Roger from New York asks: Has anyone ever written a process/macro/view/something whereby I can produce a timesheet of sorts that tells my resources what tasks they're to work on this week, possibly using the Gantt view?

Answer: This is something that many people have asked me about, and there are several solutions available depending on what you're looking for.

If you want a Gantt chart view, you could try applying the filter, "Using Resource," which would show only tasks where a specific resource is being used. Keep in mind that you'll have to run this separately for each resource. If you wanted to take this to the next level and group the work by week, this would give you a clearer idea of how the work is distributed for each resource.

To create a grouping by week, follow these steps.

1. Project | Group by | More Groups.
2. Click on "New."
3. Enter a title for the report, such as "Weekly report."
4. To base the report on start date, select Start in the Group by field (or the grouping may be created using the Finish date by selecting Finish).
5. Click off the choice above and then click back onto it.
6. The button "Define Group Intervals" becomes available. Click on it.
7. Select in the Group on field your grouping time choice -- week, month, etc.
8. The Group interval should be 1 if you would like every week.
9. Click OK and then OK to close the form.

Figure 1. How definition of the weekly report might look.

Figure 2 shows the resulting report when run for the G.C. project management resource.

Figure 2. The report generated.

You could also take this one step further and create a custom view to make it easier to repeat the query.

1. View | More Views | New.
2. Create a single view and click OK.
3. Enter a view name (such as "Weekly tasks by resource"), as shown in Figure 3.
4. For Screen, choose Gantt Chart.
5. For Table choose Entry or any table you would like created.
6. For Group, choose Weekly report (or whatever you've named in the previous set of steps).
7. For Filter, choose Using Resource.
8. Click Show in the menu to make the view accessible from the View menu.
9. Click OK.

Figure 3. Where to set up the Group Definition.

Note: If this is something that you'd like to use repeatedly, copy all the objects you created through the Tools | Organizer into the Global.MPT.

If you're looking for more detail, such as showing the number of hours a resource is assigned per week or day, I recommend using the Resource Usage view. Another benefit of this method is that the project manager could use this view to create a standardized process that would be a method of issuing work and getting back actual values. The resource will know the work they're assigned to, and they could write down how much work they did and when they did it and indicate which tasks are completed and if they need more time or additional work hours.

The existing Resource Usage view shows the resources and the tasks that are assigned. When print preview is requested, all resources are printed. I would recommend that you create a copy of the Resource Usage view so you can make a few changes and retain them:

1. Go to View | More Views | Resource Usage | Copy.
2. Enter a name for the view, such as Resource Assignment View (see Figure 4).
3. For Table, choose any resource table.
4. For Group, choose No Group.
5. For Filter, choose All Resources.
6. Click OK.

Figure 4. Setting up the Resource Usage view.

7. Apply the Resource Assignment View -- View | Resource Assignment View.
8. Click on each resource name and then click on Insert | Page Break. Repeat for each resource.
9. On the right side of the view the "Work" column should be available. Right click on the right side and click on Actual Work to add this column to the view.
10. Adjust your timescale to be per week, per day, or per month.
11. Click on Print Preview. Each resource should be on a separate page.
12. The print option will allow for printing of a date range to limit timeframe of tasks printed.

By default, Project doesn't configure headers or footers. But I recommend going into File | Print Setup and configuring each project to add the project name to the header and the date to the header or footer.

I should also note that I haven't figured out a way to print the individual resource reports to a file vs. paper unless the report for each resource is run one at a time.

 Email your question for our experts to editor@mpug.com.

With over 20 years of corporate training experience, Ellen Lehnert, PMP, MCT, MCITP, is a specialist in Microsoft Project and Microsoft Project Server. She contributes to many reference books and holds multiple Microsoft Project certifications. Ellen brings a unique combination of licensed teacher and programming background to the classes she teaches as well as process development, installations, and consulting. Contact her at ellen@lehnertcs.com or at LehnertCS.