MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX

ADD-IN DOCUMENTATION

Copyright ©2008 by Michael L. McShaffry (dba MrMike) – All Rights Reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What Is MrMike’s Project Toolbox ? ........................................................................................................ 3

Installing MrMike’s Project Toolbox......................................................................................................... 4

Uninstalling MrMike’s Project Toolbox .................................................................................................... 6

Using Custom Fields ................................................................................................................................. 7

What to Put in the Category Field .................................................................................................... 7

What’s In MrMike’s Project Toolbox ........................................................................................................ 8

Copy Categories To Task Names ........................................................................................................... 8

Clear Categories ................................................................................................................................... 8

Export To XLS ....................................................................................................................................... 9

Using the PivotTable ........................................................................................................................ 9

Showing Percentages Instead of Actual Data .................................................................................. 12

Showing Remaining Work in Days .................................................................................................. 13

Copy Costs B and Copy Costs C ........................................................................................................... 14

Reset Contingency Acceptance And Final Polish.................................................................................. 15

Reset Milestone Deadlines ................................................................................................................. 15

Workflow For Scrum .......................................................................................................................... 16

Troubleshooting ..................................................................................................................................... 19

Common Problems and Solutions ....................................................................................................... 19

Contact Information & Feedback ........................................................................................................... 20

Credits ................................................................................................................................................... 20

WHAT IS MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX ? MrMike’ Project Toolbox was originally a free set of Microsoft Project macros posted on

http://www.mcshaffry.com in March of 2007. It had a number of useful things, most especially the Export

To XLS macro, which exported a Microsoft Project schedule to excel for easy publication and analysis.

Since macros are a little hard to deal with and install – Mike McShaffry and his associate, Quoc Tran,

worked to put these macros into an installable Add-in for Microsoft Project 2003 and 2007.

The MrMike’s Project Toolbox current has the following features:

Copy Categories To Task Names – copies the Category (Text1) and Subcategory (Text2) task fields into the

task name, which makes it much easier to identify a task in standard reports and group views. For

example, a task called “Test”, with category “Install Program” and subcategory “Install Directory” would

be renamed to “Install Program – Install Directory – Test”.

Clear Categories – reverses the above process, so “Install Program – Install Directory – Test” would

become, “Test” once more.

Export To XLS – exports the entire schedule in an easily publishable form, and also a PivotTable which can

be used to analyze your schedule

Copy Costs C & Copy Costs B – copies resource costs B or C to the A tab, making it easy to keep track of

internal costs versus billable costs, and publish either one accordingly.

Rest Contingency Acceptance and Final Polish – if at least two milestones have been defined for the

project (a kickoff and a completion date) this tool will analyze the schedule and for each resource that

worked the majority of a milestone it will add 5 days of contingency time and 5 days of acceptance time

for each milestone. The new tasks will be inserted just below the final milestone.

Reset Milestone Deadlines – this tool will set the Deadline field for each task to be the milestone deadline

in which the task falls. As the schedule is being tracked, tasks that fall out of their original milestone will

show up with the red warning icon.

Clear Project for Scrum – for those teams that use Scrum, but like to track story tasks in MS Project, this

macro clears custom data fields so when tasks are updated in the Scrum meeting they can later be

published.

Daily Scrum Notes – exports to Excel all the tasks that changed since the last time the project was cleared

for Scrum – this can then be exported to a team Wiki page.

INSTALLING MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX

If you downloaded the installer from the web site, double

click on the MrMikesProjectToolboxInstall.exe file.

If you received the software on a CD, put the CD in your

CD-ROM drive and the installation program should start

automatically.

If it doesn’t start automatically follow these steps:

o Go to Start->My Computer

o Find your CD or DVD drive’s icon and double click

on it.

o You should see the

MrMikesProjectToolboxInstall.exe file, double

click on it to start the installation process.

Keep your computer secure!

Depending on your security settings and operating system,

you may need to verify that you trust content from MrMike.

MrMike’s Project Toolbox is digitally signed with a secure

certificate from Thawte – you can check this by right-clicking

on the MrMike’sProjectToolboxInstall.msi file and looking on

the Digital Signatures tab. If this doesn’t exist – DO NOT

INSTALL THE FILE! You have received a hacked version of the

file. Go back to http://www.mcshaffry.com/mrmike, click on

Downloads, and get a good version of the file.

Once installation begins, you will see

a license agreement. Accept the

agreement by clicking next to “I

Agree” and click on the Next button.

Next, choose where you want to

install the files.

Start Microsoft Project.

When Microsoft Project starts, notice

a new Menu option, MrMike, which

contains all of the add-ins you have

installed from MrMike, which now

includes MrMike’s Project Toolbox.

UNINSTALLING MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX

Follow these instructions to uninstall MrMike’s Project Toolbox:

Exit from all Microsoft Office programs,

including Excel and Project.

From your Start Menu, select

All Programs->MrMike Project Addins-

>MrMike’s Project Toolbox->Uninstall

MrMike’s Project Toolbox

Select “Remove MrMike’s Project

Toolbox Add-in” and click on the Finish

button.

USING CUSTOM FIELDS If you’ve never used custom fields before, this section will teach you about them. Microsoft Project has

dozens of extra fields you can use to store special information unique to your organization or project.

They are usually hidden from view, so before you can enter data into them you must show them. Custom

fields exist for both Tasks and Resources.

MrMike’s Project Toolbox renames custom fields in order to describe what they are used for. When you

first open a file, MrMike’s Project Toolbox will examine the custom fields it needs to see if they have been

renamed. If the custom fields have not been renamed, and if it finds any data in the fields, you will see the

following dialog:

If you click on the checkbox and then click Ok, then MrMike’s Project Toolbox will reformat the Project file

so that its features can work properly. If you do not click on the checkbox, MrMike’s Project Toolbox will

not reformat your file, giving you the opportunity to save any data you need in another custom field.

WHAT TO PUT IN THE CATEGORY FIELD The Category custom field is used by MrMike’s Project Addins. Assigning categories to your tasks is

completely up to you – but there are some general guidelines:

Choose categories that are descriptive and relatively broad.

Choose short names.

Categories should be cross-discipline, and not include references to resource groups.

WHAT’S IN MRMIKE’S PROJECT TOOLBOX

COPY CATEGORIES TO TASK NAMES

Adds the Category and Subcategory custom fields to the front of the task name, separated by hyphens.

You can do this multiple times, in case you change something in the extra text fields. If you run this tool

on this project:

You get this result:

CLEAR CATEGORIES

Effectively reverses the effect of Copy Categories To Task Names.

EXPORT TO XLS

This tool exports a Microsoft Project files task data to Microsoft Excel. It creates three spreadsheets:

Schedule Analyzer: A pivot table you can use to ask probing questions about your schedule.

Raw Schedule Data: The raw data that is used to create the pivot table.

YourFileName.mpp: A spreadsheet containing your schedule with the summary task hierarchy intact.

NOTE: For the Milestone field to work right in the PivotTable, you must first run the Reset Milestone

Deadlines tool before you run Export To XLS !

You will see the spreadsheet being built – sit back and relax because this process takes a while.

WARNING: Don’t touch Excel while this is happening – it will take your input and mess things up. A

dialog box with the message “Pivot table creation complete” will appear once exporting is finished.

You will then see this spreadsheet:

USING THE PIVOTTABLE

If you don’t have the PivotTable toolbar (above), go to Tools->Customize, click the Toolbars tab, and check

the PivotTable entry. The last button will hide and show the PivotTable Field List.

You can drag these columns into and out of various positions in the PivotTable to make different kinds of

reports.

The default report, shown on the previous page, shows who is working on what during what milestone,

and how many days of work is assigned.

If you drag all the columns out, and replace them with just Category and Subcategory, your PivotTable

should look like this:

Double click on any of the column headers, such as Category, and you will see this dialog box:

You can use this dialog box to add or remove various types of subtotals. Press the Advanced… button and

you’ll see the Advanced Options dialog:

You can use this dialog to sort your columns ascending or descending, if you wish.

SHOWING PERCENTAGES INSTEAD OF ACTUAL DATA If you double click on the “Sum of Work in Days” at the very top left of the

spreadsheet, you see the PivotTable Field options dialog box.

Drop down the “Show data as” box and choose “% of column”.

Your PivotTable should look like this:

SHOWING REMAINING WORK IN DAYS Simply drag the “Sum of Work In Days”

PivotTable field to the field list, and drag the

“Remaining Work” field in its place.

The numbers will now reflect remaining work.

COPY COSTS B AND COPY COSTS C

These tools copy the B or C resource cost fields to the A field. This is useful for storing billable costs and

internal costs in the same schedule, and easily flipping between both of them.

RESET CONTINGENCY ACCEPTANCE AND FINAL POLISH

Use this to add time to your schedule to account for any unplanned issues, as well as to add time for

acceptance and polish.

Define your milestones at the top of your schedule – you might find it useful to use the predecessor field

as shown above to set your milestone delivery dates relative to one another. In this example, M2-Hello

World is 6 weeks after M1-Planning. The “2SS+6 wks” in the predecessor field tells Project to start M2 6

weeks after M1 starts, hence the “SS”, which means to set a “Start-to-Start” constraint.

Once that is done, the Reset Contingency Acceptance and Final Polish tool will add 5 days of contingency

time each milestone for each resource in your Project plan to account for any unplanned issues. It will also

add 5 days of acceptance time for each resource in each milestone. In addition, a polish task will be

added to each resource to account for the time between the end of their planned tasks and the last

milestone date.

RESET MILESTONE DEADLINES

This feature will calculate what milestone each task falls under, and then assigns the Deadline field for

each task to the milestone date.

Once the milestone deadlines are set, you will be able to analyze which tasks fall into which milestones

with the Export To XLS tool, and you will also be able to see when tasks fall out of their original

milestones during schedule tracking, by a red warning icon that will appear on your Gantt Charts:

WORKFLOW FOR SCRUM

Run the Clear Project For Scrum tool.

Set the project status date and current date by going to Project->Project Information.

If you don’t have the Tracking toolbar up, go to Tools->Customize->Toolbars, and check the box

next to Tracking.

Begin your Scrum meeting. For each task that someone finishes, starts, or updates – select it in

the task view window:

And hit the Update Tasks button on the Tracking toolbar:

You will see the Update Tasks dialog:

o If they finish a task – enter the actual finish date, and the actual duration.

o If they start a task – enter the actual start date.

o If they are working on a task already started – enter the actual duration so far and the

remaining duration they expect to work on this task.

NOTE: If someone on your team works on something that is NOT on the schedule, you should

add the task and track it, or remove days from their contingency time. Otherwise the

development velocity will not be measured properly.

At the end of your Scrum meeting – run the Daily Scrum Notes XLS function, and

you will see all the tasks that changed during your scrum meeting.

If you have the format_as_wikitable macro in Excel – you can then run it to create a table in MediaWiki

formatted with prettytable syntax.

Copy this text right into your MediaWiki! It will look just like you formatted the table in Excel.

TROUBLESHOOTING For the very latest troubleshooting tips and solutions, go to http://www.mcshaffry.com/mrmike/forum/

COMMON PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

My milestones are not showing up correctly in Export To XLS Pivot Table – make sure each

milestone has a zero duration, and nothing in the Category (Text1) and Subcategory (Text2) field.

Also – make sure you ran the “Reset Milestone Deadlines” tool – that’s how the PivotTable

knows what tasks go in what milestones!

MrMike menu never appears in Microsoft Project

Symptoms:

Users do not see a MrMike menu in Microsoft Project after installing the Toolbox.

Users do see a “MrMikes Project Addins” menu in their Start Menu.

They likely use Office 2003

Cause: You need an update for Microsoft Office that enables shared addins like MrMike’s Project

Toolbox to function properly.

Solution:

Go to http://www.mcshaffry.com/mrmike/forum/

Search for “no mrmike menu”

Find the thread entitled, “No MrMike Menu ?”

Follow the instructions there.

CONTACT INFORMATION & FEEDBACK Please contact the online forum if you have any feedback or problems with MrMike’s Project Toolbox.

http://www.mcshaffry.com/mrmike/forum/

CREDITS Programming

Mike McShaffry

Quoc Tran