Deltek Cobra has a vast array of interesting and useful columns to choose from in both the Projects pane and the Spreadsheet pane. The real trick is getting familiar with what Deltek Cobra columns have to offer. And then, creating useful views that will store your favorite configurations of table columns.
Accessing the Cobra Columns
Whether you are in the Projects pane of the Spreadsheet pane of the CA/WP table, you use the same technique to open and choose the columns you need to display.
The first step is to right-click on the existing column headers.
This presents you with several options to choose. To add columns to your table, simply click the Insert Columns… option.
The Insert Column dialog presents you with a drop-down list of all the potential columns you can insert.
Many of these options are self-explanatory, while many others could use a little explaining. So wouldn’t it be nice to have some kind of dictionary of table column descriptions handy in order to know what to make of all these different options.
Well as it happens, we have compiled a searchable spreadsheet for you that contains a list of Project table and Spreadsheet CAWP table columns, their purpose, and where applicable, their calculations.
Courtesy of The Cobra Guy himself, and for your downloading convenience is the Deltek Cobra Column Definitions.xlsx spreadsheet: a compilation of both Project and CAWP spreadsheet table columns, with a drains-up description of each field.
Simply click on this link to download the spreadsheet.
Place it in a convenient location on your desktop or other folder and you can quickly enlighten yourself whenever you need to know if a particular field exists, or what the heck the calculation for iEAC2 might be, then this little spreadsheet will show you.
So while we are talking about it, the calculation for iEAC2 is described as follows:
Displays the independent Estimate at Complete, which is calculated using the formula Actual + [1/ (CPI*SPI)(BAC – Earned)].
How cool is that?
Now I must confess that this information is also available in the Deltek Cobra online help system. However, I’ve compiled it into a single and separate file because it is easier to search for a column in this format. While a very specific column name such as the iEAC2 column will offer the Spreadsheet Pane Column Definitions section to appear in an online help search, some field names will offer you a tremendous number of options because the term appears in so many other help topics.
The search term ‘Status’ for example, will offer no less than 186 results, whereby the iEAC2 search will offer just 5 pages, one of which being the desired Spreadsheet Pane Column Definitions page.
Cobra Help Search results for iEAC2
Deltek Cobra Help search results for Status
Summary
Between Deltek Cobra’s Projects Pane Columns and the Spreadsheet Pane Columns there are 229 different data columns to choose from at the time of writing this article. Having a convenient Definitions lookup file to help us understand exactly what values we can display using these columns is going to be very handy going forward.
On my wish list for Deltek to include in the software would be a little optional popup dialog that explained the Cobra column values and their calculations would be a great interaction design enhancement – something like the following:
I guess it’s just the teacher in me, but things like that are helpful for people who are having to self-teach in Deltek Cobra.