Views and Reports
Views are the means through which you can add, update, and display information about a project in Open Plan.
Although you can create as many custom views as you wish, all Open Plan views fall into one of the following types:
- Barchart: A composite view displaying a barchart, a spreadsheet, and a resource/cost histogram
- Code: A logic diagram of the project codes
- Network: A logic diagram of the project activities and relationships
- Resource: A display of the resource breakdown structure
- Spreadsheet: A display of project information in a tabular format. Spreadsheet views can be based on a single table like activities or on multi-tables like resource and activities.
- Histogram (Resource Histogram and Risk Histogram): A display of resource/cost or risk analysis information in a graphical format
- Time-Phased: Time-phased schedule progress charts that you can use to report by activity count or values. You can use these charts to view, for example, early/late activity completion curves with actuals as well as time-phased task completions vs baseline plan.
- Tornado: A display of risk information as a numerical barchart
- Browser: A browser view allows a Windows shortcut, Internet shortcut, or Open Plan Add-In to be stored as a view in the Views folder of the Open Plan Library.
All views to which you have access are listed in the Views folder of the Open Plan Library. Here the views store all the information about how Open Plan should display a particular view. You can customize an existing view and then share the new view with multiple projects.
In most cases, you can access your data through a number of different views. For example, you can display information about project activities in both a network view, and in a barchart view. On the other hand, some views display a certain type of information in a way that no other view can. For example, a histogram is particularly well-suited for displaying resource usage over time.
Since a view in the Library is not associated with a specific project, it cannot display data. As a result, before you can open or change its definition, you must first assign it to a project. When you assign a view to a project, you create a link from the project to the view in the Open Plan Library. If you modify the appearance of the view and save the view, your changes may affect other projects that use that view.
There are a number of actions that you can perform on a view. You can create, copy, combine, and delete views. While these actions certainly affect the way the project is displayed, they do not affect the project itself. For example, deleting a view does not delete the project itself.
In addition, you can customize any view to display information in a way that is meaningful to your organization. And, you can determine the information that is displayed in a view by using sorts, filters, and calculated fields. After customizing a view, you can save it with a new name so that it can be made available to other users.
You can also designate predefined or custom views as favorites. You can do this by clicking the Add to Favorites button or by using the Organize Favorites dialog box.
Printing Reports and Views
Any view in Open Plan can also be printed as a report.