivotTable should look like this:
SHOWING REMAINING WORK IN DAYS Simply drag the “Sum of Work In Days”
PivotTable field to the field list, and drag the
“Remaining Work” field in its place.
The numbers will now reflect remaining work.
COPY COSTS B AND COPY COSTS C
These tools copy the B or C resource cost fields to the A field. This is useful for storing billable costs and
internal costs in the same schedule, and easily flipping between both of them.
RESET CONTINGENCY ACCEPTANCE AND FINAL POLISH
Use this to add time to your schedule to account for any unplanned issues, as well as to add time for
acceptance and polish.
Define your milestones at the top of your schedule – you might find it useful to use the predecessor field
as shown above to set your milestone delivery dates relative to one another. In this example, M2-Hello
World is 6 weeks after M1-Planning. The “2SS+6 wks” in the predecessor field tells Project to start M2 6
weeks after M1 starts, hence the “SS”, which means to set a “Start-to-Start” constraint.
Once that is done, the Reset Contingency Acceptance and Final Polish tool will add 5 days of contingency
time each milestone for each resource in your Project plan to account for any unplanned issues. It will also
add 5 days of acceptance time for each resource in each milestone. In addition, a polish task will be
added to each resource to account for the time between the end of their planned tasks and the last
milestone date.
RESET MILESTONE DEADLINES
This feature will calculate what milestone each task falls under, and then assigns the Deadline field for
each task to the milestone date.
Once the milestone deadlines are set, you will be able to analyze which tasks fall into which milestones
with the Export To XLS tool, and you will also be able to see when tasks fall out of their original
milestones during schedule tracking, by a red warning icon that will appear on your Gantt Charts:
WORKFLOW FOR SCRUM
Run the Clear Project For Scrum tool.
Set the project status date and current date by going to Project->Project Information.
If you don’t have the Tracking toolbar up, go to Tools->Customize->Toolbars, and check the box
next to Tracking.
Begin your Scrum meeting. For each task that someone finishes, starts, or updates – select it in
the task view window:
And hit the Update Tasks button on the Tracking toolbar:
You will see the Update Tasks dialog:
o If they finish a task – enter the actual finish date, and the actual duration.
o If they start a task – enter the actual start date.
o If they are working on a task already started – enter the actual duration so far and the
remaining duration they expect to work on this task.
NOTE: If someone on your team works on something that is NOT on the schedule, you should
add the task and track it, or remove days from their contingency time. Otherwise the
development velocity will not be measured properly.
At the end of your Scrum meeting – run the Daily Scrum Notes XLS function, and
you will see all the tasks that changed during your scrum meeting.
If you have the format_as_wikitable macro in Excel – you can then run it to create a table in MediaWiki
formatted with prettytable syntax.
Copy this text right into your MediaWiki! It will look just like you formatted the table in Excel.
TROUBLESHOOTING For the very latest troubleshooting tips and solutions, go to http://www.mcshaffry.com/mrmike/forum/
COMMON PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
My milestones are not showing up correctly in Export To XLS Pivot Table – make sure each
milestone has a zero duration, and nothing in the Category (Text1) and Subcategory (Text2) field.
Also – make sure you ran the “Reset Milestone Deadlines” tool – that’s how the PivotTable
knows what tasks go in what milestones!
MrMike menu never appears in Microsoft Project
Symptoms:
Users do not see a MrMike menu in Microsoft Project after installing the Toolbox.
Users do see a “MrMikes Project Addins” menu in their Start Menu.
They likely use Office 2003
Cause: You need an update for Microsoft Office that enables shared addins like MrMike’s Project
Toolbox to function properly.
Solution:
Go to http://www.mcshaffry.com/mrmike/forum/
Search for “no mrmike menu”
Find the thread entitled, “No MrMike Menu ?”
Follow the instructions there.
CONTACT INFORMATION & FEEDBACK Please contact the online forum if you have any feedback or problems with MrMike’s Project Toolbox.
http://www.mcshaffry.com/mrmike/forum/
CREDITS Programming
Mike McShaffry
Quoc Tran