Merlin – Do a little bit of magic in Merlin reports – part XXVII

Those of you who do project management with Merlin on your Mac and have checked our post series explaining how to create custom templates for Merlin reports, know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Classic Report with optional WBS-Code

When wanting to report all kinds of aspects of your actual project, you usually call File  > New Report > Classic report.

In case you want to modify the report so that it outputs the WBS-Code in its tables of milestones, overdue/upcoming/overdue tasks, or elements, you would need to create an option whether or not the ‘WBS-Code’ column should be outputted and insert optionally the wbs code where required.

To make a long story short, we’ve created a new set of such a classic report and post it hereafter.

Please remember: Custom Merlin reports we provide as templates, can be downloaded and used for free. Furthermore, you may modify and distribute as you like and find appropriate. Continue reading

Merlin – Do a little bit of magic in Merlin reports – part XXVI

Those of you who do project management with Merlin on your Mac and have checked our post series explaining how to create custom templates for Merlin reports, know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Format dates in ‘Information report’, ‘Next Due Activities’ and ‘Review Report’ as dd/mm/yyy

Above report templates are XSLT based reports. This technology does not allow them to ask the date format on your Mac, so dates are hard coded as (mm/dd/yyyy) which is correct if you are US based.

If you however want to format dates as dd/mm/yyy you would need to edit all those report.xslt files and modify the dateformatter from “‘[M01]/[D01]/[Y]'” …Report.xslt-DateFormatter

to “‘[D01]/[M01]/[Y]'”.

To make a long story short, we’ve created a new set of those three reports and post it hereafter.

Continue reading

Merlin – Do a little bit of magic in Merlin reports – part XXV

Those of you who do project management with Merlin on your Mac and have checked our post series explaining how to create custom templates for Merlin reports, know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Cost report: Planned, Expected, Actual, Remaining actual cost

We’ve been asked in Merlin support, how to output planned, expected, actual cost along with the remaining actual cost. Merlin provides columns for the first 3 values in its views (View – Show View Options – Columns). There is however no column calculating a remaining cost.

One possible way to realize this, would be to activate the above mentioned columns, copy the rows (or export as a csv file), use the date in Excel (or Numbers, or what ever:-) ) and let it calculate the balance row-wise based on the value of expected and actual cost.

Another way would be to create a report (as for example this one) and let it do the required calculation.

Continue reading

Merlin – Do a little bit of magic in Merlin reports – part XXIV

Those of you who do project management with Merlin on your Mac  and have checked our post series explaining how to create custom templates for Merlin reports, know by now…

Now let’s do some magic with the reports.


Resources Groups’ or Roles’ Work as distribution in time

We’ve  been asked in Merlin support, how to output work of some specific resources and their distribution in time  as a group. For example for res A and res B 8 hours on day 1, 16 hours on day 2, 0 hours or day 3, etc.

We think this is similar to another custom report template we’ve posted outputting groups’ and roles’ utilization units distribution. Please see more about that template here. So we’ve modified that template (by entering options) to cumulate either utilization units or utilization work.

So one could create a group, group res A and res B into it, use this template and output expected work for their assignments as a time distribution.

Please remember: Custom Merlin reports we provide as templates, can be downloaded and used for free. Furthermore, you may modify and distribute as you like and find appropriate.

An output sample:
Report-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