Hi Peter, I'm not sure. I use Gantt Charts in MS project and the format I'm
familiar with shows each task individually extending through the dates it
consumes. I don't need to see the inidividual task details as separate line
items. From a management perspective, I need to see that in July I had x
number of tasks in Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 respectively. I don't care
particular who is working on each task but I do need to know that in July I
needed x number of Phase 1 workers, Phase 2 workers and Phase 3 workers in
order to discharge the tasks within their respective phases. Based on this,
I can extrapolate how many I'll need for August, September, etc, and as the
trends increase I'll be able to make the approrpiate personnel adjustments
(hires :-) the make sure that I'm adequately stafeed to accommodate
expansion.

So I guess it might be a Gantt Chart summary which I am after here.

I'll give your example a shot and see what it yields.

Thanks!

Joseph Geretz

"Peter T" <peter_t@discussions wrote in message
...
Hi Joseph,

I think you have just re-invented a Gantt chart, though you might not be
aware of it! Or maybe I have misunderstood what you are after.

Surprisingly I was able to download your file, normally my IE blocks
attachments. This is what I did to make a very basic Gnatt chart with your
data

Copy A5:B14 to g5:H14
I5 formula =C5-B5
Copy I5 to I5:K14
Copy B:4:D4 to I4:K4
H4 = "Start"
Select G4:K14
Chart wizard, Horizontal stacked bar, series in columns
Rt-click left vertical axis, format axis, Scale, Cat's in reverse order
Select & Rt-click horizontal axis
Type in the start date for the minimum value , eg 1/6/7
Select the first series named Start
Format the series No Fill & No Line (invisible)
Delete "Start" from the Legend
Tweak to suit

This chart won't be quite fulfil your described objectives, explore
further
possibilities

http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/GanttChart.html
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/GanttLinks.html

Regards,
Peter T



"Joseph Geretz" wrote in message
...
At least it seems complex to me. I'm not exactly an Excel guru and maybe
this is actually something which can be done easily via Excel once you
know
how. I'm hoping that Excel will have something built in to help me do
what
I
need to do.

I'm tracking a number of oustanding devleopment tasks at any given time.
All
task move through the development pipeline in 3 phases. I get the data
out
of SalesLogix into Excel in the following format: Each task occupies one
row
in the sheet. Each row consists Task ID plus the dates on which the task
entered each Phase. In the workbook attached, this is modelled on the
first
sheet, Raw Data.

What I need to do is to plot a chart, for any given date (or consolidate
to
week or month) how many tasks were in Phase1, how many in Phase 2 and how
many in Phase 3. This chart will plot the periodic activity of tasks as
they
move through the pipeline. The point here is that the chart should show
three trendlines which stay relatively stable relative to each other. If
this doen't happen, if I see a divergence in one or more Phases then I
can
identify a bottleneck in a particular Phase and take steps to address it.

If I understand the approach I need to take, it seems to me that I need
to
expand the matrix on the Raw Data sheet into a sequential listing of all
dates within the entire range, and then for each date maintain a count of
how many tasks were in each particular Phase on that particular date.
I've
actually done this using VBA and you can review the results on the second
sheet named Expansion.

If I need to use VBA to do this, then I guess that's the way I'll have to
develop this. I'm wondering though, whether there is some built in
transformation capabilities in Excel which will do this on a range for
me,
without requiring custom VBA?

Any and all suggestions will be most welcome!

Thanks!

Joseph Geretz