Do you hate Gantt Charts? Then you're going to love Vuedoo!

View Ribbon

All the options for controlling how the data is displayed are available from the View Ribbon. Some options are also available from the quick access toolbar.

From here, you can choose the project view and how the data in it is arranged. "Choose Text" allows you to select the info you want to display in the chart. Clipping the text as needed allows the task bars to be laid out in the most compact way possible; showing full text allows you to see all of the info but the tasks will take up more space on the chart. Changing the font size also proportionally changes the taskbar thickness. And the Scroomer can be moved or hidden. The following describes specific scenarios for various roles and contexts.

Executive Overview

Upper management often just want to see a high-level view of what needs to be done, how long it will take and the current status. They are not always necessarily interested in who is doing the tasks — that is a lower level detail. Vuedoo provides another view for this purpose — the Timeline Chart — which just displays the tasks without grouping them into resource rows. This allows the tasks to be laid out even more compactly — in a single straight line if possible — which thus allows the viewer to see even more of the project at once. For a small to medium sized project, in this view one can often see the whole project in one page. Here is an entire project showing just the top-level tasks in a very small area:

For larger projects, another way of showing all the tasks in one page is to use the Clipped text option (in the View menu). Of course the trade-off is that you may not always be able to see the full task name, but you can fit a lot of tasks into a small area:

The Timeline Chart can also be useful for project managers who wish to follow the standard process and just create the task breakdown first without worrying about who will be doing what, then switching to the Tufte Chart to do the resource assignments. Here is the same project as above showing all tasks in one page:

If required, the assigned resources can be displayed on the taskbars — select View/Choose Text. And the assigned resource can be changed in the Task Properties dialog (double-click on a task).

Project Manager

There are many ways for a project manager to drill down to do detailed planning, scheduling and assignments. Firstly, the Scroomer can be used to zoom or scroll to some subset of the project, e.g. Phase 2. Secondly, some or all of the summary tasks can be expanded to reveal their subtasks to as many levels as desired. Thirdly, resource rows can also be expanded or collapsed to allow the manager to focus on a subset of resources, or to hide any resources that have no tasks in that part of the project.

Another way to drill down into more detail is to use the Reveal All option (on the View ribbon), which expands all the tasks in a different way: it moves the summary tasks out of the way to reveal just the detail tasks down to the lowest level. This allows the manager to see more of the subtasks and to perform detailed assignment and load balancing with less distraction. The summary tasks can be shown at the top of the chart to provide additional context, or hidden to provide more screen space. Notice that when a summary task is selected at the top, it's subtasks are highlighted below on their resource rows. Note also that in this example the Scroomer is hidden, but you can still zoom by dragging the timeline, and pan in both directions at once by dragging the chart background directly.

Team Members

The My Tasks option (on the View ribbon) provides a highly detailed view of all the tasks assigned to one resource. This is primarily aimed at allowing team members to clearly see what they need to do, without having to search for their name scattered all over a Gantt Chart or Timeline Chart. However, it can also be used by project managers when doing focused work on one resource at a time. The displayed resource can be selected from the drop-down menu in the top left corner of this chart, or from the right-click menu on any resource in the full Tufte Chart. Notice the short notes that can be attached to any task (the Description field in the Properties Dialog).

Gantt Chart

For completeness, a Gantt Chart is also provided for those who prefer a more familiar format. Note that Vuedoo's Gantt Chart retains some of the Tufte Chart's advantages over the traditional format. For example, phases across the top, names and other data right on the taskbars instead of in a separate spreadsheet, highlighting of early/late status, showing links between subtasks of closed summary bars and highly intuitive direct manipulation of all chart objects.

Vuedoo Reader

For those project stakeholders who just need to see and review a schedule but not modify it, our free Vuedoo Reader allows them to do this without having to purchase additional software licenses. This is not only a big saving for an organisation, but produces a much better result than the usual approach. Having all the view options to play with is much more useful than a static .jpg or picture in a document et cetera. And best of all, the Reader downloads and installs in seconds, without requiring admin permission.

Presentations

When giving a presentation using a projector, it is often useful to use larger fonts for audience readability. The text size controls on the View menu allow you you to temporarily enlarge all text in the chart. Notice that the taskbars are automatically resized to match the text size.

The text could also be enlarged for other reasons, e.g. if the person reading it is short-sighted. Alternatively, the text can also be made smaller to fit more tasks into the screen area.

Printing

To print out a project, select Print from the File ribbon. This will take you to the Print View, shown below. Similar to the other views, at the top is a scaled-down overview of all the pages to be printed, and below that is an actual size single page selected from the overview. There is also a Print Toolbar, from which you can select the printer, open the Printer Properties pages and select the page orientation. You can also modify any of the view options on the View menu, and even make minor edits to the chart. Finally, you can set the time scaling factor for the chart by dragging the Scaler (the orange vertical bar on the right edge of the overview), which determines how many pages the chart is printed over and also automatically calculates the time increments that will fit on the timescale (e.g. days, weeks, months, years). When you are happy with the setup, click the Print button on the toolbar to send the chart to the printer.