A custom border is a Windows Metafile (WMF file) that displays a border or frame
inside which a CS Project report is displayed.
Setting up a Custom Border
1.) Go to the Reports toolbar and click on ‘Custom Borders’ on the far right, or on any report, go to the page tab and go to Custom Border.
2.) Press the ‘New’ button and give it a name. You will see the following options in the dialog box.
Fetch – press this button to select a Windows Metafile to use as a border.
Clear – clears the current border entry file.
Top/Left/Right/Bottom – specify the drawing area inside the frame as a
percentage of the frame size. This is the area on which the actual report will be
printed.
Fit to frame – estimates the drawing area inside the frame. The efficiency of this
operation depends on the drawing package that was used to produce the custom
border and the drawing elements used to set it up. The algorithm determines the
smallest open rectangular are around the centre of the page, but in this process
only looks at vertical and horizontal lines or rectangles. Generally, if you surround
the report area with a rectangle, this works well, as shown by the red frame in the
following diagram.
3.) Load your .WMF by clicking the ‘Fetch’ button, an example can be found in ProgramData\CREST Software\CS Project\Samples and Templates\Borders and select the one labelled A4 Landscape.
4.) As you can see, the dotted line goes around the entire border. This means that any generated report will overlap and go over the logo and details. We must use the Top, Left, Right and Bottom % to make the dotted line go within the desired report area. Below you can see the before and after (Corrected).
Here is another example. The red rectangle is where you would want the dotted line to be, as the grey boxes would contain personalised logos, information and other things you set.
Placeholders
You can also place special placeholders on your custom border. When the report is generated, these placeholders will be replaced by actual text or values from your project plan.
The following placeholders are allowed:
| [%] – project percent complete [ACOST] – actual cost of project [ACTFILTER] – activity filter currently applied [ACTSORT] – activity sorting currently applied [ASGFILTER] – assignment filter currently applied [BCOST] – baseline cost of project [BFINISH] – baseline finish date of project [BSTART] – baseline start date of project [CONAME] – company name defined in Setup/Preferences [COST] – scheduled cost of project [DATE] – current date [DUR] – project duration | [EVALUE] – earned value of project [FINISH] – scheduled finish date of project [ID] – project ID [MP] – total number of pages in report [NOTES] – project notes [PG] – current page number in report [PROJFILE] – name of project file [PROJTITLE] – project title [RESFILE] – name of resource file [RESFILTER] – resource filter currently applied [RESSORT] – resource sorting currently applied [REV] – revision of project schedule [START] – scheduled start date of project |
In addition to this, all user-defined variables can be displayed as well, e.g. if you have a variables called Text 1, the corresponding placeholder is called [VAR:Text 1]
Note: this will NOT work with some drawing packages, since they may internally separate these placeholders into the individual characters. Good results can be achieved with “presentation” software like Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using a Custom Border
1.) First you must have an activity table so you have some content to generate a report. It is worth noting that in order for the Custom Border to use Placeholders, the information it tries to read must be set / specified in CS Project. Otherwise, it will remain blank.
2.) Go to the Reports tab and select your desired report (In this case, Bar Chart)
3.) In the Page tab, use the drop down menu to the right of ‘Customer Border’ to select your border.
4.) Press the preview button to preview your border and print.
Below you can find the final result;
