Reporting Calendars in the Barchart View
Reporting calendars allow you to view time-scaled data in a barchart or histogram view using a non-linear date scale.
Using reporting calendars you can, for example, display a histogram that shows resource usage on a monthly basis for the next three months, on a quarterly basis for the four quarters following that, and on a yearly basis for the remaining years of the project.
If you have set up one or more reporting calendars in order to display data using a non-linear time scale, you can base a date scale on this type of calendar. This allows you, for example, to create a “rolling wave” barchart report in which the units on the date scale can refer to different spans of time.
It is also possible to use multiple reporting calendars in a single date scale by assigning a different reporting calendar to each axis.
With multiple reporting calendars, however, you must designate one of the axes as the “controlling” axis that determines how Open Plan scales the other axes. Typically, the controlling axis displays the smallest intervals to be displayed in the date scale.
To use a reporting calendar to define the appearance of a date scale, you must have already defined the calendar using the Reporting Calendars command from the Tools tab.
Once created, you can use the Reporting Calendar tab of the Date Scale Preferences dialog box to select a different reporting calendar to use on the date scale of each barchart or histogram. This feature allows you to create reports that provide different views of the same data. For example, you might want to create a barchart based on your fiscal year and another barchart based on the client's fiscal year.