Using History Logging—Exercises

Required Data

Creating Activities

Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize you with the data that must be in place before you can perform the exercises below.

Create activities in your subproject structure.
Save your changes.

General exercise for Building Project Plan

Setting Project Baselines

Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize you with the data that must be in place before you can perform the exercises below.

Create a baseline for your project.

General exercise for Setting Project Baselines

Executing Activities

Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize you with the data that must be in place before you can perform the exercises below. To create history logging data that is meaningful, you need to plan with project deliverables. You will need to approve the project and begin executing the activities. It is preferable that you do the following Required Data steps in connection with the following exercises, so that you make changes in your project in between each history logging.

Connect some objects to some activities, for example tasks, document packages or project demand. Enter planned values.
Approve the project.
Start executing your activities by executing the tasks or document packages, and by starting the procurement process.

General exercise for Approving and Starting Projects
General exercise for Creating and Connecting Tasks and Using Tasks to Report Progress
General exercise for Connecting Document Packages to Activities and Using Document Packages to Report Progress

General exercise for Registering Project Demand or Issuing Material From Inventory

Main Exercise

Purpose: The purpose of these exercises is to show you how to perform manual and automatic history logging, and how to stop history logging. You will learn how to view the results of history logging, including baseline revision data.

Windows:
Projects
Project Navigator/History
Project/Project History
New Database Task Schedule
Project History Info

Performing Manual History Logging

Note: You should do the Required Data steps above in connection with this exercise, so that you make changes in your project in between each history logging.

Open the Projects window and query for your project.
Select your project, right-click, point to Project History Logging and then click History Logging.
The History Logging on Project dialog appears, with your project entered in the Project ID field.
Enter a history logging comment.
Click OK to perform the history logging directly. A history logging record will be created and can be viewed in the following Viewing History Logging exercise.
Repeat steps 1-5 another day to create another history logging record.

Note: You can also perform these steps in the Project/Project History tab.

Activating Automatic History Logging

Note: You should do the Required Data steps above in connection with this exercise, so that you make changes in your project in between each history logging.

Open the Projects window and query for your project.
Select your project, right-click, point to Project History Logging and then click History Logging.
The History Logging on Project dialog appears, with your project entered in the Project ID field.
Enter a history logging comment.
Click Schedule. The New Database Task Schedule window appears where history logging is set up as a scheduled task.
Optionally enter a name for your task, for example containing your project ID. Choose the interval between each logging by clicking on for example Daily, Weekly or Monthly. If you select weekly logging, you must select the desired weekday to perform the logging. If you select monthly, you must enter the date to perform the logging each month (i.e. from 1 to 28). Enter the desired time for the history logging.
Proceed with the wizard and click Finish. A message appears with the information that a scheduled task was created and showing the schedule ID for this task. The scheduled task can be viewed or edited in the Scheduled Database Tasks window. History logging will now automatically be created at an interval as specified in the scheduled task and can be viewed in the following Viewing History Logging exercise.

Note: You can also perform these steps in the Project/Project History tab.

Viewing History Logging

Note: To do this exercise, you will need several history logging records. As only one record can be saved per day, you will need to wait some days to do the following steps until there are several records after doing manual or automatic history logging.

Open the Project window, populate with your project ID and click on the Project History tab.
Note that all the history logs taken for this project are listed. For each log, information is given about the date and time when the log was created, the value for Baseline Revision and Earned Value Method at the time of the history logging, the history comments entered and the history log type.
Select one or more history logging records, right-click, point to Project History Logging and then click Display Project History.
The Project History Info window appears, populated with the historical data for the history logs selected.
The navigator in this window shows the project structure as it was at the time of the history logging. Select different levels in the navigator to view the project information at the time of the history logging. If the project or a sub-project level is selected, a summary of the project costs are shown for the selected level. If an activity is selected, the activity history and connections information is shown.
Open the Project Navigator window and query for your project.
Click the History tab to view history logging as a graph.
To see a legend describing the dots in the graph, right-click anywhere in the graph and click Graph Settings.
The Graph Settings window appears. Select the Legend check box and click Save Settings.
Observe that the performance parameters shown in the graph are Committed, Scheduled Work, Earned Value, Used and Actual values.
You can choose to see these performance parameters either for costs or for hours. You can choose to see the graph for a specified period, or for the whole project period.
Note that baseline revisions are marked in the graph, and that dots representing both the Pre-Baseline and Baseline data are shown.
Select different nodes in the Navigator, i.e. the project node, different subprojects or different activities and click the History tab. Observe that the cost/hours information is shown for the project, the selected subproject or selected activity respectively.
By clicking a point in the graph, the Activity History window appears populated with the history logging details for the selected day.
Click the Activity History tab to see information about the costs, hours and performance parameters for the activity on the log date. Other information shown includes the start/finish dates and progress.
Click the Connection History tab to see information about which objects were connected to the activity on the log date.
You can also see the project's history logging details by opening the Projects window and querying for your project. Select your project, right-click, point to Project History Logging and then click Display Activity History. The Activity History window appears, populated with all history logging data for your project.
You can also select one or more records in the Project/Project History tab, point to Project History Logging and then click Display Activity History. The Activity History window appears, populated with the history logging data for the selected records.

Note: For an example of a project with history logging, see Project P101.

Stopping History Logging

Open the Scheduled Database Tasks window.
Select the desired scheduled task for history logging which you wish to stop.
Right-click and click View Schedule. The Task Schedule 'History Logging on Project' window appears.
Select Delete button and Save to delete the scheduled task and stop the history logging for this project.