Hello again and welcome back to our course on Project 2016 Advanced.
In this section we’re going to look at Outline Codes.
Now so far when we’ve been talking about structure of a project I’ve generally been
talking about the structure of the tasks in the project.
So for instance, summary tasks, subtasks and so on.
And we’ve looked at Outline Numbering and WBS Codes that reflect and identify that structure
and the elements of the structure.
But apart from the fact that these intrinsically have some problems that we’ve been looking
at in the last couple of sections in some situations there are many other ways that
you may want to add structure to your project.
Now in this section we’re going to look at an alternative way of setting up structure
for a project and we’re also going to be looking at a different sort of structure.
Now in order to do this I’m going to go back to the Northern Farm Foods Website project.
A very simple project with a few resources.
And instead of showing you an alternative way of setting up the structure that you can
see there in the table on the left what I’m going to do is to reflect the requirements
of an accountant.
And what the accountant wants to do is to be able to identify cost centers and cost
center structures for these resources.
And we need to set up a structure which reflects how we charge for the use of these resources.
So in this case we’re not looking at a task structure.
We’re going to look at a resource structure.
So let’s take a look at the Resource Sheet and I’ll explain to you more fully what
we need to do in this case.
What the project accountant has told us is that we need to identify internal resources
against external resources and then we need to identify which of the internal resources
are chargeable and not chargeable and we need to do the same for the external resources.
So we’re going to set up a very simple structure and we’re going to use this structure in
order to clarify the charging within the project.
Now I appreciate that in reality you may well often have a much more complex situation than
this but this one will serve to demonstrate the use of outline codes pretty well.
So there are my resources.
In the case of Northern Farm Foods the first resource, the client.
If we look at the sort of things that they’re doing on the project, let’s click on Resource
Usage here for the view.
Northern Farm Foods are assisting with the requirements definition of course.
As the client they would be.
They are contributing on the analysis and design and they’re doing some testing.
Now as the client we don’t have to pay them for what they’re doing.
Their contribution is overall part of the commercial arrangement we have with the client.
Now Mark Ravenswood is a member of staff and he is paid by salary.
And for salaried staff working in their normal areas of activity the department for which
that person works would not charge for their time.
Basically Mark, as with several other members of staff, will be allocated to work on a project.
And although we’d obviously need to keep track of his work, know what his work commitments
were and so on, his time isn’t actually charged to the project.
Sally Danvers who works on Analysis and Design is in exactly the same situation.
However Lorraine Reese is a member of staff who works for a quality team and she’s actually
helping to write some test scripts.
And within our quality team the time that they work on projects is chargeable.
So although Lorraine Reese is an internal resource her time is chargeable.
Now that gives you some idea of the sort of situation we’re dealing with and I’ll
go through all of these when we come to allocate the outline codes.
But first of all we need to set up the outline code structure.
So on this occasion we are going to be setting up a custom field for a resource.
So we’re going to the Project tab, Custom Fields.
It’s Resource is the option this time and we want a Resource Outline Code.
Now we’re going to choose Outline Code 1 and I’m going to rename it.
So the new name is going to be ChargeCode.
Click on OK and the Resource Outline Code 1 is now called ChargeCode.
Now notice that in this case most of the options in the Custom Fields dialog are grayed out.
The most notable exception is the one we’re going to use which is the Lookup option.
You cannot use a formula for an outline code but you can use a lookup.
So we’re going to click on Lookup and that allows us to specify the values that are available
for the new custom field ChargeCode.
Now first of all we have the option of adding a code mask.
And in the case of these ChargeCodes it’s a very simple code mask.
So we start with Code mask, Edit Mask and there are two levels to the ChargeCode.
The first level comprises three characters and then we have a dot separator and the second
level also uses characters and that comprises three characters as well.
So click on OK.
So there we have our mask in place, ***.***. So put in the first value.
This is going to be Int for internal resources.
Then at the next level we have Chg.
That is our abbreviation for chargeable.
Next level we have Ncg.
That’s not chargeable.
Then we have Ext.
Now notice that Project 2016 is warning me at this point because I am potentially duplicating
a value.
Now of course I’m not because what I’m really going to do now is to indent that value
and that value and that value and that value.
So display indenting in the lookup table?
Yes.
Use a value from the table as the default entry for the field?
Well we’re not going to put a default entry in there.
Display order for the lookup table?
We’re going to stick with by row number.
That’s the order in which they’re displayed there.
And for data entry options, allow additional items to be entered.
Certainly not.
And allow only codes that have no subordinate values.
So that means basically that you have to choose something from the lower level.
You can’t choose just Int.
It has to be a full code such as Int.Chg.
So click on Close, click on OK.
My new field is defined.
Now what I’m going to do next is to insert that column.
There it is, ChargeCode.
And I’m going to go to Northern Farm Foods.
And the value I’m going to choose for them is that they’re external and non-chargeable.
Mark Ravenswood, internal non-chargeable.
Sally Danvers, internal non-chargeable.
Whereas Lorraine Reese is internal chargeable.
Now I’ll just enter the rest of these.
Bakersfield Associates who are providing support services here, all of the work that they’re
doing is going to be chargeable.
Toby Arnott who is going to be contributing to various areas of the project is an internal
resource but not chargeable.
And there we are.
Each of my resources now has a ChargeCode assigned.
Now of course one of the issues you may spot there is that you may well have a resource
where some of their time is chargeable and some of it isn’t.
And what you may want to do in that case is to assign a code not to the resource but to
the resource assignment.
But for the purposes of this exercise let’s stick with assigning them to the resources
themselves.
So let’s now see how this new outline code, the ChargeCode, is going to enable the accountant
to analyze the resource costs on this project very quickly and easily.
Let’s go to the View tab.
And on the View tab in the Data group I’m going to apply Group by and I’m going to
say a New Group By.
And the Group By field I’m going to use is ChargeCode.
So there it is, ChargeCode, Outline Code 1.
Click on Apply.
And what you can see is we have at the top level external resource and internal resource.
At the next level we have chargeable and not chargeable.
Note with the not chargeable’s that of course we’ve got the hourly rates included so there
appear to be costs there.
But because they are going to be not chargeable we know that that cost is not actually incurred.
We’ve just got a cost calculated at the resources normal rate.
It may be more appropriate to go back into the Resource Sheet and define the cost for
the non-chargeable resources to be zero.
But in this case the accountant to can look at the non-chargeable elements and realize
that they overall cost within each of those parts of the structure is zero.
So there we have it.
We’ve set up a custom resource field of type Outline Code and used it in a specific
example as a way of breaking down the charging structure for resources on a project.
In the next section I’m going to set you Exercise 03.
And Exercise 03 will involve you in setting up an alternative outline code custom field
on this project.
But that’s it for this section.
I’ll see then.