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Resource Swimlane Chart from Microsoft Project

How to add swimlanes to your Microsoft Project timeline or Gantt chart that groups tasks based on the assigned resources.

Microsoft Project enables you to assign resources to the tasks in your project plan at both an individual and a team level. This example chart created in OnePager Pro uses the resource assignment information from Microsoft Project to create swimlane groupings for each team and employee.

OnePager chart showing a virtual summary task.

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OnePager Pro timeline software software helps you track resource assignments in Microsoft Project by creating a swimlane for each team, and then each individual member of that team. Here's how:.

  1. Let's start with a Microsoft Project plan where the tasks are assigned to different employees, and those employees are members of different departments:

    Microsoft Project plan with resources and resource groups assigned

    Here, the Resource Names field lists the names of each individual contributor, while the Resource Group field shows which department which employee is a part of.

  2. To create a chart in OnePager that use this resource information for swimlanes, place a flag field into Microsoft Project and select the tasks that you'd like to have included in the resource report:

    Select tasks from Microsoft Project.

    Here, we've placed a "Yes" to all tasks with resources assigned, and have left the summary tasks, which are not directly resourced as "No".

  3. Go to Microsoft Project's Add-Ins tab and click the OnePager Pro button. If you don't already have OnePager you can get a free trial.

    Microsoft Project Add-Ins Tab.

  4. On the start screen, click NEW to build a new chart from your Microsoft Project plan.

    OnePager Pro start screen.

  5. On the import wizard, give your chart a name, and then click Create New Chart:

    OnePager Pro import wizard.

  6. OnePager will import your selected tasks from Microsoft Project and create a chart that looks like this. Initially, the swimlanes in the chart are based on the phases of the project. In the following steps, we'll show you how to change the swimlanes to look at the resources instead:

    OnePager chart with swimlanes based on project phases.

  7. To change your swimlanes to look at resource instead of phases, go to Home > Chart Properties > Rows/Swimlanes. OnePager supports up to three levels of nested swimlanes, but in this example, we only need two. Change the first swimlane grouping to look at the "Resource Group" from Microsoft Project:

    Group swimlanes in a timeline based on the Microsoft Project Resource Group.

  8. To add a second swimlane level that looks at individual resource assignments within a team, click on the Left #2 tab, and set the second level of swimlanes to group by "Resource Names":

    Group swimlanes in a Gantt Chart based on the Microsoft Project Resource Names.

  9. Click OK. OnePager will re-group the swimlanes in your Gantt chart first by the team, and then by the individual contributor:

    Gantt chart with swimlanes grouped by team and then employee.

You can download a free trial of OnePager Pro to try it out.

Get started today by downloading a free trial or attending one of our demonstration webinars.

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