Here's a relatively tricky one to get your brain going.
I'm looking at putting together a simple database to look monitor tasks, resource usage, and have the ability to report back on the total resource usage on each day (i.e. to identify over use)... The other purpose of the database is that I'd like to be able to (easily) see the effect of delaying one item upon another task.
Multiple users can be assigned to the same task, and there is no measurement of a man-hour requirement on a task - just a start/end date.
In other words, I want something like what MS Project can do - but instead of looking at a discrete project I'm after something that can be applied on an ongoing basis (Which project is pretty dreadful at).
Project's 2000's own limitations, especially with the one-step-only undo don't give me much faith in the ability of the program to do what I want it to do; it isn't exactly friendly to multi-user environments either.
At the moment my table structure is roughly as follows
Table : Users
User ID (Autonumber)
User Name (Text)
Table : Tasks
Task ID (Autonumber)
Task Description (Text)
Start Date (Date)
End Date (Date)
% Complete (Number)
Status (Lookup)
Table : Status Type
Status Type (Complete, Started, Unstarted, Cancelled)
Table : Resource usage by Task
Task ID
User ID
Resource Usage
So as you can see, on paper at least, all the information that I'd need to be able to chart of the amount of each resource being used should be there.
Question is, how do I get from this raw information into a report or a chart format that looks something like right? I have experimented with pivot charts using Users down the left hand side, Sum of resource use in the data field, and dates as the series fields but the resulting chart doesn't "sum up" resource usage where the start/end dates are different. Can anyone suggest how I could approach this differently, or if there is a template already out there for something similar to what I'm after?
Googling for this kind of thing turns out an endless supply of shareware databases, and even full applications for this purpose, although neither of these is an option (costs are a no go, and installing unapproved software is a no go as well) so I'm hoping someone here has a better suggestion!
Thanks!
I'm looking at putting together a simple database to look monitor tasks, resource usage, and have the ability to report back on the total resource usage on each day (i.e. to identify over use)... The other purpose of the database is that I'd like to be able to (easily) see the effect of delaying one item upon another task.
Multiple users can be assigned to the same task, and there is no measurement of a man-hour requirement on a task - just a start/end date.
In other words, I want something like what MS Project can do - but instead of looking at a discrete project I'm after something that can be applied on an ongoing basis (Which project is pretty dreadful at).
Project's 2000's own limitations, especially with the one-step-only undo don't give me much faith in the ability of the program to do what I want it to do; it isn't exactly friendly to multi-user environments either.
At the moment my table structure is roughly as follows
Table : Users
User ID (Autonumber)
User Name (Text)
Table : Tasks
Task ID (Autonumber)
Task Description (Text)
Start Date (Date)
End Date (Date)
% Complete (Number)
Status (Lookup)
Table : Status Type
Status Type (Complete, Started, Unstarted, Cancelled)
Table : Resource usage by Task
Task ID
User ID
Resource Usage
So as you can see, on paper at least, all the information that I'd need to be able to chart of the amount of each resource being used should be there.
Question is, how do I get from this raw information into a report or a chart format that looks something like right? I have experimented with pivot charts using Users down the left hand side, Sum of resource use in the data field, and dates as the series fields but the resulting chart doesn't "sum up" resource usage where the start/end dates are different. Can anyone suggest how I could approach this differently, or if there is a template already out there for something similar to what I'm after?
Googling for this kind of thing turns out an endless supply of shareware databases, and even full applications for this purpose, although neither of these is an option (costs are a no go, and installing unapproved software is a no go as well) so I'm hoping someone here has a better suggestion!
Thanks!
