Introduction to views

A view is a window onto your project. A view might display the programme chart, a subchart, tasks from a number of charts, all the tasks with allocations of a particular resource or every critical task in the whole project. A view might have the project view turned off, particular columns displayed in the spreadsheet and particular bar chart features turned on or off. Each view is displayed in a tab - or in window, if you have configured Asta Powerproject to display views in distinct windows rather than in tabs.

A view can display any subset of the project data, and present it with any combination of display options.

When you save a view, the settings that are saved are:

  • The bar chart format settings.
  • The spreadsheet.
  • The current filter and sort/group.
  • The position of vertical divider bars between the panes in the bar chart window.
  • The project scope, that is whichever charts are selected in the project view (and hence are displayed in the view).

Note that a view may be associated with more than one type of filter: a bar and task filter, for filtering the project hierarchy, and an RBS/CBS filter, for filtering RBS and CBS views. You can also apply a default print profile to each view, so that the same print profile is always used by default whenever you print a particular view.

When you save a project, any changes that you have made to any views that are currently open are saved. For example, if you change the grid lines that are displayed on the bar chart in an open view, when you save the project the changed grid lines are saved in the view. Any other tabs that display the same view are not updated with the changes that you have made to the view until you close and reopen them.

Every project has a default bar chart view, which uses the internal view defaults. When you start a new project, the default bar chart view is used automatically. When you first save a project, the current view is saved as bar chart view. Each user has their own bar chart view, so when you save a project, your settings are saved with the view.

You do not have to create any more views unless you want to; you could work entirely with your default bar chart view without ever creating any further views.

You can load the default bar chart view at any time by clicking the View dropdown in the Views group on the View tab, then selecting the Default Bar Chart View command.

If you use Asta Enterprise, you can specify a default view for each user in a project. If you do this, you can specify that each user's default view should be opened when a user opens a project. You can also specify a default view for the project itself, and specify that this view should be opened when any user opens a project.

There are two types of view in Asta Powerproject:

  • Project views - views that have been defined by an Asta Powerproject user who is a member of a security group that has rights to create such a view. Project views are accessible to all other users.
  • User views - views that have been defined by an Asta Powerproject user, who may or may not have rights to create project views. You can specify whether user views are accessible to other users or not.

You specify whether a user can create project views by editing the security group of which they are a member. You may like to restrict the rights to create project views to a subset of people within your company and treat project views as 'official' views.

You specify whether user views are accessible to other users using the View Properties dialog. User views that are accessible to all other users operate in a very similar way to project views, but do not have the 'official' status of project views.

In addition to the type of view described above - bar chart views - there is another type of view - calendar views. Calendar views display the tasks in one or more charts or summary groups in a calendar, or diary format, displaying whichever tasks appear in a project within a particular time period - a week or a month, for example. Calendar views can also be used to display the allocations that appear within a particular time period for specific resources or cost centres. Each project contains a default calendar view, and you can create as many additional calendar views as you like.

Related Topics:

Configuring how views are displayed in tabs

Working with tabbed views

Specifying the views to restore when a project is reopened

Specifying a default view for a project

Specifying default views for users

Working with calendar views