Starting this week we are starting a new series of posts on project management using Microsoft excel. I have been working in various projects in the last 6 years and almost in all cases we have been using excel to manage, measure and track various aspects of project. These posts represent few of the things related to project management using excel that I have learned over the years.
Part 1: Preparing & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts
Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools
Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones
Time sheets and Resource management
Issue Trackers & Risk Management
Project Status Reporting – Dashboard
Bonus Post: Using Burn Down Charts to Understand Project Progress
Excel, because of its grid nature provides a great way to prepare and manage project plans. In this part of the project management using Microsoft excel series we will learn how to prepare and track a project plan using gantt chart in excel.
Preparing a project plan
Not all project plans are same. But most of the project plans have a list of,
- All activities / phases of project
- Planned start date of the activity
- Planned duration of the activity
From tracking perspective, we can add the following,
- Actual start date of the activity
- Actual duration of the activity
- % of the activity completed as of date
As you can see, excel provides a great way to manage such plan. Look at an example project plan made in excel.
But the above plan is more or less static. Using Excel’s features we can make a dynamic gantt chart that can,
- Update the Gantt chart when dates change
- Display a separate bar that will grow based on the % completion of each activity
- Highlight current week / day in a subtle way
In essence, we will create something like this:
Steps for preparing an Gantt Chart
- First make the above layout in a new excel sheet
- Then we will add several columns in the end, one for each day (or week or month) of the project
- We will also designate 3 cells say $N$5, $Y$5, $AL$5 where we will maintain the following values,
- In cell $N$5, a selection option that will change the plan between “planned” and “actual” dates
- In cell $Y$5, a symbol that we can use to display finished portion of work
- In cell $AL$5, where we can enter the current week (or day or month)
- Now we will do some conditional formatting (ahem!) that will highlight a particular cell in the grid,
- If $N$5 has “Planned” and cell is between planned date and planned date + planned duration
- Else, cell is between actual date and actual date + actual duration
- We will also write formulas in all the cells (same formula pasted over the entire range) which displays a symbol like solid rectangle. For finding out if we should fill in the symbol or not, we use the % completed column of the gantt chart. Figuring out this formula is part of your home work. 😉
- Finally we will adjust formatting like column widths, fonts, colors etc. and freeze top row so that it is easy to scroll and still know what you are looking at.
Once you prepare such plan it is easy to track, find out the status of individual activities and take necessary corrective actions as needed.
Download Excel Gantt Chart Template and Make your own project plan
Feel free to download gantt chart project plan template and make your own project plans using Microsoft Excel.
Download 7 Gantt Chart Templates and 17 other Project Management Templates for Excel – Click here
What next?
In the next part of this series we will understand how to manage day to day activities of projects using to do lists in excel.
Resources for Project Managers
Check out my Project Management using Excel page for more resources and helpful information on project management.
Also check out below pages:
- Project Status Dashboard – Excel template
- Project Portfolio Dashboard
- Gantt Box chart – for showing uncertainty in project
- Excel Risk Map Template
Your Thoughts and Suggestions
Do you work a lot on project management activities? Do you find this content useful? share your feedback and experiences through comments.
25 Responses to “Display Alerts in Dashboards to Grab User Attention [Quick Tip]”
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. I've also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrice's Sparklines for Excel as an alert which could also provide another piece of information.
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. I've also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrice's Sparklines for Excel as an alert which can also provide another piece of information.
For Excel 2007, your formula should do the same as the Excel 2003 version, so that non-alert rows are blank - if they are 0, the unnecessary green icon will show
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their respective alert.
Best Regards
Rohit1409
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !!! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their respective alert.
Best Regards
Rohit1409
The Complete formula [Don't Know how it got cut ]
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
PS : Use in single line [I have split it to avoid cuts 😉 ]
Hi Chandoo..
why it is not displaying the complete formula..
anyways here is the balance
"=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153), IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155), IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))"
@Rohit... your formulas are fine. Just that the width of comment area is fixed and hence my website is cropping it at 640pixels. I just edited your formula and added few white spaces so that it wraps nicely.
Very good idea btw.. kudos!
Hi,
Maybe just go for 'bold' ; 'underline' or 'italic' to draw the users attention? Those methods (if those can be called methods) are used cross media type (books, journals, blogs, billboards, ...) to guide the readers eye to valuable information.
Just a basic thought
@Tom.. good idea..
[...] has a very nice writeup on how to add such alerts to dashboard sheets. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Divide your data set into workbooksHow to enforce [...]
Hi Chandoo,
You certainly grabbed my attention! although I wasn't sure what my brother (Suresh) and cousin (Shyam) were doing right, and I was doing wrong? 😉
I love your blog btw - Many thanks for all your hard work in unravelling the secrets and mysteries of Excel!
Best regards
Ramesh
I thought I saw an advertisment for a book about learning excel called excel himalaya or something. It cost about 35.00 us money but seemed to have the things I need to have my admin assistant to start to use. I was hoping to start with this book and then send her to school if she shows some interest and aptitude. Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks
Great web site and information!!!!
@Jeff... checkout http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/08/25/excel-everest-review/
thanks, your website is awesome!
[...] Alerts to highlight focus areas [...]
[...] There are lots of numbers in this dashboard. I would suggest adding few more visualizations like showing indicators or applying conditional formatting or replacing a table with a chart. This would reduce the [...]
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
Hi Chandoo
Firstly thanks for all the cool tips on how to use Excel better.
I am new to the site and have a question which you may be able to assist with but dont know if these comment boxes are the best way of asking ?
I am looking at assets and trying to calculate the depreciation total by taking a year (say 2010) adding the expected life of the asset (say 10 years) then comparing that to a future date (say 2015) using an IF statement. The calculation in normal is - IF((year in col B (2010) plus 10years)>year 2015, add a years depreciation, otherwise leave blank). The converted date value does not appear able to add 10 years in order to compare it to 2015. Am I missing something ?
I use the “IF” Statement in conjunction with Conditional Formatting in MS Excel to give verbiage to alert one of a required action, dependant on a review date. This makes a visual stimulus, plus it clues one as to what the conditional format is trying to warn you about and what follow-up actions are required.
Wow, I'm really impressed with dashboards. I had no idea this stuff was even possible with excel. I'd like to offer an interactive dashboard to my customers, showing analytics of their data. I have a .pdf file with the datapoints. I'd like them to enter the data on my website, and be able to see their data. Is something like that possible.
Hi Chandoo,
I've recently purchased the package for both templates.
In the portfolio dashboard,under the calculations worksheet, I'm attempting to change the date range in the gantt chart to show only the range of the project that starts in late 2013. How do I do this?
Thanks
Adam
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
Hi Chandoo,
I'm new at Excel Dashboard and found your blog really useful and helpful! It's very nice of you that you dedicate your time to do this.
Could you please explain how can I use Alerts based on dates on a Dashboar?
For example, if a target date is coming closer to the actual date, the alert is yellow or red.
I'd really appreciate some help!
Thank you
Where can I download the file Excel of Averall Statistics ???
Thanks a lot.