Understanding Binding Elements

The ability to report on projects as well as project tasks on specific time periods or due dates is essential for maintaining project timelines, it supports informed decision-making, enhances project performance, and ultimately contributes to the successful completion of projects within the stipulated timeframes.

Such reporting can be done by using "< > or =" and indicate the timeframe by by referencing either start date or due date (end date).

How it works

When building a template using date filters, the date filter is worked out as follows:

• Calculates range from today's date and compares to item's due date 
  
  (for example, if you're reporting on items within the current fiscal year using the filter "<1F",  the items returned will be calculated based on the current/today's date matching with the items due date which will consolidate all items from the current fiscal year). 

The report can be built to extract data within a specific date range by using the following periods:

• Indicate the period by referencing days (D), fiscal years (F), months (M) or exact date (dd/mm/yy)

When using the date range filter, there shouldn't be any spaces between the string in order for it to extract the required data.

Note: For Financial years, the calculation looks at the fiscal year start dates where you reference due date and use 1 or -1 to indicate which financial year to return. The negative indicates previous fiscal years. 

When the report is extracted, it will reference today's date and apply the filter that you have indicated.  

Example: If you use ^DueDate<14D, this string will look at today's date (present date) and return all items that have a due date within 14 days or less from present date.

This can be applied to any section of the a report where you are extracting a list of items in a table form (Impacts, Schedule tasks, Actions and Decisions). 

Building the template

When building the template to extract items in specific date ranges, the following point needs to be considered when building the first cell: 

• Elements in the first cell of the header row (first cell in the table):
  • The filter element DueDate or StartDate with either < or > to indicate whether the table exports items less then or greater than a specific period.
    
    Example for the first cell - {@actions}[^Type=Action&&DueDate>1D]
    
    For more information on the binding elements for indicating whether to pull actions/decisions, impacts and schedule items click here. 

As part of the points stated above, we are going to outline 3 examples below of how the binding elements are used for reporting on items within specific date ranges by using different date filters. 

1. Actions & Decisions 

Use {@actions}[^Type=Action&&DueDate>14D] to be able to see all your actions from the next 14 days (2 weeks).

The table in this template represents the actions/decisions details and their binding elements (strings in curly brackets):

• First cell in the table - the binding elements to extract actions for the next coming 2 weeks. 
• Second & third column - binding elements to extract the title and description of the item. 
• Last columns - binding elements to extract the assignee and item status.
  
  
  The image below shows an example exported using the above template.
  
  

2. Project Schedule Items

Use {@Schedule}[^TaskType=Deliverable&&DueDate<1F] to see all your project schedule deliverables that were worked on from this fiscal/financial year.

The table in this template represents the actions/decisions details and their binding elements (strings in curly brackets):

• First cell in the table - the binding elements to extract deliverables that were worked on from this fiscal/financial year.
• Second & third column - binding elements to extract the title and start date. 
• Last columns - binding elements to extract the due date and task owner name.

The image below shows an example exported using the above template.

3. Sub-projects from a Program

As part of executive reporting, you can can report from a project dashboard that you have built to filter specific programs that have sub-projects that you have worked on within fiscal years. You can use a template with {@subproject}[^StartDate<-1F] 

or {@subproject}[^StartDate<-1E]  to report on all the sub-projects within a program that have a start date from the previous fiscal year/s or previous fiscal year end.

The table in this template represents the sub-project details and their binding elements (strings in curly brackets):

• First cell in the table - the binding elements to extract sub-projects that were worked on from this previous fiscal/financial year.
• Second & third column - binding elements to extract the project manager's and project owner's name. 
• Last columns - binding elements to extract the start and due date.

The image below shows an example exported using the above template.

Below attached are examples of the above mentioned templates (both Word & PowerPoint templates) to help guide you to create your template.