Create a visual report

Visual reports enable you to view your project's data in PivotTable reports in Microsoft Office Excel, and PivotDiagram views in Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007. These views provide a way for you to choose what fields, including custom fields, to display in a report while viewing it, and quickly modify how the report is displayed without having to regenerate it from within Microsoft Office Project 2007. With this flexibility, visual reports provide a more agile reporting solution than basic reports.

Note: Find information about using PivotTable reports and PivotDiagram views in Excel Help and Visio Help.

In this article

Available visual reports

Create a visual report by using a template

Edit an existing visual report template

Create a new visual report template

Export report data

Available visual reports

The report templates are divided into six categories in the Visual Reports - Create Report dialog box (Report menu). The following sections provide descriptions of the visual reports in each category.

You can also create your own custom reports. Custom reports will appear in the category for the type of data used.

Task Usage category

The following table describes the visual reports in the Task Usage category. These reports are based on timephased task data.

Timephased assignment data is available in reports in the Assignment Usage category.

Name	Type	Description
Cash Flow Report	Excel	Use this report to view a bar graph with cost and cumulative cost amounts illustrated over time.
Earned Value Over Time Report	Excel	Use this report to view a chart that plots AC (actual cost of work performed), planned value (budgeted cost of work scheduled), and earned value (budgeted cost of work performed) over time.

Resource Usage category

The following table describes the visual reports in the Resource Usage category. These reports are based on the timephased resource data.

Timephased assignment data is available in reports in the Assignment Usage category.

Name	Type	Description
Cash Flow Report	Visio	Use this report to view a diagram that shows planned and actual costs for your project over time. Costs are broken down by resource type (work, material, and cost). An indicator shows if planned costs exceed baseline costs.
Resource Availability Report	Visio	Use this report to view a diagram that shows the work and remaining availability for your project's resources, broken down by resource type (work, material, and cost). A red flag is displayed next to each resource that is overallocated.
Resource Cost Summary Report	Excel	Use this report to view a pie chart that illustrates the division of resource cost between the three resource types: cost, material, and work.
Resource Work Availability Report	Excel	Use this report to view a bar graph with total capacity, work, and remaining availability for work resources illustrated over time.
Resource Work Summary Report	Excel	Use this report to view a bar graph with total resource capacity, work, remaining availability, and actual work illustrated in work units.

Assignment Usage category

The following table describes the visual reports in the Assignment Usage category. These reports are based on the timephased data, similar to the data found in the Task Usage and Resource Usage views.

Name	Type	Description
Baseline Cost Report	Excel	Use this report to view a bar graph with baseline cost, planned cost, and actual cost for your project illustrated across tasks.
Baseline Report	Visio	Use this report to view a diagram of your project broken down by quarter, then by task. This report compares planned work and cost to baseline work and cost. Indicators are used to show when planned work exceeds baseline work, and when planned cost exceeds baseline cost.
Baseline Work Report	Excel	Use this report to view a bar graph with baseline work, planned work, and actual work for your project illustrated across tasks.
Budget Cost Report	Excel	Use this report to view a bar graph with budget cost, baseline cost, planned cost, and actual cost illustrated over time.
Budget Work Report	Excel	Use this report to view a bar graph with budget work, baseline work, planned work, and actual work illustrated over time.

Task, Resource, and Assignment Summary categories

The following table describes the visual reports in the Task Summary, Resource Summary, and Assignment Summary categories. Summary reports do not include timephased data.

Category	Name	Type	Description
Task Summary	Critical Tasks Status Report	Visio	Use this report to view a diagram showing the work and remaining work for both critical and non-critical tasks. The data bar indicates the percent of work complete.
Task Summary	Task Status Report	Visio	Use this report to view a diagram of the work and percent of work complete for tasks in your project, with symbols indicating when baseline work exceeds work, when baseline work equals work, and when work exceeds baseline work. The data bar indicates the percent of work complete.
Resource Summary	Resource Remaining Work Report	Excel	Use this report to view a bar graph with remaining work and actual work for each work resource, illustrated in work units.
Assignment Summary	Resource Status Report	Visio	Use this report to view a diagram of the work and cost values for each of your project's resources. The percent of work complete is indicated by the shading in each of the boxes on the diagram. The shading gets darker as the resource nears completion of the assigned work.

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Create a visual report by using a template

1. On the Report menu, click Visual Reports.

2. On the All tab, click the report that you want to create.

   If the report that you want to create is not listed, select the Include report templates from check box, and then click Modify to browse to the location that contains your report.

   If you know which category contains the report, you can click that category's tab to view a shorter list of reports. If you only want to list reports that open in either Excel or Visio, select or clear the Microsoft Office Excel or Microsoft Office Visio check box.

3. To change the level of usage data included in the report, select Years, Quarters, Months, Weeks, or Days from the Select level of usage data to include in the report list.

   By default, Project sets the level of usage data to what it recommends for your project's size. For most projects, this will be weeks. If you choose to include data at a more detailed level, report performance may be decreased. For best performance, if you are viewing multiple reports for the same project at one time, refrain from changing the data level. If you change the data level, the temporary reporting database stored locally must be recreated. If you don't need to include usage data in your reports, set the data level to Years for best performance.

4. Click View to generate the report and open it in Excel or Visio.

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Edit an existing visual report template

1. On the Report menu, click Visual Reports.

2. On the All tab, click the report that you want to edit.

   If you know which category contains the report, you can click that category's tab to view a shorter list of reports. If you only want to list reports that open in either Excel or Visio, select or clear the Microsoft Office Excel or Microsoft Office Visio check boxes.

3. Click Edit Template.

4. On the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, click the fields that you want to add or remove from the report, and then click Add, Remove, or Remove All to move fields between the Available Fields and Selected Fields boxes, or between the Available Custom Fields and Selected Custom Fields boxes.

   Fields in the Selected Fields and Selected Custom Fields boxes are included in the report.

5. Click Edit Template to create the report with the modified list of fields.

Notes: 

• On the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, some fields are identified as dimensions. It is important to select fewer than six dimensions for your report. If you select more than six dimensions, report performance is significantly decreased.

• Not all fields are available in all reports. Some fields are only available in Visio reports, but not in Excel reports.

• If you are unable to locate the field you want to include on the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, it may be stored in a different category of data. For example, many fields that you might think of as Task Summary fields are actually Assignment Summary fields.

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Create a new visual report template

1. On the Report menu, click Visual Reports.

2. Click New Template.

3. In the Select Application section, click Excel to create an Excel template, or click Visio (Metric) to create a Visio template.

4. In the Select Data Type section, select the type of data that you want to use in the report.

   To include timephased data, select Task Usage, Resource Usage, or Assignment Usage from the list in the Select Data Type section.

5. Click Field Picker.

6. On the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, hold CTRL and click the default Project fields that you want to add to the report in the Available Fields box.

7. Click Add to move them to the Selected Fields box.

8. Hold CTRL and click the custom fields that you want to add to the report in the Available Custom Fields box.

9. Click Add to move them to the Selected Custom Fields box.

Notes: 

• If you have the English version of Office Project 2007 installed, you have the option to create a Visio template that uses U.S. units.

• To remove a field from the report, on the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, click the field in the Selected Fields or Selected Custom Fields box, and then click Remove. To remove all default or custom fields from the report, click Remove All in the Select Fields or Select Custom Fields section.

• Not all fields are available in all reports. Some fields are only available in Visio reports, and not in Excel reports.

• If you are unable to locate the field you want to include on the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, it may be stored in a different category of data. For example, many fields that you might think of as Task Summary fields are actually Assignment Summary fields.

• On the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, some fields are identified as dimensions. It is important to select fewer than six dimensions for your report. If you select more than six dimensions, report performance is significantly decreased.

• When you have finished creating your visual report, you can choose to save it to the default template location (c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates) or to another location on your computer or your network. Templates saved in the default template location automatically appear on the Visual Reports - Create Report dialog box.

• If you begin using a different language pack after saving a custom visual report template, the template remains available but is not populated. The original field names are not recognized in the new language and are not included in the report.

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Export report data

You can select specific data to export within a category (OLAP cube), or you can export all project data as a reporting database.

Export data as an OLAP cube

1. On the Report menu, click Visual Reports.

2. Click Save Data.

3. In the Save Reporting Cube section, select the category that contains the type of data that you want to save.

4. Click Field Picker to modify the fields included in the list of data to export.

5. On the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, click the fields that you want to add or remove from the list of data to export, and then click Add, Remove, or Remove All to move fields between the Available Fields and Selected Fields boxes, or between the Available Custom Fields and Selected Custom Fields boxes.

   Fields in the Selected Fields and Selected Custom Fields boxes are included in the exported data.

6. Click OK on the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, and then click Save Cube.

7. Browse to the location where you want to save the cube data, and then click Save.

Notes: 

• Cube data is saved as a .cub file.

• When accessing cube data with Visio, the .cub file cannot be stored on a network share.

Export data as a reporting database

1. On the Report menu, click Visual Reports.

2. Click Save Data.

3. Click Save Database.

4. Browse to the location where you want to save the database, and then click Save.

   The data is saved as a Microsoft Office Access database (.mdb) file.

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