[email protected] +1.303.779.0344

Home How-To

Red Amber Green Status in a Project Report

How to make a red amber green (RAG) status report in Microsoft Project

When showing the status of a set of tasks in a project plan, we color-code the tasks red when there are definite issues, amber (yellow) when there are potential issues, and green when there are no known issues.

RAG Project Status Report

OnePager Pro is presentation software for Microsoft Project that lets you automatically add and update RAG status to your project plans without spending any time drawing things by hand in PowerPoint. Don't have OnePager Pro yet? You can download a free trial and try it out today.

You can do this by following these easy steps:

  1. Start with a Microsoft Project plan. Notice that Project is automatically calculating a status for you:
    MS Project file, showing Project Status column
  2. To build your RAG project report, double-click the OnePager Pro icon on your desktop. From the Start screen that pops up, choose New.
    OnePager Pro Start screen.
  3. In the import wizard, choose your Microsoft Project plan as the source file for project timeline. Then go to the Starting Template section, click Change..., then BROWSE..., and find the Status (RAG) View.tat template. This will build a RAG project report for you very quickly.
    Changing your OnePager Pro starting template
  4. Click Create new Chart. OnePager will import your Microsoft Project schedule and automatically color-code each task based on its status:
    RAG Project Status Report

Conditional Formatting

Curious how this works? OnePager Pro adds conditional formatting to Microsoft Project, meaning you can set up special rules to look at your Microsoft Project data and assign colors, shapes, and fonts automatically.

Going to Home > Chart Properties > Task Bars and then clicking on the Manage Rules button will show you the default rules that are set up to assign different styles based on the “Status” column in Microsoft Project. OnePager Pro is flexible, so you can set up other rules to look at different Microsoft Project columns if you’d like:

RAG conditional formatting in OnePager Pro

OnePager Pro’s conditional formatting for Microsoft Project becomes even more powerful as your project plan changes. Let’s say that three months has gone by, and the status of your project plan has changed. You can simply refresh your existing OnePager Pro report, and have it automatically update your dates and status colors based on the revisions you have made in Project. Here’s how:

  1. Make the necessary changes to Microsoft Project.
  2. Open your original RAG status report, and go to Data > Add Snapshot. Pick a new status date for your updated report:
    Updating your red-amber-green status report in OnePager Pro
  3. OnePager will reimport the status information from Microsoft Project and will assign new RAG colors:
    Updated RAG Project Status Report

Notice that as the status changes in Microsoft Project, OnePager Pro automatically re-formats each task and milestone on the chart based on your conditional formatting rules. Tasks that were previously yellow are now red because their status has changed. This is the quickest and easiest way to create a project status report, because it’s 100% dynamic and data-driven.

OnePager makes it easy to represent a project’s status with compelling graphics. OnePager is available in two versions: one supporting Microsoft Project (OnePager Pro) and the other supporting project plans built in Excel (OnePager Express).

Get started today by downloading a free trial.

15-Day
Free Trial