Merlin – Do a bit of Magic in Reports – Part XVI

Those of you who have checked our new post series about “Merlin report templates” know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Output Project’s WBS
We have posted here in the past ways to display the WBS of a Merlin project.

If you prefer using a report template instead of AppleScripts, feel free to use following custom report template we present hereafter. It lists per default up to 3 levels of the WBS, ignores assignments and milestones, shows the project objective if existing and  resources. Optional you may enable the view of milestones and limit the shown levels.

You may check contained ‘ProjectWBS.py’, “ProjectWBS.wbl” or “Info.plist” to see how we ask for items on the various levels, or how we iterate in their properties for the output.
Feel free to modify this custom report further as you require for your needs.

Credits for the CSS and other resources used: SlickMap CSS was created by Matt Everson of Astuteo and is licensed for free.
An output sample:

And the report options: Continue reading

Merlin – Do a bit of Magic in Reports – Part XV

Those of you who have checked our new post series about “Merlin report templates” know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Report Events
To report events recorded in your Merlin project, you may customize the Elements area, click an Event row and call File > Print > PDF…

Should you like a report template, here is one outputting non private Events defined in your Merlin project.

Feel free to check the contained python file ‘MEREventsReport.py’, “MEREventsReport.wbl” or “Info.plist” to see how we ask for elements of kind ‘Event’, or how we iterate in their properties for the output. Feel free to modify this custom report further as you require for your needs.

An output sample: Continue reading

MERLIN – DO A BIT OF MAGIC IN REPORTS – PART XIV

Those of you who have checked our new post series about “Merlin report templates” know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Report issues
To report issues recorded in your Merlin project, you may use the Classic Report (File > New Report > Classic Report), disable other outputted areas and enable just the Issues part.  It will output only issues needed to be fixed.

This is another template outputting just issues. You may choose to output all remaining issues, those already fixed, those in progress, or unassigned and of course rejected ones, and to restrict if required the output to issues for which a specific resource is responsible.

Feel free to check the contained python file ‘MERIssuesReport.py’, “MERIssuesReport.wbl” or “Info.plist” to see how we group the output to the above named categories or how the options are defined. Feel free to modify this custom report further as you require for your needs.

An output sample: Continue reading

MERLIN – DO A BIT OF MAGIC IN REPORTS – PART XIII

Those of you who have checked our new post series about “Merlin report templates” know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Report element costs by type
Should you choose to record costs on elements of Merlin projects and define the cost type, you may want to have a report outputting costs by type.

So you need to get first all elements of a project. Following python method does so, excludes private elements…

Continue reading

MERLIN – DO A BIT OF MAGIC IN REPORTS – PART XI

Those of you who have checked our new post series about “Merlin report templates” know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Report cash flow for expected cost or approved budget
We have used snippets from the ‘cost distribution’ report template as basis.

In a Python method we collect all tasks with group and sub-tasks.

In the WBL we iterate in this array and output the desired values

Getting the task number is easy, you need to ask its flatOrder. ‘title’ and ‘expectedCost’ bring the total costs of each item. The method spaceByLevel places a space before the item’s title for indentation purposes. It calculates as 15px per level. Continue reading