Extended the Indicators Field

[Tom J]

I have on several occasions wished that I could extend the functionality of the Indicators field. I like that the Indicators field can multiple different indicators for a task, unlike the graphical indicators feature, which will display only one of a limited set of indicators in a field.

FWIW, here’s the solution I came up with: Create a custom formula that creates a one-character string for each criterion to flag, and concatenate them together.

IIf(Condition1,”X”,””) & IIf(Condition2, “Y”, “”) & IIf (Condition3, “Z”, “”)

I put the formula in Text20, and use special characters in place of “X”, “Y”, and “Z”, which come from the extended portion of the character set. The formula will display all of the indicators that meet the test criteria. Here are the indicators that I normally use:

↰ Task has no predecessor
↳ Task has no successor
⇔ Task has a relationship other than finish-to-start
⇩ Task has a deadline
◇ Task has high float
☈ Task is a Summary task that has a predecessor or successor
⚓ Task has a hard date constraint (i.e. other than ASAP)
❎ Task is missing task data (SOW, CLIN, CWBS, or Performing Company)
⟽ Task has a lead
⟾ Task has a lag

These indicators flag the tasks that will fail some of the schedule checks that my customers require. You can cut and paste these characters to put them into the formula, or use the Chrw() instead.

[Larry Christofaro]

Pretty slick, thanks for sharing. I haven’t seen anything like that before…

[Author]

Posts