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Create a Salesforce Project Plan in Excel with OnePager Express

How to create a project plan based on data from Salesforce.com

If you use Salesforce.com to manage your customer projects, you may occasionally be asked to present a project plan, either by management, or by your clients themselves. Salesforce is a great way to track customer interactions, but if you are not a project manager, it can be a little daunting to create a project plan that is easy to understand.

OnePager Express, an Excel-based project management tool, works with the data you already have in Salesforce to build project plans quickly and easily. To learn more, you can download a free trial and follow these step-by-step instructions:

  1. You can track client projects in Salesforce lots of different ways, but the easiest way is to create an Opportunity for each separate project, and give each opportunity a start date and finish date that corresponds to when you're planning to begin and finish work.
    Once you have this data (or something similar) in Salesforce, you can create an Opportunity Report that summarizes all of your current projects like this:
    Salesforce custom report reflecting ongoing client projects.
  2. Click the Export Details button to export your projects into an Excel format like the one below, being sure to save the file:
    Salesforce data exported to Excel.
  3. Now, it's time to create your project report. Double-click the OnePager Express icon on your desktop. From the Start screen that appears, choose New.
    OnePager Express Start screen.
  4. Choose the Excel spreadsheet you just created as the source file for your project timeline.
    OnePager Express source file selection.
  5. OnePager Express will launch an easy import wizard. Give your project plan a name, and specify a snapshot (status date) as shown below:
    Import your Salesforce project dates into OnePager Express to create a project plan.
  6. Click Next and double-check that the columns you're importing from Salesforce are the ones you want in your project plan:
    Import your Salesforce project plan into OnePager Express.
  7. Click on the Create new project view to build a project plan based on your Salesforce account data:
    Project plan built based on Salesforce report data, using Excel and OnePager Express. This project plan has been automatically grouped into swimlanes by the Account Name and color-coded by the Opportunity Owner, which makes it really easy to read.
  8. You now have an eye-catching project plan straight out of Salesforce that you can share with the rest of your team. Just go to Home > Copy, and paste your chart into PowerPoint.

It's really easy to get started!

Customizable

The best part is that you can customize your OnePager Express report to:

  • Change colors, symbols, fonts, and layouts
  • Automatically group or color-code by account owner, opportunity type, or any other Salesforce data
  • Update your report any time your data changes in Salesforce
  • Add comment boxes, text boxes, curtains, or images to your project plan

OnePager Express is the easiest way to make PowerPoint-ready project plans out of Salesforce account and opportunity data. Join the thousands of people just like you who use OnePager today!

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

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