Traditionally, curtains have enabled you to highlight a fixed period of time in your project--for example, a quiet period the spans 45 days from October 1st to November 15th. Beginning in OnePager 8.0, you have the ability to create dynamic, data-driven curtains that are tied to a task or milestone in your project plan. As the dates in your project change, the curtains will follow:
Creating a New Milestone Curtain
To add a milestone curtain to your OnePager chart, right-click on the milestone that you would like to drive the curtain, and choose Task/Milestone Curtain:
OnePager will insert a curtain that is tied to your selected milestone:
By default, OnePager will automatically highlight seven days before and after the milestone date, which helps to make sure that the curtain is visible. It will also apply a color that is a semi-transparent version of the underlying milestone's color. You can change all of these properties, which we'll cover towards the bottom of this article.
Creating a new Task Curtain
Task curtains follow a similar process, where you right-click on the task that you would like to control the curtain, and again select the Task/Milestone Curtain option from the context menu. Notice that when OnePager adds a curtain to a task, it matches the start and finish dates of the task exactly, as opposed to highlighting seven days before and after, as it does with milestones. Because the underlying task is green, this curtain takes on a semi-transparent green color:
Editing Task/Milestone Curtains
If you want to make changes to the formatting of your task or milestone curtain, you can either double-click on it, or right-click on it, and choose the Properties option:
When the Task/Milestone Curtain Properties form appears, you'll have the opportunity to change a number of properties of your data-driven curtain:
Options include:
- Color: By default, the initial color of your curtain will be derived to the color of the task or milestone that is tied to, but you can change it to any other color if you wish.
- Transparency: You can make your curtain more opaque by lowering the transparency number, or make it more transparent by increasing the number.
- Begin Shading: For tasks, the curtain shading will begin on the start date. For milestones, shading will begin seven days before the milestone date. You can adjust these ranges, or can tell OnePager to begin shading from the left-hand edge of chart.
- End Shading: For tasks, the curtain shading will end on the finish date. For milestones, shading will end seven days after the milestone date. You can adjust these ranges, or can tell OnePager to finish shading at the right-hand edge of chart.
For example, we could change the blue milestone curtain so that its shading starts at the beginning of the project, like this:
Curtains Move as the Schedule Changes
Because task/milestone curtains are dynamic, they will automatically move in lock-step with your project plan. This animation shows a OnePager chart with three snapshots, where the curtain for Milestone A shifts to the right as that milestone's schedule changes. Meanwhile, Task 9's schedule remains unchanged, so its curtain stays in the same position: