AEU17: Interactive Gantt Chart Scheduler in Access

Topic outline: In many database solutions, there is often a need to present data in the form of a Gantt chart. For example, in the processes of production planning, team task management, hotel room reservations etc. It is also convenient to edit this data interactively on the chart, as this allows you to handle possible collisions and manage the overload of certain resources etc. In this session, Aleksander Wojtasz demonstrated how creating interactive Gantt charts for Microsoft Access makes it easy to manage such database solutions. More details and download files: isladogs.co.uk/aeu-17/ Synopsis: A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart used to display a project schedule. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities and the current schedule status. Tasks to be performed are shown on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis. The width of the horizontal bars in the graph shows the duration of each activity. TIMES: 0:00 Welcome to this month's speaker, Aleksander Wojtasz 1:24 Intro by Aleksander 3:08 Brief 'teaser' demo of Gantt chart application 6:06 DEMO Using the GDI library: GDI32.dll to draw onto a blank 'canvas' 6:58 Design view - no data source 7:19 Draw lines - change position, length, colour, thickness 8:20 Change line style - solid/dash/dot etc (only available for thickness=1) 8:37 Draw rectangles - change fill color & border color. Rounded corners 9:18 Draw polygons 9:43 Add text - change font properties, alignment, add textbox 10:59 Add image - change size / aspect ratio 11:37 Code - Explanation of how the above features work together with links to the relevant articles online 11:51 Chapter 1 - Wha t is GDI? 12:22 GDI Library file GD!32.dll 12:36 Call GDI functions from VBA 13:25 GDI input parameters are data structures e.g. BITMAPINFO 14:24 Memory Device Contexts (MDC) 15:15 Device Independent Bitmaps (DIB) 15:27 Attach MDC to DIB 15:58 Transfer DIB data to Image Control Data 17:47 Chapter 2 - Basic Drawing Operations - Brush/Pen/Font settings - GDI saves drawing parameters until these change 19:15 Basic Drawing Operations - Draw lines 20:06 Basic Drawing Operations - Draw Rectangles 20:47 Basic Drawing Operations - Draw Text 21:03 Basic Drawing Operations - Draw Pictures 22:06 Chapter 3 - Using Mouse Events on form controls followed by questions . . . 23:55 Q1 - can the code handle changes in resolution? A: Yes it is possible but the code to do this is not in the example supplied 25:12 Q2 - does the twips per pixel ratio differ on high resolution monitors? A: No - these are constants 25:36 Chapter 4 - Putting it all together & explaining the class module code 28:35 Gantt Chart form code 29:41 Declare the canvas object in Form_Load event and create tables to store data generated for Gantt chart 31:49 DEMO Placing objects on the the Gantt Chart. NOTE: Flickering seen is an artefact and doesn't occur in normal use 32:07 Declare custom data types and memory arrays to store object data in memory 33:37 Current date stored in public variable 33:56 Populate memory arrays 34:16 Initialise background picture 37:06 Draw jobs rectangles 38:13 Enter job details popup form 38:39 Reacting to mouse move events over the layout 40:41 Reacting to mouse down/up events over the layout 42:11 Right click context menu 43:30 Trust Center Macro Settings issues - recommend use a trusted location or code signing certificate 44:52 Explanation about flickering seen during video - only occurs when editing code in the VBE. NOT an issue in normal use 45:58 Thanks & questions from chat: 47:04 Q1 - when is data written to tables? A: Only when movement completed 47:54 Q2 - is GDI library available in older versions of Windows? A: Yes - since at least Win95 (possibly 1.0) but code improved in Windows 7 49:45 Q3 - are techniques transferable to reports? A: Yes - export image as bitmap for use in reports. Follow-up explanation of how this works in more detail 58:46 Taster DEMO of more advanced Gantt chart application also developed by Aleksander for a client 1:00:40 Final thanks to Aleksander. Download files from this presentation at isladogs.co.uk/aeu-17/ 1:01:10 Next month Juanjo Luna (MVP) - Creating applications in Blazor - An Access Developers Guide 1:01:45 Outline by Juanjo of next month's presentation 1:04:00 Thanks to everybody - see you all next month for Juanjo!

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