Making your 1st POAP

Making your first POAP is a simple and quick process.  On this page we will look at 

1. What is the minimum data needed to make a POAP and what data you can use to display things like RAG, Baselines etc.
2. How to use Auto Layout to make your first POAP with some swimlanes.
3. How to make some changes to the auto-generated POAP to display the summary as you want.
4. How to control the colours of the bars and milestones.
5. Setting up MSP to quickly export your data to make updating the POAP quick, easy and error-free.

1. Data needed

The minimum data needed is shown in the required column 

For this quick start guide, we will assume that you have the Required date and which swimlanes (Major and Minor) you want the bars and milestones to be part of.

If you have a plan in MS Project you may want to jump ahead to the section on setting up MSP however to quickly get started you can simply paste in some tasks and milestones with references to see how it all works.  You can apply the numerical reference (1-300) against any task, milestone or summary line in the plan.  SummaryPro will combine any rows with the same reference into one bar.

Copy / add the data to the "Date and Bars Import" sheet in the Excel file under the correct column headings

2. Using Auto Layout

Once the data is in the "Data and Bars Import" sheet, click the "Auto Layout" button to the right.  This will present you with a set of options which drive how the POAP will be laid out:

• Auto Layout - Struture.  This gives you the choice to layout your POAP based on
  • Waterfall by date - positions 1 item per line in order of start date
  • Waterfall by ID - positions 1 item per line based on the numerical reference.  This can be useful if you want the POAP to follow the order of your plan
  • Mimimse rows used - this condenses the number of rows used as much as possible without items overlapping.  Note that this often means that you will need to adjust the position of things if you want to apply labels to milestones or boxes which are too small to hold their respective text.  It is however very useful for producing a POAP with a lot of items which will be too thin when using a waterfall layout.
• Include Swimlanes?
  • This allows you to use the data in the Major and Minor Swmlanes columns to organise your POAP into up to two levels of swimlane.  Note that you don't have to do this.
  • For this example, choose "Yes".
• Update the dates in the POAP?
  • This adjusts the dates used in the timescale of the POAP so that it will cover all the dates in the data you are importing.
  • It will also decide what units make sense for the various levels of the timescale (days, weeks, months, quarters, years)
  • As this is the first time, choose "Yes". 
  • In future reports, you may not want to change the settings; for instance, you're only interested in this year, have set the timescales accordingly, and don't want to change this, so you choose "No".  Note that SummaryPro will automatically exclude anything that wholely falls outside the report's timeframe from the Auto Layout.
  • You can go in and adjust the timescale settings in the "Standard Settings" sheet.  

The POAP is now set up and we can close the Excel and update the POAP in VIsio to see what it looks like

 3. Change how the POAP appears

Changing where the bars are located

The tasks and milestones are arranged in rows so it is a simple thing to change where a specific item appears on the POAP by changing the row entry in the "Bar details" sheet, column G.

If you want to move everything up one, for instance you would like to make a waterfall POAP occupy less rows (and thus allow a larger bar) you can enter the row to be removed in column AC on the "Bars Details" sheet and -1 in AD.  Then press the "Change Rows" button at the top of the page, and all subsequent rows will be adjusted, moving the bars and swimlane divisions appropriately.  

Note if the row number has an amber fill the chosen row conflicts with a swimlane division -  you can identify which swimlane as it will be similarly highlighted.

If you want to insert a blank row, use the same method but +1 rather than -1 in column AD.  You will then have to enter the "missing" row number - highlighted in Red at the top of the sheet, in the "Blank Rows" section so that there aren't any gaps in the row numbers being used which will cause an error.

Whenever you have adjusted row numbers or removed items, you should check that there are no gaps in the rows being used by clicking the "Update Row data" button, which will display any gaps in red which can then be removed or addressed.

Change what is on the bars

Whilst the Auto Layout function will use whatever is in the plan as the bar name, you don't need to do so.  To change what is displayed on a bar simply change what is entered in column F "Bar Name)".  This can be helpful when editing the text to better fit on a bar.  

Adding Labels

You will need to label milestones and you may want to label bars too short to hold the text you want to display.  Use the "Sticky Label" shape on the "SummaryPro Shapes" stencil to do this.  Drag the label onto the page, or copy an existing one, and enter the desired text.  

Click on the "i" button at the top of the label to choose which connection point is "sticky" and then drag the sticky point to connect with your milestone or bar.  Note that the choice of sticky connection point drives the text formatting (horizontal and vertical), so you don't need to do this.  When the connection point is "stuck," it will turn green.

Removing something from the POAP

If you don't want to display a box or milestone remove the "y" from column D "Display?" in the "Bar Details" sheet and remove the Row entry to avoid a blank row if there is nothing else on that row.  

Once again, click the "Update Row data" button to avoid any possible errors.

4. Controlling the colours

You control the colours of the bars and milestones in the "Styles" sheet.   Enter the following:

• A short reference in column O - this is what you will apply to each item in the "Bar Details" sheet
• The name which will appear in the Key on the POAP
• Chose the colours for foreground, background and line in the appropriate columns
• The number for the chosen pattern (for an explanation of these see the Visio Patterns sheet on the Additional Files page)
• Line width and type

Now that you have defined some styles, you can use the reference to apply them to any of the rows in the "Bar Details" sheet.  Note that you can use the same styles from POAP to POAP to give consistency across your POAPs, for instance you may choose a set of colours for your workstreams and your audience will quickly understand which team is being referenced in the POAP.

5. Setting up MSP to export the data

 This is covered in more detail in the manual, however at its core you need to

• Establish some custom fields, the minimum of which is a Number field to hold the numerical reference.
• Setup a new table which will hold the data which needs to be copied into SummaryPro 
• Define a filter which looks for the number field <>0
• Setup a view which uses your new table and filter to display only the rows which have a number in the number field and displays the table of information which needs to be copied into MSP

Then display the number field in your normal Gantt view and go through the plan adding numbers to the rows which you want to pull into the POAP.  Remember that rows with the same reference number will be combined into a single bar in the POAP.

Once this is done, save the file and then display your new view.  Select all the data and copy it.

Paste this data into the "Dates and Bars Import" sheet and close the Excel file, saving it as it does so.

Now, the Visio is ready to be updated by double-clicking on the "Update" button.

6. Setting up your next POAP

Now you have established one POAP you will probably want to use it as a template for other POAPs.  To do this:

• Cose both the VIsio and Excel files.  Select them both and Copy and Paste.
• This will create a pair of files with -Copy on the end.
• Ensure both are selected and hit F2 to rename.
• When you press enter both files will be renamed with the same name (vital to ensure that SummaryPro works)

Now you have your next POAP ready for different data but using the same styles etc.

* Add colours

* Setting up MSP to export the data