The provided text from “01.pdf” offers a comprehensive introduction to the Microsoft Project interface, explaining the contextual ribbon, the “Tell me” search box, and the timeline view. It details the Gantt chart’s components and customization options, along with the status bar’s functionalities for view switching and task scheduling. The text also clarifies the role of ribbon tabs in organizing commands and introduces various methods for switching between project views. Furthermore, it describes tables as a way to view and edit different project information and outlines exercises for practicing basic navigation and customization, as well as configuring project options and calendars. Finally, the text differentiates between manually and automatically scheduled tasks, explains linking tasks and task dependencies, describes task constraints and viewing options, and details how to organize projects with summary tasks and subtasks, including importing tasks and managing project structure, deletion, WBS codes, and outline codes for resource structures.

Microsoft Project Review: Project Interface and Task Management

Quiz

1. Describe the purpose of the contextual ribbons in Microsoft Project. Provide an example of when and why a contextual ribbon might appear.
2. Explain the functionality of the “Tell me what you want to do” box. What are two ways a user can access and utilize this feature?
3. What are the two main components of the Gantt chart view, and what information does each part primarily display? How can a user adjust the size of these components?
4. Identify at least three elements found in the status bar at the bottom of the Project interface and briefly explain the information or functionality each provides.
5. Explain the purpose and benefit of the Quick Access Toolbar. How does it differ from the ribbon in terms of accessibility?
6. Describe the primary function of the Task tab on the ribbon. Give two examples of commonly used commands found within this tab.
7. What is the significance of setting the default start and end times in Project Options to match the project calendar? Why is it important to apply these settings to “all new projects”?
8. Explain the fundamental difference between automatically scheduled and manually scheduled tasks in Project. How does Project handle date and duration calculations for each?
9. What is a milestone task, and how is it typically represented visually in the Gantt chart? How does a milestone task affect project duration?
10. Describe the purpose of a summary task and its relationship to subtasks. How are the duration and start/finish dates of a summary task determined?

Quiz Answer Key

1. Contextual ribbons in Microsoft Project are designed to display commands that are relevant to the currently selected element or view. For example, if a user clicks on the timeline, the “Timeline Format” ribbon appears, providing tools specifically for managing and formatting the timeline view. This helps to keep the interface organized by showing only the necessary tools.
2. The “Tell me what you want to do” box allows users to search for specific commands within the Project ribbons or access help documentation on particular topics. A user can click in the box and type keywords related to the command or help they need. Alternatively, the keyboard shortcut Alt + Q will immediately place the cursor in this box for quick searching.
3. The Gantt chart view consists of a task table on the left and a graphical chart on the right. The task table lists all project tasks in a grid format with columns for information like name, duration, and start/finish dates. The chart uses horizontal bars to visually represent the duration of each task and their relationships. Users can adjust the size of these components by hovering the mouse over the vertical border between them and dragging it left or right.
4. Three elements found in the status bar include: task scheduling mode (indicating whether new tasks are Autos scheduled or manually scheduled, which also acts as a toggle to switch between modes), the current view name (displaying the view the user is currently working in), and the zoom slider (allowing users to zoom in or out of the project view).
5. The Quick Access Toolbar provides a customizable collection of frequently used commands that are always visible, located just above or below the ribbon. Its purpose is to offer quick and easy access to these commands without needing to navigate through different ribbon tabs. Unlike the ribbon, which is context-dependent, the Quick Access Toolbar remains constant.
6. The primary function of the Task tab is to provide access to commands related to managing and formatting individual tasks within a project. Two examples of commonly used commands found in this tab include “Cut,” “Copy,” and “Paste” for editing tasks, and options for formatting task fonts and styles.
7. Setting the default start and end times in Project Options to match the project calendar ensures that when new tasks are created, their default working hours align with the defined working times of the project. Applying these settings to “all new projects” makes these synchronized default times consistent across every new project a user creates.
8. Automatically scheduled tasks have their start and finish dates and durations calculated automatically by Project based on dependencies, constraints, and resource assignments. Manually scheduled tasks allow the user to directly input and control the start and finish dates and duration, with Project providing less automation in scheduling.
9. A milestone task represents a significant event or checkpoint in a project with zero duration. It is typically visually represented in the Gantt chart as a diamond-shaped icon. A milestone task does not inherently increase the project duration; its placement indicates a point in time.
10. A summary task is a higher-level task that groups related subtasks together, representing a phase or a major component of a project. The duration of a summary task is determined by the overall span of its subtasks, from the start date of the earliest subtask to the finish date of the latest subtask. Similarly, the start and finish dates of the summary task reflect the earliest start and latest finish dates of its constituent subtasks.

Essay Format Questions

1. Discuss the advantages and potential challenges of splitting a large project into multiple subprojects linked to a master project and a shared resource pool. What factors should a project manager consider when deciding whether to take this approach?
2. Compare and contrast outline numbering and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) codes in Microsoft Project. In what situations might one be preferred over the other for identifying and structuring tasks?
3. Explain the concept of custom fields in Microsoft Project and discuss their benefits in project management. Provide specific examples of how different types of custom fields (e.g., text, number, flag, outline code) can be utilized to enhance project tracking and reporting.
4. Describe the process of setting up and utilizing recurring tasks in Microsoft Project. What are the key considerations and potential limitations of using recurring tasks for project scheduling?
5. Discuss the various methods for managing and tracking resource costs in Microsoft Project, including standard rates, overtime rates, cost per use, and cost rate tables. How can project managers account for changes in resource costs over the course of a project?

Glossary of Key Terms

• Contextual Ribbon: A set of commands and tools in the Microsoft Project interface that appears and disappears depending on the currently selected element or view, providing relevant options for that specific context.
• Gantt Chart: A horizontal bar chart used in project management to visually represent the project schedule, showing tasks, their durations, start and finish dates, and dependencies.
• Timeline View: A visual summary of key project tasks and milestones displayed horizontally at the top of the Gantt chart view, providing a high-level overview of the project schedule.
• Status Bar: A horizontal bar at the bottom of the Microsoft Project window that displays helpful information such as the current task scheduling mode, view name, and options like the zoom slider.
• Quick Access Toolbar: A customizable toolbar located above or below the ribbon that contains frequently used commands for quick and easy access.
• Task Tab: The primary ribbon tab in Microsoft Project that contains commands related to managing and formatting individual project tasks.
• Project Calendar: Defines the working and non-working days and hours for a project, influencing the scheduling of tasks.
• Automatic Scheduling: A task scheduling mode where Microsoft Project automatically calculates task start and finish dates and durations based on dependencies, constraints, and resource assignments.
• Manual Scheduling: A task scheduling mode where the user directly inputs and controls the start and finish dates and duration of a task, with less automated scheduling by Project.
• Milestone Task: A task with zero duration that represents a significant event or checkpoint in a project schedule.
• Summary Task: A higher-level task in Microsoft Project that groups related subtasks and represents a phase or major component of the project; its duration and dates are determined by its subtasks.
• Subtask: A smaller, more detailed task that is part of a larger summary task in a project hierarchy.
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): A hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. In Project, WBS codes are unique identifiers assigned to tasks.
• Outline Numbering: A hierarchical numbering system automatically applied to tasks in Microsoft Project based on their indentation level, reflecting the project’s structure.
• Custom Fields: User-defined fields in Microsoft Project that allow for storing and displaying additional information about tasks, resources, or the project beyond the standard fields.
• Lookup Table: A predefined list of values that can be selected for a custom field, ensuring data consistency.
• Graphical Indicators: Visual cues (icons or symbols) that can be displayed in custom fields based on defined criteria or formulas.
• Formula (in Custom Fields): An expression used to automatically calculate the value of a custom field based on other project data.
• Cost Variance: The difference between the budgeted cost and the actual cost of a task or project.
• Outline Code: A type of custom field that allows for creating a hierarchical coding structure to represent different aspects of a project (e.g., cost centers), where the user manually defines the code values.
• Recurring Task: A task that repeats at a specified interval (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) over a defined period.
• Budget Cost: The planned or estimated cost for a task, resource, or the entire project.
• Cost Rate Table: A feature in Microsoft Project that allows for defining multiple standard and overtime rates for a single resource, which can be applied to different tasks or at different times.

Briefing Document: Microsoft Project Interface, Task Scheduling, Project Structure, Customization, and Cost Management

This document provides a detailed review of the main themes, important ideas, and facts presented in the provided excerpts related to using Microsoft Project. Quotes from the original sources are included where appropriate.

1. Understanding the Microsoft Project Interface:

• Contextual Ribbons: The ribbon at the top of the Project window changes based on what the user has selected. For example, selecting the Gantt Chart view displays the “Gantt Chart Format” ribbon, while clicking on the timeline activates the “Timeline Format” ribbon.
• “ribbons will appear and disappear depending on what we’re clicked on that’s why we call them contextual”
• “Tell me what you want to do” Box: Located next to the ribbon tabs, this search bar allows users to find specific commands or access help documentation. Typing keywords like “timelines” will provide a list of related help topics. The keyboard shortcut “Alt + Q” quickly jumps to this box.
• “what I can do from up here is that I can use this little bar to search for different Comm commands on the ribbons if I was struggling to find something or this is where I can come to get help on something specific”
• Timeline View: Situated just under the ribbons, the timeline provides a visual overview of the project. It can be toggled on or off via the “View” tab.
• “the timeline is a really nice way of just kind of getting an overview of everything that’s going on on your project”
• Gantt Chart View: This is the primary working area, consisting of a grid listing tasks and a visual representation of these tasks as bars showing duration. The size of both sections can be adjusted by dragging the border between them. A horizontal splitter also allows for adjusting the space allocated to the timeline and the Gantt chart. Scroll bars enable navigation through the task list.
• “the Gant chart consists of two parts really we have all of our tasks listed in a grid form and then on the right hand side we have that represented with these visual bars which make it really nice and easy for us to see the duration of each task and how all of our tasks link together”
• Status Bar: Located at the bottom of the window, the status bar displays information such as the default scheduling mode for new tasks (Auto Scheduled or Manually Scheduled). Clicking on this area often acts as a toggle to switch between these modes. The right side of the status bar allows users to switch between different project views like “Task Usage,” “Resource View,” and “Resource Sheet.” A zoom slider is also present for adjusting the magnification.
• “if you take a look over on the left hand side you can see it’s telling me that all new tasks are Autos scheduled and if I click on this I can switch between Autos scheduled and manually scheduled tasks”
• Quick Access Toolbar: Found above the timeline and below the ribbons, this customizable toolbar allows users to add frequently used commands for quick access, eliminating the need to navigate through the ribbons.
• “this is a customizable toolbar which allows us to add commands that we use frequently to it so that they’re quick and easy to access and we don’t have to hunt through the ribbons”
• Ribbon Tabs: These organize commands logically into groups. Common tabs include:
• Task Tab: Contains frequently used commands like cut, copy, paste, font formatting, task management (updating progress, linking/unlinking), scheduling mode, and adding summary tasks and milestones. The “Properties” group here provides access to project information.
• “the task tab this is where you’re going to find a lot of the commonly used tasks… it’s also where we can go to manage everything related to our tasks”
• Resource Tab: Provides tools for managing project resources, including assigning resources, creating resource pools, and accessing leveling options.
• “the resource tab is where we would go for everything related to resources that we’ve added into our project”
• Report Tab: Used for creating various project reports to analyze data, including cost and progress reports, and visual reports.
• “the report tab is where we come to create reports in Project once you have your project up and running you’re you’re probably going to want to start running some reports to analyze that data”
• View Tab: Enables users to change the project view (e.g., Gantt Chart, Task Usage, Resource Sheet), toggle the timeline, and manage window arrangements.
• Project Tab: Contains high-level project management commands, including accessing project information, changing working time, defining WBS codes, and managing resource pools and master projects.
• “the project Tab is where you’re going to find all of your project wide settings and information”

2. Managing Project Calendars and Options:

• Project Calendar: Defines the working and non-working days and hours for the project. The standard calendar is initially set to 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Users can modify the working time of the standard calendar or create new custom calendars (e.g., for part-time staff). This is done via “Project” tab -> “Properties” group -> “Change Working Time.”
• “we need to go to the project Tab and in the Properties Group Change working time”
• Project Options: These settings apply to the Project application as a whole or to the currently open project. It’s crucial to synchronize the “Calendar options for this project” (accessible via the “Options” button in the “Change Working Time” dialog) with the defined project calendar. This includes setting the default start and end times to match the project’s working hours. For changes to apply to all new projects, ensure “All New Projects” is selected in the calendar options.
• “the final thing you want to check in here is right at the top where it says calendar options for this project and we have the project that we’ve got open right now listed now if we click the drop down we want to make sure we change this to all new projects”
• Calculating Days per Month: Project estimates 20 working days per month based on roughly four weeks per month and five working days per week (4 * 5 = 20).
• “if you’re wondering how it calculates this 20 days per month project basically says there’s roughly four weeks in a month and there are five working days per week so 4 * 5 is effectively 20 days per month”

3. Automatic vs. Manually Scheduled Tasks:

• Default Scheduling Mode: New tasks can be either “Manually Scheduled” or “Auto Scheduled.” The default setting can be changed in “File” -> “Options” -> “Schedule” under “Scheduling options for this project.” To change the default for all new projects, modify the setting at the top of the dialog. The status bar also indicates the current default scheduling mode for the open project.
• “notice it says any new tasks that are created are going to be manually scheduled and this applies to this project only… I want to change this so that every task I schedule is Autos scheduled across all of the projects that I create”
• Auto Scheduled Tasks: Project automatically calculates task dates and durations based on dependencies, constraints, and resource availability. This is generally recommended for large, complex projects.
• “Autos scheduled tasks mean that project is automatically going to calculate task dates and durations which is extremely helpful particularly for large complex projects”
• Manually Scheduled Tasks: Users have full control over the start and finish dates and duration of these tasks. Project provides warnings if there are scheduling conflicts but does not automatically adjust dates. This mode can be useful for tasks with uncertain timelines or when more control is needed.
• “With manually scheduled tasks on the other hand project gives you complete flexibility and control over the scheduling of those tasks”

4. Utilizing Milestones:

• Definition: Milestone tasks represent significant checkpoints or key events in a project and have a duration of zero days. They do not affect the project’s overall duration or resource time.
• “Milestone tasks don’t have any duration so it’s always going to default to zero days… Milestone tasks don’t increase the project duration in any way or reflect on the work or resource time”
• Insertion: Milestones can be inserted via the “Task” tab -> “Insert” group -> “Milestone.” They are typically inserted above the currently selected task.
• Representation: In the Gantt Chart, milestones are visually represented by a diamond icon on the timeline.
• “Milestones are represented with this little Diamond icon”
• Predecessors: Milestone tasks can have predecessors, indicating that they depend on the completion of other tasks. Conversely, other tasks can also have milestone tasks as predecessors.

5. Organizing Projects with Summary Tasks and Subtasks:

• Purpose: Summary tasks help organize projects into logical phases or groups of tasks, providing structure and making the project easier to read and understand.
• “Summary tasks help us organize our project and they also give our project structure”
• Creation: To create a summary task for existing tasks, select the tasks that should become subtasks, navigate to the “Task” tab -> “Insert” group -> “Summary,” and a new summary task will be inserted above the selected tasks. The selected tasks will automatically become subtasks, indented under the summary task.
• Naming: The “New Summary Task” can be renamed by clicking in the task name field.
• Collapsing and Expanding: Summary tasks have a small black triangle next to their name, which allows users to collapse and expand the subtasks within them.
• “as soon as I do that I get this little black triangle next to the summary task so this is a collapsible and expandable group”
• Duration and Dates: The duration and start/finish dates of a summary task are automatically determined by the earliest start date and latest finish date of its subtasks. Users do not typically manually edit the duration or dates of summary tasks.
• “the duration of the summary task is very much defined by the durations of the subtask below it… the start date that you see up here for this summary task is going to be the start date of the earliest task in this group and the Finish date is going to be the Finish date of the latest task in this group”
• Visual Representation: Summary tasks are displayed as black bars on the Gantt Chart timeline.

6. Deleting Tasks, Subtasks, and Summary Tasks:

• Deleting Individual Tasks: To delete an entire task, click on the task number (ID) to select the entire row and then press the “Delete” key. Alternatively, clicking in a field and pressing “Delete” will only clear that field’s content, but a cross icon will appear, offering the option to delete the entire task.
• “if you want to delete an entire task you need to make sure that you have the entire task selected by clicking on that task ID”
• Deleting Summary Tasks and Subtasks Together: If a summary task and its subtasks are selected, pressing “Delete” will prompt a confirmation asking if you want to delete the summary task and all its subtasks. The same prompt appears if only the summary task is selected for deletion.
• “deleting it will delete all of its subtasks as well… I have a choice I can continue and delete expenses and its subtasks or I can cancel and not delete anything”
• Deleting a Summary Task While Keeping Subtasks: To delete only the summary task and keep its subtasks, first select the subtasks and use the “Outdent” button (in the “Schedule” group of the “Task” ribbon) to move them to the same outline level as the summary task. Then, delete the summary task. The subtasks can be re-indented if necessary.
• “if I want to delete the summary tasks but keep the subtask I first need to select the subtasks and put them on the same level as the summary task… we’re going to go up to the schedule group on the task ribbon and use our outdent button”

7. Utilizing Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Codes:

• Definition: WBS codes are unique codes used to identify each task in a project. They can be particularly helpful in projects with tasks that have the same name. The task ID is simply the row number and not a unique identifier across changes in the project structure.
• “what a WBS code is is a unique code that helps us identify each task in our project”
• Insertion: A “WBS” column can be inserted into the project plan by right-clicking on a column header (e.g., “Task Mode”) and selecting “Insert Column,” then choosing “WBS” from the list.
• Customization: Default WBS numbering can be customized to be more relevant to the project. This is done via “Project” ribbon -> “Properties” group -> “WBS” -> “Define code.”
• “to create our own WBS codes we need to jump up to the project ribbon and in the Properties Group we have a WBS option if we click the drop down we can go to Define code and this is where we can create our own work breakdown structure codes”
• Project Code Prefix: A prefix can be added to the WBS codes to uniquely identify the project.
• Code Mask: This area defines the structure of the WBS code, including the type of characters (numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase letters), the length of each level, and the separator between levels. Multiple levels can be defined. A “Code preview” shows how the codes will look.
• Options: The “Generate WBS code for new task” checkbox ensures that new tasks automatically receive a unique WBS code. The “Verify the uniqueness of new WBS codes” option prevents the use of duplicate codes.
• Behavior During Restructuring: Unlike outline numbers, WBS codes are generally more static and tend to stay with their assigned tasks even when the project structure is changed (tasks are moved or indented). Project might assign new WBS codes to moved sections, potentially leading to gaps in the original numbering sequence.
• Resetting WBS Codes: The “Re-number” option under “Project” -> “WBS” can reset all WBS codes back to their default sequence based on the current project structure.

8. Working with Subprojects and Master Projects:

• Scenario: For large projects, it can be beneficial to split them into smaller, more manageable subprojects. A master project can then be created to link these subprojects together. Resource pools can be shared across these linked projects.
• Resource Pool Linking: When opening a project that shares resources from a resource pool, Project prompts the user with “Open Resource Pool Information,” asking whether to open the resource pool file. Choosing “Yes” opens the resource pool file (often in read-only mode) alongside the project file, allowing Project to track resource assignments across the shared files. The paths to other linked project files using the same resource pool are often visible in resource-related views like the “Resource Usage” sheet, even if those project files are not currently open.
• “this file shares resources from a resource pool what do you want to do and I can choose to open resource pool to see assignments across all shareer files or do not open other the files”
• Inserting Subprojects: To incorporate a subproject into a master project, select a blank line in the Gantt Chart view, navigate to the “Project” tab -> “Insert” group -> “Subproject,” and browse to select the MPP file of the subproject to be inserted. A subproject is visually indicated by a project icon in the information column.
• “we do this by inserting a sub project… we’re going to go into the project tab and notice in the insert group we have sub project”
• Maintaining Links: When a project is split, links between tasks in different parts of the original project might not be automatically maintained in the subprojects. These links (predecessors and successors) need to be recreated in the master project after inserting subprojects.
• Recreating Predecessor Links to External Tasks: To link a task in a subproject to a task in the main (master) project, select the predecessor task in the main project, hold down the “Ctrl” key, and select the successor task in the subproject. Then, click the “Link” button in the “Task” ribbon (“Schedule” group). The predecessors column in the subproject will show the full path to the linked task in the master project. The standard method of selecting a predecessor from a dropdown within the subproject typically only shows tasks within that subproject.
• “we have to use the link option on the toolbar so let’s select book venue we’re going to go down hold down control and select perform risk assessment and then on the task RIS bur we’re going to choose link”
• Recreating Successor Links to External Tasks: The process is similar to predecessors, but the task to be linked from (the predecessor in this case) should be selected first, followed by the task to link to (the successor in the main project).
• Deleting Original Tasks After Inserting Subprojects: Once the links have been successfully recreated, the original set of tasks that were moved into the subproject can be deleted from the master project, leaving only the subproject link.
• Saving Changes with Resource Pools: When saving a master project with linked resource pools, Project may prompt to update the resource pool to reflect the changes.

9. Considerations for Project Consolidation and Resource Sharing:

• Straightforward Requirements: Consolidation and resource sharing in Microsoft Project work best when project requirements and resource needs are relatively simple and clearly defined.
• Complexity: For more complex scenarios involving multiple resource pools, fluctuating resource needs across projects, or numerous projects sharing resources, Microsoft Project’s native capabilities can become challenging to manage without meticulous attention. Small errors can have significant consequences.
• Project Server/ERP: For complex resource management needs, consider using Microsoft Project Server or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which offer more flexible and resilient ways to handle shared resources from multiple pools.
• Multiple Project Managers: When several project managers are working on a consolidated project and resource pool, clear rules and protocols are essential to avoid conflicts and ensure data integrity.

10. Setting Up Recurring Tasks:

• Definition: Recurring tasks are tasks that repeat on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).
• Accessing the Feature: To create a recurring task, go to the “Task” ribbon -> “Insert” group, click the dropdown under “Task,” and choose “Recurring Task.”
• Task Details: In the “Recurring Task” dialog box, users need to specify:
• Task Name: The name of the recurring task (e.g., “Project Meeting”).
• Duration: The length of each occurrence (can be specified in hours, days, etc.).
• Recurrence Pattern: The frequency of the recurrence (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) and the specific details (e.g., every month on the 29th, the second Wednesday of every month).
• Range of Recurrence: The start date and either the number of occurrences or an end date for the recurring task. The start time is also specified here.
• Calendar for Scheduling: The project calendar to be used for scheduling the recurring tasks.
• Time Component in Dates: Project can display and schedule tasks with a time component in the start and finish dates. This can be enabled by changing the “Date format” in “File” -> “Options” -> “General” to include time.
• Handling Non-Working Time: If a recurring task falls on a non-working day, Project will display a warning and offer options to:
• Reschedule to the first available working time (Yes).
• Not create the occurrences that fall on non-working time (No).
• Cancel the creation of recurring tasks (Cancel).
• Modifying Recurring Tasks: Editing the duration of the main recurring task will likely recreate all individual occurrences, potentially requiring users to re-adjust any previously made exceptions. Individual occurrences can have their start and end times adjusted via their task information.
• Extending Beyond Project End Date: Recurring tasks can be scheduled beyond the project’s end date, but this will extend the overall duration of the project.
• Visual Representation: Recurring tasks in the Gantt Chart are grouped under a parent task with a collapsible/expandable arrow. Individual occurrences are numbered for easy identification.
• Assigning Resources: Resources can be assigned to the main recurring task, and they will be assigned to all individual occurrences. This is done by right-clicking on the main recurring task and selecting “Assign Resources.”

11. Creating and Using Custom Fields:

• Purpose: Custom fields allow users to store and display additional information relevant to their specific projects, beyond the standard fields provided by Project.
• Types of Custom Fields: Custom fields can be created for tasks, resources, or the entire project. Different data types are available, including text, number, date, duration, cost, flag (yes/no), and outline code.
• Accessing Custom Fields: Custom fields are managed via “Project” tab -> “Properties” group -> “Custom Fields.”
• Defining a Custom Field:Select Entity Type: Choose whether the field is for “Task,” “Resource,” or “Project.”
• Select Type: Choose the data type of the custom field (e.g., “Text,” “Number,” “Flag”).
• Choose a Dummy Field: Project provides a set of generic custom fields (e.g., “Text1,” “Number1”) that can be renamed and customized.
• Rename Field: Give the custom field a meaningful name using the “Rename” button.
• Custom Attributes: Define how data is entered or calculated in the field:
• None: Allows users to enter any value of the selected data type.
• Lookup: Provides a dropdown list of predefined values that users can select from. The order and default value of the lookup table can be customized.
• Formula: Allows users to define a formula to automatically calculate the value of the custom field based on other fields or functions.
• Calculation for Summary Rows: Determine how the custom field value should be calculated or displayed for summary tasks based on the values of their subtasks.
• Graphical Indicators: Associate images or icons with specific values in the custom field to provide a visual representation. These can be set for non-summary rows, summary rows, and can inherit criteria. The “Show data values in tooltip” option displays the underlying value when hovering over the indicator.
• Inserting the Custom Field Column: To display the custom field in a view like the Gantt Chart, insert a new column and select the newly created custom field from the list.
• Formulas for Custom Fields: Formulas can use mathematical operators, operators (e.g., greater than, less than), built-in Project fields, and functions (categorized by type, including logical functions like “IF” and “SWITCH”). Nested “IF” statements or the “SWITCH” function can be used to create complex conditional logic for calculating field values. The “SWITCH” function can be more flexible than nested “IF” statements when dealing with multiple conditions. Project performs a syntax check on formulas when they are saved. Help documentation provides details on available Project functions for custom fields.
• Flag Custom Fields: Flag fields have a data type of “Yes/No” and can be used to mark tasks based on certain criteria. Formulas can be used to automatically set the flag to “Yes” or “No” based on the values of other fields. For example, flagging tasks with a finish variance greater than a specified threshold. When working with durations in formulas for flag fields, be aware that durations are often stored in minutes within Project.

12. Managing Resource Costs and Rates:

• Budget Resources: Resources of type “Cost” can be designated as “Budget” resources. These are typically used to track overall budgeted amounts for specific cost categories (e.g., service costs). Budget cost resources are assigned to the project summary task and their costs are entered in the “Budget Cost” column (often in Task Usage view or by inserting the column in other views). Units and cost per use cannot be directly entered for budget resources at the assignment level.
• “we’re going to give it a type of cost let’s give it some initials… but what I’m going to do is I’m going to create a little group so we’re going to call this service costs group… on the general tab notice over on the right hand side we have a little budget checkbox so we’re going to select this”
• Assigning Cost Resources: Regular cost resources (not designated as “Budget”) can be assigned to specific tasks, and their associated costs can be entered (e.g., cost per use for a consultant).
• Resource Groups for Cost Tracking: Resources (including budget and regular cost resources) can be assigned to groups. This allows for reporting and analysis of costs by category using the “Group By” feature in views like “Resource Usage.” Grouping by the resource group can clearly show the budgeted costs versus the actual costs for a specific category.
• “we created a group called service cost group so we’re going to assign both of those resources to that same group… if we jump up to Resource usage View and go up to the data group you can see we have a little group by field just here”
• Cost Rates: Resources can have multiple cost rates defined (Rate A, Rate B, Rate C, etc.). Rate A is the default rate. Each rate table can have a standard rate and an overtime rate.
• Viewing Assigned Cost Rate Table: The “Cost Rate Table” column in resource-related views (like Resource Usage) shows which rate table (A, B, C, etc.) is currently being used for each resource assignment.
• Changing Cost Rate Table for a Task Assignment: While the rate table cannot be directly specified when initially assigning a resource to a task in Gantt Chart view, it can be changed for individual task assignments in the Task Usage view by double-clicking on the assignment and selecting a different rate table in the task information dialog.
• Scheduling Cost Rate Changes: Future changes in resource cost rates can be scheduled within the cost tab of the resource information dialog (for each rate table). Users can add multiple rows with effective dates and the new standard and overtime rates. This allows Project to automatically apply the new rates from the specified date onwards. Rate increases can also be specified as a percentage increase on a particular date.

This briefing document summarizes the key concepts and functionalities discussed in the provided excerpts, offering a foundational understanding of how to navigate the Microsoft Project interface, manage tasks and project structure, customize the application, and handle resource costs. Remember to refer back to the original sources and utilize Project’s help documentation for more in-depth information and practical application.

Frequently Asked Questions about Microsoft Project Based on Provided Sources:

1. What are contextual ribbons in Microsoft Project, and how do I use the “Tell me what you want to do” box?

Contextual ribbons in Microsoft Project are toolbars that appear and disappear depending on what you have selected in the project view. For example, selecting the Gantt chart area will display the “Gantt Chart Format” ribbon, while clicking on the timeline will show the “Timeline Format” ribbon.

The “Tell me what you want to do” box is located next to the ribbon tabs. It allows you to search for specific commands or get help on particular features. You can type in keywords related to what you’re looking for (e.g., “timeline”), and a dropdown list of relevant commands and help topics will appear. Hovering over an arrow will show a short list of help options, and selecting one will open the help pane with detailed information. The keyboard shortcut Alt + Q will quickly jump your cursor to this box.

2. Can you explain the different visual elements of the main Project interface, specifically the Timeline view and the Gantt chart?

The main Project interface consists of several key visual elements. At the top, you may see the Timeline view, which provides a graphical overview of the entire project schedule. This can be toggled on or off in the View tab.

Below the timeline is the primary project area, which usually displays the Gantt chart. The Gantt chart is divided into two main parts: a grid on the left that lists all of your tasks with details like name, duration, start and finish dates, and a visual representation on the right consisting of bars that illustrate the duration of each task and how they are linked together.

You can adjust the size of the grid and the Gantt chart sections by hovering your mouse over the border and dragging. Horizontal and vertical scroll bars allow you to navigate through all the tasks in your project plan. At the bottom, the status bar provides information such as the default scheduling mode for new tasks (Auto Scheduled or Manually Scheduled), which can often be toggled by clicking on it. The status bar also displays options to switch between different project views (e.g., Gantt Chart, Task Usage, Resource Sheet) and a zoom slider to adjust the view magnification.

3. How are commands organized in Microsoft Project, and what are some key tabs I should be aware of?

Commands in Microsoft Project are logically organized into groups within ribbon tabs located at the top of the interface. Each tab focuses on a specific aspect of project management. Some key tabs include:

• Task Tab: Contains frequently used commands related to tasks, such as cut, copy, paste, font formatting, managing task progress, linking and unlinking tasks, switching between Auto and Manually Scheduled modes, and adding summary tasks and milestones. The Properties group here also provides access to project information.
• Resource Tab: Houses all commands related to the resources assigned to your project. This is where you can assign resources, create resource pools, and find leveling options.
• Report Tab: Used for creating various reports to analyze project data, such as cost reports and progress reports. It also includes options for creating visual reports.
• View Tab: Allows you to control which elements of the project interface are visible, such as the Timeline view. It also provides access to different project views (Gantt Chart, Task Usage, etc.) and tools for managing multiple windows.
• Project Tab: Contains project-level settings and information, including options to change working time, define WBS codes, access project information, and work with custom fields.

4. What is the significance of setting the Project Calendar and Project Options, and how do I synchronize them?

The Project Calendar defines the working days and hours for your project. It establishes the baseline for when tasks can be scheduled and how durations are calculated. You can modify the working times for standard working days and create exceptions for holidays or non-working periods. You can also create new calendars for resources with different working schedules (e.g., part-time staff). You access and modify the Project Calendar via the Project tab, in the Properties group, by clicking “Change Working Time.”

Project Options contain various settings that affect how Project behaves, including default start and end times for tasks and the default scheduling mode for new projects. It’s crucial to synchronize the Project Options, particularly the default start and end times, with the working hours defined in your Project Calendar. This ensures consistency across your project schedule and any new projects you create.

To synchronize them, go to File > Options > Schedule. In the “Scheduling options for this project” section (or “Calendar options for this project” depending on the specific settings), ensure that the default start and end times match the working hours defined in your Project Calendar. For global settings that apply to all new projects, change the “Calendar options for this project” dropdown to “All New Projects.”

5. What is the fundamental difference between Automatically Scheduled and Manually Scheduled tasks in Microsoft Project?

The core difference between Automatically Scheduled and Manually Scheduled tasks lies in how Microsoft Project calculates their dates and durations.

• Automatically Scheduled Tasks: Project automatically calculates the start and finish dates and the duration of these tasks based on factors such as dependencies (predecessors), resource assignments, and the project calendar. When changes are made to related tasks or resource availability, Project will automatically update the dates of Auto Scheduled tasks. This is particularly useful for large and complex projects where maintaining consistency and understanding the impact of changes is critical.
• Manually Scheduled Tasks: With manually scheduled tasks, you have complete control over the start and finish dates and the duration. Project will not automatically adjust these based on dependencies or resource assignments. This mode can be useful for tasks that are not yet well-defined, have uncertain durations, or are dependent on external factors not tracked within Project. However, relying heavily on manually scheduled tasks can reduce Project’s ability to provide accurate schedule analysis and highlight potential conflicts.

You can switch between these scheduling modes for new tasks via the status bar at the bottom of the Project window or within the Task tab in the Schedule group. It’s also possible to set the default scheduling mode for new projects in Project Options (File > Options > Schedule).

6. How can I use Milestone tasks and Summary tasks to better organize and visualize my project schedule?

Milestone Tasks are significant points in your project that represent the completion of a major phase, a key decision, or an important deliverable. They have zero duration and are visually represented as diamond shapes on the Gantt chart. Milestones do not impact the project’s overall duration or resource workload. They serve as checkpoints to track progress and highlight critical dates. You can insert a milestone task by selecting a task, going to the Task tab, and clicking “Milestone” in the Insert group. You can also link predecessors to milestone tasks and make milestone tasks predecessors of other tasks.

Summary Tasks are container tasks that group related subtasks. They help to organize your project into logical phases or categories, making the project plan easier to read, understand, and navigate. When you create a summary task, the tasks indented under it become its subtasks. The duration, start date, and finish date of a summary task are automatically calculated based on the earliest start date and latest finish date of its subtasks. Summary tasks are displayed as solid black bars on the Gantt chart. They can be collapsed or expanded to show or hide the underlying subtasks, allowing you to focus on different levels of detail. To create a summary task, select the tasks you want to group, go to the Task tab, and click “Summary” in the Insert group. You can also create nested summary tasks to represent multiple levels of project structure.

7. What are WBS codes, and how can I customize them in Microsoft Project?

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) codes are unique alphanumeric identifiers assigned to each task in a project. They provide a hierarchical representation of the project’s breakdown into smaller, more manageable components. WBS codes can be particularly useful for projects with tasks that have the same name, for cross-referencing tasks in different documents or systems, and for conforming to specific industry or organizational standards. Unlike outline numbers, which are automatically updated based on task indentation, WBS codes can be customized and are generally intended to remain consistent with the task, even if the task’s position in the schedule changes.

To customize WBS codes, go to the Project tab, in the Properties group, click the “WBS” dropdown, and select “Define Code.” Here, you can:

• Add a Project Code Prefix: A text that will appear at the beginning of all WBS codes for the project, helping to uniquely identify the project.
• Define the Code Mask: Specify the structure of the WBS codes by adding different levels. For each level, you can choose the type of identifier (Numbers, Uppercase Letters, Lowercase Letters), the length (number of characters), and a separator character (e.g., dash, period, forward slash) to separate levels.
• Generate WBS Code for New Task: Automatically assign a unique WBS code to any new task added to the project.
• Verify Uniqueness of New WBS Code: Ensure that any newly generated or manually entered WBS code is unique within the project.

After defining the WBS code structure, you’ll typically insert the “WBS” column into your project view to see the generated codes.

8. How can I effectively manage costs in Microsoft Project using features like budget resources, cost rates, and cost rate tables?

Microsoft Project offers several features for managing and tracking project costs:

• Budget Resources: You can create resources of the “Cost” type specifically for tracking budget amounts for different expense categories (e.g., travel, services). To designate a cost resource as a budget, open the resource information and check the “Budget” box on the General tab. Budget resources are typically assigned to the project summary task (task 0). You can then enter the budgeted cost for that category in the Task Usage view under the “Budget Cost” column.
• Cost Rates: For work and material resources, you can define standard and overtime rates in the Resource Sheet. These rates are used to calculate the cost of assigning these resources to tasks based on their work duration. The default rates are considered the “A” rate table, but you can define additional rate tables (B, C, D, E) within the resource information (Cost tab) to account for different billing rates for different types of work or projects.
• Cost Rate Tables: These allow you to define multiple sets of cost rates for a single resource. For example, a consultant might have a standard rate for general consulting (Rate A) and a higher rate for specialized graphical work (Rate B). You can then specify which cost rate table to use when assigning the resource to a particular task in the Task Usage view (by double-clicking the assignment). You can also schedule changes in cost rates over time by adding new rows with effective dates and updated rates within the resource’s cost rate tables.

By utilizing these features, you can establish a project budget, track actual costs based on resource assignments and defined rates, and analyze cost variances to ensure your project stays within financial constraints. Grouping resources by cost-related custom fields (like a “Charge Code”) in the Resource Usage view can also help in analyzing and reporting on different categories of resource costs.

Understanding the Microsoft Project Gantt Chart

The Gant chart is a key component of the Microsoft Project interface and is the main area where you’ll likely be working most of the time. It consists of two main parts: a grid on the left that lists all of your tasks, and on the right-hand side, a visual representation of these tasks using bars. These bars make it easy to see the duration of each task and how all the tasks link together.

Here are some important aspects of the Gant chart format as described in the sources:

• Contextual Ribbon: When you are in the Gant chart view, Project displays a specific “Gant chart format” contextual ribbon. This ribbon contains all the commands you need to manage and format your Gantt chart. Contextual ribbons appear and disappear depending on what you have clicked on in the project interface.
• Customizing Size: You can modify the size of the grid (table) and the visual bar area by hovering your mouse over the borderline between them and dragging. Similarly, you can adjust the vertical space allocated to the timeline and the Gantt chart using the horizontal splitter.
• Default View: The Gant chart with the timeline view is often the default view in Project. You can switch to other views, but the Gant chart is where you’ll primarily manage your project schedule.
• Visual Representation: The visual bars in the Gant chart provide an intuitive way to understand task durations. The length of the bar corresponds to the task’s duration.
• Linking Tasks: The Gant chart visually represents how tasks are linked together. Arrows are typically used to show dependencies between tasks.
• Formatting Options: The “Gant chart format” ribbon allows you to control the visual appearance of the Gant chart. For example, you can highlight predecessors of a selected task. You can also control the layout of task links and add grid lines to improve readability.
• Task Paths: The “Gant chart format” tab, under “Bar Styles” and “Task Path,” allows you to highlight predecessor tasks that directly affect a selected task. These driving predecessors are often highlighted in a specific color, like orange.
• Layout of Links: The “Layout” option in the “Format” group of the “Gant chart format” tab allows you to change how task links are displayed, offering different styles for the connecting lines.
• Gridlines: You can add gridlines to the Gantt rows from the “Gridlines” option in the “Format” tab to make it easier to associate the bars with the corresponding task entries.

In summary, the Gant chart format in Microsoft Project provides a visual and interactive environment for managing and understanding your project schedule, with dedicated formatting options available through the contextual “Gant chart format” ribbon.

Microsoft Project: Understanding Contextual Ribbons

Contextual ribbons in Microsoft Project are ribbon tabs that appear in the interface only as and when they are needed. They are called “contextual” because their appearance is dependent on the current context of what you are doing or what you have selected within the project.

Here’s what the sources tell us about contextual ribbons:

• Appearance based on need: Contextual ribbons do not remain visible all the time. They are triggered to appear when you select a specific element or switch to a particular view that has associated, specialized commands.
• Gant chart format ribbon: A prime example of a contextual ribbon is the “Gant chart format” ribbon. As its name suggests, this ribbon only appears when you are in the Gant chart view. It contains a range of commands specifically designed for managing and formatting your Gantt chart, such as options for bar styles, task paths, layout of links, and gridlines. We previously discussed the “Gant chart format” ribbon and its various formatting options in our earlier conversation.
• Timeline format ribbon: Another example from the sources is the “timeline format” ribbon. This ribbon appears when you click somewhere within the timeline view at the top of the project window. It provides the necessary commands to change and format that specific timeline area.
• Purpose: The purpose of contextual ribbons is to provide you with the tools that are most relevant to the task at hand, without cluttering the main ribbon area with commands that you may not currently need. This helps to keep the interface organized and makes it easier to find the specific commands you are looking for in a given context.
• Disappearance: If you click away from the element that triggered a contextual ribbon (for example, clicking away from the timeline), that contextual ribbon will disappear.

In summary, contextual ribbons in Microsoft Project are dynamic ribbon tabs that appear based on your current selection or view, offering a focused set of commands relevant to that specific context. The “Gant chart format” and “timeline format” ribbons are key examples of this functionality, providing specialized tools for managing and formatting the Gantt chart and timeline views, respectively.

Microsoft Project “Tell Me” Box: Command & Help

The “Tell me what you want to do” box is a helpful feature in Microsoft Project designed to assist users in finding commands and accessing help. You’ll find this box located next to the ribbon tabs in the Project interface.

Here’s a breakdown of its functionality based on the sources:

• Searching for Commands: If you are having trouble locating a specific command within the various ribbon tabs, you can type keywords related to that command into the “Tell me” box. This will then provide you with a list of relevant commands that you can directly access.
• Accessing Help: The “Tell me” box also serves as a quick way to get help on specific features or tasks within Project.
• You can type in a keyword or phrase related to the topic you need assistance with (e.g., “timelines”).
• As you type and then hover your mouse over the arrow, a short list of relevant help items will appear.
• Selecting one of these help items will open the Help pane on the side of your screen.
• Within the Help pane, you will have access to the help files that provide guidance and information on the selected topic, such as the process of creating a timeline in Project.
• Keyboard Shortcut: For quick access to the “Tell me” box, you can use the keyboard shortcut Alt + Q. This will immediately position your cursor within the box, allowing you to start typing your query.

In essence, the “Tell me what you want to do” box acts as a central point for both navigating the extensive functionality of Microsoft Project by searching for commands and for quickly accessing the built-in help resources when you need guidance on specific aspects of the application.

Microsoft Project Timeline: A Visual Project Overview

The Timeline view in Microsoft Project is a visual feature that provides a high-level, graphical overview of your project schedule. It is typically located just under the ribbon tabs and above the main Gantt chart area.

Here’s a more detailed look at the Timeline view based on the sources:

• Overview of the Project: The primary purpose of the Timeline view is to give you a quick and easy way to see the key milestones and phases of your project at a glance. It allows you to understand the overall flow and important events without getting bogged down in the details of every single task.
• Optional Feature: The Timeline view is not a mandatory part of the Project interface. You have the option to toggle it on or off as needed. This can be done by going to the View tab on the ribbon and either selecting or deselecting the “Timeline” checkbox in the View group.
• Location: When enabled, the Timeline view will appear as a banner running across the top of the primary project working area, just above the Gantt chart grid and bars.
• Integration with Gantt Chart: The Timeline view complements the Gantt chart. While the Gantt chart provides detailed information about individual tasks, their durations, and dependencies, the timeline offers a more summarized, visual representation of the project’s progress over time.
• Customization and Formatting: When you have the Timeline view selected or are working within it, a contextual ribbon called “Timeline Format” will appear. This ribbon contains specific commands that allow you to customize the appearance and content of the timeline. You can format the dates, add or remove elements, and highlight specific phases or milestones.
• Adjusting Vertical Space: The vertical space allocated to the Timeline view can be adjusted using the horizontal splitter that separates it from the Gantt chart area. By hovering your mouse over the boundary, you can drag it up or down to make more or less room for the timeline as required.
• Default View Option: In the Project Options, under the General tab and Project View section, “Gant with timeline” is often the default view when you create or open a project. This indicates the importance Microsoft places on having both a detailed task view and a high-level timeline summary available.
• Alternative View: While the Gantt chart with timeline is common, you can also view your project in other ways, and “timeline” itself might be listed as an option when switching between views. However, the typical usage involves having the timeline displayed above another view, such as the Gantt chart.

In summary, the Timeline view in Microsoft Project is a valuable tool for gaining a strategic overview of your project. Its optional nature, top-of-screen location, dedicated formatting ribbon, and integration with the Gantt chart make it a useful feature for communicating project progress and understanding key milestones and phases.

Microsoft Project Status Bar Essentials

The status bar in Microsoft Project is located at the very bottom of the application window. It provides quick access to important project settings and view options. Here’s a breakdown of its key features based on the sources:

• Auto vs. Manual Scheduling Toggle: On the left-hand side of the status bar, you can see an indication of the default scheduling mode for new tasks. In the example provided, it states “all new tasks are Autos scheduled“. This is not just an indicator; it also acts as a toggle button. By clicking on this area, you can switch between Autos scheduled and Manually scheduled task modes. We discussed these scheduling modes in a previous turn, where we noted that in Autos scheduled mode, Project calculates task dates based on duration and dependencies, while in Manually scheduled mode, you have direct control over dates and durations.
• View Switching: On the right-hand side of the status bar, there is an area that allows you to quickly switch between different project views. The source specifically mentions that you can switch to:
• Gant chart view
• Task usage view
• Resource View
• Resource sheet view We have previously discussed the Gantt chart view as the primary view for managing schedules. The ability to quickly change to other views from the status bar offers a convenient alternative to navigating through the View tab on the ribbon.
• Zoom Slider: Also located on the right-hand side of the status bar is a Zoom slider. This feature allows you to zoom in or out of the project view. The source notes that this functionality is fairly standard across Microsoft applications, so if you’ve used it in other programs, it will likely be familiar.

In summary, the status bar in Microsoft Project provides at-a-glance information about the default scheduling mode and offers convenient one-click access to toggling this mode, switching between different project views, and adjusting the zoom level of the current view.

The Original Text

[Music] Simon Says subscribe and click on the Bell icon to receive [Music] notifications we’ve made the accompanying exercise files for this tutorial available for free just click the link below in the video details to get these Microsoft Project 2021 is the latest Standalone version of project available from Microsoft it’s one of the most popular tools on the market for scheduling organizing and managing projects of all sizes from the most basic task list to highlevel complex projects my name is Deborah Ashby I’m a Microsoft trainer who’s been training project for over 15 years and I’m going to be your host for this course now let’s make no mistake project 2021 is a complex application there is so much functionality that it can become overwhelming so it’s important to know about those key features and how to use them effectively having a good understanding of project will help you work more efficiently and deliver better project outcomes and it’s also a great thing to have on your resume in this course we’re going to be using a fictitious training rollout plan to work through the different features and functionality that help us manage the entire Project Life Cycle the files I use in the course are available to download so you can follow along with me or you can save them for later and rewatch the videos at your own pace at the end of each section we’re going to work through an exercise so you can really put into practice the skills that you’ve learned and you can find all of these exercise files in the exercise files folder so make sure that you’ve downloaded those they’ll also be questions as you go through the course so you can test your knowledge as you go these questions really help identify where you have knowledge gaps and then you can go back and re-watch the relevant videos so if you’re ready to supercharge your project management knowledge then grab yourselves a drink and spend the next few hours with me whipping a project into shape sometimes it can be quite complex when you’re thinking about which project management solution to purchase because there are so many different versions of project these days it can be a little bit confusing so in this lesson let’s just take a quick look at the different offerings to give you more of an idea as to which one is going to suit your needs now I’m just on the Microsoft website and I’m on the compare project Management Solutions and costs page now notice currently we have two tabs at the top here cloud-based Solutions and on premises Solutions and I’m currently clicked in the cloud-based Solutions tab so now now I can see the three different project plans that are available for the cloud-based project management tools so those would be project for the web which is the latest offering and project online project is a subscription application so if you’re thinking that it’s included within your Microsoft 365 subscription then unfortunately it’s not you do have to purchase a separate license and you can see here those three different licenses project plan 1 Project plan 3 and project plan 5 now these have been recently renamed to bring them in line with Microsoft’s Enterprise Solutions E1 E3 and E5 so project plan one is the most basic and the cheapest of the projects and you can see here how much it is per month mine’s showing in pounds but this will update depending on your location and project plan one includes project for the web which is a completely cloud-based project management tool which isn’t as complex as something like project professional but still gives you all of the core functionality that that you need it’s also a lot easier for you to collaborate on projects using project for the web and it has the advantage of being on the Power Platform so we can really harness the power of power apps power automate and powerbi and we can manage all of our projects through a web browser so that’s project plan one project Plan Three includes project for the web so pretty much everything that we have in Project plan one but it also includes Project online to manage more comp Lex projects now project plan 5 is really the Big Daddy of them all this includes everything in the first two project plans but it also allows us to do a lot of highlevel project portfolio management and if you want to take a deeper look at the different features so that you can compare and contrast if you come onto this page and scroll down you can see exactly what each of these plans contains so it’s definitely worth having a little look through these if you want to go for a cloud-based solution now the other options that we have when it comes to project is to choose an on premises solution so let’s jump across to that tab now the first thing you’ll notice immediately is that the prices are a lot higher and that’s because this is a one-time purchase option it’s not a subscription so we’re not paying a monthly fee to access the software we’re actually purchasing it and downloading it onto app PC so we pay a onetime price and it’s hours forever now of course the disadvantage of things like this is that if there are any updates to the software we might have to wait for a security patch to be released or if we want to get new features we might have to wait for the new version to be released before we can access them whereas if we’re using a cloud-based Solution on a subscription package that updates automatically now when it comes to the project on premise Solutions we have project standard 2021 and project professional 2021 so project standard has all of the core functionality but it doesn’t really contain too many collaborations tools and some of the more advanced features project professional contains absolutely everything so if you’re a pmo looking to do some high level project management then this is going to be the application for you and of course it includes absolutely everything that we have in Project standard and project professional 2021 is what we’re going to be using in this course so we basically have access to all of the features so those are all the options you have when it comes to acquiring project so what’s new in Project 2021 when compared with project 2019 well first off remember that I’m using project professional 2021 if you’re using the project Standard Version then some of these new features might not be available so just make sure that you check the version that you’re using prior to commencing this lesson and if you want to check which version of project you’re using just click on the file tab and jump into account so let’s start out with just a generalization something that’s different a lot of the icons in Project 2021 have a much more modern updated look and feel so you might notice that when you first open up the application now if we go through each ribbon so let’s now go through each ribbon and I’ll highlight the minor differences and it is worth mentioning there aren’t a huge amount of changes or differences between 2019 and 2021 the main overall difference is really something that’s inconsequential to day-to-day project management the biggest difference in Project 2021 is that Microsoft seem to be moving towards a more cloud-based offering but with regards to the design and the functionality there are just a few little differences so let’s start out by jumping into file and if we go into new this is where we can come to create a new project so we have a blank project and then we have our templates listed underneath that we can use now one of the differences here is that we have a new template and it’s the one that you can see at the top here the Sprints project so if we open up this template it gives us this Sprint planning board which looks completely different to what we’re used to working in in project this is very similar to using something like board view if you’re working in Microsoft planner or project for the web so we have a brand new template in Project 2021 now if we go to the task ribbon and take a look at what’s different here the only thing is if we go all the way over to the right hand side of the ribbon we have a little link to group here now this button allows us to link tasks in our project to a plan that we have in Microsoft planner so if I click on this it’s going to open up a little pan on the right hand side and it’s going to allow me to link to a specific task in a plan another change we can find on the report ribbon aside from all of these reports that we can run we have a new report called task board reports so if I was to select one of these standard reports this is basically related to the board that the tasks are assigned to and boards are very similar to buckets again in an application like Microsoft planner or project for the web so just be aware that we have access to that new report if we jump across to the project tab again in the Properties Group the only change we have here is the ability to manage as Sprints so we can do things like change the name of our Sprints add more Sprints to find the start and finish and the length and if we go across to the view tab again we have this new view task board view which allows us to view our tasks based on different buckets that they’re stored in now if we go to the help tab not too much has changed on here but one change we do have is notice at the top here it says Gant chart format so this is where I can come to start making changes to the bars that you see in the project plan now previously in Project 2019 this tab was actually just called format so there’s been a little bit of a name change just there and that is pretty much it when it comes to the actual differences that are going to affect what we’re doing when we’re working in Project as I said a lot of the bigger changes have come in the background and the fact that Microsoft is moving to a more cloud-based environment in this first exercise we’re going to start nice and gently so I’d like you to make sure that you have downloaded and installed project hopefully you’re already at that stage I don’t want you to make sure that you’ve downloaded and saved the course and exercise files you’ll find those in the relevant folders within the course just make sure that you have those saved off somewhere safe because we’re going to be referring to those throughout this course and then finally make sure that you have reviewed your settings in Project options so that if you’re working working along with me everything matches and we don’t get confused so that is all I need you to do for this first exercise see how you go with that and I will see you in the next one for the next section you’ll want to download the course exercise files click the link below in the video description to get these you can also scroll through the details to find timestamps for each section in this course if you’re enjoying this training please leave us a comment before we get into the nuts and bolts of how project works we need to get ourselves familiar with the project interface and when I say interface I just basically mean what we’re looking at on this screen so I’ve opened up a project and we’ll just walk through the different parts of the screen so that you’re familiar with where everything lives so if we start right at the top you can see we have our title bar this is where your you’re going to see whatever you’ve saved your project as and then underneath that we have various different ribbon tabs and if you’re used to using other Microsoft applications like maybe word or Excel or PowerPoint this takes on exactly the same structure we have our different ribbons and each ribbon contains different commands which help us execute actions in project and all of the commands are grouped logically onto different ribbons and also into different groups you can see right at the bottom we have the group name so undo view clipboard font schedule so on and so forth and those groups are really just there to make it a lot easier for us to find exactly the command that we’re looking for at any given time we also have a file tab at the top which takes us into what we call the backstage area and we’ll talk about this in more detail in the next lesson for the time being let’s just click the back arrow to take us back to our main window now aside from backstage and the regular ribbons that we have when we open up project we also have what we call contextual ribbons and I can see one of them on the screen right now and it’s this one just here Gant chart format now what contextual ribbons are are ribbons that only appear as and when they’re needed now because I’m currently in Gant chart view that’s why I can see the Gant chart format ribbon and this ribbon contains all of the commands that I need to manage and format my Gant chart now if I was to click somewhere else so let’s click up here in the timeline notice that I get a different contextual ribbon this time I get the timeline format ribbon so ribbons will appear and disappear depending on what we’re clicked on that’s why we call them contextual so just be aware of that point now next to our ribbon tabs we have this little tell me what you want to do box so what I can do from up here is that I can use this little bar to search for different Comm commands on the ribbons if I was struggling to find something or this is where I can come to get help on something specific so maybe I want to know a little bit more about timelines I can type it in and when I hover my mouse over the arrow I have a short list of items that I can get help on so if I select the first one it’s going to open up the help Pane and then I get access to the help files which talks me through the process of creating a timeline in Project it’s Al worth noting that if you quickly want to jump up to that tell me box there is a keyboard shortcut of alt Q that’s going to position your cursor in the correct place and you can then type in whatever it is you need help on now just under the ribbons we have timeline view now this is something that you don’t have to have toggled on you can simply turn this off by going to the view Tab and deselecting timeline and notice if I do that it gets rid of it if I click again it brings it back but the timeline is a really nice way of just kind of getting an overview of everything that’s going on on your project and if you have that turned on you’re going to see it running across the top of the primary project area and just under timeline view this is the main area that we’re going to be working with this is the Gant chart that we’re looking at and the Gant chart consists of two parts really we have all of our tasks listed in a grid form and then on the right hand side we have that represented with these visual bars which make it really nice and easy for us to see the duration of each task and how all of our tasks link together and in general this is going to be the view that you work in for the majority of the time if you want to modify the size of these then you can definitely do that so if we hover our Mouse over the borderline between the table and the actual Gant chart we can drag out and we can drag back in again so we can really customize the size so that it’s suits us and there’s quite a lot of information lurking underneath here so you might want to widen this out quite a bit depending on what it is you’re doing I think I’m going to leave mine there for the time being you can also do the same using the horizontal splitter so once again if I hover my mouse over the boundary I can make more room for the timeline or I can drag the gantar back up again we have our scroll bars out the side so I can scroll up and down and see all of the tasks that I currently have in my project project plan and then finally at the bottom we have the status bar now if you take a look over on the left hand side you can see it’s telling me that all new tasks are Autos scheduled and if I click on this I can switch between Autos scheduled and manually scheduled tasks now we’ll get on to that a little bit more later on but just be aware that this acts as a toggle down in the status far and then all the way over on the right hand side this is where we can come to switch between different views So currently we’re working in ganta chart view but we have a task usage view a resource View and also a resource sheet view as well and of course all of these we’re going to discuss in more detail later in the course the final thing we have is a little Zoom slider so if we want to zoom out or zoom in then we can definitely do that as well and this is fairly standard across all of the Microsoft applications so if you’ve used this previously then that’s probably not too much different for you now the final thing to highlight here is the quick access toolbar now the quick access toolbar you’ll find underneath the ribbons just above the timeline and currently I just have a few icons on my quick access toolbar now this is a customizable toolbar which allows us to add commands that we use frequently to it so that they’re quick and easy to access and we don’t have to hunt through the ribbons and we have a whole lesson dedicated to how we can customize this and set it up so it works for us but that is pretty much the project interface have a little look at it make yourself familiar with where all the commands are and which ribbons they’re located on and I will see you in the next lesson the ribbon tabs help us organize our commands logically into groups and we briefly touched on this in the last lesson but I want to explore these in a bit more detail so that you start to get familiar with where different things are located because in Project we have so many commands it can sometimes be a little bit overwhelming so if we start with the first tab just here the task tab this is where you’re going to find a lot of the commonly used tasks so this is where you’ll go to find things like cut copy paste and all of your font formatting options it’s also where we can go to manage everything related to our tasks we can update the progress in the schedule group we can link and unlink tasks in there as well we can switch between Auto schedule and manually scheduled tasks and we can add things like summary tasks and Milestones this is also where we can come in the Properties Group to see an overview of our project information the resource tab is where we would go for everything related to resources that we’ve added into our project it’s where we can go to assign resources and create resource PS and it’s also where we’re going to find things like our leveling options the report tab is where we come to create reports in Project once you have your project up and running you’re you’re probably going to want to start running some reports to analyze that data you might want to run a cost report or a report related to the progress we can even do things like create visual reports and dashboards from here as well on the project tab this is where we’re going to find lots of options for managing our overall project is where we can change the working time view our project information and also do things like set baselines and move our project as well the view tab is where we come to switch views as I mentioned at the start we’re currently looking at the default view which is the Gant and timeline view but we can modify how we’re viewing and what we’re viewing from here this is also where we can come to do things like sort and filter our data the help tab is pretty self-explanatory it’s where we can come if we want to get help notice the first button here is the help button we have a keyboard shortcut of F1 to open those help files and what you’ll see when you click on F1 is pretty much the same as when you’re using that tell me box at the top it’s going to open up a pane on the right hand side where you can go in and search for whatever it is you’re looking for help on so really nice and useful and then of course the final ribbon that I have here is the contextual ribbon Gant chart format and as I mentioned this is contextual so it’s only appearing because I’m in Gant chart View if I click on timeline view it switches to the timeline format ribbon and these contextual ribbons contain in this example everything I need to change and format that timeline area running across the top so those are going to change depending on where you’re clicked now the final tab that we haven’t spoken about much yet is the file tab now notice I refer to this sort of separately to the others and that’s because it does look different when you click on file it takes you into to what we call the backstage area and this is where you’re going to find sort of your more admin style tasks this is where you would come if you want to create a new project either a blank project or maybe from a template this is where we come if you want to open an existing project that maybe we have saved off to a specific folder or maybe even in the cloud if we click on info this is where we can come to see some information about this particular project that we have open we have save and save as and we’re going to get into those a little bit more later on in this section we can print from here we can share our file we can export it and we can also close and then towards the bottom we have account so this is where you can come to find out information related to your account for example we can see here exactly which version of project we’re using so sometimes maybe if your it team is saying to you what version of project are you using this is where you can come to find out that information now noce here it says Microsoft Project online desktop client this is where we also come to install any updates and we can also do things like change at theme for example if I wanted to work with a black theme I could do that if I preferred that I could go with this nice dark gray or I can stick to white or colorful which in general is what I like to set we can also change our office background so if you cast your eyes up to the top right hand corner you can see I just have this sort of doodle pattern in the background this is where we can change that so so that might be something that you want to do and finally at the bottom here this is really important this is our project options area and we have lots of different pages of information Now options is where we come to adjust as settings and really personalize how our copy of project works for us and we’re going to be dipping in and out of here throughout the balance of this course and in fact in a lesson that we have coming up we’re going to jump into here and I’m going to show you some of the settings that I recommend that you change before you get started now just before we leave here I just want to go back to the open screen now as I mentioned this is where you can come to open any existing project files you have stored off and you can see I’ve got some locations here where I could select my project files from so I use one drive cloud storage so I could open up a project file that I have saved into one drive very easily from here alternatively if I just have it saved off to my PC I could choose the this PC option underneath other locations and if I click on browse that’s going to open up file explorer and allow me to navigate that way if that’s what you prefer if you cast your eyes over to the right hand side notice we have two folders at the top here projects and folders now I’m currently clicked on projects and it’s showing me the last projects or the most recent projects that I opened now this is a very new install of project 2021 so I don’t have a great deal in here but if you’ve been using project for a while then this list is going to be full of your most recent files the same thing with the folders area this is going to show you the last folders that you saved files into and the idea here is it just makes it really quick for you to find things that you’ve worked on recently and open them and we can simply open by double clicking on the file in the list and if you have any files that maybe you access every single day you can pin those to the top of the list so that they don’t don’t move around when we start opening other files for example if I want to pin marketing campaign planning project I can click on the pin icon and that’s going to move it up to this pinned area just here and that’s going to stay there until I choose to unpin this item and I can simply do that by clicking on the drawing pin once again and it’s going to remove it from that little area now the final thing to mention about these ribbons running across the top is that you can minimize or collapse up the ribbon and give yourself a little bit more room on the screen now the way that you do that is if you just rightclick your Mouse anywhere on the ribbon you can see in the contextual menu we have an option to collapse up the ribbon if I click on this it’s going to collapse that up I can just see those tab headings but I can’t actually see the commands and it just gives me a little bit more room to work with now what happens when I want to actually access a command well I simply click on the tab and it’s going to pull down tempor temporarily that ribbon when I click away again it’s going to disappear if I want to bring it back permanently I just need to click on a tab right click and then uncheck collapse the ribbon so that’s more of a detailed run through of the different ribbons that we have that backstage area and what you can find in there and also how we can collapse up the ribbons something that I highly recommend that you do is customize the quick access toolbar and I mentioned the quick access toolbar in the last lesson it’s this little toolbar that we can see running just above the timeline and underneath the ribbons now currently the toolbar isn’t showing too much we have a few little icons on there and it’s worth noting that when you’re looking at your copy of project your quick access toolbar might not look exactly the same as mine or you might not be able to see it at all so let me show you first of all how you can turn the quick access toolbar off or on now mine’s currently on so I’m going to turn it off but the process is the same if you want to do the reverse so once again we just need to right click our Mouse anywhere on the ribbon and in the contextual menu you can see I have hide quick access toolbar now if you don’t have yours displayed that’s going to say show quick access toolbar so if I click this notice that that toolbar now disappears if I rightclick again and click show it brings it back again so make sure that you’re showing that quick access toolbar now what exactly is this quick access toolbar or qat as we refer to it well this is a customizable area where we can add commands that we use frequently to make them easy to find an action and you can see on here I have a few commands added already so I can create a new project from here I can save I can undo do and I can redo so how do we customize this quick access toolbar and fill it full of commands that we use all the time well there are a couple of different ways that we can do this notice that right next to the quick access toolbar I have a little drop- down arrow when I hover over it says customize quick access toolbar and that’s going to open up a menu which is going to allow me to add very quickly one of these 15 or so commands and you can see the ones that are currently on my quick access toolbar already have a tick next to them so new save undo and redo so if I decide that I’m always print previewing my projects I could choose print preview and it’s going to add that command to that quick access toolbar maybe I want to add email I could do that as well now notice in here we only have a few of the vast amount of commands that are available in project so what if we want to add a command to the qat that isn’t in this list well well again there are a couple of different ways that we can do this now the easiest way to add a command that you can see on one of the ribbons is simply to rightclick on it so maybe I’m always looking at the project information window so if I go across to the project tab where we have project information I’m going to right click and I’m going to say add to quick access toolbar that is the quickest way to add any command that you can see on your ribbons I’m going to right click on spelling I’m going to add that to the quick access toolbar as well so really nice and straightforward and as you would imagine if I then decide that I want to remove something from this quick access toolbar I can rightclick on it and I have a remove from quick access toolbar option just here now it’s worth noting that not every command in Project is available on a ribbon and some commands are available on contextual ribbons which means we don’t actually see them until they’re needed so what if I want to to add one of those commands that I can’t currently see on the ribbons to my quick access toolbar well this is where we need to click the dropdown again to go into customize and go to more commands now this is basically going to jump us across to our project options and you can see it’s jumped us straight into the quick access toolbar area now what you can see in here if we start on the right hand side is I can see a preview of my quick access toolbar and I can see all the commands that I currently have on there so project information and spelling were the last two that we added on the left hand side this is where I can see all of the commands that I can move to the quick access toolbar now they are grouped together so currently I’m only looking at popular commands if I want to see a list of all commands available in project I need to choose all commands from that dropdown and now I have all of the commands in here Unfortunately they are organized into alphabetical order to make them a little bit easier to find so we can then scroll through find exactly what we want so let’s go for something like I’m just going to go for arrange we can select it and then click the add button to move it across to the quick access toolbar so very very simple just to add things similarly if you want to remove something from the quick access toolbar you can select it and then click the remove button in the middle we can also organize our commands using the up and down arrows on the right hand side so maybe I decide that I want undo to be first in the list and redo next and the final thing I always like to do here is I like to add some separators now separators are a very simple way just to add a little bit of structure into that quick access toolbar they allow us to visually separate commands of similar type at the top of every list in here you’re going to find separator so I’m in all commands but if I was in popular commands right at the top of that list we have a separator as well so I’m going to add a couple of separators into here I’m just going to rearrange them so let’s move this one down to I think just about there so now when I click on okay take a look at how that quick access toolbar has updated so it’s added the new commands and you can see that we have these faint lines those are the separate which just adds a little bit of structure in the final thing to point out here is that if you don’t like or you find it difficult to identify these commands on the quick access toolbar simply by looking at the icon we can choose to have a label next to the icon and this is a reasonably new feature in Project let’s click the drop down right at the bottom here we have show command labels so if I click on this you can see it adds a piece of text next to each one making it a little little bit easier to know what that icon represents of course the downside is it does take up more room so you can’t have quite as many items on your qat I’m going to switch mine back to the icons but that is pretty much all there is to know about the very useful feature the quick access toolbar if you want to work efficiently in Microsoft Project then you’re going to want to know a selection of keyboard shortcuts to help you move around your project plan quickly and the good news is if you are already a Microsoft user as in you are used to using applications like Excel PowerPoint or maybe even word many of the keyboard shortcuts that you already know and love in those applications are exactly the same in project so things like control C to copy crl V to paste crl X to cut crl s to to save all of these are exactly the same now of course there are some differences and some that are very specific to project only and in general what you’ll find is that you’ll probably have 10 to 15 keyboard shortcuts memorized and you will use them all the time I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts because I find they really do speed up the way that I work so where can you go to see a full list of all the keyboard shortcuts available in Project well the easiest way is to go into the help files so we’re going to go in there from The Tell Me box and I mentioned this keyboard shortcut earlier we’re going to press alt Q which is going to jump our cursor up to the top there so if we type in keyboard shortcuts and hover over the arrow I want the second one keyboard shortcuts for project so this is going to open that help file and then as we scroll down the shortcuts are divided into different groups so if we jump into frequently used shortcuts we can see a big long list of all all the different shortcuts to execute specific tasks in project and as I said you’ll notice that some of these are exactly the same so saving a project file crl s creating a new project file crln that’s the same as if you wanted to create a new word document in Word so have a little look through these maybe jot down a few that are going to be most useful to you and then after a while you’ll find that you get these memorized now another way to find out if a command on the ribbon has a keyboard shortcut assigned to it because not all commands do is to Simply hover your mouse over the command now notice here I’m hovered over bold on that ribbon and I can see the keyboard shortcut in Brackets in that screen tip that comes up contrl B if I hover over underline contrl U is the keyboard shortcut if I hover over copy contrl C is the keyboard shortcut and if I hover over for example in ECT it’s not showing me the keyboard shortcut so does that mean that it doesn’t have one well not necessarily because something else we also have which I know a lot of people love to work with are what we call keytips now we can access our keytips by pressing the ALT key on our keyboard now as soon as I do that check out what’s happened to my ribbon this is a great way to be able to navigate and select commands entirely using your keyboard so maybe I want to switch The View I can go across to the view ribbon by pressing w i then jump across to that ribbon and get a whole new set of keyboard shortcuts so let’s say I want to look at task usage I’m going to press K that’s going to drop down the menu I want the first one so I need to select K again and now it’s switching me across to that particular view take a look at the bottom I can see my task usage pan and I did that using entirely keyboard shortcuts so that ALT key is really useful so if you recall I mentioned that some of these commands when you hover over them don’t have a keyboard shortcut showing but if we press the ALT key and make sure that we’re on the task tab press h notice that inspect actually does I could use NS and that is effectively a shortcut for this inspect command and if you want to turn these keytips off simply press the ALT key again to get rid of them when we’re working in Project we have lots of different built-in views that we can display in different pains and the initial view or the default view that will load up when you first start using project is called Gant with timeline and you can see that reflected in the current project at the top we have this timeline view giving us an overview and then underneath we have the Gant chart which shows us all of our individual tasks our task information and then a visual rep representation of those tasks now if we jump up to the view tab up here we have a split view group so this is where I can control whether or not I see that timeline view at the top so if I decide that I’m not interested in this at this stage I can simply deselect timeline and that’s going to disappear put the check back and it brings it back again something else I can do from here is I can turn on the details view and what this is going to do is it’s going to split the screen and it’s going to add task form View at the bottom and this task form basically gives me more information about whatever task I’m currently clicked on in my project plan so if I was to select this second task just here I can see a little bit more information about this specific task So currently I don’t have any resources assigned to this task so that is why this area is blank but I can see the duration is 2 days it’s effort driven I can see the start and finish date I can see that it’s fixed units and I can also see a list of any predecessors down here as well so that details pane can be pretty useful for viewing more detailed information now I’m going to turn this off and I’m going to switch my timeline back on again now let’s jump back to the task tab because you can see that we have a View group just here now if I click the dropdown this is where we can choose what we’re displaying in our primary window So currently you can see that I’m displaying the gantar but I’ve also got a big long list of some of the most popular views that I might want to switch to for example I could switch across to the task usage View and I’m now seeing that in the primary window as opposed to the Gant chart now notice at the side here we have task usage and timeline now the one that’s highlighted in green is basically where you’re currently clicked so for me that is Task usage if I was to click up in the timeline that title is going to turn to screen so just be aware that you can very simply switch between your views from this Gant chart dropdown the difference between this and jumping across to the view tab is on The View tab we just have a bit more detail about the different views that we can select and it’s split down into views related to tasks and Views related to resources now the final way that we can switch views in Project is by using the status bar and again this is very similar to other Microsoft applications if you cast your ey down to the bottom right hand corner you can see that we have our different views down here so I can switch into Gant chart view which is basically what I’m currently on I can switch across to task usage view which is what we were just looking at I can go to Team planner which is a slightly different way of viewing my project and then I also have a resource sheet so if I have any resources I’m going to be able to see them in there and then finally I have a blank report view as well so as always with micros moft there are numerous different ways of switching views we’re going to be working predominantly in the default view which is Gant chart and timeline so as you leave this lesson ensure that your project is set up in this way another piece of terminology that you need to get used to when you’re working in Project is the concept of tables and a table is a little bit like a spreadsheet in Excel for example currently I have the entry table loaded up on the screen and this is just what you can see over here a table in general is made up of columns and also rows so in this particular entry table you can see the columns that we have a task mode task name duration and then if I was to drag this out we have a lot more lurking underneath there and then we have rows that contain our task information and this has the look and feel as I said of an Excel spreadsheet now the entry table is the main table you’re going to use to enter information about each task but there are other tables that we can load up in order to see other pieces of information and also edit them directly from the table as well so if we jump up to the view tab at the top in the data group we have a table Dro down just here and you can see that currently the entry table is selected that’s the one we’re currently looking at but I have other tables that I can select depending on what I’m interested in seeing at any given time so maybe I want to load up the summary table I can simply select it and it gives me an overview of the main touch points of this particular project or maybe I’m interested in the costs that are assigned to this project I could load up the cost table now we don’t have any costs in this project as yet but we can see our fixed costs our total cost our Baseline the variance all things like that let’s go back up to tables because we also have a more tables option right at the bottom and this is going to open up this little window which is going to show us all of the tables that we can load up into our primary window so if you can’t find what you’re looking for in that tables drop down jump into more tables and you should be able to find it in here so maybe I’m interested in looking at the workt let’s apply and this is going to show me information about the work hours the Baseline work hours if I’ve set that the variant the actual so on and so forth now another way that you can quickly switch between tables is to hover your mouse over this little square in the corner so just above where we have row zero and to the left of where it says task name if we right click in this little area this is a quick way of switching between the most popular types of tables so I’m going to switch back to entry but that’s pretty much all you need to know about tables at this stage just know that there are lots of different tables that you can load up in order to view different types of information in exercise 2 we’re going to practice some of the skills that we’ve learned so far in this section so the first thing I’d like you to do is just open up project and then open a new blank project I’d like you to review the ribbons and familiarize yourself with where the commands are located on each ribbon I’d then like you to practice moving between ribbons and selecting commands s using keyboard shortcuts once you feel comfortable with all that let’s add some commands to our quick access toolbar so I don’t mind which ones you add I’ve just given you some examples here of adding the format painter the 100% complete button and copy and finally I just like you to have a little play around and switch between views and tables so that when we do that throughout the course you know exactly where you need to go so a few things to do there if you’d like to see my answer then please keep watching so the first thing I asked you to do in this exercise is open a new blank project so I’m back at the start screen I’m in the new section we have blank project at the top doubleclick to select the next thing I asked you to do was just familiarize yourself with the different ribbons so take a good look through some of these ribbons and review some of the commands that we have on these ribbons remember if we hover our Mouse over any of these we get that little SCP it pop up which gives us more of an idea as to what this does so I just wanted you to sort of have a little look through start to get familiar with the layout of project the next thing I asked you to do was to practice navigating quickly and opening up commands using keyboard shortcuts so remember we can press our ALT key which pulls up those little letters so for example I could go to the view tab by pressing W I could go to the Gant chart by pressing G and then I could switch to the tracking Gan by pressing n so make sure you’re familiar with those ALT key shortcuts the next thing I asked you to do was to practice adding some commands to the quick access toolbar now I already have quite a few on here and I didn’t really mind which commands you added but I did give you some examples and one of those was the format painter so we can simply find it here in the clipboard group right click add to quick access toolbar another one was the 100% complete button which is just here in the schedule group rightclick add to quick access toolbar and the final thing I asked you to practice was simply switching between different views and tables so on the task ribbon we can click the drop down underneath Gant chart and we can switch to different views from here so I can switch to the resource sheet I can switch to Resource usage so on and so forth and if I want to switch between tables I can click on The View tab click the tables drop down the default is the entry table but I can switch to any of these so I can go to the worktable the summary table so on and so forth so just make sure you’re familiar with all of these different controls there’s lots of options and settings that we can change in Microsoft Project to get our copy of project working in a way that best suits us and really the options that you set are very much personal preference but there are a few that I would recommend that you either toggle on or toggle off before you get going so let’s run through those and I’ll show you my recommendations now to get to your project options we need to jump up to the file tab which is going to take us into that backstage area and we’re going straight down to the bottom let’s open up options now project options is a huge area we have so many different things that we can change in here you can see we have these different categories running down the left hand side so let’s let be logical and start at the top with the general tab I’m just going to draw your attention to some that I’d like you to check and possibly think about changing now notice here in the second section we have project View and it’s telling me that the default view here is Gant with timeline and that’s exactly what you can see behind here we have the timeline at the top and the ganta underneath and in general this is the view that I would recommend you start working with there are other options in here but if you have it set to something else make sure that at least for the duration of this course you have it set to Gant with timeline we can also choose our date format from here as well now this will differ depending on where you are in the world as you can probably tell I’m in the UK and the UK has a different date format too somewhere like the US now I have my copy of project set to us St format and you can see all of those listed down here and in general I like my dates to show in project in a very concise way so instead of this date format I’m actually going to change mine to something a little bit more concise I’m going to put it to that let’s now jump across to the schedule page and take a look at what we have in here now at the top here where we have calendar options for this project this is basically the time scale that our project is going to take on so the week starts on Monday the fiscal year starts in January and a working day is essentially 8 till 5:00 p.m. 8 hours per day 40 hours per week and 20 days per month now we’re going to talk a lot more about calendars a bit later on but this is your standard calendar that project uses by default of course we can set up our own calendars and modify this default calendar so that it more accurately reflects the working hours of our company because not everybody works Monday to Friday 8: till 5:00 p.m. for the time being we’re going to leave these default calendar settings alone if we scroll down to scheduling options for this project you can see where it says new task created are Autos scheduled and there are two options in here you can have manually scheduled tasks and Autos scheduled tasks so I’d like you to make sure that you have this set to Autos schedule what that means is that project will use its own scheduling engine to calculate when the task should occur and in general it’s a lot less work for you than manually scheduling your tasks now a little bit further down we have this little check box new tasks are effort driven now I’m going to put a check in this box because what this means is that the total work or effort Remains the Same when you modify resource assignments for example if we assign two people to a task that task duration decreases because the work is split between two people and usually that’s what you want it to do so make sure you have a little tick in that box and I also want you to make sure that where it says autolink inserted or mve tasks make sure that you don’t have a tick in this box because in my experience having this ticked can end up pretty messy so make sure you untick that now let’s jump across to the save page and check out our save options now right at the top here this is where we can specify where our project files saved so I’m going to change the location let’s go to browse and I want mine saved in my course files folder let’s click on okay and the good thing about this is that every time I now go to save a project file it’s automatically going to jump me straight to this folder because it’s the default file location another thing you might want to check here is autosave so how often would you like your project file to autosave now currently I have mine set to 5 minutes and that’s a little bit too short so I think I’m going to change this to 20 minutes and I want it to save the active project only now another setting that I like to have turned on is prompt before saving and what that means is that every 20 minutes I’m going to get a prompt pop up on my screen asking me if I’d like to save my project file now the reason why I like to have a prompt is that sometimes if I’m just messing around with a project file if I’m not prompted to save it means it’s just going to save it automatically and it might be that I’m doing something that I don’t particularly want to save to the file so I like to have a little prompt and I can choose myself if I want to save or if I don’t again this is very much personal preference but now I’ve set it to 20 minutes you might see it pop up occasionally as we’re working through this course let’s jump across to the advanced page and in this General section I’m also going to turn on this option prompt for project info for new projects so when we create a new project it’s automatically going to open up the project information window so that I can enter in some useful information about my project and this is something in general that I would do at the start anyway when I create a new project so I might might as well have it automatically prompt me to do that so let’s put a tick in there and finally let’s jump across to the trust Center and we’re going to go into our trust Center settings now I’m going to choose Legacy formats just here because this allows me to Define how project deals with files that have been created in older versions of project because what you might find is that if you are trying to open a file that was created in a much older version of project project professional simply will not open it and sometimes you’re not really sure why so I’m going to say prompt when loading files with Legacy or non default file format so that I get a message letting me know that this file was created in an older version let’s click on okay and okay again to save those settings so those are some of the settings that I recommend you change before you start working with project in this lesson we’re going to explore the basics of creating saving and closing a project file and up until this point we’ve been working with just a very basic file that I’ve created from a template in Project now the first thing I’m going to do here is I’m going to close this file down so a couple of points about closing project files there are a few different ways that you can do this we can jump across to the file Tab and we have a close option in here we could also use the keyboard shortcut control W notice that it’s prompting me to save my changes so I’m going to say yes I do want to save those changes and it’s now closed down that file a mistake that a lot of people often make is they immediately go up to the top right hand corner of the screen and click on the cross in the corner now the difference here is that if you click on that cross it’s going to close down all of project so you’re going to need to restart the application again in order to open another file so if you just want to close down the file but leave project open go to file and close or use the keyboard shortcut control W so now we’ve closed that file it’s jumped us directly to the back stage area and to the new section so this is where we can come to create a new project file and you can see we have lots and lots of different templates sometimes it’s quite good to start from a template because it means you’re not having to start completely from scratch and you can see that we have lots of templates in here organized by category that we can have a little search through so maybe I just want a simple project plan I could select this template from here click on Create and it’s going to load that up into the main window and these are great because we can just go in and edit the tasks but we already have the bare bones of a project plan in place so they’re a great starting block if you’re new to project and even if you’re not new to project they can be invaluable now we’re not going to work from a template in this case so control W to close down and this time I’m not going to save the changes because what we want to do is we want want to create a blank project so you can see the first option we have here the first thumbnail is blank project or we can use the keyboard shortcut contrl n which is also going to create us a new blank project now notice what’s happening here if you remember one of the options that we set in the last lesson was that as soon as we create a new project it’s going to pop open the project information window and that’s exactly what it’s doing just here so now I can Define the start date of my project the calendar I want to use where I want to start scheduling from all of that helpful stuff so I’m going to set my project start date to quite a way in the future so let’s do it for the 1st of March next year now when you schedule a project start dat that’s basically where any tasks you add are going to start from but also if you add tasks and you don’t assign a date to them which is something which happens frequently in Project sometimes you’re not really sure when exactly a task is going to start right at the beginning of the project if you add a task with no start date it’s going to give it the default of whatever we have for the start date of the project so in this case March the 1st 2023 now notice that the Finish dat is grade out and that’s because project calculates the Finish date for us automatically based on the tasks in our schedule so the Finish day is constantly moving depending on the duration of each task that’s why we can’t edit it from here another thing to note is that the calendar that this project is is going to use is the standard calendar and I briefly mentioned this again in the last lesson the standard calendar or the default calendar in Project is Monday to Friday 8: to 5:00 p.m. with an hour for lunch now there are a couple of other calendars in here there’s a 24-hour calendar and there’s also a night shift calendar but for now we’re going to keep this on the standard calendar so that’s all the information I want to add about this project at this stage let’s click on okay and the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to save this project if you take a look up in the title bar you’ll see that before you save it for the first time it’s going to be given the very generic name of project one project 2 project 3 so on and so forth so let’s save again we can go into file or we can press crl s and it’s going to jump us across to the save as section now if this is the first time that you’re saving a file it doesn’t matter if you choose save or save as it’s going to take take you to save as because we need to give it a name now I’m going to go straight down to browse and notice what happens again this is another setting that we changed it takes me directly to my default project file location which for me was the course files folder so I’m just going to give this a name my first project and click on Save notice that the name has now changed up in the title bar so now that we’ve saved this for the first time as we work through we can now just save normally so when we press contrl s it’s just going to save all the changes that we’ve made now I’m quickly going to close this file again I’m going to use the keyboard shortcut control W and let’s just briefly take a look at how we can reopen files let’s go to the open page and if you cast your eyes over to the right hand side of the screen notice that the file that we last accessed is at the top of the list and I’m going to click on the drawing pin to pin that to the top so all I really need to do here is double click to reopen and if we control W to close down again the other way that I could open the file is to go to browse and it’s going to jump me back to that folder where I have all of my files saved I can simply select it click on open and it’s going to open the file so really simple and straightforward to create new project files save them and close and open a project I’ve mentioned calendars a few times already in this course so let’s delve into this subject in a little bit more detail and I’ll show you how you can set up your project calendar now as I’ve mentioned calendars in Project Define the working and non-working time for your project and the default calendar in Project is Monday to Friday 8: to 5:00 p.m. with 1 hour for lunch now not everybody works in this way for example some people might work part-time others might work at night some might have certain days of the week off so we have the ability to create additional calendars in project so let’s go up to the project Tab and in the Properties Group we want to go to change working time this is where we can come to take a look at our different calendars and Define the working hours for that calendar it’s also where we can create new calendars from as well now notice at the top we have loaded up our standard project calendar this is the default we have a little Legend which tells us what this shading means in this calendar so you can see here anything that’s white is working time so that’s Monday to Friday anything that’s shaded in Gray is non-working time so in this calendar that is Saturday and Sunday and that’s all we have in this particular standard calendar notice that if I click on a day in the calendar it shows me over on the right hand side that this particular day that I’m clicked on is a working day and these are the hours so 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. we then have a 1 hour break for lunch and then the afternoon is 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and then underneath we have a little exceptions table and a work weeks table now if we go back up to the top and click the drop down notice we have two other calendars in here so let’s take a look at the night shift calendar so this is defined by different working time so you can see here every day is a working day apart from Sunday and if I click on one of the working days we can see the working times for this particular night shift calendar so 12:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. then 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. 11:00 p.m. to 12: a.m. now if we take a look at the work weeks tab underneath this tab basically represents the days and times when people work now because this says default in here the default calendar applies to all dates so let’s switch back to our standard project calendar because what we’re going to do here is we’re going to make some modifications so I’m going to make sure I’ve clicked on work weeks where we have default and let’s click on details now I’ve got Sunday selected currently and Sunday is a non-working day in this standard calendar but let’s go to Monday you can see in here it’s showing us the times that apply for this working day now maybe I decide that Monday to Friday the Working Day at my organization doesn’t start until 9:00 a.m. so the morning is basically 9:00 a.m. to 12: we then have an hour for lunch and then the afternoon is 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. instead so I’m going to change these working times now A simple way to do this is I can select all of the days that I want to change the times for simply by holding down my mouse button and dragging down so I’ve got Monday to Friday selected I’m going to say set days to these specific working times which allows me to edit these fields so I can simply come in here and I’m going to make the change so let’s say we want this to be 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and click on okay and you can now see that that’s been reflected up here where it says working times for October the 5th 9:00 a.m. to 12 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and you’ll find that is the same for all of the working days so very simple and straightforward to modify the standard calendar now it might be that some weeks we have different working hours so for example that kind of middle week between Christmas and New Year where a lot of people still work the company might decide that we have reduced hours because it’s Christmas so if we want to add in a schedule that accommodates that we can simply add in another work week in this little area at the bottom so we could give it a name let’s say I’m just going to call it Christmas week I can choose when that’s going to start so let’s move across to December and it’s going to be let’s say this week just here it starts on the 26th and ends on the 30th I can then go into details and I can set up the hours for that particular week so again it’s Monday to Friday I’m going to set the working hours and maybe everyone’s doing a half day so let’s say 12 to 6: p.m. and I can just delete out what we have here click on okay and check out the calendar above it’s now updated to reflect that change and notice in the calendar these are now highlighted in yellow and if we look at the legend it’s telling me that this is a non default work week because it’s a little bit of an anomaly and of course from here we can also create additional calendars so maybe I want to create a calendar for all the members of Staff who work part-time we have a create new calendar button in the top right hand corner let’s click it and I’m going to call this part-time calendar and in general I like to base the part-time calendar off of the standard calendar and simply modify it so I’m going to say make a copy of standard let’s click on okay I want to save the changes I’ve made to the standard calendar and now I’m in the part-time calendar so I can now go through and Define the working times so let’s go into details again I’m going to say

that part-time workers they work Monday Wednesday and Friday and they do 900 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and let’s get rid of that underneath click on okay and now I have my parttime calendar which I can select from the four calendar drop-down at the top using project calendars we can Define exceptions for regular work weeks such as public holidays so in this lesson I’m going to show you how you can set those up so the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to jump across to the project Tab and we’re going to go back into change working time and we’re going to add our exceptions to the standard project calendar so let’s make sure that we’ve got that selected at the top there which we have and at the bottom we want to make sure we’re clicked on the exceptions tab now exceptions are primarily for nonworking time for example I might want to set up an exception for the first bank holiday in May next year now for those of you outside of the UK a bank holiday is basically just a public holiday and for us we have a bank holiday on the first of May it’s our Spring Bank holiday so I’m going to set up an exception in this calendar because it’s non-w working time so let’s first type in the name I’m going to double click so I can edit this cell and I’m going to say Spring Bank holiday now when I press the Tab Key it puts in some default start and finish dates but we’re going to jump straight in here and we’re going to change this so the Spring Bank holiday occurs on the 1st of May every year so let’s select that and it’s just one day so you can see the f time has automatically updated to reflect a one-day holiday maybe I want to add in another exception so this time we’re going to say that the office is being renovated so none of us are working now that probably wouldn’t happen in a real world scenario we’d probably be asked to work from home but just for this example let’s add in 5 days of nonworking time for office Renovations and this is going to occur in the summer so let’s go and say that this is going to start on the 12th of June and it’s going to end on the 16th of June so we have a 5-day duration now because this is non-working time I don’t really need to jump into details and specify anything else other than the name and the start and finish dates and you can see that when I click on exception number two office Renovations at the top here it says June the 12th 2023 is nonworking and if we now take a look in the little calendar preview for June just above you can see that those have been shaded out according inly in the calendar and if we look at the legend it’s telling me that this relates to exception days for this calendar so so far everything is working correctly now another thing you can add in are recurring exceptions for example maybe our team has a monthly all day meeting now technically these might be considered as working days but we’re going to block them out in our calendar as nonworking days and this is a meeting that occurs every month so we want to make sure that we set this exception to recur month monthly so let’s type in the name we’re going to say monthly meeting now for this I don’t necessarily need to specify the start and finish dates just here if we jump into details to open up this pane this is where we can set our recurrence pattern and one thing to note here is that when you’re adding in this type of recurring exception all of the recurrences need to be the same so we’re going to set this to nonworking time and then we’re going to choose our recurrence pattern so this is a monthly me meeting and I’m going to say that this meeting occurs on the first Monday of every month and then we need to choose the range of recurrence so when is the first meeting going to be when’s it going to start so I’m going to say that this first meeting is going to be towards the start of the project so our project begins on the 1st of March so let’s say that the first meeting is going to be the Monday after the 6th of March and then we can choose a specific date that we want this to end by or we can choose to end end after a specific number of occurrences so I’m going to schedule this for an entire year so I’m going to say end after 12 occurrences because it’s a monthly meeting let’s click on okay and now we should see this also shaded out in our calendar as an exception day so we’re on June 2023 but remember I scheduled it for all of next year and the first Monday of the month the 5th of June is in fact shaded out if we go to May you can see yes it’s there as well so one and so forth and now you can also see in the exceptions table at the bottom the start and finish dates have now updated to reflect the information that we’ve added into details let’s click on okay and we now have those exceptions added to our standard calendar in order for everything to work correctly in Project there’s some information that project needs to know for example project needs to know how many work hours there are in a day day and a week along with how many days there are in a month so that it can convert durations between time units it also needs to know the default start and finish times for tasks when they don’t have dependencies to calculate them so let’s just confirm what our calendar hours actually are first of all so we’re going to go up to the project Tab and we’re going to go into change working time now we’re in the standard project calendar and you can see in the preview window underneath it’s currently got today’s date highlighted October the 4th 2022 and then we have our working times defined 9:00 a.m. to 12: p.m. we have a 1H hour break for lunch and then we work 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. so this works out to an 8 hour day which is 40 hours a week so these are the working times that we’ve defined for our standard project calendar and if you recall we did make a slight amendment to these earlier on in this course so now that we have just reviewed our actual working times let’s click on okay and we’re going to jump into project options so let’s go up to the file tab all the way down into options and we’re going to go to the schedule tab now we did briefly look in here a bit earlier on because at the top here this is where we can Define our calendar options for this project so what we’re basically trying to do here is we want to make sure that our calendar options in here match our actual project calendar now notice here default start time is 8:00 a.m. now note at the top here default start time and default end time are currently set to 8 till 5: so we need to change this because our project calendar is 9 to 6 so we’re going to reselect 9:00 a.m. and we’re going to finish at where are we all the way down here 6:00 p.m. and this still works out at a standard 8 hours per day 40 hours per week and 20 days days per month if you’re wondering how it calculates this 20 days per month project basically says there’s roughly four weeks in a month and there are five working days per week so 4 * 5 is effectively 20 days per month now the final thing you want to check in here is right at the top where it says calendar options for this project and we have the project that we’ve got open right now listed now if we click the drop down we want to make sure we change this to all new projects because if we leave it on just the project that we have open these timings are only going to be used for that particular project and I want to use these timings for all new projects that I create so let’s make sure we select all new projects and click on okay so now our project options are synchronized with what we have defined in our project calendar in this exercise we’re going to practice some of the skills that we’ve learned in this section of the course so I’d like you first to open the file new product launch. MPP from the exercise files folder once you’ve got that file open I’d like you to go in and change the working time of the standard calendar to 9:00 a.m. to 1: p.m. and 2: p.m. to 6:00 p.m. I’d then like you to add another calendar a part-time calendar for staff that work Monday to Friday 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. I’d like you to sync the project calendar options with the project calendar and once you’ve done all of that I’d like you to close the project file so a few different things to do there if you’d like to see my answer then please keep watching so the first part of this task was to open the file new product launch. MPP from the exercise files folder so this is that file you can see it’s already populated with tasks durations start and finish dates now the next part of the task was to change the working time so for this we need to go to the project Tab and in the Properties Group Change working time now I asked you to change the working time for the calendar standard project calendar which is the one that we currently have selected and if I click on one of the working days so Monday to Friday you can see that the current working times are 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 5 p.m. so let’s go across to work weeks and click on the details button and from here we can Define our working times so I’m going to select Monday to Friday and we do that by holding down the shift key and I’m going to say set days to these specific times and then we’re going to modify this 9:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2: p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and click on okay so now all of our working days should be set to those times I then asked you to create a new new calendar for part-time workers so let’s click on create new calendar I’m going to call this half time and I’m going to make a copy of the standard calendar to do this I’m going to say yes I want to save changes to the standard calendar and now I can Define my working hours so once again I’m going to select a working day let’s click on the details button but this time we’re going to select Monday to Friday we’re going to set to these specific working times but the smart time people only work 9 to 1 so let’s add that in and we can delete out the other times click on okay and now we can switch between these two calendars we have our standard project calendar with our new times and then we have our halftime calendar where we have 9:00 a.m. to 1: p.m. the next thing I asked you to do was to synchronize your times with the actual project options calendar so for this we can jump straight into options by clicking the options button at the bottom we’re going to say that our week starts on a Monday and I want to Define my default start and end times so we want these to match the times we’ve just set so 900 a.m. and the default end time is 6:00 p.m. and click on okay let’s click okay again I’m going to give my file a quick save and then we’re going to close it’s time now to talk about something that is really important in project and that is the difference between automatic and manually scheduled tasks now before we get into the details we need to make a quick change in Project options and as I’ve just been talking you can see the project has popped up a prompt for me to save this project if you recall in a previous lesson I also set this in options as well so I’m going to say yes I do want to save and let’s jump into ad project options now if we go to the schedule page I want to draw your attention to this little section down here scheduling options for this project now notice it says any new tasks that are created are going to be manually scheduled and this applies to this project only so just this file that I have open and if you take a look just behind this window in the status bar you can see right at the bottom it says new tasks m manually scheduled now I want to change this so that every task I schedule is Autos scheduled across all of the projects that I create so I’m going to go in and I’m going to change this because what I want to happen here is that for all new projects I want them to be Autos scheduled by default so I’m going to change it in my options click on okay and it’s not going to switch this project to automatically schedule new task by default I need to manually change that at the bottom so where we have new task manually scheduled I’m going to click just here and make sure that I have Autos scheduled selected going forward if I create new projects it’s going to default to Autos scheduled now what is the difference between manually scheduled tasks and Autos schedule tasks well let’s start out with Autos scheduled tasks first of all Autos scheduled tasks mean that project is automatically going to calculate task dates and durations which is extremely helpful particularly for large complex projects with manually scheduled tasks we’re in control of the task dates and durations so let’s take a deeper dive into this because it’s a really important concept to get your head around so let’s start with Autos scheduled if we take a look at the project plan that I have open notice that the second column here is called task mode so this is where we have our indicator as to whether a particular task is manually or automatically scheduled and you can see here that for all of these tasks in this project plan I have this icon and this icon tells me that this particular task is automatically scheduled that is the task mode so let’s pick a task in this list I’m going to go for task number 12 just here you can see that the duration of this task is 3 days the start date is October the 7th and the Finish date is October the 11th so when I added this task in and I set the duration to 3 days and I also set the start date project or automatically calculated what that finish date is going to be based on the duration and the start date and of course it’s going to take into account things like weekends and nonworking days so project effectively defines for me when this task is going to finish now the benefits of automatically scheduled tasks really present themselves when we’re looking at linked tasks so for example we’re still looking at task 12 and if we take a look at the bars on the right hand side we can see this blue bar here represents the length of this particular task but notice at the end we have an arrow because it’s linked to task number 13 so task number 12 needs to finish before task number 13 can begin so what happens if I was to change the duration of one of these tasks so I’m going to go to task number 12 and instead of 3 days let’s change this to 7 days now notice what happens the start and finish times update and again if we take a look at the bar that’s also updated it’s now longer than it was and task number 13 which relies on task number 12 completing has also had its start and finish dates adjusted because of the change that we’ve made so this is why automatically scheduling tasks is my preferred option because it means that I don’t then have to go in and start moving around task number 13 to reflect the new start and finish time now manually scheduled tasks are basically do-it-yourself scheduling we set the dates and the durations so just to show you how this works let’s add a brand new task into our schedule so I’m going to click task number 15 and I’m going to insert a new task above this task now there are a few different ways you can insert tasks I’m going to rightclick and then from the contextual menu I’m going to choose insert task so now we have this new task up here notice that it’s by default on the same indentation level as the ones above and we’re going to talk more about that in a later lesson and it’s automatically inserted it as an automatically scheduled task take a look at the icon in the task mode column now I’m going to change this to a manually scheduled task so to change individual tasks we don’t want to change them all we can click in the task mode click the drop-down and switch it from Auto to manually scheduled now notice the different icon that we get just there we get this little drawing pin or push pin icon so that is how you can tell which tasks are manually scheduled and which ones are automatically scheduled also notice in the duration we have one day question mark and that’s because we haven’t defined start and finish dates for this task as yet so project doesn’t really know so it’s put in the default of one day and it’s presenting a question mark because there’s unknown information so let’s rename this task I’m going to call this I’m going to say finalize market research results press the Tab Key and I’m going to set a duration so I’m going to set this to 2 days now notice the start date just here it’s showing as September the 30th 2022 and that is in fact the start date of this project so when we don’t Define a start date for a task the default is to start based on that project start date now also notice what’s going on with the bar over here notice that the bar is showing in this teal color now maybe at this stage I’m not sure about the start date for this particular task so what I could do in here is add in some placeholder text as opposed to having start and finish dates so in the Finish field I’m going to click and I’m going to say confirm with team now notice that it’s been shaded out the bar is now also a lot shorter because we don’t have a finish date we only have a start date and check out what’s happened to the icon in the task mode column we now have a question mark in there because the Finish date is effectively unknown at this stage and this is a really good reminder for me when I’m looking through my project plan I can see these highlighted areas these placeholders so that I know that I have some action to take I need to confirm the market research results with the manager and together we can work out how long this task might possibly take once we have that information we can just go back into the schedule and add it in so I’m going to say that that it’s been confirmed with the manager that this task needs to start on October the 20th 2022 the duration is 2 days so the Finish date is going to be December the 21st notice the bar now has these dark green caps on either end so that just means that we have a defined start and finish date for this manually scheduled task also notice that the question mark has disappeared from the push pin icon because we’ve entered in the duration the start and the Finish date so now that we’ve established the difference between Autos scheduled and manually scheduled tasks let’s create an Autos scheduled task so you can see how this works so to add a task into the entry table it’s a simple case of clicking in the first row in the task name column and typing the task name so my first task is conduct course research if I press the tab key it’s going to take me across to the duration field and notice again by default it’s put in start and finish dates based off of the start date of this project also notice in the task mode column this is an automatically scheduled task so all we need to do here is basically fill in the duration and project is going to take care of everything else so let’s say that course research is going to take me 10 days now I can use these little up and down arrows to scroll through the number of days alternatively I can click in the cell and I can simply type in 10 Now the default is days so I don’t need to specify anything other than 10 on a side note if you wanted to maybe use weeks instead what you could do here is Type in let’s say one W and that’s going to give you one week now I’m going to switch this back to 10 days now if I just put in 10 because I just changed it to weeks it’s it’s going to give me 10 weeks instead so now I do need to add something in other than 10 I need to add D after it so project knows its days and not weeks and now based off of this duration and my start date project has automatically calculated what that finish date is going to be for this specific task and we can see the bar updated in at timeline on the right hand side so really nice and straightforward let’s add in another task and we’re going to say that this task is going to take 3 days now once again check out the bar because I haven’t specified a start date it’s starting at the same time as conduct course research which is based off the start dat of the entire project now maybe I can’t draft the course outline until I’ve conducted the course research so I really want this task to begin when the one before it finishes so I’m going to change the start date just here to the let’s say the 16th of March now check this out I’m getting the planning wizard pop up now the planning wizard is an option that you can turn off or on but by default this is turned on so it’s telling me you entered a start date for draft course outline that is close to the Finish date of conduct course research so he’s asking me if I’d like to link these so the draft course outline will always follow conduct course research or I just want to move the start date of this task without adding a link to the previous task now in this case I do want to link these together because conduct course research is effectively a predecessor of of draft course outline now we are kind of getting a bit ahead of ourselves here because we haven’t really discussed predecessors but for the time being just to really illustrate the benefits of Autos scheduling tasks I’m going to say that I want to link them now as soon as I click on okay check out what happens to task number two it’s now moved to its new start date and it’s linked to the previous task so what we’re basically saying here is that task number one conduct course research needs to end before I can draft the course outline also notice in the entry table just here we have a predecessors column and we have a number one next to task number two so this is telling me that task number one is a predecessor of task number two so basic basically when you automatically schedule tasks and particularly when you’re linking them together the Finish date of this first task really controls the other task so now we understand how an automatically scheduled task Works let’s turn our attention to manually scheduled tasks and to really illustrate the difference I’m going to add one more automatically scheduled task into the schedule so let’s click in task name and add a third task so send outline to training manager for review is Task number three once again notice the duration is set to one day with a question mark so that means currently this is estimated the start and finish dates are set to the start dat of the project simply because we haven’t linked this task to any predecessors so for example I kind of want all of these tasks to start after each other so I can’t send the outline to the training manager for review until I’ve dro Ed the course outline so effectively task number two is a predecessor of task number three so what I could do here to get all of my dates to update and reflect accurately is go to the predecessors column click the drop- down and select task number two as the predecessor notice on the timeline it automatically links those tasks together and it moves task number three into the correct position because it starts directly after the task before it I still need to add the duration so I need to come in here and I’m going to say that this is going to take one day so my automatic tasks start and finish date has basically been determined by its predecessor and whatever duration I’ve entered now what about if this task doesn’t have a predecessor so if I remove the predecessor from this box by selecting it and pressing the delete key notice what happens to this task it moves back to the start date of the project and if I try and change the start date to let’s say the 21st of March I’m going to get this little error message just here and this is where we start to get into things like constraints now I’m not going to get into that at this moment in time I just really want to illustrate the difference between manual and automatic tasks so when we have a task set to automatic and the start date isn’t defined by a predecessor if we try and go in and manually change that start date we’re going to get all kinds of error messages and constraints pop up so this is where we would want to use a manually scheduled task Instead This is going to allow us to go in we don’t necessarily have to have a predecessor we can just select the exact dates that we want from the calendar drop down so I want this to start on the 21st which it does the duration is one day so it’s going to end on the 21st as well and if we take a look in the schedule you can see that manually schedule tasks show in a teal color we have darker caps on the end and the beginning to show we have start and finish times in there that are fixed and also notice we have this little push pin icon in the task mode drop down so automatic tasks are great for tasks that are linked together because it will automatically work out the start and finish times but in some cases that can be a little bit restrictive and you might find switching it to a manually scheduled task a little bit easier to work with another type of tasks we can add into our project plan are Milestone tasks and Milestones really show key points in a project they might be there to show progress completed deliverables or decisions or triggers and Milestone tasks don’t have any duration so we can add as many as we need into our project so let’s add a couple in because these are very simple and straightforward now notice that I’ve made a couple of changes to this project since the last lesson I’ve added in a few more tasks and the majority of these have predecessors and are automatically scheduled tasks the final one at the bottom where we finalize the course outline you can see I have a little note in there it’s a manually scheduled task and I don’t really know the duration or the Finish dates yet because I’m waiting on approval from the training manager so I’m going to add in a milestone task for when this course outline line is approved by the training manager so I’m going to select task number six and another little side note here when you’re selecting tasks click on the task number all the way over on the left hand side that’s going to select the whole task as opposed to the individual Fields if you were to click in any of these so we’re going to click on task number six let’s go up to the task Tab and all the way over in the insert group we have a milestone option so let’s click to add a milestone task now notice that’s inserted above where I was clicked and we just have the default text of new Milestone now notice that the duration is zero days as I said Milestone tasks don’t have any duration so it’s always going to default to zero days and now we can rename this Milestone so I’m going to click in the field and this is going to be outline approved now this Milestone task relies on task number five the task before being completed so let’s add in a predecessor once again we can click the drop down and I’m going to choose task number five click on okay and now check out the timeline Milestones are represented with this little Diamond icon so let’s zoom in so you can see that a little bit clearer we scroll across we have a little Diamond icon there and it’s showing me the date of this key milestone and this Milestone task doesn’t change at all unless you manually move it and Milestone tasks don’t increase the project duration in any way or reflect on the work or resource time so now that I have that Milestone I can update the information for task number seven so the duration is going to be one day but I now know the date that this task can start so we’re going to change this to the day after the outline has been approved so that is going going to be March the 25th but check it out the 25th is a Saturday so we want to set this to the next working day which is going to be the 27th and if we take a look at the Timeline we can see that change has now been reflected and it’s also worth noting that you can create predecessors for Milestone tasks as well so I’m going to make the Milestone task a predecessor of finalized course outline so if we click the drop down there it is Task number six outline approved let’s click and that’s now updated in the schedule summary tasks help us organize our project and they also give our project structure summary tasks can represent different phases of a project or even different groups of tasks and by Design when we create a summary task we can have subtasks of that overall summary task so let’s start out in this example by inserting some new summary tasks for existing tasks in our project so I’ve added a few more tasks in here I’ve set the duration start and finish times and if they have predecessors you’ll also see that we have a bit of a mixture of automatically scheduled and manually scheduled tasks so if I take a look at the different tasks that I have in this project I might want to divide these up into more manageable sections as I said creating summary tasks allows us to focus on just what we’re interested in at any given time and it also makes our project easier to read easier to understand and it gives it structure so we’re going to split this project up into a few different sections so what I’m going to do first here is I’m going to select all of the tasks that belong to the first section and our first section is going to be called preparation phase so let’s hover our Mouse over where we have task one until we can see that little black Arrow I’m going to click and then I’m going to drag down to select all of the tasks that belong to this first phase so that is basically going to be tasks 1 to 7 let’s go up to the task Tab and then in the insert group we have a summary option and this is going to allow us to insert a summary task now check out what’s happened to our table just here we now have new summary task at the top and the other tasks are now effectively subtasks of this summary task so let’s give our summary task a name we can click in the field and this is going to be called preparation phase you don’t have to put it in caps that’s just how I’ve chosen to lay these summary tasks out now notice that as soon as I do that I get this little black triangle next to the summary task so this is a collapsible and expandable group now I can click on the little arrow and it’s going to collapse up all of the subtasks click again and it’s going to expand them all out also notice with this summary task if we check out the timeline summary tasks are represented by a black bar now the duration of the summary task is very much defined by the durations of the subtask below it so the summary task is basically going to show us the duration when we add up all of these subtasks below and the start and finish dates for the summary task again is going to be determined by the subtask below so the start date that you see up here for this summary task is going to be the start date of the earliest task in this group and the Finish date is going to be the Finish date of the latest task in this group so we don’t really have to go in and edit anything for summary tasks because it’s all determined by the subtasks below and the reason why these summary tasks are quite nice is because at a glance you you can see exactly how long this preparation phase is going to take I can see it’s going to take 18 days I can see we’re starting on March the 1st and the preparation phase is going to come to an end on March the 27th so it gives you a really nice high level overview let’s add in some more summary tasks so this time I’m going to select tasks nine to task 17 let’s click on summary once again this is going to be the recording phase and this time you can see the duration for this entire phase is 69 days and we can see the start and end dates and check out how that reflects in the timeline let’s select tasks 19 to 24 click on summary this is the documentation phase and then finally we have the go live phase so all of the subtasks are indented under their relevant summary tasks and we can collapse up any that we’re not interested in which helps us remove the noise and really just focus in on the tasks that of interest to us now notice that when we’ve added in these summary tasks by default they are automatically scheduled summary tasks but we can also have manually scheduled summary tasks as well and manually scheduled summary tasks are sometimes quite good for showing this if we have enough time to get subtasks done so I’m going to add in another summary task and this is really just for demonstration purposes I’m going to delete it straight away afterwards but let’s say I want to insert another summary task just here so I’m going to highlight task 15 let’s go up to summary and I’m just going to add in here editing phase and I’m going to switch this to a manually scheduled summary task now currently the editing phase summary task only has one subtask which is make video amendments and the make video Amendment M task ends on June the 29th so the summary task above reflects that as well now check out what happens if I go into this summary task and modify the duration I’m going to take this down to two days now notice what happens here I’ve got a red squiggly line underneath the finish and if we check out the timeline notice that it’s showing in red and that’s basically telling me that the summary task is set to end before its subtask in this case completes and this is probably something that I’m going to need to look at now this doesn’t generally tend to happen with automatically scheduled tasks but sometimes when you’re working with manually scheduled summary tasks this problem might pop up so it’s good to know what it means and how to fix it so now I can see that this is in red I can see okay I’ve set 2 days for the editing phase but we only have one subtask here and that is 4 days long so it’s going to finish after the end of the summary task now I’m just going to take this back up to four which is an easy fix as soon as I do that you can see that it changes back to how it was previously a teal bar with the summary task showing just above so in the last lesson we saw how we can add a bit of structure into our project by adding summary and subtasks and I just want to focus a little bit more on that at the beginning of this lesson and then I’m going to show you how you can import tasks from other Microsoft applications now when we look at our tasks in our task entry view we can see that the summary tasks are currently showing in bold with these little triangles next to them and then all of the subtasks of these summary tasks are slightly indented from the left hand side now this is effectively a first level indent and if we click on the little triangle as we’ve seen that’s going going to collapse up that particular group of tasks click again to expand them out now it is worth noting that we can have subtasks of subtasks for example if I wanted to make let’s say task number three draft course outline a subtask of of conduct course research task number two I can simply select task number three and then up on the task ribbon in the schedule group I have this little button here that will allow me to indent that task notice that the one next to it will outdent the task so it’s going to do the opposite so if I click indent task notice what happens in the Grid it’s now indented task number three and made it a subtask of task number two and in turn because task number two is now effectively a summary task even though it’s not a top level summary task it’s highlighted in bold and again we have the same collapsible and expandable menu so if I coll collapse this up it’s just going to collapse up that one subtask click again to expand it out now if I want to do the reverse of that this can sometimes throw people off a little bit because most people think okay well I’m going to select task number two and I’m going to use the outdent button now if we do that we get something a little bit strange outting makes task number two a top level task and it removes the top level task from preparation phase now I’m going to control Zed just to undo that because effectively what we want to do here is Select task number three and then click on the outdent button and that’s going to put everything back to how it was previously so don’t forget about these two little buttons up here to indent and outdent your different tasks another thing that’s worth noting is that if we jump up to the Gant chart format ribbon remember this is one of those contextual ribbons that you only see when you need it and because we’re working in Gant chart view that’s why I can see this ribbon now all the way over on the right hand side we have a little show hide group here which is going to allow us to view as sub our summary and subtasks in different ways So currently you can see that I’m showing summary tasks if I was to Des select this it’s going to remove those and I just get a big long list of all of the tasks in my project click again to add those back in now something else I can add is a project summary task now when I click on this check out what happened we now get a new task at the top and this is always task number zero and this project summary task shows us information for the entire project so I always like to have this in my project so I’ve got a good at a glance overview of the exact duration and the start and finish dates of the entire project the task name is always going to be the name of the project plan that you’re working on so for me this particular plan is called import task information and that’s why I have that in the task name just there but of course we can go in and change that to something a little bit more meaningful so I’m going to say let’s just call this training roll out project so I highly recommend you turn on that project summary task and then finally at the top we can show or hide outline numbers so this shows our summary tasks and subtasks with a different numbering system so we have 1 1.1 1.2 so on and so forth if I was to make for example this task if I was to indent this a little bit further so let’s indent it it then goes to 1.2 and 1.2.1 before going back to 1.3 so that can sometimes be a really nice way of structuring your project now something else we can do when it comes to adding tasks into our project is we can import them from other Microsoft applications for example I’ve got some tasks that I want to add to this project and I’ve got them in a Word document now notice the way that I’ve structured this word document I have the summary task at the top this is the live training phase then I have my top level task here I’ve got some subtasks so on and so forth throughout this document and notice that some of these I have highlighted in yellow and these are basically my Milestone tasks now if I want to quickly get all of these into my project plan I don’t have to manually type them in I can simply copy and paste so what I’m going to do here is I’m going to select everything in this document and a quick way of doing that is to press the keyboard short cut crl a I’m going to press crl C to copy let’s go back to our project scroll all the way down to the bottom and I’m going to click in the task name and then I just need to paste contrl V and take a look at that it pastes everything in with the correct summary and subheadings now we say it doesn’t always get this completely right so I would definitely go through and check that everything is as it should be but in general this is a much quicker way than going through and typing it all in yourself obviously we still need to go in and update ad duration start and finish information and check out those Milestone tasks that were highlighted in yellow in the word document you can see that it brings across that formatting it doesn’t make these Milestone tasks automatically in project but it is a good way to REM remind us that these ones need to be changed to Milestone tasks and a quick way of changing these to Milestone tasks is to Simply set the duration to zero so I’m going to do that for all three of these and they are now effectively milestones in this project once I’ve set these as Milestones I can select all three of these and in the font group I’m going to say no color just to remove that yellow background fill so I’m going to go through and I’m going to add some durations and some start and finish dates for these tasks that we’ve just added I’ll see you in the next lesson so let’s take a look at some of the things we can do to reorganize the structure of our projects now as we’ve already seen we can use our indent and outdent buttons on the task ribon in order to indent or outdent various different tasks in our schedule for example if I scroll down my list of tasks maybe I decide that task number 37 get budget approval is indented too much we can simply select it go up to the schedule group and I’m going to choose to outdent this task which now puts it on the same level as book venue and create venue short list so very easy to rearrange the structure in that way effectively creating summary tasks and subtasks now what about when it comes to moving tasks around now you can move tasks around by dragging and dropping them but in my experience particularly if you have a long list of tasks it can be a little bit fiddly trying to move tasks around in that way because the page tends to scroll really really quickly so a much easier way to move your tasks around is simply to use cut and paste for example maybe I decide that this section just here the travel and accommodation section and when I say section I mean the summary task and all of its subtasks maybe I want to move that so that it all happens before we sort out the venues so what I can do here is select the summary task and all of its subtask which is all of these I can then press crl X or alternatively if we go up to the task ribbon in the clipboard group we have a cut option just here so let’s click on Cut and notice that that planning wizard pops up again so it’s telling me that I’ve got multiple summary tasks selected and it says deleting them will delete all their subtasks as well now this is because project has recognized that I’ve cut them so I’m essentially removing them from their current place in the schedule so it sort of thinks that I’m deleting them now I’m not deleting these tasks I’m simply moving them so I’m going to choose cancel just here and click on okay and then I’m simply going to move to where I want to paste them which is up here and once again I can press the contrl V key to paste or alternatively I can jump up to the clipboard group and click the top half of the paste button and like magic that moves them all into place so that is by far the easiest way to move individual or groups of tasks now one thing you might notice is that when you start to make changes in your schedule some of these fields or some of the cells are going to be shaded in blue now what these indicate are basically just changes that we’ve made so if you take a look at this you can see that all of the fields for the travel and accommodation section are currently shaded out in this light blue color and that’s because we’ve just made a change to these we’ve just moved them so if you are curious as to what that blue shading means it’s really there just to be helpful to show you the last tasks that you’ve made changes to it’s time now to talk about deleting tasks because once this is a fairly straightforward process says there are a couple of little quirks that you need to be aware of so let’s start out nice and easy deleting a single task for example if I go all the way down to the bottom of my schedule where I have print out expense forms if I want to delete this task all I need to do is select the task and I can simply press the delete key on my keyboard or alternatively I can rightclick on the task and I have a delete task option in the contextual menu so if we delete this nice and straightforward it’s gone from the schedule now I actually don’t want to delete that so let’s do a control Zed to undo and restore that task now this works slightly different if you’re deleting a summary task and its subtasks so let’s select the summary task and all of its subtasks and if I press the delete key on my keyboard that planning wizard is going to pop up again so it’s telling me that expenses is a summary task and deleting it will delete all of its subtasks as well now that makes sense in this instance because we have the summary task and all of the subtasks selected so you would imagine that if we are pressing delete we want to delete everything that we’ve selected so here I get a choice I can continue and delete expenses and its subtasks or I can cancel and not delete anything so I’m going to say continue click on okay and it’s it’s going to delete that entire group now I’m going to contrl zed to undo again because if we were just to select the summary task at the top and press delete again it’s going to ask me the same question so I have a choice of deleting the summary task and all of its subtasks or I can cancel and not delete anything so the point I’m trying to make here is don’t think that just because you haven’t selected the subtasks if you try and delete the summary task that is the only option you’re going to get now let’s take a look at a slightly different scenario maybe we want to delete a summary task but not any of the subtasks so we need to go about this in a slightly different way now notice that I’ve added just some example tasks into the schedule so task number 60 is the summary task and then tasks 61 to 63 are the subtasks so if I want to delete the summary tasks but keep the subtask I first need to select the subtasks and put them on the same level as the summary task so for this we’re going to go up to the schedule group on the task ribbon and use our outdent button that effectively makes the summary task and it subtask the same outline level I can then simply go in and delete the summary task as normal by pressing the delete key I can then reselect these three tasks and change their indentation level if I need to so I’m going to outd all of these and the final Point worth mentioning here about deleting is that if you want to delete an entire task you need to make sure that you have the entire task selected by clicking on that task ID if you’re clicked in let’s say the task name and you press delete it’s simply going to delete just the information from that particular field but notice as soon as I do that I now get this little cross icon pop up where I get an opportunity to delete the entire task so if if I click that cross it’s going to say delete the task name or delete the task so I’m going to say delete the task to get rid of the whole thing so just be aware of that when you’re making your deletions now I actually don’t want these two tasks in here so I’m going to select them press the delete key and we’re now back to how we were originally one thing that can be really useful in Project is to create WBS codes and WBS stands for work breakdown structure and what a WBS code is is a unique code that helps us identify each task in our project now why on Earth would you need a WBS code to identify your tasks well it might be that in some projects you have tasks with the same name for example if we look at this project on the screen you can see task number 46 is get budget approval and this is related to approving the budget for the venues and then a bit further down we also have another task task number 55 which is also get budget approval but this time it’s related to travel and accommodation for the trainers so effectively these tasks have the same name so adding a unique identifier is going to be helpful to us further down the track so let’s take a look at how we can create WBS codes and apply them to our schedule now the first thing we want to do here is we want to add a column into our project plan to show our WBS codes so don’t make the mistake of thinking that the task ID is the unique identifier this is effectively just the row number or the task number so let’s insert a WBS column so I’m going to write click on task mode and we’re going to go to insert column and this is where we can choose the type of column that we’re inserting so I’m going to scroll all the way down because these are in alphabetical order and we should have one for WBS and there it is now notice as soon as I add this column it’s giving me its default WBS numbering now we can create our own custom numbering to make this a little bit more relevant to the project that we’re working on so let’s take a look at how we would do that so to create our own WBS codes we need to jump up to the project ribbon and in the Properties Group we have a WBS option if we click the drop down we can go to Define code and this is where we can create our own work breakdown structure codes now the first thing we can do here is we can add in a project code prefix so in order to uniquely identify this project I could give it a prefix of let’s say trp for training rollout project and I’m going to put a dash there because I want a dash to separate that project code prefix and any numbering that I go with after this so now in this code mask area we can Define the number in sequence that we want to use for our unique codes and this first one is the top level so if we click the drop- down just here we can choose what we want it to display so I’m going to say numbers and you’ll see as I select these we get a code preview at the top so if I was to click on okay just here my tasks are going to be numbered trp1 trp2 trp3 so on and so forth in the length column I can place a limit on the number of characters so if I was to select two just here it means the numbers are going to run from 0 to 99 and I’m going to leave my separator as a period now I’m going to add another level and this time I’m going to choose lower case letters and once again I’m going to select two characters and again you can see in the code preview exactly what this is going to look like so this part of the code is going to run through from a a to zed z let’s add another level so I’m going to say uppercase this time I’m going to make the length three our fourth level is going to be numbers and I’m going to set this to two and let’s add a fifth level as well that’s also going to be numbers and I’m going to leave that on any length so now we’ve defined what our code is going to look like we want to make sure that we keep these two checkboxes underneath selected because means it’s going to generate a new unique WBS code for any new tasks that I add into the project and it’s also going to keep checking that the WBS codes that are being added are unique so let’s keep those checked click on okay and now you can see if we widen out this WBS column exactly what our numbering structure looks like so let’s take a look at our summary tasks that we have here those have trp 01 trp 02 trp 03 so on and so forth the next level down is 01 a a 01 a b 01 a c so on and so forth and that pattern continues throughout our project plan notice as we get a bit further down in this project plan where we have more outline levels we can see our WBS code is using more of the code that we specified so for example task number 31 is trp 05 AA and then we have Triple A the next one goes to Able a AAC so on and so forth so WBS codes are a great way to create a custom code that helps you uniquely identify tasks in your project plan in this exercise we’re going to practice some of the skills that we’ve learned in this section of the course so the first thing I’d like you to do is to open the file newor buor plan. exelsa from the exercise files folder and this is an Excel file and we’re going to use this file as the basis for the project that we’re going to create throughout the balance of these exercises once you have that open I’d then like you to go back to project and create a new blank project and save it as your initials business plan. MPP and I’d like you to set the start date of the project to the 7th of November 2024 or if you’re using your own project whatever the start date of your project is once you’ve done that I’d like you to add the first four tasks in the spreadsheet the ones that aren’t in bold because those are summary tasks into the project as automatically scheduled tasks now you don’t necessarily have to add them all there is a lot of them in the spreadsheet but add a good 10 15 to 20 i’ then like you to Mark some of the tasks as Milestone tasks in the schedule now again I have a few tasks in the spreadsheet marked as Milestones but if you you haven’t added that many tasks you can set any of the tasks to Milestones and then once you’ve done that I’d like you to go through and create summary and subtasks again using the spreadsheet as a guide and if you’d like to see my answer then please keep watching so I’ve opened up the new business plan Excel file and I’ve got it positioned on the right hand side of my screen and in the left hand side I just have project open so the first thing we need to do here is open up a new blank project and we need to save this so let’s go up to five down to save as I’m going to browse and select a location and we’re going to call this our initials new business plan and click on Save the next thing I asked you to do was to change the project start date so if we look at the details in the spreadsheet the first task basically starts on November the 7th 2024 so I’m going to use that as my project start date so so I’m going to jump into project information and I’m going to set the start date from here now because this is quite far in the future and I don’t want to have to scroll through a calendar I’m just simply going to type this in so November the 7th 2024 and click on okay and you can see it jumps to that part of the schedule so now that we have everything set up we can start to add in the tasks and I’m just going to add the first one I asked you to add the first four for a little bit of practice so the first one we want to add which isn’t a summary task is self assessment so let’s move across to task name now notice here it’s put it in as a manually scheduled task so I’m going to go down to the bottom and make sure that I have Autos scheduled selected and then we’re going to change this to Autos scheduled now the start date of this task is in fact November the 7th which is when the project starts the duration according to the spreadsheet is 3 days and there we go we have our first task scheduled and we can see the blue bar update let’s add the next one Define business Vision this is a one-day task and again this starts on November the 7th so we simply carry on going through adding in these different tasks and this is really all the information that I want you to add at this stage so I’ve added in a few more of those tasks and the next thing I asked you to do was to Mark some milestones in the schedule so if we take a look at the spreadsheet in column A we have mileston so I can see the first Milestone is this one down here confirm decision to proceed which in the spreadsheet is in row 27 so if we scroll down to task 27 this is going to be a little bit out because we don’t have the summary tasks in here but it should give us the rough area where this is so there it is just there confirmed decision to proceed I’m going to Mark the this as a milestone let’s double click to open it up and I’m going to select Mark task as Milestone and click on okay and I would go through this spreadsheet marking the other tasks that we can see in here are milestones in the schedule the final thing I asked you to do in this exercise was to create this summary and the subtasks so again I’m just going to do the first one because once you’ve done one you can pretty much do them all so the first one at the top here in rot of the spreadsheet new business this this is our top level task so what I’m going to do here is I’m going to right click and I’m going to insert a task at the top there let’s double click to open it up and we’re going to call this new business and click on okay and this is basically going to be our top level summary task so we need to select everything else in the spreadsheet so from task 2 control shift down arrow all the way down to task 101 and I’m going to have to maximize my window so I can see this properly if we go to task in the schedule group I’m going to indent these tasks which effectively makes that top task the top level summary task and then going to right click and insert a another task and this one is going to be phase one strategic plan and click on okay now this is going to be a summary task as well because if we refer back to our spreadsheet you can see Define the opportunity is also a summary task so I just want to include these tasks within the phase one strategic plan summary task so let’s select those tasks and once again we’re going to click indent task and now you can see our structure beginning to take shape so what I would like you to do is just go through the rest of your tasks adding in this structure and use the spreadsheet as your guide in order for a project to work and flow correctly project tasks need to be performed in the right sequence and when it comes to a project plan task dependencies or links basically Define the sequence of the tasks and it’s worth noting that most links have a link type of finish to start so what exactly does that mean this finished to start well let’s take a look at our current schedule so if we scroll to let’s say these tasks just here and I’m going to zoom out a little bit because that is a little bit too wide now if we take a look at these tasks so task 11 down to about task 15 notice that we have little arrows linking these tasks together so effectively what these links denote is that task number 12 isn’t going to start until task number 11 has finished so that is what we call a finish to start link and you’ll find that the majority of links that you come across in Project are going to be finished to start one task finishes before the next task can begin so effectively what we have here is Task number 11 is a predecessor of task number 12 so how do we create links between two tasks well let’s scroll down a bit further in the schedule and I’m going to say here that task number 32 assigned teams to Regions can’t be completed until we’ve assigned trainers to teams because each trainer has a specific preference as to which region they’d like to travel to so we need to establish that first before we assign the teams to the regions now I have task number 32 highlighted and if you take a look at the timeline view or where we normally have our bars I’ve got nothing on the screen I’m not in the correct position in the schedule now a quick way to jump to the part of the bars that relates to the task that you’re currently C clicked on is to Simply go up to the task Tab and all the way over in the editing group we have a scroll to task button now if I click this it’s going to move me to the place in the schedule relevant to where I’m clicked in the task entry table now you’ll find yourself using this scroll to task button all the time so while I’m here I’m going to right click and I’m going to add it to my quick access Toolbar to make it super easy for me to access so I can see here that task number 32 is a manually ual task and I need to link it to task number 31 so for this we need to select the task we want to link to first and then the other task so I’m going to hold down control and select both of these then up on the task ribbon in the schedule group I’m going to click this little link chain icon and notice here that there is a keyboard shortcut to quickly link tasks of contrl F2 now when I click this notice what happens to the BS it inserts a link so now we have this little arrow that links these two tasks but if we also check out what we have in the predecessors column in the entry table you can see that it’s automatically added that task number 31 is a predecessor of task number 32 now when we’re working through our schedule and we’re creating lots of different links and dependencies it can sometimes be quite useful to see a little bit more information about those links so what we can do is go up to the view ribbon and in split view I’m going to select details and this opens up another window at the bottom called the task form and what this is going to show me is additional information about whatever task I’m currently clicked on in the task entry view so if we take this linked task for example if I click on task number 32 I can see some further information I can see the name of the task the duration the fact that it’s manually scheduled the percentage complete and if I take a look over on the right hand side I can see see the task that it’s linked to so it’s linked to task ID 31 assign trainers to teams and it’s telling me that the task type is FS which basically means finish to start now it’s also worth noting when you’re working with links that you don’t necessarily just have to link each task to the previous task individually you can do them all in one go for example I could select um these three tasks just here go up to the task ribbon and click on create link and it’s automatically going to create finish to start links for all of these tasks so that can be really helpful if you have tasks in your project that can only start when the previous task finishes now aside from clicking on the little chain link icon in the schedule group to link tasks together you can also Link in a couple of other ways for example if I wanted to link tasks 2 and three together I can simply come over to the predecessors column and and I can either type the task number in this case number two or alternatively if I delete that out I can click the drop-down Arrow it’s going to pull up a big long list of all of the tasks and I can select the task that I want to link to from here so again that would be number two so three different methods you can use in order to link your tasks now I’m going to remove that because I don’t want to link those two notice as I did that as I added that link check out the cells that are showing as being changed the dates for all of the tasks below changed because of that link I just created and that is why these are showing as changed cells now we do have other task types that we can add in as I said by far finish to start is the most common but we also have finish to finish links that we can add where the finish of One controls the finish of another and then we have the two rarest task types start to start and start to finish and those really aren’t used very often and I will say that something like start to start can be quite problematic if the predecessor task starts and then is delayed it could finish after the successor and start to finish means that the start of one task triggers the finish of the other as I said both of those are extremely rare now if you want to change the type of link that a task has again we need to make sure that we have our details pane open and if we select let’s say this task on the right hand side in the task form where we can see the predecessor we can also see the type so this is a finish to start but we can come in here and change this to a finish to

finish we can change it to a start to finish or we can change it to a start to start and this subject is definitely something I recommend reading the help files on so you get a really good idea as to the types of scenarios the types of tasks where you might have to use a different link type and if we take a quick look in the help files you can see here underneath types of tasks we have those different link types and a full description and in this description it gives you different scenarios where these might come up so I definitely recommend having a read through so that you know if and when you need to apply those to your project plan I’m going to switch off the details Pane and we are about ready to move on to the next lesson sometimes when we’re working with our project there is a delay or an overlap between tasks and this is where we can add in lag or lead time so let’s take a look at a quick example now currently in this schedule we take a look at task number five and I’m going to make sure that I’m on the correct part of the timeline and we can see that task number five is basically to update the course outline now in order to update the course outline I need to receive feedback from the training team and the task before that is to send the outline to the training team for review now currently I’ve assigned a one-day duration to that now it might be that the training team are assigned to another project for the next 4 days and can’t actually look at this outline so what I could do is I could add in some lag time and reflect that in the timeline so if you take a look at the bars currently we can see that update course outline is linked to the task before and currently update course outline is set to start as soon as the previous task finishes so as soon as the training team have reviewed the outline I can then update the course outline based off of their feedback but now they’re not available for the next 4 days so nothing’s going to happen for 4 days and I need to reflect that in my project plan so what I can can do here is once again let’s jump up to view and open up the details pane because in here this is where we can apply lag time if you take a look at the right hand side we can see the predecessor of this particular task is Task number four the type is finished to start and currently the lag time is zero dates but check out what happens if I change this to four so I’m going to use the little arrows just to move up to four and when I click away the schedule is going to update now you might need to scroll a little bit just to see that but check out what we have now if we click on task number four we can see the duration where it’s supposed to start but then we have 4 days of lack time before the next task starts and if you check out what we now have in the predecessor column we can see that for task number five update course outline I can see that this is linked to task number four with a finish to start link type and it has plus 4 days left lag that’s what this little code means just here so this is particularly useful because it enables you to see at a glance so much information so wherever you have a delay in your schedule you can reflect that accurately by simply adding in lag time to your tasks now what about if we want to do the complete opposite of that maybe we want to add overlap time to As schedule now what do I mean by overlap time well it might be that we have two tasks that can overlap each other for example if we take a look at the recording phase in my project plan maybe I don’t need to finish writing all of my training notes before I start recording the training videos so what I could do here is I could add in overlap time now the way that we do this is pretty much exactly the same as when we add in lack time but we just use minus values instead so I’m going to select record training videos task number 11 we can see that in our timeline if I scroll over a little bit and if we take a look in the task form we can see that this is linked to task number 10 write training notes it has a finish to start link type and currently there is no lag or overlap now we’re going to change that we’re going to click in this cell and instead of using the up Arrow to make it a positive value we’re going to say that there is a 5day overlap just here so it goes to minus5 when I click check out how that updates in the schedule if we take a look at our bars we can see that task number 11 record training videos can start whilst WR training notes is still going on and we have the arrow here linking these tasks but we clearly have an overlap once again if we take a look in the predecessors column we can see exactly what’s Happening Here we can see that task number 11 is linked to task number 10 with a finish to start link type and we have an overlap of minus5 days so that is the difference between lag and lead time use them accordingly wherever you feel they’re necessary in your schedule sometimes tasks in our project need to occur on specific dates or have restrictions and constraints are one way to specify when a task starts and finishes and it’s worth noting that every task has a constraint so what do I mean by that well let’s switch into a different view so you understand what I’m talking about now currently I have task form open at the bottom but we’re going to jump up to the view Tab and over in split view we’re going to click the drop down and go straight into more views because what I want to bring up here is the task details form let’s click on apply and I can now see that showing in the pane at the bottom now this is going to show me what constraints are applied to any particular task I have selected in the task entry table so let’s just pick a random task here task number six we can see a lot of information about this task but we can see that there is a constraint on this task now I haven’t set any constraints manually myself on any tasks that we’ve added into this schedule I’ve just typed them in we’ve done a couple of other things but we haven’t specified specifically constraints for any of the tasks but there is a default constraint that’s applied to all tasks and you can see here that that constraint is that the task starts as soon as possible and that’s kind of really what you want when project is trying to work out your durations and your timings it works off of the principle that you really want this project to be finished as soon as it’s possible and that is why we have that constraint type applied to every single task now of course if we click the drop down here we have other constraints types that we can use so things like as late as possible finish no earlier than finish no later than must finish on must start on so on and so forth and there might be scenarios where you need to add one of these constraints depending on what’s going on in your project so let’s take a look at a quick example if we take a look at this task task number 58 I can see that this is due to start on September the 12th 2023 and maybe I know that at the end of September every single year there is a sale on flights so I don’t want anybody to start booking flights for the trainers until those flights go on sale because we’re going to save the company quite a bit of money so what I can do here is I can change the constraint from start as soon as possible to start no earlier than and then I can select a date so I’m going to go across to September 2023 and I don’t want anyone to start booking flights until the last week of September so let’s change that to the 25th and you can see automatically these schedule updates and everything below that relies on this particular task has also updated hence why we have those blue cells now I’m going to scroll to task by using the icon on the quick access toolbar so I can see what we have going on here now notice something else about this task now that we’ve added that constraint you can see that in the information column on the left hand side we now have this little calendar icon and if I hover my mouse over it I get a little screen tip popup that says this task has a start no earlier than constraint on September the 25th 2023 so whenever you see that calendar in that column it means that There’s a constraint applied to that particular task now I’m going to leave it to you to explore some of these other constraint types I think most of them are pretty self-explanatory now a lot of these are what we would consider to be flexible constraint types but some of them are a little bit more fixed so for example must start on for example if I select task number 47 book venue maybe that’s a very fixed item and it must start on a specific date in order for anything that comes after it to flow correctly through the project so maybe we have to book a venue on August the 25th so I could select a constraint in here to make that more fixed in the schedule so I’m going to select it it is a milestone task we can still apply constraints to Milestones but I’m going to change the constraint to must start on and then I can choose the date so it’s going to be August the 25th so let’s jump across to August and select the 25th click on okay and once again we get that little calendar icon which says that this task has a must start on constraint and then we have the date so some of these are a little bit more flexible some of them are very fixed but something that’s worth bearing in mind is that you want to really limit the number of date constraints that you have in your project and the reason why you want to limit it is because it reduces projects ability to schedule things in the best way if we’re constantly adding constraints into the project muster on this day can’t start before that date project is going to find it harder to create a project plan that flows nicely through now obviously in some circumstances you’re going to need to add constraints but all I’m saying is be mindful of how many you have in your project and try and limit them the best that you can another thing that’s worth noting about task constraints is that you don’t necessarily have to apply these from the task details form so if you don’t have this details pane open and your project looks something like this what you can do is select your task and then on the task ribbon all the way over in the Properties Group we have an information button and that’s going to pull up loads of information about the task that you’ve selected so in this case I’ve selected a summary task now if we jump across to the advanced tab we can also set our constraint type in here so this one currently is as soon as possible but if we click the dropdown we have some other options and we can choose a constraint date now notice here that when I click the dropdown I only have three options to choose from now that’s because I’m clicked on a summary task if I just click on a regular work task go up to information and to the advaned tab when I click the drop down I now have all of those constraint types so if you see a shorter list in here it’s going to be because you’re clicked on a summary task as opposed to a work task and this information box is a really good place to come because this is where you’re going to find lots and lots of information about the tasks that you currently have selected in the schedule and of course you can modify task information from here as well as well as from the task form details paint when we start linking tasks together in Project it can start to become a little bit cluttered so we need to know the best ways that we can view our tasks and view predecessors and links now one way we’ve already seen we have the predecessors column in our task entry table which gives us a nice overview we can see immediately which tasks are linked to other tasks and also the type of task link that we have in place and if there’s any lead or lag time so if you don’t have this predecessors column showing I highly recommend that you right click go to insert column and choose predecessors from here and remember this long list is in alphabetical order so it’s very simple to find the one that you need now I already have my predecessors column so I’m just going to escape out of that now another way that we can view our tasks and any links is by looking at the bars on the right hand side now currently I’m not seeing a great deal on this page because I have my bars set to display every single day so my tasks are very stretched out across the entire timeline of the project which in some cases is a good thing if you want to see in more detail but I actually want to condense this up a little bit so I can actually see more of the task in this area so what we can do here is we can jump across to the view ribbon and then notice in the zoom group we have a time scale option and currently mine is set to days which is why I have such a broad time scale up here so what I’m going to do is I’m going to click the drop down and I’m going to change this to display in weeks and now I can see a lot more information because it’s a little bit more condensed another thing that we can do is we can select a task in our task entry table so I’m just going to go for task number three and we can see it’s driving predecessors now if we jump up to the Gant chart format tab in bar Styles and click task path let’s take a look at the screen tip just here it says that this is going to highlight the predecessors that directly affect the selected task so let’s click on this now notice when I click away These Bars change to this orange color and depending on which task I select in the task entry table the predecessors that are driving this particular task are going to highlight in Orange if I was to click somewhere down here you can see more and more things get highlighted in Orange so this is a quick way of seeing all of the tasks prior to the one that you have selected that are really driving the completion of the task you currently have highlighted and that can sometimes be really useful now if you want to turn that off just go back up to task paath and deselect driving predecessor and one final thing that you can do from this Gant chart format tab is you can control the layout of these tasks and how they’re linked together so if we go to the format group right at the beginning here we have a layout option and it says format various aspects of the current view so if we click on this and take a look at the link section we have three choices here so I can choose to display my links like that so I have no arrows in between each of the bars so it gives it a less cluttered look and feel but for me personally I don’t find this particularly helpful I like to have a visual representation of which tasks are linked together as opposed to just having the numbers in the predecessors column in the task entry table but that option is there if you like that look if I select the second one it links them through like that and the third one we get something slightly different so really it’s just the format the layout of these links so choose whichever one you prefer and another thing that you could turn on to make the readability of your bars a little bit easier is you could turn on grid lines so again in this format tab if we click the drop down next to grid lines and select grid lines again I’m going to choose to add lines to my Gant rows I can then choose the type of lines let’s go for a dotted line and I can also choose the color so let’s go for a green color and I can then choose the interval now I’m going to set that to none and click on okay and you can see what that looks like so sometimes that can really Aid your readability because it makes it a little bit easier to see which bar relates to which entry in the task entry table so if you like that then turn that on I’m going to turn this off and try and keep this as clean as possible by setting this back to none in this exercise exercise 5 I’d like you to create task dependencies as per the information in the spreadsheet so you’ll see that there is a predecessors column that tells you which tasks need to be linked together and then I’d like you to just have a play around adding lag and lead time into certain tasks and I don’t really mind which tasks you use for this once you’ve done that I just like you to practice filtering your task list so a good one to show would be all of the tasks Tas s in your project that are Milestone tasks so a reasonably straightforward exercise if you’d like to see my answer then please keep watching so let’s take a look at the spreadsheet and you can see that we have a predecessors column just here so once again I’m just going to do the first couple so you can see how this works but I can see that identify available skills information and support is dependent on the task before so if we go to this task in the schedule which is Task id5 and expand the column we can choose our predecessor so this is going to be task number four which we can simply select just here and click away and the next task so this one is going to be linked to task number five and that is how simple it is to add predecessors into our schedule notice the arrows connecting the bars in the Gant chart remember you can add more than one predecessor to a task so go through that spreadsheet adding in your predecessors and creating those links the next thing I asked you to do was to add in some lag or lead time so let’s choose this task task number six I’m going to double click to open it up we’re going to jump to the predecessors Tab and I can see here that we have a finish to start link type currently with zero days lag so what I’m going to do is I’m going to add in five days lag remember if you want to add in lead time this is going to be a minus figure in here let’s click on okay and now you can see how that’s affected the schedule task number six has now been pushed by 5 days into the future because we’ve added in that lag time if we select the previous task and for this one let’s add in 3 days of lead time and the final thing I asked you to do here was just to practice playing around with some of the filters so we can find those up on The View tab in the filters group and one example I gave you was to filter and show all of the Milestone tasks so you can see here I’ve got four of them in my schedule we’ve made the files the instructor uses in this tutorial available for free just click the link below in the video details to get these hello everyone and welcome to this course on Project professional 2021 Advanced my name is Deborah Ashby and I’m a Microsoft instructor and subject matter expert and I’m going to be your host for this course now I’ve been using project for over 20 years now so I am very aware of what a fantastic tool is for project managers or pmos but I’m also aware of some of the challenges of using what is effectively a powerful but complex application now this is the advanced project course so I will be assuming that you’ve worked through the beginner course already or you come to this course with a good knowledge of project we won’t be covering many of the basics of project instead focusing on more advanced topics like reporting macros consolidation and sharing custom fields and so much more project 2021 is the latest Standalone releas of project from Microsoft so if you have that version then this course is going to be absolutely perfect however if you are using project 2019 or 2016 then you’ll still be able to work through the majority of this course because there aren’t too many changes between the different versions now this course is divided down into logical sections and lessons there are 39 video Leed lessons and 10 exercises to work through and the exercises are there so that you can practice the skills that you’ve learned in each section you also have access to all of the course files that I use in the videos so you can follow along with me if you choose to once again welcome to this course it’s time to get started before we dive into the lessons I just wanted to spend a few minutes ensuring that you are set up for Success so the first thing to do here is to make sure that you’ve downloaded the course and exercise files and you’ve stored them off somewhere that’s easily accessible on your PC now each lesson will have two main course files so the one that has start in the title is the starting point for each lesson if you’re following along with me the complete file is how the file looks at the end of the lesson so this just provides a good reference point for you some lessons also require the use of multiple files but you should find everything that you need in that course files folder now the excise files are simply named exercise 1 2 3 4 Etc and for the majority of them there is also an answer file for each one too so you should have everything that you need to work through this course in those folders now when it comes to working inside project 2021 if you do want to follow along with me it’s probably going to be helpful for you to have some settings set the same as mine so let’s take a quick look at those so open up project we want to go into file and down into project options now on the general tab a couple of things I would make sure that you have set here so that it mirrors mine is the default view make sure that that is Gant with timeline also notice the date format that I’m using I’m using the month then the day then the year then the time there are lots of different formats you can choose from in here but again if you want to match mine as closely as possible make sure you have your date format set to that now if we jump across to the schedule page I would also recommend you review these calendar options as well so these are the settings that I currently have my week starts on a Sunday the fiscal year starts in January and my default St end times for a day are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. which works out at 8 hours a day 40 hours per week 20 days per month so once again I would recommend that you change your settings to mirror mine now one final thing to note here that’s really important this course was recorded in March and April of 20123 so all of the dates that you see in the videos and in the course files are very much in relation to the dates when this project was recorded now I’m very well aware that you might come to this course in 6 months time a year’s time where these dates might not make too much sense so you have a couple of different options here you could adjust the start and end date of your project so it’s more accurate for you but just be aware that if you do do that you’re going to need to change those dates in every single course file that you work through alternatively you can just use my dates but just be aware that the results that you get in some lessons might not exactly match mine because we’re working up to different current dates so those are the main things to be aware of make sure you’ve got those course and exercise files downloaded because it’s now time to dive in to our first lesson it’s time now to complete exercise one now this exercise differs from the rest of the exercises in this course in that we haven’t really covered a great deal in project to facilitate a meaningful exercise however I just wanted to reiterate a couple of points here to make sure that you’re set up correctly to complete this course now the first thing you’ll notice in the exercise files folder is that there is no folder for exercise one and that’s because we aren’t using any project files in this particular exercise so if you’re curious as to where that fold is it’s not supposed to be there all I really need you to do for this exercise is once again make sure that you’ve downloaded and save those course and exercise files I want you to review the dates and decide if you want to use my dates or use your own dates and make sure that you have reviewed your settings in Project options so that is it I promise you that the exercises will be a lot more meaningful than this as you work through the course so let’s dive into the first lesson for the next section you’ll want to download the course exercise files click the link below in the video description to get these you can also scroll through the details to find timestamps for each section in this course if you’re enjoying this training please leave us a comment in this first lesson of this project professional 20121 Advanced course we’re going to take a look at consolidation and resource sharing and we’re going to look at these topics together as you often need to use them on a large project at the same time now generally what happens when you’re working on a project is that that project gets larger and larger over time and sometimes it can turn into a set of projects as opposed to just one project or perhaps we’re working on a project that needs to be split into a set of projects and not only do we need to split up the work the tasks but different people are going to manage different parts and what usually happens is that even if projects are being managed by different people they often share the same resources so in this lesson we’re going to look at combining multiple projects into one or splitting a large project into separate projects and sharing resources between projects now to demo this we’re going to use an example of an event and this event really has three key parts we have a Gala dinner and this is where invitees will pay an admission fee they’ll get a nice dinner maybe there’ll be some entertainment some dancing afterwards the next part of the event is a fashion show so maybe we’ve invited local fashion houses to display their clothes at this fashion show and they also get a buffet lunch whilst they’re there and the last part is the sports day so this is more of a family friendly event where people compete in different sports just for fun and there’s also a barbecue so we have have three very distinct parts of this one event now we’re going to assume that we’ve done some early planning and you can see here at the top I have a planning section if we expand this we can see the tasks beneath that so we have 20 or so tasks which we’ve already scheduled in relation to the planning of this big event now this event is quite a large undertaking so what we want to do is we want to split this event into separate parts with different people managing those different parts so we might have someone managing the overall project plan we might have somebody else managing the gala dinner someone else managing the fashion show and somebody else managing the sports day now the individual projects are not that complicated and we need a project manager to be able to manage their part independently and separately so why do we need to be able to do this well as you’ll know from your current knowledge of project when you’re dealing with editing a single MPP file if our project managers each want to work on it at the same time that can become complicated particularly if they want to work on it from home or they don’t have any shared access now splitting up the actual project file into effectively four separate files is pretty straightforward the problem starts to occur when it comes to resources now if we jump across to the resource sheet for this project you can see that we have eight or so resources assigned now also notice that I don’t have any costs assigned to these resources at the moment we are going to talk about that a bit more later but for the time being just note that we have eight or so resources now resources such as volunteers the event director publicity officers they might need to be able to work across all four of the projects so we need to set them up as effectively shared resources what you’ll also notice if we switch back to the Gant chart view is that many of these tasks across all of the different parts of this project have dependencies and links to other tasks in other parts of the project so when we split this project and we set this up to share resources we also want to make sure that we’re maintaining the Integrity of those links and everything links through correctly now a good proportion of the work here relates to the relationships between the tasks so let’s start out first of all by just separating off the sports day section of this project so if we scroll down you can see here is the sports day section so from task 46 to 56 and we’re just going to select all of these tasks now what I’m going to do is press contrl C to copy those tasks to the clipboard and then we’re going to open up a brand new blank project file you can go up to the file tab to do this I’m going to use the keyboard shortcut crln just to quickly open that up and then I’m going to press contrl + V just to paste those tasks in so now we have just the sports day tasks in this new project now once you’ve copied these tasks across it’s worth noting that those dependencies still exist within this summary task but remember in the original version of the project plan this sports day section also had dependencies in other parts of the project and those haven’t come across when we’ve copied these tasks also if we jump across to the resource sheet for this file notice that we now only have two resources because it’s only bringing across the resources that are included in this part of the project plan and you can see that the volunteer is now showing as overallocated because we’ve split this section out now the way that project looks at these resources is that these are completely independent of the original resources in the other project plan so these aren’t the same resources they’re two brand new resources as far as project is concerned so in the next lesson what we’re going to look at is how we can to share these resources across our project plans now before we leave this lesson the final thing I’m going to do here is I’m just going to save off this file so let’s jump up to file down into save as and I’m going to save this into the course files folder and we’re going to save this as Charity eventcore sports day and click on Save in the previous lesson we discuss the reasons that you might want to split up a project or join together a project and we recognize that it’s important to deal with resources and the key issue here is that when we split a project we need to make sure that those projects are using the same resources and the way that we do that is to set up what we call a resource pool once we’ve set up a resource pool we can then share that resource pool amongst several projects So currently we have our two files and you can see that I’ve got them both open on the screen just here now just a quick side note about project and opening multiple files what you’ll find is that if you try and double click in file explorer to open two separate project files they open in the same project window because we only have one project license it’s not like an application like Excel where you can have multiple Excel windows open to view different files now the way to get around that and to arrange files like I have them here you can see I have both of my files open in the same project window is simply to jump up to the view tab go over to the window group and you can see we have an arrange all button just here and that’s all I’ve done I’ve clicked arrange all and arranged my windows so they take up half of the screen equally so that’s just a side note if you’re wondering how I got to this point so now we have both of these files open one thing to note is that the original charity event file which we have on the right hand side here still contains all of the sports day tasks remember we copied and pasted those into the sports day file that you can see on the left hand side now we will need to remove those from the original file eventually but before we do that we’re going to set up a resource pool now the key aspects here when it comes to setting up a resource pull is that we basically set up a brand new project with resources but no tasks and really if this is something that you want to do you want to try and do this at the outset of the project so what many people will do is they’ll start off with an empty MPP file they’ll enter the resources make up the resource poll and save the project but with no tasks so I’ve closed down the smaller sports day file so we’re just back at our original charity event file and if we switch across to the resource sheet sheet we can see that we have a pretty good base for our resource pull because we have all of our resources listed in here so what we’re basically going to do is we’re going to make a copy of this file by saving it as a different name and then we’re just simply going to remove all of the tasks so let’s jump up to file and down to save as I’m going to save mine into the course files folder and I’m just going to call this charity eventcore resources MPP and let’s click on save so we’re now working in that file so let’s jump back to the Gant chart View and what we’re going to do is we’re simply going to remove all of the tasks so if we click on the Square in the top leftand corner just here it’s going to select everything and we can simply press the delete key on our keyboard I’m getting a little warning from the planning wizard do I want to delete multiple selected summary tasks and their subtasks yes I do let’s click on okay and all of those tasks are gone but we still have our resources listed out on the resource sheet so this is now effectively my resource pool so let’s give this a quick save and I’m going to reopen the other file the sport day file so what we need to do here is we need to specify that this project uses the resource pool that we just created so from here we’re going to switch across to the resource sheet and remember you can switch across using the icons in the bottom right hand corner in the status bar or you can jump up to view and resource sheet is just here so let’s click on resource sheet you can see the current resources that we have that limited list but if we jump across to Resource and into assignments we have a resource pull option so let’s Click Share resources and this is where we get to select the resource pool so from here if we choose the second option use resources we can then choose where our resource pool is located and the important thing to note here is that you need to have that file open in order for the dropdown to recognize it so I still have my resource pool open There It Is Charity eventor resources this is the file we’re going to be using and then we have options for on conflict with calendar or resource information the pool takes presidence or the sharer takes presidence now we’re going to look at this in a bit more detail a bit later on but what can sometimes happen is that there may be a conflict between the resource poll and any calendars applying to the resources in the resource poll and calendars in the sharing project so we need to specify which takes presidence the pool or the sharer now before we do this I’m actually going to click on cancel here because I want to demonstrate what happens to overallocated tasks when we assign a resource pool so let’s jump back to Gant chart view for one moment if you take a look in our task you can see that task 10 is currently showing as overallocated that’s a little red icon we can see in that First Column so now if we go back to Resource pool and share resources we going to make sure we’re using resources from our charity event resources file we’re going to say the pool takes presidence when I click okay watch what happens to task 10 you can see that that over allocation is resolved and that’s because if we now go to our resource sheet this project is using the resource poll and not just the two resources that were included when we copied the tasks across so what we now have is a resource poll and a project that is using that resource pool now the other thing that we need to do is we need to get the original file the charity event project to use the resource pool as well so let’s open it up so we’re going to do exactly the same thing we’re going to jump up to Resource pool share resources use resources from the charity event resources file and once again the pool takes presidence let’s click on okay now notice that as soon as I did this we we now have over allocations for the sports day pm and the volunteer and that’s really related to the fact that we have the sports day event in two different files if you recall when we copied the task across we didn’t delete them from the charity event file which is why we’ve got these over allocations and we are going to deal with those in a moment so just put that to the back of your mind now what we’re going to be doing over the next couple of sections is that we are going to split this charity event project up because at the moment we’ve only sectioned off the sports day part of this event but before we get on to that just one or two important points about resource sharing as I mentioned if we go back to our resource sheet we now have these over allocations and something that can be really helpful is being able to view which resources are assigned to which projects that can be very helpful when it comes to dealing with over allocations so for this we’re going to switch to Resource usage view let’s widen out this column and we’re going to add a new column so that we can see the project that each resource is assigned to so if we widen this out we can see at the top we have some unassigned resources but we can also see the projects in this column where those resources exist and if we scroll down to the sports day section I can see that the sports day PM the sports day project manager that resource is being used in both the sports day project file and also the original charity event file so adding this project column into your resource usage sheet can be super helpful particularly when you’re trying to deal with over allocations and see which resources you have allocated to which projects now one final point before we finish this lesson it’s not necessarily the case that all projects that share a resource poll are always Consolidated into one project you might find you have a situation where another project project that is completely unrelated to this event is also using the same shared resource pole so what I’m trying to say is when you’re working with a resource pool it might have a whole mixture of different projects that are using its resources so just bear that in mind as we work through the balance of this section so now it’s time to move on to the next lesson when we’re going to start to split off other parts of this charity event into its constituent projects in this lesson we’re going to set up a master project for our charity event and we’re going to start with our original project and the sports day project and if you recall these two share a resource poll now when it comes to splitting a large project up the key area where there is usually the most effort required is in restoring the links that existed in the original project and as I’ve mentioned a couple of times previously it’s a good idea to make this decision very early on so make sure that you decide if this is going to be a project that you’re going to want to split up into multiple different projects as early as you can because the later you leave it the more work you’re giving yourself now I currently have the charity event project open I’m just going to close this down and reopen it because there’s a little message that appears that I think it’s important that you take a look at so let’s close this down I’m going to say yes to save changes now I’ve close down the charity event file and I’m just back at the start screen for project because I want to just very quickly show you what happens when you reopen these files if you have everything closed so if we go to open I’m going to open up my charity event file and you can see that I get this little message open resource pool information now it says this file shares resources from a resource pool what do you want to do and I can choose to open resource pool to see assignments across all shareer files or do not open other the files so it’s basically recognizing that this file links to a resource pool in another file and it’s asking me if I want to open it so I’m going to say yes let’s click on okay and now if we jump up to the view Tab and go over to the windows group if I click switch Windows notice that not only do I have the charity event file open I now have the resource file open as well but it’s in readon mode so I have these two files open what I don’t have open is the sport day file but notice in the project column in the resource usage sheet where I have these long path names where it says C drive users Deb a so on and so forth this is actually the path where the sports day file is located so it’s still recognizing that we have links to that sports day file even though I don’t currently have that file open now let’s jump back to Gant chart View and we’re going to expand and the planning section now I’m going to collapse up some of the other sections so I’m going to collapse up fashion show so that we just have sports day expanded and planning because what you’ll notice here is that many of the tasks within the sports day section have links to tasks that are up here in the planning section and this is where the problem can lie when you’re trying to split up a project because effectively what we want to do is maintain the Integrity of the links between different parts of the project now if you recall we separated off into a separate file the sports day tasks and we save those into a file called charity event sports day so what I effectively want to do here is I want to replace these tasks in this project with the tasks from the sports day file and we do this by inserting a sub project so what I’m going to do is I’m just going to go into a blank line and we can choose this one just above and we’re going to go into the project tab and notice in the insert group we have sub project now if we select this we can then go in and browse for the file that contains the information that we want and it’s this one here the charity event sports day file and we can click on insert and you can see now we get a sub project inserted into our main project and we can tell that this is slightly different from the other tasks in this project because we have the little project icon in the information column I can expand the main summary task and I get to see all of the subtasks below now just take a look at some of the differences between these two sections now if we take a look at uh let’s say task number 51 just here look in the predecessors column this particular task has a predecessor of task 10 and if we take a look at the Gant chart I can see it relates to task 10 in the planning section now if I take a look at this same task in the some project perform risk assessment notice the predecessors column is empty so the link effectively hasn’t been maintained so these are the links that we basically need to recreate now before we get onto that I just want to talk a little bit more about the layout up here because what we’re going to do eventually is we’re going to delete out the sports say tasks in the original project so we just have the sub project but I like to leave these in there so that I can use them as a guide to recreate the existing links so for example if we take the first item here task 51 I can see that its predecessor is Task 10 and if we scroll up to the planning section task 10 is book venue so I basically want to recreate this predecessor for the corresponding task in the sports day project so you can see here we don’t currently have a predecessor for perform risk assessment now in Project 2021 normally when you’re link in in tasks you can simply click in the predecessors column and click the drop- down and select your task but notice here it’s only showing me tasks that are part of this sub project it’s not allowing me to link to other tasks within the original project so we can’t use this method we have to use the link option on the toolbar so let’s select book venue we’re going to go down hold down control and select perform risk assessment and then on the task RIS bur we’re going to choose link now notice a couple of things that happen here in the predecessors column it looks slightly different to what we normally have in here normally you’ll just see the task number but because we’re effectively linking to another project we actually get the entire path name in this predecessors column but if we now take a look at the Gant chart so I’m going to scroll across a little bit you can see that this particular task in our sub project is now linked with task 10 in the main project so we’ve very easily been able to maintain the Integrity of that link now I’m pretty much going to go through and do exactly the same thing for all of these other tasks and I’m going to be using this as my guide so wherever we have a predecessor number I’m basically going to recreate it for the project using the method I just showed you so join me back here in a couple of moments once I’ve done that so now that I’ve done that my Gant chart is starting to look a lot better and one thing to remember is that you also want to run through this same process for any successes now for most of these in our sports day subproject the successors are within the same project but if we take a look at this one just here sports day and barbecue I can see here the successor is a task that we have in the planning section now creating successors is pretty much the same as predecessors the only difference is the order in which we select the tasks so to create a successor we need to select the task we want to link to first so sports day and barbecue and then we select the successor so we’re going to scroll up and we’re going to select task 15 by holding down control and then we can click on link task 15 the predecessor updates but down here the successor has updated with that task so just bear that in mind when you’re linking through to your predecessors and successors now one thing you might have noticed here is that we have gaps in the numbering for example if we take a look we’ve got one and then it skips over two and we go to three 4 five six is missing seven eight is missing so on and so forth now we are going to talk more about these gaps a bit later on so don’t worry about it for now the final thing we’re going to do in this lesson is we’re going to delete out these sport State tasks so we can simply select them right click and choose delete I’m fine to delete all of the summary and subtask so let’s click on okay and now we’re just left with our sub project and all of the links should link through to earlier sections of the project let’s give it a save and once again we’re going to get this message pop up and for this you don’t really have to worry about it too much we’re going to click on okay to update the resource poll to reflect our changes we’re then going to Simply go to file and close this down it’s time now to complete exercise two and I have to say out of all of the exercises in this course this is probably the one that’s going to take you the most time now what you’re going to find in the exercise files folder is the exercise 2 MPP file and this file contains lots of different parts so much like what we were doing in the section previously so we have our planning section we have the gala dinner tasks we have the fashion show tasks and the sports day tasks and what I basically want you to do in this exercise is to practice the skills that we’ve learned in this section so I want you to split up this project into separate files so basically you need to create a master file and just for reference there is mine sitting here it’s called charity event all and this master file is going to contain multiple sub projects and each of the sub projects are listed below so we have fashion show dinner planning and sports day you’re also going to need to create a shared resource pool that all of them share together and once again you can see here I have a file called charity eventor resources this is where you’re going to find your resource poll and it’s the file with no tasks so your starting file is the exercise file at the bottom and these files here are really guides for you they are the finished result of my workings out now I don’t mind what you call your files you don’t have to name them exactly the same as what I’ve done here you can name them whatever you like but I would recommend that you save all of your files into the same folder another point to note with these exercises is don’t Focus too much on getting your project to look exactly the same as mine with project you might have different project dates set you might be doing this way in the future so the dates that you see in my project are not the same as yours you might have different options set or you might be using specific calendars so the focus doesn’t need to be on getting your project plan to look exactly the same as mine you just need to practice these skills so you can apply them to your own plans so that is it give it a go and I will see you in the next lesson so we’ve looked at some of the basic aspects of resource sharing and consolidation and now we’re going to look at some of the more practical aspects now consolidation and resource sharing Works absolutely fine if you follow a clearly defined set of rules and protocols and in order for this to be the case your requirements must be pretty straightforward if your requirements are more complex and a good example would be if you have a number of pools of resources and sometimes you need to get resources from one place and sometimes another or maybe you have lots of projects then Microsoft Project isn’t really going to cope with it without you being extremely careful because even then we would be working in an environment where even a small slip or deviation has the potential to cause disaster so if your requirements are even just a little bit more complicated go for project server where you can use Erp now Erp stands for enterprise resource planning and it gives us the ability to deal with shared resources from multiple pools and it’s supported in a more flexible and resilient way so if you’re looking at this and thinking my project is more complex than this then you really need to think about if Microsoft Project is going to be up to the job also if we have a situation where say we have four project managers sharing a Consolidated project and resource pool it’s very important that they all know what they’re doing because if even one of them doesn’t understand how to do this then it can cause chaos for everybody else so those are just a couple of points to bear in mind now you can see on the screen I’m currently in file explorer and I have all of my files remember we created these in the exercise I have them saved off to a shared location now in reality if you’re working at a company this might be some kind of shared network drive that everybody in your company or in your team can access now I’m just simply one person I don’t work at a company so I don’t have a shared network drive but what I do have is one drive cloud storage which again is another area where you can share files so I’ve saved my files into this shared area now one of the potential problems when you have project files saved to a shared network drive is the potential for conflicts because with a shared network drive lots of people might have access to these files and we could have multiple people opening the same file at the same time so again just bear that in mind I’m going to show you a couple of little pointers here so let’s start out by opening charity event all because all I want to do right now is just see the entire project so let’s double click to open so first off it recognizes that there is a shared resource pool and it’s popping up this little message asking me how I want to handle that so it says this file shares resources from a resource poll what do you want to do and then we have two options we can choose to open the resource pool to see assignments across all shareff files or do not not open other files now the reason why we might choose the second option do not open other files would be a situation where maybe we’re not that interested in working with or even seeing the resources maybe we just simply want to open the project plan so we can take a look at the schedule maybe add a couple of tasks in that kind of thing so if you aren’t really interested in the resources you could select that second option now the first option will allow us to see the other resources and that’s one we’re going to choose in this situation so let’s just click on okay so it’s going to open up the charity event all file and I can see the master and all of the sub projects that we have in here now the reason why I can see these is because I have them all stored in the same folder location if we just quickly jump back to file explorer all of the files all of the sub projects that are part of this master project are all in the same folder now let’s start dive into a quick scenario maybe I’m the project manager for the gala dinner only and at any particular time I only need to see the tasks and the information related to the gala dinner so let’s close down this file and just open up the Gara dinner sub project so we’re going to jump back to file explorer there is the Gara dinner project let’s double click to open now note that we get exactly the same message about the resource pull also note when you look behind at the tasks some of those are ghosted or grayed out and these are the tasks within the gadner project that either have predecessors or successors so essentially tasks that have dependencies now these aren’t real tasks in this project they just represent tasks in other sub projects so they’re really there to give me information about external dependencies now once again we’re going to select the first option let’s click on okay so there is my project and if we jump across to the resource sheet I can see my resource pull and I can use these resources in my project and remember as we saw before we could jump across to Resource usage view we could add a column for project and even though I only have the gala dinner project open I can still see where those resources are being used in relation to other projects so so this is a really important point to note here the resource pool is aware of where all of the resources are being used even if we only have a small part of the file open so now we have a little bit of a different situation the project manager for the gala dinner has decided that he or she wants to work on their part of the project from home so we’re going to say that they don’t have access to the shared location remember this is all in the context of these files being stored on a network drive at at your company now as the project manager of the gala dinner I want to be able to take all of these files home but the other project managers for each part of this project are also taking their files home so in order for the project manager of the gala dinner to be able to work successfully on this project from home would he or she need to take home the resource pool as well well in theory that is possible but in my experience that can lead to a bit of a disaster because if the project manager takes the Gad Dina file home and also the resources file and they make changes to those files from home the next day when they come into the office and load them back onto the network server and let’s say that all of the other project managers do exactly the same thing how do we manage all of those changes now of course in theory we could set this up so that everybody can work on it from home and the good example here would be to save these files into something like one drive as I do here but a lot of companies still work with files that are stored on network drives so we need to work out a way that we can do this successfully and with ease but also make sure that everybody is aware of the implications of doing this so what we’re going to do here is let’s close down the gadin file we’re going to reopen it but this time we’re going to select the second option do not open other files and click on okay so now we have a situation where we have the garad dinner file open but we don’t have but we don’t have the shared resource pool so if we go across to the resource sheet notice that we only have two resources as opposed to all of our resources and that is because we don’t have the resource pole open we don’t have access to it currently so it’s only showing us the resources that are in use for the specific tasks in the garad dinner project only and what project is basically doing here is it creates a temporary working resource sheet and only includes the resources that it knows about so as far as project is concerned these are local resources in a local resource sheet so let’s go in and let’s make a change so we’re going to open up the prepare dinner venue task we’re going to make sure we’re on the resources Tab and where we have our volunteer resource currently that’s showing us 300% so effectively we have three volunteers all working at 100% so what I’m going to do is I’m going to take this down to 200 click on okay now notice we get a little warning next to task 12 let’s click the drop down we have some options I’m going to choose the second option that’s absolutely fine change the amount of work but keep the duration the same so let’s choose that and it gets rid of our warning the other thing we might do is we might assign additional resources just here so maybe I want to assign the volunteer that I’ve just freed up to the make bar arrangements task so we’re going to click in resource name we’re going to choose volunteer units 100% that’s fine and click on okay now what about assigning a resource that we can’t currently see remember we can only see the garad project manager and the volunteer maybe we want to assign someone to help with the training of the garad dinner volunteers so let’s jump back across to the resource sheet and we’re going to add a caterer resource and we’re going to assign this resource to that task so let’s jump in to train garad dinner volunteers we’re going to go to the resources Tab and we’re going to add our caterer so those are the changes that I’ve made at home let’s give the file a quick save and close it down so let’s pretend it’s the next day I’ve come back into the office and I’ve uploaded the files that I worked on at home to the shared network drive so let’s now open up charity event all we’re going to select the first option as we’re back in the office now let’s check our changes if we scroll down to the garad inner section of the project let’s jump into the train garad in a volunteers task we’re just going to open it up and check our resources there is the caterer that we added so that’s looking good what about make bar arrangements let’s double click because we made a change there yes we have our volunteer assigned and if we jump across to our resources you can see that the caterer has now been added to the bottom of the resource pool so effectively the changes that we’ve made to this project without the resource P being available have come across absolutely fine in the previous lesson we looked at some of the Practical aspects of sharing and consolidation and how a project manager can work separately on a project that is part of a larger project and in this lesson we’re going to start by looking at another important basic question how do you maintain a resource pool now we’re still working in the shared location and we’re just going to open up the resource pool which is this file just here charity event resources. MPP so let’s double click to open it up and what you’ll notice is you get this little open resource P dialogue box and we have three options that we can choose so it says this file is the resource pool for many projects what do you want to do and the first option that’s selected by default is is open resource pool read only allowing others to work on projects connected to the pool now before we select our option here it’s important to bear this information in mind when we’re talking about making changes or updates to the resource pool we’re actually talking about two different things one type of update is where we change information in the resource poll such as the pay rate someone’s initials or maybe the calendar the other type of change we could make isn’t really a change to the resource poll at all it’s a change to an assignment and in this case it’s sort of the running total that the resource pool keeps of assignments for each of its resources so with that in mind we’re going to first select the first option in this list open resource pool readon allowing others to work on projects connected to the pool now if we open the resource pool using this option we can look at the properties of the resources and maybe do things like runoff reports but we can’t make changes to them so let’s select the first option and click on okay now you can see automatically up in the title bar it’s showing me that this file is open as read only now what we’re effectively doing here is we’re looking at a snapshot of the resource poll at a moment in time and of course other project managers might be working on their projects individually and it’s entirely possible that they’re making changes to their project and also the resource resource pull so if at any time we want to refresh the resource pull and see the changes that other people are making we can do that so if we jump up to the resource Tab and go to Resource poll notice we have a refresh resource poll option just here so if we click this it’s going to refresh it and pull through any of those changes now if we ourselves are making changes to the resource pool and we want to make sure that everybody can see those we would do a similar thing we would jump up to Resource pool but we would choose the option below update resource pool now it’s currently grayed out for me because I haven’t made any changes or updates to the resource pool but this is the option you would choose now if we go back into resource pool and just jump into the share resources option this is going to show us all of the files that this resource pool is linked to now this is more of an FYI it’s just useful information to know now I’m going to cancel out of here I’m going to close down the resource pool and we’re going to reopen because we want to take a look at the second option in that list so the second option says open resource P read write so that you can make changes to Resource information like pay rates Etc although this will lock others out of updating the pool with new information so if what you need to do here is something like change pay rates as it says in the message or any other fundamental change to the information about one or more resources then you’re going to need to open the resource pool in read write mode now when you do that you don’t stop

others from opening projects that share the resource pool from opening their projects but they won’t be able to make changes to the resource information so it doesn’t stop them changing assignments but they can’t change any information that involves actually changing resource information itself so if you do need to do maintenance on the information in the resource poll then this is the option to use now the third option option is a variation on the second option it says open the resource pool read WR and all other share of files into a new master project file you can access this new master project file from The View tab switch Windows command now so far when we’ve been talking about project consolidation the implication is that there is an element of permanence to this all project the project that contains the sub projects and we’ve done that on the basis that this will be something that will continue throughout the life of the overall projects now in some cases either you don’t need that or that creates its own problems for example it restricts how users manage their own projects so you might find it’s better all around for users to keep their projects entirely separate on a day-to-day basis so they can still share the resource PLL but the projects are not Consolidated into one master project however it may be that maybe once a week for example you need to run a report and you need to run a report on all of the projects together in a master file so these are all decisions that you need to make depending on the type of projects that you have and I’m going to leave that for you to experiment with now a final few things to cover before we leave this lesson we’ve taken a look at how to share resources but what about doing it the other way around what about stopping sharing resources and really the important thing to remember here is that you need to have the pool and the file open so we’re going to open the resource pool in read write and I’m also going to open the Gara dinner file now as we already know the Gara dinner file shares resources I’m on the resource sheet now and I have my resource pull so if we jump up to Resource pull and go to share resources what I could do here is Select use own resources I’m going to click on okay notice now it’s effectively unlink from the resource poll and we’re only seeing the resources that are part of that Gala dinner project so so let’s close the garad dinner file down I’m going to say yes to save the changes I’m now back in my resource pool file and if we go to Resource pool and share resources check out the sharing links below remember we looked in here previously this is showing us all of the files that the resource pool is linked to you can see that the Gad dinner file is now no longer in this list so it’s no longer sharing the resource pool now I’m going to close down the resource pool and we’re going to open up charity event all and I’m going to say yes open the resource pool and notice in the project column where we can see our resources and where those resources are coming from we now have two separate files so the majority of these resources are using the shared pool which is this charity event resources file but the three resources that are part of the gala dinner project are now getting their resources from the gala dinner project instead now just to finish up this lesson let’s jump back to an chart View and as we know we’re currently working in the charity all which is showing us the master and all of the sub projects now maybe at this stage we decide that we don’t want the gala dinner sub project to be a sub project anymore maybe we just want to list out these tasks and have them part of the all project and this is a very straightforward thing to do so what we’re going to do is we’re going to select the sub project we’re going to right click our Mouse and we’re going to jump into information and we’re going to go to the advanced Tab and where we have source project if you notice underneath it says link to project so if we want to make these just regular tasks and not a sub project we just simply need to deselect this and click on okay I’m going to say yes I want to save changes and check it out we now just have those tasks listed as regular tasks within the all project it’s no longer an inserted sub project now this can have implications further up up in the schedule if we scroll up to the planning section some of the tasks that are part of the gala dinner project are now being referenced from in this case the planning sub project and what we would need to do here is to make sure that where the dependencies originally existed between the two sub projects and now exist between effectively a sub project of the all project and tasks within the all project you need to go through these dependencies and make sure they’re set up correctly and one of the most important things to bear in mind here is that when you do convert a sub project back to regular tasks that is not reversible so I always recommend it’s a good idea to take a backup copy of your file in case you decide at any stage that that’s not what you wanted to do in this lesson we’re going to take a look at how we can set up recurring tasks as this might not be something that you’ve come across before and we’re going to use the example of a progress meeting so in this scenario it might be that every month let’s say the 29th of each month we get the team together for a progress meeting and that meeting is going to last 3 hours and it occurs in the afternoon from 2: p.m. to 5:00 p.m. so if you were managing a project let’s say which lasts roughly a year you would also be managing 12 progress meetings now we could schedule these meetings individually but it’s lot more time efficient to set them up as recurring tasks we have to be aware that if you are going to set these meetings up as recurring tasks you need to be in a situation where there isn’t much variance from a pattern and what I mean by that is you know for sure that that meeting is going to occur on the 29th of every month and the duration is going to be 3 hours from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. now of course there are natural variations for example the 29th of the month might not always be on a working day it could be at the weekend now project will deal with any situation like that so we don’t really need to worry about that too much but if in fact what you find is that every month your boss wants to move the meeting to a different date maybe the 24th or the 27th then setting up a recurring task might not be the most efficient way to do this so what I’m trying to say is that there needs to be a reasonably consistent pattern to your tasks now before we get into setting up our occurring tasks for this project meeting I just want to demonstrate something that surprisingly a large number of people don’t generally get to do in project and that is to use times as well as dates for our start and finish now what I mean by that is when you’re adding tasks or maybe setting the start date of your project most of the time we’re working with days we won’t generally scheduled tasks between two times it will always be a task that has a duration of 3 days 2 days one day 5 days so on and so forth but for this we are going to jump into the options and we’re going to add in a time element to our start and finish times so I’m currently working in the recurring task project file which you can find in the course files folder and I’m in Gant chart View and I’m just going to widen out the duration column because we’re going to add in a longer date format so let’s click on file we’re going to go down to options and on the general page if you take a look in the date format field you can see this is the format that I’m currently using so I’m going to change this to add in the time component as well so I think I’m just going to use this date format just here and let’s click on okay and we’re going to see that reflected when our occurring tasks are added into the schedule so now it’s time to add our occurring task we’re going to jump to the task ribbon and then all the way over in the insert group we’re going to click the drop down underneath task and choose recurring task so we need to to give our task a name so this is going to be a project meeting the duration is currently set to one day now we don’t want this meeting to be a one-day meeting it’s going to be a 3-hour meeting so I’m going to type 3 H in here I then get to choose the recurrence pattern so is this occurring daily weekly monthly yearly this is a monthly meeting so I’m going to choose monthly and then I can choose the detail of that recurrence so I could choose to set this to recur on a specific day of every month for example or I could choose to schedule this meeting on the second Wednesday of every month or maybe the third Monday of every month so you can really get quite granular about your occurrence information just here now we’re going to say that we want this meeting to occur every month on the 29th so let’s add in 29 just there of every 1 month and then underneath we get to specify the range of recurrence now currently the default start date here is just the start date of my project and the actual date that you have in here the start date doesn’t matter too much cuz project will work that out based on today’s date but we do need to change the time just here otherwise it’s going to schedule all meetings at 8:00 a.m. in the morning so we can leave the start date as it is but we do need to change this information over here so I’m going to say I want this to start at 2:00 p.m. we then get to choose if we want to end after a specific number of occurrences so maybe I’m only sched in this project for the next 6 months so I could say I want to end this after six occurrences now I don’t want to do that in this case I’m going to choose a specific date so let’s click on end by and I’m going to use the date picker and we’re just going to schedule these until the end of the year so I’m just going to select the 31st of December and I’m going to add onto the end here five p.m. the final thing at the bottom here is to choose a calendar for scheduling this task now for the for the time being I’m just going to choose the standard calendar and click on okay now notice I’ve got this little popup warning message that tells me two of the seven project meeting tasks will occur during non-working times so that means that the 29th of the month has fallen on a non-working Day so a Saturday or a Sunday based off of my standard calendar twice so I now need to tell project how I want to deal with that so I have a few different options it says project can reschedule the task to occur at the first available working time to reschedule the two task occurrence click yes so if I was to click yes here then project is going to reschedule both of those tasks that fall on a non-working day to the next available time on the next working day so we can safely say that if my tasks fall on a weekend if I was to choose yes here then project is going to schedule them for the next working day which is going to be Monday now if I was to choose no down here it’s not going to to create the two task occurrences so it’s not going to create them at all so maybe we decide that for those meetings that do fall on a weekend we’re just not going to have a meeting I could choose no the final option cancel is if I just decide that I want to cancel out of what I’m doing and not create any tasks I can just choose cancel now in this instance I’m going to get project to reschedule the two task occurrence so let’s click on yes and see what we get now if we take a look at the start column just here we can see that most of these project meetings have scheduled on the 29th but we can see our two exceptions we have one here which has been rescheduled to July the 31st at 8:00 a.m. in the morning and then we have this one down here which has been rescheduled to October the 30th so the majority of my tasks have been rescheduled correctly but I will now have to go in and deal with these two exceptions so that they reflect accurately because we don’t want these occurring at 8:00 a.m. in the morning so let’s click on the first task that needs to be rescheduled which is this one just here here we can right click and go into information and now we can just adjust the time so I’m going to change this again to 2 p.m. and the end time to 5 p.m. and click on okay so that one now looks a lot better I’m going to do exactly the same for this task just here so let’s rightclick information and make our changes so there we go pretty simple and straightforward but again it is worth noting that if each meeting that you want to schedule has significant differences maybe completely different times of the day then creating these individually as opposed to setting them up as recurring tasks is probably going to be more efficient for you now another thing to know if we decide at some stage that maybe this meeting is going to last 2 hours as opposed to three and we right click and go into the information for the first task just here if we were to change the duration up here to 2 hours just know that it’s going to BAS basically recreate every single task in this list so if you did make any changes to exceptions like we just did you’re going to have to go back in and redo those so that’s just really a point to note and another little thing to note here before we finish this lesson is that if you do go in and create recurring tasks you don’t necessarily have to create them just the end of your project you can extend them further than the project end date just bear in mind that if you do this it is going to extend the overall duration of your entire project so just be aware of that as well now when we do have our meeting scheduled as we do here you can see we have a project at the top which has a little arrow next to it which means it is collapsable and expandable and project has helpfully named all of these individual projects with a number so 1 2 3 4 to make them easy to identify now the very final thing to note here is that we can also assign resources to our meetings so what I could do here is click the project meeting at the top right click and choose assign resources and I have three resources already included in my resource sheet and I want to assign all three of these resources to the meetings so what I can do is I can hold down control to select multiple resources so let’s click the first one hold down control select the second one and the third click on assign and now when I click on close I can see in the resource names column I now have all of those resources assigned to every single recurring meeting in this lesson we’re going to take a look at how we can create custom fields and it’s probably the case that you have seen and used many of the fields associated with tasks and resources before so Fields associated with tasks would be things like its duration its start and finish times and you can see those them fields on the screen right now for this new project that we’re going to be working on so fields in Project are essentially columns now in some cases it might be that you’ll specify values yourself and sometimes project does it for us for example if we set up a task starting on a particular date and then we create another task with a dependency on the first say it’s going to start 20 days after the first task project will calculate the start date for us it will also calculate things like the amount of work involved in a task based on the duration number of resources and so on so the number of fields that we already have within project is pretty large but in any particular situation there might be other information that you want to store or see in your project so we do this using custom Fields And there are so many different things that we can do with custom Fields now as you’ll see in a moment when we dive into this project provides a set of dummy fields that we can use as the basis of our own custom Fields so we’re going to look at a very simple example of how to create a custom field and it will really give you an idea as to the type of things that you can do with them so we’re going to set up a very common scenario many project managers these days keep information about the tasks in a project and they call it rag status now what rag stands for is effectively red Amber and green and it’s a really simple indicator of how a task is going in a project so the way that this works is that for each task in a project it’s given a rag status so something is going well and it’s on track we might give it a rag status of G for green if something’s got issues it might get a status of a for Amber and if we have a task where things are going horribly wrong we’re over budget we’re behind schedule then we might decide to give that task a status of R for red now the way that people assign these statuses can vary some people do it manually and do it on a task toask basis but in other cases these values will be calculated based on the current performance of the project maybe how far overtime is this project or how far out of budget have the costs gotten now for this particular lesson I’m going to demonstrate setting up a rag status for use manually and we’re going to set up this new rag status custom field and then we’re going to assign values for the Project based on my own assessment of the state of each task so the project that we’re going to be working on is a new website for a company called National Farm Foods now the details of this project don’t really matter in this example but it is just a simple representation of the building of a website so let’s set up our custom field so for this we need to jump up to the project Tab and in the Properties Group we have a custom Fields button so let’s click on this and see what we get now it’s worth noting right at at the top here we can create a custom field for a task a resource or a project now we’re creating a custom field for tasks so we’re just going to select this first option and then we can choose the type of custom field that we’re creating and you can see that we have a number of different options in the dropdown just here now we’re creating a rag status task which means I want to see either R A or G in the column so that is text so our type is going to be text and then just below that in the fields area we have all of our dummy custom fields and you can see that we have 30 of them that we can modify and use So currently they just have the generic name text one text 2 text three so on and so forth and to be honest with you it doesn’t really matter which one of these you choose but let’s keep things logical we’re going to select text one at the top now the first thing I’m going to do here is I’m going to rename this field now we can double click to re name it or we can just select the rename button underneath so I’m going to give this a more meaningful name so I can identify it a bit better and we’re just going to call it rag let’s click on okay you can see it now renames it but we still have text one in Brackets so that just lets him know the type of field we’re using when we’re working with our custom field also note below we have some other buttons so we can delete fields from here if you want to get rid of one you can do that we can even import fields from other applications the next set of options that we have are custom attributes and you can see we have a choice of none lookup or formula now if we were to choose none it basically means that we’re allowing the users to type whatever they like in the field so instead of just typing R A or G they could type anything they wanted into that field now that’s not what I want I want to lock this down a little bit so that they can only type R A or G and that is where we would use the second option the lookup option because with this option we can provide a list and the only thing users are going to be able to do in that field is Select an option from that list the final option is formulas so if we wanted to add a formula which does a calculation in this field we could do that from here also now we’re going to choose lookup and this is where we get to Define what we want to see in that dropdown now the order in which you type these is entirely up to you but in general I tend to like to have the one that’s probably going to be the most commonly used at the top so for me I think that’s probably going to be green so I’m going to type G in here and then we can give it a description and the description is going to be progress good the next one is going to be a for Amber and we’re going to say that this is a warning so maybe something we need to check on and the final one is going to be R and we’ll just say that there are issues with this task now note that if you do want to rearrange these you can simply select them and you have little move buttons at the top so I could move that up to reorder it or move it back down we also have some buttons just above which will allow us to copy and paste if you want to make copies of these we can insert rows things like that and then underneath this little table notice we have a little check box that says user value from the table as the default entry for the field so once again if you think that one of these is going to be way more common than the others then you might want to select it so for example G for Progress good and click on set default and you can see that that Chang color which means that this is the default option we can also change the way that we’re displaying the order in this lookup table so currently I’m displaying these by row number so they’re going to show 1 2 3 in the dropdown or I could chose to sort these ascending or sort descending alphabetically and then the final option that we have down here are our data entry options and it says allow additional items to be entered into the fields and those values will be added to the lookup so again if we want to allow our users to be able to effectively modify what they’re seeing in the dropdown and just type something in and have it become part of this list then we could choose this option now I don’t want to do that in this case so we’re just simply going to click on close the next little group of options that we have calculation for task and group summary rows so these options here relate to calculations so if we take a look at our project let’s take a look at the development task and it subtasks in the project so task 13 14 15 and 16 so the development summary task has three subtasks so what this basically relates to is if I give all three of these subtasks a rag status of G for green do I want the summary task the development task to get a status of G as well or what about if I have a different status applied to each of the subtasks how do I want that to reflect in the summary task do I want it to average out to work out the status for the summary task so that is what these options relate to just here now in this case we’re just going to leave as on none the next option calculation for assignment rows now once again we’re just going to leave this on none and then the final group here values to display now currently I have this set to data which means it’s going to display an R an A or a g but if I wanted to make this more graphical I could add graphical indicator to represent those values and I could choose if I want to add them for non- summary rows summary rows and if I do select this option I can also select that summary rows inherit the criteria from non summary rows so this is where we could come in and we could add an image just here so for example I could click the drop down in test for Rag and I could say that if it equals let’s say G for green I could assign an image so let’s choose a green circle if it equals an a for Amber then we want to have let’s say an orange circle and if it equals R for red then we’re going to have a red circle now you don’t have to do this I’m just showing you this as an example let’s click on okay so now let’s click on okay to create our cust field and to get that fied display we just need to add a new column so I want my rag status column to appear somewhere around here so let’s select the duration column go up to Gant chart format and we’re going to insert a column and then we can go through and if we scroll down to R we should find our rag custom field there it is just there let’s select it and check out what we get because we set the green one as the default that’s why we’re seeing Green in here here but I could change this by clicking the drop down and maybe I want to change this to a for warning and we get our orange graphical representation now remember if you just wanted R A and G in here you didn’t have to set up these graphical indicators so I’m going to set this to progress good let’s say that this one has some issues or warning and we’ll just carry on adding a rag status for each of these tasks and it’s entirely up to you if you want to manually add a status for the summary task as well I’m just going to add them for the subtasks all the way down to the bottom and we’re going to do most of these as progress good so that is how you can set up a custom field and use it in your project in the previous lesson we saw how we can add a custom field into our project that shows the rag R status of each task and the way that we did that was that we entered our rag status manually if you recall after we added the column I then went through and selected the rag status manually from the drop-down for each of the tasks but as I mentioned in the previous lesson aside from doing that manually we might decide that we want to automate the calculation of values for a custom field and that’s exactly what we’re going to do in this particular lesson and we’re going to stick with our rag status field but this time the values are going to be calculated and there are many ways that people calculate rag status this can be based on numerous different things it might be based on Time Performance or maybe cost performance and we’re going to create a calculation based on cost performance now you can see here that I have version two of this project on the screen and version two differs from version one very slightly so we’re going to set up this scenario that the project isn’t going particularly well everything in the the original project plan was behind schedule and going well but now some things have happened and we’ve had to update our project to reflect the new status of each task and version two reflects the new status of the project now the first thing I’m going to do here before we get on to the calculations part of this lesson is I’m going to change the rag status column to use text as opposed to these graphical indicators so this is just a good opportunity for you to see how you can switch between these two representations of the rag status so I’m going to select the rag status column let’s go up to Gant chart format and custom Fields now if I don’t want to show these graphical indicators I just want to see the r a or G all I need to do is come down to where it says values to display and change this from graphical indicators to data so let’s select that option click on okay and we now get our text as opposed to those Graphics now now as I mentioned we’re going to calculate our rag status based on cost so the first thing we need to do here is we want to make sure that we’re displaying the cost table now I have the cost table displayed if you’re not sure how to do this and you’re in a different view if you jump up to the view tab go to the data group we have a tables drop down just here so you just want to make sure that you’re clicked on cost you might find that you’re clicked on Entry instead if you can see all of your tasks so we want to display the cost table now now one thing I want you to take a look at here if we extend this out is the variance column we can see that quite a few tasks have a positive variance I.E they’re currently running over budget and that really does make sense because in this project plan in this version two I’ve actually extended the duration of some of the tasks in this project and with an extended duration it means that we require resources for a longer period of time to work on that particular task and that in turn pushes the costs up so it’s not really a surprise to see that we have quite a few positive variances in here and that quite a few tasks are running over budget if you look at task five for example requirements definition we can see that the variance is just over $22,000 task 10 analysis and design that’s just under $11,000 and there are a couple of other tasks in here as well that are also running over budget for example ask 14 graphical resources and branding that’s slightly over budget at $90 so we’re going to calculate the rag status based off of the variance and the rule that I’m going to apply is that anything that has a cost variance of zero or less I.E the currently planned cost doesn’t exceed the Baseline cost any of those tasks the rag status will be G or green for any task whose cost variance is positive but doesn’t exceed $11,000 the status is going to be a or Amber and for all of the other tasks where the cost variance exceeds $11,000 the status will be r or red so let’s set up a second custom field so let’s go to the project tab custom fields and this time we’re still working with tasks we’re going to choose the next one in the list text two and we’re going to rename this to rag Auto so we can differentiate it from the original now when it comes to the custom attributes this time we’re going to use a formula to calculate the rag status so let’s click on the formula button now this little formula dialog box that pops up is very similar to the Expression Builder in Excel if you’ve ever used that you can see we have our mathematical symbols underneath so plus minus multiply divide we have our operators we have a little drop down this where we can choose different fields to work with and we also have a list of functions and these are categorized by type now the formula that we’re going to set up here we’re going to do it in two parts and the first part of this formula is going to allow me to identify all of the G’s in the rag status column so any task that’s flagged with a G for green now we know that a status of G can be identified by anything that has a c variance of zero or negative so let’s click the functions dropdown and the function that we’re going to use is the IF function so again if anybody out there is an Excel user this might be a function that you’re already familiar with and the IF function is a logical function it allows us to perform a test and then it outputs a value of true or false and we can add meaning to that true or false output now that’s all a bit complicated at this stage so let’s work through it slowly I’m going to go into General because this is where we have our if expression and notice here it does look a little bit different to if you’re using it in Excel but the formula is basically the same so let’s select if from the list and notice in this formula we have expression true part false part so the expression part is where you’re performing your test and then we choose what we want to Output if that test is true and what we want to Output if that test is false so what is our expression going to be what is our logical test well for this first part what I want to say is if the cost variance is greater than zero so I’m going to select where it says expression we’re going to delete that out and we’re going to replace it with a field so let’s click the drop down we’re going to go to cost and we’re looking for cost variance and what we’re saying is if the cost variance is greater then zero and then we can Define what we want it to do now for this first part here this true part I’m just going to put a little placeholder in here because we’re actually going to work through this in the second part of this formula so for the time being I’m just going to put in quote marks X and for the false part we’re going to put G so let’s work through this because if you’ve never seen this before this can look pretty complicated so what we’re basically saying here is if the cost variance is greater than zero if that is true output an X if it’s false output a g for green so if I was to click okay on this formula what I’m basically going to see in the rag Auto column is an X for positive values and a g for negative values so let’s try it out let’s click on okay now you might see this little warning message pop up it basically tells you that anything that’s currently in the rag auto field field is going to be overwritten by this formula now in this case that is totally fine so let’s click on okay and okay again so let’s go up to Gant chart format and we’re going to say insert column and this time we’re looking for rag Auto and there it is just there so notice what we get if we take a look at this first one requirements definition I have an X in the rag auto field and if I take a look at the variance I can see that this is a positive variance so this is over budget the next one for example is showing G in the rag Auto status column and that’s because the variance is zero remember anything that’s greater than zero is going to show an X and everything else will show a g the same thing down here analysis and design we have an X and that’s because we are over budget on that one design sign off has a variance of zero so that is effectively on budget we have a g so so far this formula is working correctly but I need to take it a stage further because I don’t want to have X in the rag Auto column I want it to display g a or R so we need to modify our formula and add in another condition so let’s jump up to custom Fields select rag Auto and we’re going to click on formula we’re going to go back in and simply edit our formula now what we effectively need to do here is turn this into a nested if statement and again if you are an Excel user this might be something that you’re already familiar with so we want to replace this X part with another if formula so we’re going to delete it out we’re going to go to function into General and we’re going to select if to add another one in now our expression this time let’s delete that out is going to be if the cost variance is greater than $1,000 if that’s true we want to Output r or red status if it’s false we want to Output an a for Amber status so working through this formula the formula is first going to check if the cost variance is greater than zero if that’s false it’s going to Output a g if it’s true it’s then going to move on to the next and check if it’s greater than a th and it’s going to assign r or a based on that calculation anything else it’s going to assign a g so let’s click on okay and okay again and we can now see that our values have been updated so this one just here has a automatic rag status of R because the variance is greater than a th if we take a look at something with a rag status of a we can see that it’s greater than zero but not greater than a th000 so that is how that formula calculates now the final thing I’m I’m going to do here because I don’t want to have both of these columns in my table is I’m going to Simply hide the original rag column so let’s right click and choose hide column and then I’m just going to switch back to my entry table View and I’m going to quickly add another new column to display my rag Auto status in this view as well so let’s scroll down rag Auto and there we go in the previous lesson we set up a rag Auto Custom field and the value for the custom field for each task was calculated using a formula and as I pointed out in that lesson the formula that you can create can be pretty sophisticated there are lots of different options if you have a little look around and in setting up that formula we used nested if statements now there is a very good alter alternative to using nested if statements which can make things simpler and also allows us to deal with situations where we have more than three values so that’s what we’re going to take a look at in this lesson we’re going to edit the rag Auto Custom field and we’re going to use a different formula so let’s click on the project Tab and we’re going to jump into custom fields and make sure that we have rag Auto selected and we’re going to click on the formula button and in there we we still have a nested if formula now we’re going to replace this formula with a more flexible formula called switch and again if you are an Excel user then you might be familiar with this function so let’s delete out everything that we currently have in there now you can simply type the formula in but if you prefer to get those little prompts for the arguments then jump into function go down to General and there is the function that we’re going to use switch now the switch fun function allows us to create multiple Expressions so more than the three that we did using the nested if statements and you can see that these arguments kind of come in pairs we have expression one and then value one expression two value two and we could carry on going expression three value three so on and so forth so we’re going to double click to select expression one and we’re still working with the cost variance field so we’re going to insert our cost variance field field and we’re going to say if this is less than or equal to zero the value we want to Output is going to be G or green so basically anything with a negative cost variance is going to have a rag status of G we can then complete this for expression two so once again we’re working with cost variance if this is less than or equal to $11,000 the value is going to be a and then finally we’re going to add another one if the cost variance is greater than $11,000 then we’re going to Output an r and of course if we had more options we could simply carry on going setting up these different pairs logical test and then the output now we’re going to stop there it’s all we need for our example click on okay and what you should notice is that when I click on okay again there should be absolutely no change in the rag auto field because we effectively doing the same calculation we’re just using a different formula to do it so let’s click on okay and like magic nothing changes so our formula is working it’s also worth bearing in mind that when you do click on okay project does do a syntax check of your formula so if you’ve typed something in incorrectly you are going to get a warning message come up if you don’t see anything then you can safely ass assume that your formula is good now because there are so many different types of formulas that you can do in project and you want to learn a little bit more about this we definitely don’t have time to cover all of them in this course but something that can be really helpful is to jump into the help files and just search for Project functions for custom fields and the top link here if we open this up it’s going to give us a whole heap of information about the different functions for custom fields and it’s going to go through them all with an explanation so it’s definitely worth having a little read through these help files if this is something that you think you’re going to be using all the time in Project now the final thing we’re going to do here is we are going to read add some graphical indicators but we’re going to make them slightly different to before so let’s go to the project Tab and custom Fields we’re going to make sure that we have our rag auto field selected we’re going to change this to graphical indicators and we’re going to click on the button and then we’re going to jump in here here and we’re going to add some squares this time so let’s choose equals if the value equals g the image we’re going to use is this green square we’re going to say equals again if it’s a we’re going to have an AM square and then finally if it’s equal to R we’re going to have a red square also now underneath we have this little option selected show data values in tool tip now I do recommend that you keep this selected let’s click on okay and okay again and we can see that those have now applied they’re looking lovely but what exactly is that tool tips option well if I hover my mouse over any of these indicators it will show you the underlying value so if I hover over one of these let’s go for this one just here I don’t know if you can see it’s sort of very briefly flashed now that’s got something to do with the fact that I’m recording the screen for you when you hover your mouse over this and you’re not recording you’ll be able to actually see the value that sits underneath the graphic so I do recommend having those turned on can be super useful so that’s it for this section on custom field we’ve seen a couple of different examples there but of course there are so many different formulas left for you to explore it’s time now to complete exercise three and in this exercise we’re going to create a custom field for a project that you haven’t seen yet and this is a reasonably basic building project the schedule isn’t quite finished and we haven’t assigned any resources as yet but we are almost at the end of the planning stage and we’ve saved a baseline but we’ve had to change some of the estimates so now that we’ve changed some estimates we get a finish variance for some of the tasks in the project and you can see those in the Finish variance column in the exercise file now this is your starting point for this exercise if you take a look in that column you’ll see that many of the tasks don’t have a variance for some of them it might just be 2 or 3 days and for a few it’s 5 days or more so what I’d like you to do in this exercise is I want you to flag the tasks that have a variance of 5 days or more so that we can address that before we go on to the next stage of planning now the way that I would like you to do this is to create a custom field of type flag so if you check each of the types you’ll see that a flag field is a data type of yes no and I’d like you to make sure that the value of yes is set for any task where the finished variance is 5 days or more and I’d also like you to set this for the appropriate summary task as well so if a summary task has a finished variance of 5 days or more I’d like to have the value of yes also the next thing I’d like you to do in this exercise is I would like you to indicate graphically each of the tasks and summary tasks with a finished variance of 5 days or more in the Gant chart using an icon so a couple of things for you to practice in this exercise now before you dive straight in there’s just a couple of really important things that I want to mention here which are really going to help you when you’re completing this exercise in Project 2021 durations are stored in minutes so if you want to check the value of finish variance you need to do that in the terms of minutes so when I say 5 days that’s five working days so in a project where the defaults are still in Force 5 days is 40 hours which is 2,400 minutes now this is going to be important when you’re completing this exercise and I’m not going to give you too many clues or hints because I really want you to have a think about this yourself but just bear in mind that when you’re dealing with durations be aware that they’re stored in minutes if you’d like to see my answer then please keep watching so here is my answer you can see that I’ve moved the columns around a little bit so that we have finish variance at the start here and we have a new colum called week late and notice in this column Whenever there is a finished variance of 5 days or more we have this little red diamond icon so that just lets me know which tasks I need to focus on so you should have ended up with something that looks like this remember your dates might be different so you might have a slightly different result but if you can see the week L column and the graphical indicators are appearing where they’re supposed to appear you can safely assume that you’ve completed this exercise correctly and of course if you’re unsure then you’ll find this file in the exercise files folder take a look at the field and see what I did to achieve this result that’s it for now I will see you next time in this lesson we’re going to start to take a look at outline numbering and WBS codes because these might be things that you’re not familiar with so let’s start out with outline numbering now in this lesson we’re going to use the example of a houseb bu project now this project isn’t complete but there is enough information in it for the purpose of this lesson and the thing about house build projects is that they’re normally very structured and they’re also normally very similar so most housef projects will have tasks included similar to the ones that you can see here now something that’s not particularly obvious when you’re just looking at this project is that behind the scenes project 2021 is keeping a list of outline numbers for us so let’s take a look at them for this project now what I’m going to do is I’m going to insert a column just here and we’re looking four outline numbers so let’s scroll down there it is and now we can see our different outline number levels now this is very simple number formatting but let’s just walk through it so you understand so you can see here the task number one our top level summary task site has been given an outline number of one the next task task two which currently says clear site has been given an outline number of 1.1 and that’s because task number two is effectively a subtask of task number one we can see that it’s been indented which gives us our outline number of 1.1 the next task task number three set out that’s on the same indentation level as clear site so the numbering is going to follow on from that point so set out is now 1.2 and you can see that this numbering structure continues throughout this project plan and currently pretty much all of the tasks that we have in this plan are either level one the summary task or level two so we’re not really going Beyond 8.1 8.2 8.3 now let’s see what happens when we introduce another task into the middle of the schedule so I’m going to select where we have task three and we’re going to insert a task and this task is going to be called trim now this task needs to be a subtask of clear site so let’s jump up to the task ribbon and we’re just going to indent this task so check out what happens to our outline numbering now that we’ve introduced a third level trim has been given an outline number of 1.1.1 and then the numbering for task 4 goes back to 1.2 because this is out dented compared to trim if I was to insert another task directly under trim and indent it to the same level that task would be given an outline number of 1.1.2 so this is fairly standard outline numbering that I’m sure you’ve come across at some point in your career now the good news about this outline numbering is that project 2021 does all of the maintenance for us so as we make changes to the schedule add tasks delete tasks it’s going to automatically update the outline numbering to reflect the new structure so what exactly is the point of having outline numbers well we can use them to uniquely identify a task in a project for example if you wanted to relate materials to a particular task maybe we’re ordering steel for the steel frame you can see down here task number 21 when we order that steel maybe we want to make sure people know which particular project and task the steel was meant for so to do that we could provide them with the name of the project and also the outline number so outline numbers can be useful in that respect but they also give your project structure now this in theory all sounds good but in practice the use of outline numbers can have problems now if you have a very fixed structure on your projects and you’re reusing the same structure and there is rarely a need to change it or vary it then this can work however if you need something that can deal with variations with the addition of new tasks then it doesn’t work too well so when we started this project if we just scroll back up to the top site had an outline number of one clear site had an outline number of 1.1 Etc and they still have those outline numbers and if you recall we inserted the trim task into the schedule and everything numbered correctly but supposing that trim had to go into the schedule but it wasn’t a subtask of Clear Sight instead it was a subtask of site so let’s give that a go and see what happens so I’m going to select the trim task and what we’re going to do is we’re going to outdent it so it’s on the same level as clear site so now that we’ve done that and all subtasks underneath the site summary task are on the same level and all the numbering looks as if it’s working and flowing through correctly one thing that has happened is that the numbering Has Changed For example for task number four set out when we modified the indentation level of trim just above it changed the set out task number from 1.2 to 1.3 so the addition of new tasks and the changing of the indentation will renumber other tasks in your project to accommodate those changes now this might be absolutely fine for the project that you’re working on but in some cases having volatile numbers that can change depending on the changes that you’re making to the schedule is not really what you want sometimes you want to assign a unique number to a task and have that number follow that task no matter what else is going on in the schedule and that is where WBS codes come in so let’s take a look at the default WBS codes for this particular project so let’s insert another column and we’re going to choose WBS from this list so this will be near the bottom there we go and we can see the default WBS codes now WBS codes are the same really as outline numbering by default but we can customize the WBS codes to make them more relevant to the project that we’re working on and if you’re wondering where WBS codes originated from they originally came from government work work and US military work and the idea was not only to be able to identify the tasks in a project using a code in system but also to do things like relate WBS codes in one project to WBS codes in another project so a lot of the time if you were a project manager you’d be given a set of standard WBS codes to use and you need to set them up in your project to conform not only to government requirements but often to International standards and WBS code codes are still used and they’re very common in the public sector now one key aspect of WBS codes is that they don’t often look as simple as this the coding system is more complex and it’s more specific to the project so if you were given a set of WBS codes to use in a project you’d need to know how to customize them and that’s what I’m going to show you next now also another thing to note before we begin with these standard WBS codes that you can see in this new column that we’ve added check out what happens here so the first one the summary task for site is 001 clear side 01 SLA now you’d think that the next one would be 001 SLB but it’s not it’s e now this has something to do with what I was talking about earlier in the fact that WBS codes are more fixed and travel with their task as opposed to project changing the outline numbering when we start moving and deleting tasks so this is why we’re seeing e just here and I’ll talk about this more a little bit later on now let’s take a look at how we would customize these WBS codes to make them a little bit more meaningful to this particular project what we’re going to do is jump up to the project Tab and in the Properties Group we have WBS Define code so this is where we can set up exactly how we want our WPS codes to look now the first field we need to complete is the project code prefix now this will in general help us identify which project these WBS codes belong to so this is a house build project and we’re working in the 01 file so I’m going to say that the prefix for all of these codes is going to be hb01 Dash and then we’re going to have our numbering system now we Define our different numbering levels in the code mask area below and we’re going to create three different number numbering levels so our first numbering level let’s click the drop down we’re going to say that we won numbers the length well let’s go for three digits and the separator is going to be let’s say a forward slash so that is my first level of numbering and you can see in the code preview at the top what that’s going to look like so it’s going to say hb01 d111 because I’ve chosen numbers it’s going to start at one the length is three and when we move on to the next level the separator is going to be a forward slash our next level of numbering let’s do these in uppercase the length this time is going to be one character and the separator is going to be a DOT and then our third level is going to be ordered numbers again and this time we’re going to have two characters and we’re not going to have a separator on the end now before we click on okay let’s just take a look at these two little checkbox options that we have at the bottom we have generate WBS code for new task selected so when we add new tasks into the schedule it’s going to generate a brand new WBS code for that task and then the second option verify the uniqueness of the new WBS code so basically project is going to check against the list to make sure that the WBS code we’re using is a unique code so I’m happy with this let’s click on okay and check out our schedule so now we have our WBS style number applied once again if you take a look at this trim task you can see that it seems to be out of order because it’s not really flowing through with its numbering system now we’re going to talk about why that is in the next lesson so I’m going to hop over there now and I look forward to you joining me previously we looked at outline numbers and WBS codes and we pointed out some problems in terms of producing a consistent and reliable way of identifying the tasks in a project and the structure of those tasks then we created custom WBS codes so in this lesson we’re going to take a look at some of the problems that we might encounter with outline numbers and WBS codes because there are issues with both of them just different issues now it’s important to remember that there is a fundamental difference between a situation where you are given codes to use and they need to be assigned to the Tas in a project in such a way that those codes never change and the procedure whereby the tasks in a project are outline numbered in some way and that numbering is updated when you update the structure or the contents of the project so do you want your codes to be fixed or flexible and adaptable as the project changes so let’s take a look at this in a bit more detail so let’s take a look at task number 11 lockup and also task number 18 frame now now lockup has a WBS code of 003 we’re just going to look at the last three numbers on the end here and frame has a WBS code of 004 so what I’m going to do here is I’m going to drag frame above lockup so let’s grab the task let’s drag it up and drop it in there now a couple of things to notice here the first thing is the indentation notice that frame has effectively taken on the indentation of the summary task above and the outline numbering reflects that as well now the first thing I’m going to do here is just outdent frame to give it its correct outline level now notice here that when we’ve done this rearranging and made changes to this structure the outline number has recovered well we can see that everything still flows through so frame is now outline number three 3.1 3.2 all the way down to 3.4 and lock up has now changed to outline number four and all of its subtasks have the appropriate numbering level but check out the WBS codes this is an entirely different story effectively the WBS codes have acted in the opposite way so the lockup task and all of its subtasks have retained the original formatting so it’s still showing us 003 003a so on and so forth in the WBS code field but the outline numbering is all related to the number four so the WBS code hasn’t changed whereas the outline numbering has now if we take a look at the frame summary task and all of its subtasks remember this is the one we moved above lockup we now have some very strange numbering in here we have hb01 013 and that follows down throughout all of the subtasks so why do we have 13 in here well it’s because project views these as inserted tasks into the schedule and effectively treats them as if they are brand new tasks and assigns the next lot of WBS codes to them in the list so if we scroll down to the bottom of this schedule you can see that the last WBS code here for sign off task number 47 is HB 01012 so 12 now because project is treating these tasks as brand new tasks it’s assigned them the next set of WBS codes in the list which is 13 and you’ll also see if you look down that WBS column that we now no longer have any WBS codes that relate to 004 we have ones for 003 just here and then our ones for 005 and that’s because in here is where we had that frame summary task with its subtasks that was the one that we moved further up the schedule so outline numbers and WBS codes behave in very different ways when you change the structure of your project so let’s grab the frame summary task again and let’s move it back to where it was and see what happens to the schedule so let’s grab it and move it all the way down to to here and once again I’m just going to need to outd the summary task so it doesn’t take on the indentation of the tasks Above So once again you can see that the outline number has updated but the WBS code has remained static now let’s say that when we’ve done this we don’t particularly like the way that these WBS codes have been handled well fortunately there is a way that we can get around this all we need to do is right click on the summary task and jump into information and we’re going to jump across to the custom field Tab and you can see here is our WBS code so what I could do is simply manually change this from here if I didn’t like the WBS code that had been assigned so I’m going to change this to the value let’s put it back to 004 click on okay and if you now take a look at the schedule where we have frame we now have those codes looking as we need them to look now it might be that we get into a situation where we’re renumbering different WBS codes and maybe we get ourselves into a bit of a mixup we just want to reset everything back to how it was fortunately we have a button which will help us with this so if we go up to project and into WBS we have a reum option just here and that will reset all of your numbering back to how it was originally in this lesson we’re going to learn at outline codes so far we’ve been talking about the structure of a project and we’ve looked at outline numbering and the WBS codes that reflect the structure now there are many other ways that you can add structure to projects and we’re going to proceed in this lesson by going back to the nff website project if you recall this is the project for Farm Foods where we’ve basically outline the structure for building a website now this time we’re going to do something a little bit different because what we want to do is to reflect the requirements of an accountant now the accountant wants to be able to identify cost centers and cost center structures for the resources assigned to this project so we need to set up a structure which reflects how we charge for the use of these resources so in this example we aren’t looking at a task structure we’re looking at a resource structure instead now the project accountant has told us that we need to be able to identif ify which of the internal resources are chargeable and which are non-chargeable so we just need to create a simple structure that clarifies the charging within the project now if you take a look at the first resource in the resource sheet it says Northern Farm Foods now Northern Farm Foods is essentially the client and as the client we don’t have to pay them to do what they’re doing so let’s take a quick look at the types of tasks that the northern Farm Foods client Cent is performing within this project so we’re going to jump up to Resource usage and there is Northern Farm Foods and we can see here that they are involved in the requirements definition the analysis and design and also the testing now as the client we don’t have to pay them to do what they’re doing their contribution to this project is part of the commercial Arrangement that we have with the client now if we take a look at Mark Raven’s word I can see that he’s in charge of of the coding side of things so he’s going to be writing all of the HTML now Mark Ravensword is an internal salaried member of staff so the department won’t be charging for his time the same thing applies to Sally danvas she’s an internal member of Staff as well and her time is not chargeable because this is effectively part of her job she’s been assigned to this project to carry out these specific tasks and for Sally that is the analysis and design now Lorraine Reese is is a slightly different scenario Lorraine again is an internal member of Staff she’s been brought in to help with the testing of the scripts but her time is chargeable so we’re going to set up an outline code structure to reflect all of these different scenarios so let’s jump up to the project tab we’re going to go into custom Fields so we’re going to make sure that we select resource at the top here and the type we’re going to change to outline code so this little custom Fields window should look reasonably familiar to you now because we have used it a couple of times throughout the balance of this course so let’s rename our field and this time we’re going to call it charge code and click on okay now take a look down in the custom attributes section you can see that Nan and formula are both grade out so they’re inaccessible to me at the moment the only option we have in here is look up which is fortunate because that’s the option we need so the first thing we’re going to do here is we’re going to Define our code mask so this is really the structure that the charge code is going to take on so if we click on edit mask this is where we can Define our charge code structure so we’re going to say that there are going to be two levels to our charge code the first level is going to be characters the length is going to be three and we’re going to have a DOT separator the second level is also going to be characters and the length is also going to be three and you can see just above in the code preview what that’s going to look like so let’s click on okay now that we have our code mask our structure we can start to add our values in so our

first value which is going to be three characters is in NT and the description internal resource our second value is going to be chg for chargeable and then our third value is going to be for nonch chargeable now we’re going to do exactly the same but for external resources as well so we’re going to have EXT we’re going to have chg again now notice as soon as I type that it appears in red because project is recognizing that we already have chg as a value now we’re not going to worry about that too much right now because this will change when we adjust the indentation so let’s just finish off what we’re doing here and the final one again for external resources is non-chargeable so now what we can do is we can use our indentations at the top here to give this a little bit of structure so I basically want this one to be indented so it’s under internal along with this one as well and we want to do the same for the other two notice how that now we’ve added that indentation project is recognizing that these are not actually duplicates now if we take a look at some of the other options underneath we’re pretty much going to leave everything on the default settings here so we want to display the indenting in the lookup table so I always like to have this turned on because it just makes it easier to see what you’re selecting user value from the table as the default entry for the field now I’m not going to set a default so I’m going to leave that blank display order for the lookup table well I’m happy displaying it by row number and when it comes to our data entry options I don’t want to select either of these because I don’t want to allow additional items to be entered into the fields and I don’t want to allow only codes that have no subordinate values so we’re basically going to leave these as default click on close and okay so now what we’re going to do here is we’re going to insert a column and we’re going to display our custom field there it is just there charge code outline level one and now we can go through and assign different charge codes to different resources so if we go for the client first of all and click the little drop-down there is our little table and you can see some of those options that we selected coming into play we can see that we’ve got our indentation in place so it’s easier to identify what we’re selecting so Northern Farm Foods is external non-chargeable Mark Ravensword well as we mentioned he is internal and non-chargeable as is Sally danas Lorraine Reese she’s internal but she is chargeable and I’m basically going to go through the rest of these resources just assigning a charge code for each so let’s say that Adrien is internal non-chargeable Bakersfield Associates well they are external and chargeable People for People they are also external and chargeable Deborah Ashby well she is internal and non-chargeable and that is all I’m going to fill in there so now if we jump back to the resource sheet we can add a column into here as well so we can see those different charge codes and that can be a really useful column to add to this resource sheet so let’s click add new column once again we’re going to find our charge code column and there we have all of those charge codes listed out now the very final thing that I want to show you in this particular lesson is how the new charge code will enable the accountant to analyze the resource costs on this project so for this we’re going to jump up to the view tab we’re going to go into the data group and where we have group by we’re going to create a new group and in the field name we’re going to say that we want to group by and then we’re going to choose the new field that we created so this one here Group by charge code now you could modify the formatting that you’re applying down here for this example I’m just going to leave it on the defaults and click on apply now check out what happens you can see that our resources have been grouped by charge code so at the top we have all of the resources that currently don’t have a value but we can also see all of the external resources grouped together together and all of the internal Resources Group together and they are separated into groups depending on if they are chargeable or nonch chargeable so this can be really helpful to accountants when they’re trying to analyze the costs of a project it’s time now for us to complete exercise four and in this exercise we are back to working on our web development project and I’ve updated it a little bit and the starting point you’re going to find in the exercise files folder the file name is exercise 4. MPP if you take a look at this file and jump across to Resource usage view you can see that the charge code custom field that we created in the previous lesson is still there if you recall this is the one that we set up to assist the accountant now in this exercise we’re going to practice custom Fields but we’re going to shift our Focus back to custom fields for task so we’re going to use a custom field of the type outline code to reflect the structure of the project and remember that the difference when using outline codes is that project doesn’t maintain the values for us we must enter the values into the custom field so we want to put in a structure into this project that is fixed and under control so let me just show you my answer and then I’ll explain some of the specific requirements for this exercise so this is my answer you can see here that we have a custom column called web dev project code and then underneath we have a code for each of the different tasks and summary tasks in the project now if we click notice that we have a drop down just here where we can see a list of all of those values now notice that we only have five levels but the third level design and development is split into two parts we have 001 and 00 2 and hopefully you should recall from the previous lessons how we actually set up this drop-down list and how we can create these Su levels so in this exercise I’d like you to create a custom field called webdev project code I’d like you to set it up as I’ve got it set up here and then I’d like you to go through make sure that you can see the webdev project code field in the Gant chart View and assign the relevant project code to each summary task and task within the project so that is your exercise give it a go and I will see you in the next lesson in this and the next sections we’re going to take a look at costs and I’m going to assume that you have a basic knowledge of using costs in a project but we are going to look at some of the aspects that you might not have come across before and in this first section we’re going to take a look at fixed task costs now for many of the projects that you manage a large proportion of the costs will be related to the costs of resources and materials but sometimes you’re going to have fixed costs for specific tasks so we’re going to start with the example of our building project now if we scroll down to the services section you can see that task number 32 is the connect to services task and for this particular type of task there might be a fixed cost aspect for example there might be a cost in connecting the house supplies to the services so things like electricity and water so in this case we’re going to assume that the fixed cost is $295 now this isn’t a cost of a specific resource or material it’s a cost associated with the specific task of connecting to services so when we’re entering the fixed cost we need to enter it via the cost t table so let’s jump up to the view tab over in the data group we’re going to click tables and we’re going to make sure that we select the cost table and you can see here is the task in question task number 32 now if you just take a look at the different column headings within the cost table the First Column is the fixed cost column we then have fixed cost acral which is related to when this cost is implemented and I’m going to talk a bit more about that later on we have total cost base line and then we have variance so what I’m going to do here is in the fixed cost column we’re simply going to enter in 295 we then need to complete the fixed cost acral method and we have three options in here start pro rated and end now as I mentioned we are going to talk a bit more about this later on so for the time being we’re just going to set this to start which basically means that the cost is going to be acred at the start of the task so now we’ve entered this information information you can see that the total cost has updated to 295 you can also see that’s rolled up to the summary task of services we have nothing for Baseline which is fine because we haven’t set a baseline as yet and the variance is $295 as well now if you have assigned a fixed cost to a task you can still assign other costs to the same task for example if a member of my team had to spend time getting involved in this task that can still be added to the cost of this task so I’ve switched across to the website project and you’ll notice that one of the tasks in this project has a fixed cost of $2,000 task number two tendering process now one really important Point that’s worth bearing in mind is that it’s only possible to record one fixed cost against a task if you have more than one to apply you would add the cost together to get a total and add it into the fixed cost column and if you are going to do something like that it’s always good to add a note so that everybody knows what’s going on with these fixed costs so what we could do here for example is we could select the task let’s right click and go into information and then if we click across to the notes tab this is where we could add some notes just letting everybody know what each of the fixed costs are for so there’s my description for the $2,000 fixed costs if I had added multiple fixed costs together into one total I could carry on listing them out here so everybody is aware now there is another case that can sometimes occur let’s suppose you are getting external consultancy from an expert and in the case of this tendering process task we need to appoint a consultant now the consultant doesn’t charge on an hourly basis he charges a fixed cost so what we can do is we can set up the work resource for the consultant on the basis that there isn’t an hourly charge or cost but there is a fixed cost charge for their services so we can set this consultant up on the basis that their standard rate is zero but there is a cost per use so let’s take a look at that we’re going to jump across to the resource sheet and we’re going to add in a new resource so this is going to be our contract consultant now we’re going to say that his standard rate is $0 an hour so I’m not going to change anything just there but the cost per use is $400 an hour so now let’s go back to the Gan chart we’re going to select this task and we’re going to assign a resource to this task and the resource that we’re going to assign is the one that we’ve just added which is the contract consultant let’s select them and click on assign so now you can see the total cost for this project is $3,200 now if we jump into the information for this task and take a look at the resources you can see there are two resources now assigned to this task Deborah Ashby and the contract consultant the former has a cost of $800 and the latter has a cost of $400 so if we add these together that’s $1,200 don’t forget we already have a fixed cost of 2,000 assigned to this project so the total cost is 3,200 so that’s how the breakdown of these costs work for this specific task in this lesson we’re going to talk about cost AC CW and Costa CW might be something you’re familiar with it might not be and for some people who aren’t familiar with accounting it can all seem like a little bit of a mystery now we’re going to work in this dummy project and you can see the file there cost ACR demo. MPP you can find this in the course files folder if you’d like to follow along with me now in this dummy project we simply have five tasks task a to task e we also have five dummy resources in the resource sheet as well so resource one through to five and one thing to not about these resources is the ACR at column you can see that a couple of them have an acral method of prated two of them ACR at the start and one of them acrs at the end and when a cost acrs it’s basically the point in time in which the accounting function associated with the project recognizes that the cost has been incurred for example if we have a resource ACR using the pro-rated method it means that the cost of that resource is spread across the duration of the project if the cost incurs at the start it means as soon as the task gets an actual start date that’s when the cost will ACR and if a cost acrs at the end then it means that cost will be incurred once the task has finished so it’s important to to understand the difference between these acral methods now generally people recognize how cost acral Works in terms of labor costs we would normally prate the labor costs over the course of a task on which the labor is employed but there are some exceptions now if you take a look at this dummy project currently we don’t have any costs associated with any of these tasks now we’re going to go in and change that for task a we’re going to add a fixed cost of $100 and we’re going to say that this cost is incurred at the start now one thing to notice here you can see that we now have a total cost of 100 a variance of 100 but the actual is still at zero for task B let’s also give this a fixed cost of 100 but we’re going to leave this one on pro rated and then what I’m going to do is on the project tab I’m going to set a status date so I want to set the status date of today which is March the 22nd let’s click on okay and I’m going to choose update project underneath let’s update the entire project click on okay and check out what’s happened here if we take a look at task a we still have our fixed cost of 100 but the actual is now also showing us 100 and that’s because the cost acrise at the start of the task if you take a look at the Timeline this task starts on March the 20th which was actually 2 days ago so as soon as I set the project Date Update to today’s dat it recognizes that this task has started and so that cost is incurred and that’s why we’re seeing the full amount the full $100 in the actual column let’s take a look at task B remember we set this one to PR rated so this cost is going to be spread out over the lifetime of the task so we have something slightly different in here our total cost is still $100 the variance is 100 but the actual is only $30 and if we double click to open up task B we can see that this task is 30% complete and that is effectively the charge that we’ve incurred so far for 30% of the project now currently we don’t have any resources assigned to these tasks and I have five tasks and I also have five resources so what I’m going to do is I’m basically going to go through and assign Resource One to task a resource 2 to task B so on and so forth so let’s right click go to assign resources and for task a we’re going to assign Resource One let’s click on assign now remember you can leave this little window open when you’re assigning these which makes things a lot more efficient so let’s select resource 2 and assign going to go for task C is going to be resource 3 task D we’re going to assign resource 4 and task e we’re going to assign resource 5 so now that we’ve assigned resources you can see how that affects the cost that we have in our cost table for task a the total cost is now 2,100 we have a variance of 2,100 and an actual of 1,300 and if we double click to open up this task we can see that the cost for resource one is $2,000 now remember if we go across to the resource sheet Resource One is set to acrw using the pro-rated method so the resource is pro-rated but the fixed cost is incurred at the start so for task a we’ve incurred the whole of the fixed cost for task a but now we have 8 hours of work at $50 an hour for Resource One whose cost is accured prata throughout the project for task B we’ve accured a third of the fix cost because it’s pro-rated but we’ve incurred all of the costs for resource 2 because if we check this out you can see that that’s set to acrw at the start and resource 2 is working on a standard rate of $60 an hour so you can see how these changes are affecting the actual costs we see on the schedule and that is why it’s so important to understand if costs are acur at the start at the Finish or if they’re prated across the span of the project and the final thing I really want to point out here is something within the options so if we go to file and down to options let’s go across to the schedule page right at the bottom you’ll see it says default fixed cost acral and it’s set to prated so this is the default if you won’t change this to anything else now of course you can click the drop down and you can choose start or end if that is your preferred method in general I leave mine on pro rated and then if I need to change anything I can just manually change it in the cost table in this lesson we’re going to take a look at budget costs and I’m going to explain to you why people use budget costs why you may want to use budget costs and how you can compare progress on a project with a project budget with specific reference to costs now it’s probably a good stage to point out that you can do exactly the same thing with budget work the approach is very similar so we’re back working in a house build project if you’d like to follow along with me we’re working in house build 4 and currently we’re looking at tasks for Burlington house a and I simply have all of the tasks collapsed up so we can just see there summary tasks at the top also notice that currently we we don’t have any costs associated with project if we jump across to the resource sheet we also don’t have any resources listed currently now we might need to prepare a budget and this in general wouldn’t relate to any particularly accurate estimates of costs but I might say for example that I think the labor costs on this project are going to be $40,000 possibly the material costs are going to be $30,000 and the legal costs are going to be $10,000 and so on so so these are just very rough estimates now I also might come up with some budget figures and then during the course of the project I’m going to want to see how the costs are progressing in terms of budget now rather than do all of those things I’m going to take one element and show you how to deal with it and the final thing to point out here is that you shouldn’t confuse budget costs with Baseline costs a Bas line is a saved copy of a schedule at a specific point in time and that will include everything that’s been added budget costs are assigned at the project level and although we can compare the budget cost with our actual costs it’s not the same as comparing actuals with a baseline now we’re going to use the example of setting up a budget cost for connecting to the services so maybe this particular task involves connecting the house up to the relevant services but also getting a building inspector to come around and inspect the building now what I’m going to do here is I’m going to to set up a resource and that resource name is going to be service costs we’re going to give it a type of cost let’s give it some initials I’m just going to call this serve costs but what I’m going to do is I’m going to create a little group so we’re going to call this service costs group now what I’m going to do here is I’m going to double click to open up this resource and on the general tab notice over on the right hand side we have a little budget checkbox so we’re going to select this and click on okay and now I’m basically going to assign this resource to the entire project now when you’re trying to assign resources to an entire project you need to make sure that you have the top level summary task showing at the top here so you can see that I do have mine Burlington house a but if you can’t see this for whatever reason you can simply jump into file go down to options and on the advance tab if you scroll down this is what you’re looking to select show project summary task so select that and it should reveal that top level summary task which controls the entire project and will always have a task number of zero so let’s rightclick and go to assign resources and we can see our service cost resource that we just set up sitting right there now because we also set this to budget it means that we can’t enter in any units and we can’t enter in any cost if I try and type it just doesn’t type anything so the only thing we can really do here is click on the assign button to assign it to the summary task and it’s worth noting that you can only assign it to the summary task as well now once we have assigned it we can then specify the cost in a number of different ways we could jump across to task usage View and you can see in here we have a budget cost column and we could type in the service cost into here so let’s say that our estimate for this is going to be $500 and if we switch back to Gant chart view remember we’re currently displaying the cost table we can now see that budget cost listed in the budget cost column remember if you can’t see that column you just need to insert a column and choose budget cost so now what we’re going to do is we’re going to create two more resources that are going to be in the same category as that budget cost if you recall we created a group called service cost group so we’re going to assign both of those resources to that same group now we could do this using a code or a custom field which we have seen earlier on in this course but we’re going to use the group that we created so let’s jump back across to our resource sheet and I’m going to add in two more resources so there are my two resources we have the local inspector so he’s the one who’s going to be carrying out the building inspection and we also have the Service Company who are responsible for connecting up the services to the house and you can see that both of those are of type cost we have their initials and we’ve assigned them to the same group as the service cost that is the service cost group also note the acral method at the end the first one is prated the second one AC cruise at the start and the last one AC cruise at the end so let’s jump back to our Gant chart View and we’re going to assign one of the resources to the connect to services task so let’s rightclick and go to assign resources and we’re going to assign the Service Company resource because these are the people who are in charge of connecting the services up to the house and maybe we’ve determined that the cost for this is going to be $295 so let’s enter that in click on assign and you can now see that that cost is updated in the cost table now let’s assign our second resource so if we expand completion you can see we have a task here called final inspection so this is when we’re going to need the building inspector so let’s rightclick and go to assign resources is we’re going to select local inspector and we’re going to say that this cost is $265 let’s click on assign so against a budget of $500 you can now see that we have those two costs and you can see right at the top where we have the summary task Burlington house a our budget cost is $500 but our total costs are currently coming in at 560 so how could we possibly start reporting on this typ type of information well we could report on this using the group that we created the service cost group because all of these resources are now part of this same group so if we jump up to Resource usage View and go up to the data group you can see we have a little group by field just here so we’re going to click the drop- down and I’m going to say new group bu so what we effectively want to do here is we want to group by the group that we created now you can give your group a name at the top here I’m just going to leave it on the default but where we have group by we can Group by a specific field so there’s lots of different fields that we could group this by but if you want to group it by the group that you’ve created in this case the service cost group we just simply need to type group in here you can see at the top we have group no value and these are all the ones that we haven’t assigned to a group but we also have a little bit further down group service cost group and that’s going to include all of those resources that we assigned to that specific group so now we can see very clearly our budget cost and our actual cost just here and we can see that there is a difference there of $60 so that is a way that you can very easily report on the difference between your budget and your actual costs in this lesson we’re going to take a look at Cost rates and changes in cost rates and you’re already familiar with assigning resources and we’ve already looked at calculations involving the cost of resources working on a task now sometimes when you assign a resource to a task there might be the added complication that the rate that you pay for that resource will depend on the task that the resource is being assigned to now we’re back in our Northern Farm Foods website and we’re going to jump across to the resource sheet now if you take a look at the First Resource just here for Northern Farm foods you can see that we have a standard rate of $35 an hour and an overtime rate of $35 an hour and we’re working on the basis here that everything is chargeable and you can see here that for all of these resources we have a standard rate and we also have an overtime rate now the contract consultant at the bottom this is slightly different you can see that we have a cost per use charge here of $400 instead now when you set these resources up those rates that you can see in these columns those are the default rates or what we call the a rates for example if we open up Mark Raven’s word and take a look at the cost tab you can see here we have a number of different tabs we have a which is the default b c d and e and the a rate here we can see the standard rate and the overtime rate that is displayed in the resource table behind but in addition Mark could have other rates assigned to him so he might have a b rate a c rate a d rate or an e- rate and we can schedule changes to any of those rates and I’m going to talk a little bit more about this a bit later on for the time being just get the concept that the default is what we call the a rate but we can have other rates for each resource so let’s just click on okay to come out of there so what I’m going to do here is I’m going to jump across to the resource usage View and if we look down our list of resources there is Mark Raven’s word and I can see that he only has one task assigned to him he’s in charge of all of the HTML coding whereas if we take a look at let’s say Bakersfield Associates you can see that they have a range of different tasks assigned to them so analysis and design graphical resources and branding writing test scripts and then testing now if we double click on Bakersfield Associates and take a look at their cost we can see here that their default rate their a rate they have a standard rate of $60 an hour and an overtime rate of $100 an hour so it might be that this is what they charge for standard it work but maybe when it comes to something like graphical work they could possibly charge a higher rate for that so if we go across to the B tab you can see that we have a higher rate in here so the standard rate for graphical work is $100 an hour and the overtime time rate is $1150 an hour so we effectively have two different rates that we can possibly use when we’re assigning tasks for Bakersfield Associates so let’s click on okay because what we’re going to do next is we’re going to add a column to the table which makes it really easy for us to see which rate each resource is using for each task so we’re going to add a new column and the one that we’re looking for is cost rate table and you can see that currently everybody is using the default cost rate the a rate so what I’m going to want to do here is for this task just here the 60-hour task we’re going to change that to use B rate that higher rate so now that we’ve changed that I’m going to add another column and this time we’re simply going to add the cost column so now you can see if we take a look at these two down here analysis and design is using the a rate and if you remember the a rate is $60 an hour so if you were to calculate that that works out to $6,150 whereas for graphical resources and branding we have almost half the work but it’s working out at $6,000 because we’re using the B rate here that higher rate so we’re basically doing $100 multiplied by 60 which gives us a cost of $6,000 so displaying both of these columns can be really helpful when you’re trying to work out which rates resources are using now I’m going to briefly jump back just to gantar view because when it comes to assigning resources to tasks there isn’t an option in here where we can specify the rate table that we want them to use it’s always going to use the default of the a rate but what we can do instead if we jump across to task usage View and let’s just scroll down and find let’s say Adrian haskill just here if we double click to open that up notice we can specify what cost rate table we’re using for this particular resource so I can click the drop down and I can change it to whatever I like just remember that by default everyone is going to use cost rate table a so I’m going to change that to B and click on okay now another situation that you’ll probably encounter over the lifetime of your project is an increase in rates people’s prices ordinarily increase as opposed to decrease so we need to know how to make those changes and reflect them in our project so let’s look again at Bakersfield Associates and we can see that their a rate is $60 an hour and they have a b rate of $100 an hour now maybe Bakersfield Associates have let us know that as of July the 17th 2023 their rates are going to increase by5 and $10 an hour so what we can do in here is we can add another row to this table with the increase so the effective date is going to be Monday the 17th of July the standard rate is going to increase by $5 so it’s going to go up to 65 and the overtime rate is going to increase by $10 so it’s going to go up to $110 let’s do the same for the B rate that we have in here as well so those costs are going to increase on Monday the 17th of July the Stander rate this time is going to be 105 and the overtime rate is going to be 160 and if you take a look at this you can schedule changes to rates quite some time into the future because we have 25 different rows that we can add in here and you could set them up and schedule them all in here so that as soon as that effective date comes around the new rates come into play and of course when we click on okay this is going to have an effect on the cost for those different tasks and you can see those new costs reflected in the schedule the final thing to point out here is let’s open up Adrien hasell again and maybe we’ve been notified that Adrian’s costs are going to increase by 5% on a particular date so let’s go in and I’m going to choose let’s just choose the same date so we’re going to say July the 17th but this time we don’t want to enter a monetary amount we’re not adding $5 or $10 we want to increase them by a percentage so all we need to do here is type plus 5% and project 2021 is going to work that out for us so you can see here it’s calculated that that’s going to be 5250 and this charge will kick in on the 17th of July we can do the same for the overtime rate so let’s do plus 10% for the overtime rate and again project works it out for us so once we’ve done this these new costs are going to be reflected in the schedule going forward from whatever date we’ve set a big congratulations everybody for making it all the way through to the end of this project 2021 course I hope you enjoyed running through this course as much as I’ve enjoyed hosting it so let’s just take a moment to recap how far we’ve come if you remember all the way back at the beginning of the course we learned about the difference between the project plans and also the differences between project 2019 and project 2021 we then started to explore the project interface we looked at the ribbons and the commands we saw how to use the quick access toolbar and customize it and I showed you how you can quickly move around your project interface using keyboard shortcuts we then also spent some time taking a look at the different views and tables available within project in the next section we set ourselves up for success and we ran through many of those basic but fundamental skills so things like opening closing and saving a file we also set up our project calendar options in this section as well section four was where we really started to get going by entering tasks and other information into our project plan we discussed the difference between automatic versus manually scheduled tasks we saw how to add milestones and also give our project structure by adding summary and subtasks we then moved on to taking a look at dependencies and constraints and how adding dependencies affects your overall project schedule we also spoke quite a bit about lag and lead time and how you can add that into your schedule as well in the next section we moved on consolidating projects and resource sharing I also showed you how you can set up recurring tasks and work with custom fields and calculated custom fields we spoke about outline numbering outline codes and WBS codes and then we moved into talking about cost so fixed costs cost acral overtime budget costs and variable material costs so if you went through this course and completed all of the exercises then a huge well done to you I hope you feel that your knowledge of project has now progressed on and you can tackle with confidence some of the more advanced functionality the final thing to do here is for me to say my goodbyes I hope you enjoyed running through this course as much as I’ve enjoyed hosting it for you and I very much look forward to seeing you on another course at some point in the future but for now goodbye if you’re not a subscriber click down below to subscribe so you get notified about similar videos we upload to get the course exercise files and follow along with this video click over there and click over there to watch more videos on YouTube from Simon says it

By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog

Affiliate Disclosure: This blog may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you click on the link and make a purchase. This comes at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products or services that I believe will add value to my readers. Your support helps keep this blog running and allows me to continue providing you with quality content. Thank you for your support!

The provided text is a comprehensive guide to using Microsoft Project 2021 for effective project management. It begins with an overview of project management concepts and a tour of the Project environment. The guide details creating a project plan from a blank template, defining project schedules, managing tasks, and establishing a work breakdown structure. It further explains how to manage project resources by adding, costing, and assigning them to tasks, as well as resolving resource conflicts. The text covers finalizing a project plan through optimization, setting baselines, and various methods for sharing the plan. Additionally, it instructs on tracking project progress, using different views, creating custom elements, and analyzing the plan with features like task boards and sprints. Finally, it explores reporting capabilities, including built-in and custom reports, visual exports to Excel, and application customization through options, templates, and sharing resources across projects.

Microsoft Project 2021 Study Guide

Quiz

1. What is the purpose of manually scheduled tasks, and when might you switch to automatically scheduled tasks in Microsoft Project?
2. Describe the function of summary tasks and how their information is derived in a project plan.
3. Explain what a milestone task is and how it is visually represented on the Gantt chart.
4. List and briefly define the four types of task relationships available in Microsoft Project.
5. Differentiate between lead time and lag time in the context of task relationships.
6. What are the three types of resources you can add to a project plan in Microsoft Project, and how do they differ?
7. Explain the concept of resource over-allocation and one method to resolve it in Microsoft Project.
8. What is the significance of setting a baseline plan in Microsoft Project, and what types of data does it track?
9. Describe the difference between the “copy” and “copy picture” commands in Microsoft Project and when you might use each.
10. What is the purpose of the project timeline, and how can you customize it for reporting to stakeholders?

Quiz Answer Key

1. Manually scheduled tasks allow you to enter placeholder text for task duration, start, or finish dates, which is useful in the early stages of project planning when not all information is available. You would typically switch to an automatic schedule before work starts on the project, allowing Project to take over the scheduling based on dependencies and durations.
2. Summary tasks are used to group related subtasks and provide an overview of a particular phase or section of the project. Their information, such as duration, start, and finish dates, is automatically calculated based on the earliest start date and latest finish date of their subtasks.
3. A milestone task is a task with zero days duration used to mark significant events or checkpoints in a project plan. On the Gantt chart, it is visually represented by a diamond icon with the date of the milestone displayed next to it.
4. The four types of task relationships are:

• Finish to Start (FS): The successor task cannot start until the predecessor task is finished.
• Start to Start (SS): The successor task can start at the same time as the predecessor task.
• Finish to Finish (FF): The successor task cannot finish until the predecessor task is finished.
• Start to Finish (SF): The successor task cannot finish until the predecessor task has started (infrequently used).

1. Lead time is a negative delay that allows a successor task to start before the predecessor task finishes, enabling task overlap. Lag time is a positive delay that introduces a pause between the finish of a predecessor task and the start of its successor task.
2. The three types of resources are:

• Work: People or equipment that perform the tasks, measured in time.
• Material: Consumable items used by the tasks, measured in units (e.g., reams of paper).
• Cost: Expenses associated with tasks, such as travel costs or rental fees, measured in currency.

1. Resource over-allocation occurs when a work resource is assigned more work than their maximum availability allows within a given timeframe. One method to resolve this is resource leveling, which delays or splits tasks to bring resource assignments within their availability limits.
2. Setting a baseline plan captures a snapshot of the original project schedule, including planned start and finish dates, durations, work, and costs. It is crucial for tracking project progress by providing a point of comparison against actual performance and identifying variances.
3. The “copy” command in Microsoft Project copies data from the selected cells to the clipboard as data, which can then be pasted into other applications, often retaining the tabular format. The “copy picture” command takes a snapshot of the selected portion of the Gantt chart or other view as an image, which can then be inserted into documents or presentations.
4. The project timeline is a visual representation of key project phases, tasks, and milestones that appears above the Gantt chart. It can be customized by adding specific tasks, adjusting the date range, and displaying tasks as callouts to provide a high-level overview of the project schedule for stakeholders.

Essay Format Questions

1. Discuss the importance of effectively managing task dependencies and constraints in Microsoft Project for creating a realistic and achievable project schedule. Explain how different types of dependencies and constraints can impact the project timeline and resource allocation.
2. Explain the process of resource management in Microsoft Project, from defining resources and their availability to assigning them to tasks and resolving over-allocations. Analyze the impact of effective resource management on project timelines and costs.
3. Evaluate the significance of tracking project progress against a baseline plan in Microsoft Project. Describe the various tools and views available for monitoring progress, identifying variances, and making necessary adjustments to keep the project on track.
4. Compare and contrast the different methods for sharing project information and reports with stakeholders using Microsoft Project. Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each method in terms of clarity, accessibility, and the level of detail provided.
5. Discuss the benefits of customizing Microsoft Project to better suit specific project needs and organizational workflows. Explain how creating custom views, fields, tables, and reports can enhance project planning, monitoring, and reporting capabilities.

Glossary of Key Terms

• Baseline Plan: A saved snapshot of the project plan at a specific point in time, used as a reference point for tracking progress and variances.
• Critical Task: A task on the critical path with zero or very little total slack; a delay in a critical task will directly impact the project’s finish date.
• Duration: The amount of working time expected to complete a task.
• Gantt Chart: A horizontal bar chart that visually represents the project schedule, showing tasks, their durations, start and finish dates, and dependencies.
• Lag Time: A delay inserted between the finish of a predecessor task and the start of a successor task.
• Lead Time: An overlap allowed between the finish of a predecessor task and the start of a successor task (represented as a negative lag).
• Milestone Task: A task with zero duration, representing a significant event or checkpoint in the project.
• Predecessor Task: A task that must be completed before another task (the successor task) can begin.
• Resource Leveling: The process of resolving resource over-allocations by delaying or splitting tasks.
• Slack (or Float): The amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting either its successor task (free slack) or the project’s finish date (total slack).
• Summary Task: A task that represents a phase or group of related subtasks; its duration and dates are calculated based on its subtasks.
• Successor Task: A task that depends on the completion of another task (the predecessor task) before it can begin.
• Task Constraint: A restriction applied to a task that affects its start or finish date (e.g., start no earlier than, finish by).
• Task Dependency: A relationship between two tasks that determines the order in which they can be performed (finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-finish).
• Timeline: A high-level graphical overview of key project tasks and milestones, typically displayed above the Gantt chart.
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): A hierarchical decomposition of the project into smaller, more manageable tasks.

Briefing Document: Analysis of Project Management Sources

This briefing document reviews the main themes and important ideas presented in the provided excerpts from “01.pdf,” which appears to be a tutorial or guide on using Microsoft Project for project planning. The document covers the initial setup of a project plan, task management, scheduling modes, importing tasks, organizing tasks using summary tasks and the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), defining task relationships, managing project resources, finalizing the project plan by setting a baseline, sharing the plan with stakeholders, tracking project progress, analyzing the project schedule, and controlling the project plan through various actions and adjustments.

Main Themes and Important Ideas:

1. Initial Project Plan Setup and Task Entry:

• Saving the Project: The first crucial step is to save the project file. “before we start manually entering tasks into our project plan file we should probably go ahead and save the work that we’ve done so far… I’m going to name it training roll out initiative and save it.” This ensures that progress is not lost.
• Scheduling Modes (Manual vs. Automatic): Microsoft Project offers two scheduling modes for tasks:
• Manually Scheduled: This is the default mode, allowing for placeholder text in task duration, start, or finish dates. This is useful in the early stages of planning when all information might not be available. “manually scheduled gives us the ability to put placeholder text for a task duration start or finish date… before work starts on the project I always switch it to an automatic schedule.“
• Automatic Schedule: In this mode, Project takes over the scheduling based on dependencies, durations, and the project start date. Placeholder text is not allowed in this mode.
• Entering Task Names and Durations: Task names should be concise, using noun-verb combinations. Duration is typically entered in days, with “D” being optional if the unit is days.
• Task Mode Indicator: A pushpin with a question mark icon indicates a manually scheduled task in the “Task Mode” column.
• Gantt Chart Representation: Manually scheduled tasks are represented by lighter-colored bars on the Gantt chart, showing duration only until start and finish dates are automatically calculated or manually entered.

2. Importing Tasks from External Sources:

• Tasks can be efficiently imported from other sources, such as Excel spreadsheets. The excerpt demonstrates copying a range of data (excluding a specific column, like Task ID) from an Excel sheet and pasting it into the Project plan. “we’re actually going to use this tab to bring the rest of the project plan tasks into the file… I’m going to just click in cell B1 hold down my shift and my control keys I’m going to tap my right arrow and my down arrow to select everything on this import sheet except column A and then I’m going to do control C just to copy it… and now I’m going to press Ctrl Z to paste the rest of the information in.“

3. Organizing Tasks with Summary Tasks and WBS:

• Summary Tasks: These are higher-level tasks that encompass subtasks. The duration and dates of a summary task are automatically calculated based on its subtasks. The “Project Summary Task” (task zero) represents the entire project. “a summary task like this one is its information comes from its subtasks all the tasks underneath it… the whole project will take 10 days based on the start and finish dates.” Summary tasks can be collapsed and expanded to show or hide their subtasks.
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): This is a hierarchical decomposition of the project into smaller, more manageable tasks. WBS codes provide a unique identifier for each task and are a standard way to refer to tasks. WBS codes can be displayed in a separate column or within the task name column by enabling “Outline Number” under the Gantt Chart Format tab. “often your tasks are referred to by their code numbers their WBS codes rather than the task name… now if you look in your task name column each task has its WBS code before the task name.“

4. Defining Task Relationships (Dependencies):

• Task relationships define the sequence in which tasks need to be completed. There are four types of relationships:
• Finish to Start (FS): The successor task cannot start until the predecessor task finishes (default). “when one task finishes another task starts that is the default relationship type.“
• Start to Start (SS): The successor task can start when the predecessor task starts.
• Finish to Finish (FF): The successor task cannot finish until the predecessor task finishes.
• Start to Finish (SF): The successor task cannot finish until the predecessor task starts (infrequently used).
• Predecessor and Successor Tasks: The predecessor task is the one that comes before, and the successor task is the one that follows.
• Lead and Lag Time:Lead Time: Allows for overlap between tasks (successor can start before the predecessor finishes). Represented by a positive value. “when the first task is 50% finished the next task can start that would be known as lead time.“
• Lag Time: Introduces a delay between tasks (successor starts after the predecessor finishes). Represented by a negative value in the predecessor column or a positive value in the “Lag” field of the Task Information dialog box. “after it’s finished wait one day before the next task will start… lag time is represented as a negative lead time is represented as a positive.“
• Relationships are set up by selecting tasks and using the “Link the selected tasks” icon or by directly entering predecessor task numbers in the “Predecessors” column. The Gantt chart visually represents these relationships with arrows.

5. Managing Project Resources:

• Resource Sheet View: This view is used to add and define project resources (work, material, and cost). Columns include Resource Name, Type, Material Label, Initials, Group, Max Units, Standard Rate, Overtime Rate, Cost per Use, Accrual, and Base Calendar.
• Resource Types:Work: People or equipment. Max units represent availability (e.g., 100% for full-time, 500% for five full-time individuals). Costs are defined by standard and overtime rates.
• Material: Consumable items (e.g., paper). A material label (unit of measure) must be specified.
• Cost: Project-related expenses that don’t fit into work or material (e.g., travel). Costs are entered per occurrence.
• Adding Resources: Resources are entered row by row in the Resource Sheet view, specifying their type, availability, and cost information.
• Assigning Resources to Tasks: Resources are assigned to tasks in the Gantt Chart view (in the “Resource Names” column) or through the Task Information dialog box (Resource tab). Multiple resources can be assigned to a single task.
• Resource Calendars: These define the working and non-working time for individual resources, overriding the project calendar. Exceptions (e.g., vacation) can be added to a resource calendar.
• Resolving Resource Conflicts (Over-allocations): When a resource is assigned to more work than their availability allows, they are considered over-allocated (indicated by a red person icon). Over-allocations can be resolved by:
• Delaying tasks.
• Assigning different resources.
• Leveling resources (allowing Project to automatically adjust task start and finish dates within available slack).

6. Finalizing the Project Plan and Setting a Baseline:

• Optimizing the Plan: This involves reviewing task relationships, lead/lag times, and resource assignments to ensure the schedule is realistic and efficient.
• Setting a Baseline: A baseline is a snapshot of the project plan (duration, start/finish dates, work, cost) taken before work begins. It serves as a reference point for tracking progress and identifying variances. Up to 11 baselines can be saved. “you’re definitely going to need to set a Baseline Plan before work starts on your project and that is the only way you’ll be able to track the progress of your project… Your Baseline tracks your durations the start and finish dates of your tasks the amount of work and the cost.“
• Interim Plans: These save only the current start and finish dates and are simpler than baselines, used as project markers.
• Baselines are set via the “Set Baseline” option under the Project tab. The “Project Statistics” dialog box can be used to verify that a baseline has been set.

7. Sharing the Project Plan with Stakeholders:

• Printing: Least efficient method due to potential for many pages and blank areas.
• Copying Task Lists: Selecting task names and durations and copying them into other applications like Word for a simple list.
• Copy Picture: Taking a snapshot of the Gantt chart (or a portion of it) to share as an image in documents or presentations. Options include saving as a GIF file.
• Timeline View: A high-level visual representation of key project phases and tasks, useful for stakeholder communication. Tasks can be added to the timeline and displayed as bars or callouts. The date range can be customized, and the timeline can be copied as a full-size image for sharing. “my favorite built-in tool to use to do high level reporting to stakeholders at this stage of the project is the timeline.“

8. Tracking Project Progress (Covered Briefly, likely expanded upon later):

• The document mentions that once work starts, actual progress can be tracked, and variances against the baseline will be identified.

9. Analyzing the Project Schedule (Covered Briefly, likely expanded upon later):

• The concepts of slack (free and total), critical tasks (tasks that, if delayed, will delay the project finish date), and late/slipping tasks are introduced as elements for analyzing the project schedule.

10. Controlling the Project Plan (Covered Briefly, likely expanded upon later):

• The document briefly touches upon editing the task list, setting deadlines, splitting tasks, applying constraints, and rescheduling tasks as ways to control the project plan as it evolves. Updating the baseline after significant changes is also mentioned.

This initial excerpt provides a foundational understanding of how to begin and structure a project plan in Microsoft Project, emphasizing the importance of careful setup, task organization, dependency management, resource allocation, and the establishment of a baseline for effective project control and communication.

Microsoft Project Task Scheduling and Organization

Manually Scheduling vs. Automatic Scheduling

Q1. What is the difference between manually scheduled and automatically scheduled tasks in Microsoft Project? Manually scheduled tasks allow users to enter placeholder text for the duration, start, or finish dates. This is useful in the early stages of project planning when not all information is available. The scheduling of these tasks is primarily controlled by the user. Automatically scheduled tasks, on the other hand, have their start and finish dates determined by Project based on dependencies, durations, and constraints. Once a project plan is more defined, switching to automatic scheduling allows Project to manage the timeline.

Q2. Why might you choose to use manually scheduled tasks initially in a project plan? You might choose manually scheduled tasks at the beginning of a project plan because you may not have all the detailed information about task durations, start dates, or finish dates. This mode allows you to input placeholder text or rough estimates without Project automatically calculating and potentially misrepresenting the schedule. It provides flexibility in the initial planning phase.

Q3. When is it recommended to switch from manually scheduled to automatically scheduled tasks? It is generally recommended to switch to automatically scheduled tasks once the project plan is more complete, and you have defined task names, durations, and ideally, the relationships between tasks. This allows Project to take over the scheduling, ensuring that start and finish dates are logically linked and any changes to one task automatically update dependent tasks.

Organizing Tasks: WBS, Summary Tasks, and Milestones

Q4. How can you organize tasks in Microsoft Project using a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)? A WBS is used to break down a project into smaller, more manageable components. In Microsoft Project, you can create a WBS by using summary tasks and subtasks. Summary tasks represent higher-level activities, while subtasks are the detailed work items under them. Indenting tasks under a summary task creates this hierarchical structure. Project automatically generates WBS codes (outline numbers) that reflect this hierarchy, providing a unique identifier for each task.

Q5. What is the purpose of creating summary tasks in a project plan? Summary tasks serve as containers for related subtasks. They provide an overview of a particular phase or component of the project. The duration, start, and finish dates of a summary task are automatically calculated based on the earliest start date and latest finish date of its subtasks. They help in organizing the project, making it easier to understand and report on progress at different levels.

Q6. What is a milestone task, and how is it represented in Microsoft Project? A milestone task is a task with zero days duration that marks a significant point or event in the project timeline, such as the completion of a phase or a critical decision point. In Microsoft Project, milestone tasks are represented on the Gantt chart as a diamond icon with the date next to it.

Task Relationships, Lead Time, and Lag Time

Q7. What are the four types of task relationships in Microsoft Project, and which one is the default? The four types of task relationships in Microsoft Project are: * Finish to Start (FS): The successor task cannot start until the predecessor task finishes (default). * Start to Start (SS): The successor task can start at the same time as the predecessor task. * Finish to Finish (FF): The successor task cannot finish until the predecessor task finishes. * Start to Finish (SF): The successor task cannot finish until the predecessor task starts (infrequently used). The default relationship type is Finish to Start (FS).

Q8. Explain the difference between lead time and lag time in the context of task relationships. Both lead time and lag time modify the start or finish of a successor task relative to its predecessor. * Lag Time: Introduces a delay between the finish of a predecessor task and the start of its successor (in a Finish to Start relationship), or between the start of a predecessor and the start of its successor (in a Start to Start relationship), and so on. It is entered as a positive value in the “Lag” column of the Predecessors tab in the Task Information dialog box or by adding a positive number followed by a time unit (e.g., +2 days) to the predecessor link in the Predecessors column. * Lead Time: Creates an overlap between tasks. In a Finish to Start relationship, lead time allows the successor task to start before the predecessor task has completely finished. It is entered as a negative value in the “Lag” column (e.g., -1 day) or by adding a negative number followed by a time unit to the predecessor link.

Microsoft Project 2021: Project Management in the Application

This course on Microsoft Project 2021 will begin with a brief review of project management concepts. Understanding these concepts is useful because they correlate with how project plan files are created and administered in the application. While Microsoft Project is primarily used by project managers, it’s also valuable for anyone who needs to track a schedule.

The typical phases of project management include:

• Conception and initiation: This initial phase determines the purpose of the project, whether it is feasible, and what resources would be needed for successful completion. This course will not cover this phase.
• Definition and planning: This is the phase where you determine the scope of the project and the budget. You also set up your work breakdown structure (WBS) to organize tasks and consider risk management techniques that might be necessary. This course will start with this phase, aligning with how you’ll work in Microsoft Project.
• Launch and execution: During this phase, you are actively tracking the status of your project, updating your tasks, resource assignments, and schedules, and reporting on the status to your project stakeholders. This is also known as executing the project or tracking actuals.
• Performance and control: Here, you check to ensure that your objectives are on track. If not, you identify tools to get them back on track if possible. You also assess whether the deliverables meet quality standards and perform effort and cost tracking, as well as evaluating the overall project performance. This involves monitoring project progress and controlling the project plan.
• Project close: This final phase typically involves a post-mortem to go over Lessons Learned and the creation of end-of-project reporting.

The course will primarily focus on the definition and planning phase and subsequent phases as they relate to using Microsoft Project. You will learn how to define a project, create a work breakdown structure, manage resources, track progress, and report on a project plan’s progress within the software.

Microsoft Project Environment Overview

Let’s discuss the Microsoft Project environment as described in the sources. When you launch Microsoft Project and click on “Blank project” under the “New” heading, you enter the main interface.

The key elements of the Project environment include:

• Title Bar: Located at the very top of the screen, it displays the name of the application (e.g., “Project Plan – Project Professional”). On the right side of the title bar, you’ll find your login information and the traditional window management buttons (minimize, maximize/restore, and close). It’s also noted that there are two sets of close buttons (two ‘x’s), with the top one controlling the application and the bottom one closing the current file. To the left of the title bar is the Quick Access Toolbar.
• Quick Access Toolbar: This toolbar is located to the left of the title bar and can be customized like in other Microsoft programs. The source demonstrates how to add the “Project Information” icon to this toolbar by right-clicking on it in the “Properties” group of the “Project” tab on the ribbon and selecting “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”. This allows for easy access to frequently used features.
• The Ribbon: Below the title bar is the ribbon, which is organized into tabs. The main tabs mentioned are:
• Task: This tab contains most of the features needed to work with tasks.
• Resource: This tab houses tools related to managing resources.
• Report: Here, you can access built-in interactive reports, visual reports, and create your own custom reports.
• Project: This tab is described as an overall tab with various features that will be used throughout the course, including spell check.
• View: This tab provides access to lots of different views in Project, and you can customize these views as needed.
• Help: This tab offers access to help resources, feedback options, information about new features, and comparisons to previous versions.
• Gantt Chart Format: This is a contextual tab that appears because the default view for a new blank project is “Gantt Chart with timeline”. This tab provides formatting options specific to the Gantt Chart view.
• “Tell me what you want to do” Box: Located to the right of the ribbon tabs, this box offers another way to navigate the program or get help by typing in what you are trying to achieve.
• Default View: Gantt Chart with Timeline: When you select a new blank project, this is the view you typically see. It’s a split screen:
• Timeline: Located at the top, below the ribbon, this provides a high-level overview of the project and is useful for managing the plan with a quick glance at the project’s progress.
• Entry Table: This is on the left side of the screen and contains columns where you enter task information such as task name, duration, start and finish dates, predecessors, and resource names. The column headings are visible at the top of this table.
• Gantt Chart: On the right side of the screen, this provides a visual representation of your task durations and other task-related information as the project is populated.
• View Indicator: Situated to the left of the entry table, this area currently says “Gantt Chart” and indicates the view you are currently in. You can change views by using the “View” tab on the ribbon or by right-clicking on the view indicator to see other available views.
• Status Bar: This is the gray band located all the way at the bottom of the screen. It typically starts with the word “Ready”, indicating that you can start entering information. It also provides information such as whether new tasks are manually scheduled. On the right side of the status bar, there are a series of view buttons that act as shortcuts to switch to different views like Gantt Chart, Task Usage, Team Planner, Resource Sheet, and blank Report views. Finally, to the far right is a zoom slider. Unlike in Excel or Word, this zoom slider in Project changes the time scale displayed above the Gantt chart and does not increase or decrease the font size.

Understanding these components helps you navigate and work effectively within the Microsoft Project 2021 environment.

Creating a Project Plan in Microsoft Project

Let’s discuss the process of creating a project plan in Microsoft Project as outlined in the sources.

The process typically begins by launching Microsoft Project and clicking on “Blank project”. It’s a best practice to set up your project plan file before actual work starts on your project.

The initial steps in creating a project plan involve defining the project:

• Setting the Project Schedule: You need to determine how the project will be scheduled: from its start date or its finish date. By default, Project schedules from the project start date, and all tasks begin as soon as possible. Scheduling from the finish date changes this to “all tasks begin as late as possible,” which can potentially cause issues. Therefore, it’s generally recommended to schedule from the project start date.
• Setting the Project Start Date: This is done through the “Project Information” dialog box, which can be accessed from the “Project” tab in the “Properties” group or via a customized icon on the Quick Access Toolbar. In this dialog box, you can select the desired start date for your project. Once the start date is set, a vertical line indicating the project’s start date will appear on the Gantt chart. Additionally, a default task zero (the project summary task) will update to this start date if it’s visible. You can control the visibility of this project summary task in the “Show/Hide” group of the “Gantt Chart Format” tab.
• Assigning a Project Calendar: The project calendar lists all the exceptions, such as holidays or days when no work will occur on the project. Unlike an Outlook calendar, you need to manually enter these exceptions. To set up a project calendar, you go to the “Project” tab on the ribbon and click on “Change Working Time” in the “Properties” group.
• Project has three built-in calendars: Standard, Night Shift, and 24 Hour. It’s recommended to leave these built-in calendars intact and instead create a new calendar.
• To create a new calendar, in the “Change Working Time” dialog box, select the standard calendar (or another if preferred) and then click “Create New Calendar”. You can base it on a copy of an existing calendar and give it a unique name, such as “training rollout initiative”.
• In the new calendar, you can define exceptions (non-working days) on the “Exceptions” tab by selecting dates on the mini calendar and entering a name for the exception (e.g., “Independence Day”, “Labor Day”). You can also set these exceptions to be recurring yearly with an end date far in the future.
• Once the exceptions are added, you need to tell your project plan file to use this new calendar. This is done by going back to the “Project Information” dialog box and selecting your newly created calendar from the “Calendar” dropdown menu on the right side.

After defining the project, the next step is to create and organize tasks:

• Saving the Project Plan: Before entering tasks, it’s advisable to save the project. You can use the save icon or go to “File” > “Save” or “Save As” and give your project plan file a name (e.g., “training roll out initiative”) and choose a location to save it. The title bar will then update with the correct file name.
• Entering Tasks: There are two modes for entering tasks: manually scheduled and automatically scheduled. By default, new tasks are manually scheduled. This allows you to enter placeholder text for task duration, start, or finish dates, which is useful when you don’t have all the information initially. Before work starts, it’s recommended to switch to automatic scheduling, where Project takes over the scheduling.
• You can manually enter tasks directly into the first blank “Task Name” cell in the entry table. It’s suggested that task names be fairly short noun-verb combinations. After entering a task name and pressing Enter or Tab, you can move to the “Duration” column and enter the duration in days (the default unit). Manually scheduled tasks are indicated by a pushpin with a question mark in the “Task Mode” column. The duration is visually represented by a bar in the Gantt chart.
• Tasks can also be imported from other applications, such as an Excel file. The source mentions an Excel file named “tasks for import” in the video description. To import tasks, you can copy the relevant columns (e.g., task name, duration) from the Excel sheet (excluding task ID if present) and paste them into the first blank “Task Name” cell in your project plan.
• Creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): This involves organizing your tasks into a hierarchical structure. The source demonstrates grouping tasks by stages (e.g., four stages in the example project) and creating summary tasks for these stages with subtasks underneath them. You can indent or outdent tasks using the buttons in the “Task” tab to create this hierarchy.
• Defining Task Relationships: You need to define how tasks are related to each other. Common task relationships include finish-to-start (FS), where a successor task cannot start until its predecessor task finishes. You can create these links by selecting the predecessor and successor tasks and using the “Link the selected tasks” button in the “Task” tab. The relationships are visually represented by link lines between the task bars on the Gantt chart.
• Scheduling Tasks: Once task relationships are defined, and the scheduling mode is set to automatic, Project will calculate the start and finish dates of tasks based on their durations, relationships, and the project calendar. You can also introduce lag time (a delay between tasks) or lead time (overlap between tasks) to fine-tune the schedule by modifying the link relationships.

By following these steps, you can create a foundational project plan in Microsoft Project, defining the project, setting up the schedule and calendar, and building the task structure with dependencies.

Microsoft Project Task Scheduling Modes

Let’s discuss task scheduling in Microsoft Project, drawing from the provided sources and our previous conversation about project plan creation.

Task scheduling in Microsoft Project revolves around how the software determines the start and finish dates of tasks. There are two primary scheduling modes for tasks: manually scheduled and automatically scheduled.

Manually Scheduled Tasks:

• By default, new tasks are created as manually scheduled.
• This mode gives you the flexibility to enter placeholder text for the task name, duration, start, or finish dates. This is particularly useful in the early stages of project planning when all the details might not be available.
• The task start date for a manually scheduled task initially defaults to the project’s start date that you set. However, you can override this with any text or date you prefer.
• The finish date for a manually scheduled task is determined by the entered duration, but again, you can manually input any value.
• Manually scheduled tasks are indicated by a pushpin with a question mark icon in the “Task Mode” column.
• In the Gantt chart, a lighter colored bar represents a manually scheduled task, and if you hover over it, the screen tip will show “duration only” if you haven’t specified start or finish dates beyond the calculated duration based on the project start date.
• Project does not automatically adjust the start and finish dates of manually scheduled tasks based on dependencies or the project calendar. You have direct control over these fields until you decide to switch to automatic scheduling.

Automatically Scheduled Tasks:

• When you switch a task to automatically scheduled mode, Project takes over the scheduling. This is generally recommended before the actual work on the project begins.
• Automatically scheduled tasks are indicated by a different icon in the “Task Mode” column, which matches the “Auto Schedule” icon on the “Task” tab of the ribbon.
• The bars for automatically scheduled tasks in the Gantt chart are a deeper color compared to manually scheduled tasks.
• Once in automatic schedule mode, Project populates the start and finish dates for all tasks based on the project start date, task durations, and any predecessor relationships you have defined.
• The project calendar plays a crucial role in automatic scheduling. Project will not schedule work on weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) by default. Additionally, any exceptions (non-working days like holidays) you define in the project calendar will be honored, and no work will be scheduled on those days.
• Task Duration: The duration of a task is a key factor in scheduling. When you enter a duration (e.g., ‘2’ for two days), Project calculates the finish date based on the start date and the working days defined in the project calendar.
• Task Relationships (Predecessors): Establishing relationships between tasks is fundamental to automatic scheduling. The default relationship is finish-to-start (FS), meaning a successor task can only start after its predecessor task finishes. When you link tasks, the start date of the successor task is automatically set to occur after the finish date of the predecessor task, taking into account weekends and calendar exceptions. Other relationship types like start-to-start (SS), finish-to-finish (FF), and start-to-finish (SF) also influence the automatic scheduling.
• Lag and Lead Time: You can further refine the schedule by adding lag time, which introduces a delay between the finish of a predecessor and the start of a successor. Conversely, lead time allows a successor task to start before its predecessor has fully finished, creating an overlap. These adjustments directly impact the automatically calculated start and finish dates.

To switch between manual and automatic scheduling, you can use the “Task Mode” column for individual tasks or select multiple tasks and use the “Manually Scheduled” or “Auto Schedule” buttons in the “Task” tab of the ribbon. You can also change the default scheduling mode for new tasks via the status bar.

In summary, task scheduling in Microsoft Project involves initially defining the project’s schedule and calendar, then creating tasks with durations and establishing relationships. You can start by manually scheduling tasks to input preliminary information and then transition to automatic scheduling to let Project calculate and manage the task start and finish dates based on dependencies and the project calendar. This automatic scheduling ensures a coherent and realistic project timeline.

Microsoft Project: Monitoring Project Progress

Let’s discuss project monitoring in Microsoft Project, drawing on the information in the sources. Project monitoring is a crucial aspect of project management that involves tracking the progress of your project plan and ensuring that objectives are on track. Microsoft Project offers several tools and features to help you effectively monitor your project’s progress.

According to the course outline, Module 3, Lesson 2 is specifically focused on “monitoring project progress”. This involves several key activities:

• Viewing the project in a number of ways: Microsoft Project offers various views that provide different perspectives on your project’s status.
• Gantt Chart: This is the default view and provides a visual timeline of tasks, their durations, and dependencies. You can also visualize progress on the Gantt chart by the thin blue line that appears within the Gantt bars as tasks are completed.
• Tracking Gantt View: This view compares the current schedule with the baseline plan, visually indicating progress. It shows the taskbar (blue) in relation to the baseline bar (gray). Tasks ahead of schedule will have their blue bar extending beyond the gray baseline bar. This view also displays the percentage of completion next to most taskbars.
• Variance Table: Accessible through the “View” tab > “Tables” > “Variance”, this table displays the start and finish dates compared to the baseline start and finish dates, along with the start and finish variance. Negative variance indicates starting or finishing ahead of schedule.
• Project Statistics: Found in the “Project Information” dialog box (accessible from the “Project” tab or a customized Quick Access Toolbar), the statistics provide a summary of the current, baseline, and actual start and finish dates, duration, work, and cost, as well as the variances. It also shows the percent complete for duration and work for the overall project.
• Network Diagram View: This view presents the project as a flowchart, with parallelograms representing summary tasks and rectangles representing subtasks. It displays task names, start and finish dates, IDs, durations, and percent complete. A slash through the shape indicates work has started, and a double slash might indicate 100% completion.
• Task Boards: This view, accessible from the “View” tab, displays tasks in columns representing different statuses (e.g., Not Started, In Progress, Done). You can move tasks between columns to reflect their current status. The appearance of cards can be customized to show additional information like task ID and percent complete.
• Sprint Views: If you are using Sprints (time-phased layers), Project offers views like the Current Sprint Board and Current Sprint Sheet to monitor progress within specific timeframes.
• Adding custom fields: You can create custom fields in Project to track additional information relevant to monitoring. These can be text, cost, date, or other types of fields and can be used to categorize or flag tasks or resources for monitoring purposes. For example, you can add a field to track the department responsible for a task. You can also use graphical indicators in custom fields to visually represent progress based on certain criteria.
• Creating custom views: Beyond the built-in views, you can create your own custom views by combining different tables, filters, and groupings to focus on specific aspects of project monitoring. For example, you can create a split view that shows the Gantt chart at the top and a task form at the bottom to view or edit detailed task information.
• Creating a network diagram: As mentioned earlier, the network diagram provides a visual flow of the project, helping to understand task dependencies and potential bottlenecks.
• Analyzing the plan: Project provides features to analyze the schedule and identify potential issues.
• Critical Tasks: These are tasks that, if delayed, will directly impact the project’s finish date. They can be highlighted on the Gantt chart with a specific color (e.g., salmon) when the “critical tasks” option is checked in the “Gantt Chart Format” tab.
• Slack (Free and Total): Free slack is the amount of time a task can be delayed without delaying its successor task. Total slack is the amount of time a task can be delayed without delaying the entire project finish date. Slack can be visualized as a thin black line to the right of the taskbar on the Gantt chart when the “Slack” option is checked. You can also view free and total slack in a table.
• Late Tasks: These are tasks running behind both the baseline start and finish dates. They can be highlighted on the Gantt chart.
• Slipping Tasks: Tasks with a forecasted finish date later than the baseline finish date. Slippage can be visualized on the Gantt chart by selecting “Baseline” under the “Slippage” dropdown in the “Gantt Chart Format” tab, which displays a thin bar indicating the difference between the baseline and scheduled start dates.
• You can create a custom table to display fields like “Critical”, “Free Slack”, and “Total Slack” to analyze these aspects of your plan in a tabular format.
• Using task boards and defining sprints: Task boards and sprints offer an agile approach to monitoring within Microsoft Project. By using task boards, you can visually track the progress of tasks through different stages. Sprints allow you to monitor progress within defined time intervals.
• Sorting, Filtering, Highlighting, and Grouping: These features in the “View” tab’s “Data” group allow you to focus on specific sets of tasks or resources for monitoring. You can sort tasks by criteria like cost, filter tasks based on resources or cost ranges, highlight specific tasks (e.g., those assigned to a particular resource), and group tasks by various criteria like duration.
• Utilizing Reports: Microsoft Project has built-in interactive reports accessible from the “Report” tab. These reports provide valuable insights into various aspects of the project, including:
• Dashboards: Offering a high-level overview with reports like Project Overview, Upcoming Tasks, and Work Overview.
• Resources: Showing over-allocated resources and resource utilization.
• Costs: Providing insights into cash flow, cost overruns, earned value, and resource/task cost overviews.
• In Progress: Highlighting critical tasks, late tasks, milestones, and slipping tasks.
• Task Boards: Offering reports on task status and work status within the task board framework.
• Sprints: Providing reports focused on task and work status within the defined sprints.

By utilizing these diverse tools and views within Microsoft Project, you can effectively monitor your project’s progress, identify potential deviations from the plan, and take necessary actions to keep your project on track. Remember to regularly review these monitoring tools throughout the launch and execution phase of your project.

The Original Text

welcome to learn it training the exercise files for today’s course are located in the video description below don’t forget to like And subscribe hi everyone Trish Connor Kato here welcome to Microsoft Project 2021 this video is for users who are looking to gain skills in Microsoft Project to create administer Monitor and report on a project plan’s progress project is a powerful scheduling tool used to track tasks resources and costs it also provides powerful and interactive reporting tools used through each stage of a project as you will see during the course we’ll start with A Brief Review of project management Concepts although Microsoft Project is used by project managers it’s also widely used by anyone in a position that requires tracking a schedule it is useful to know how project management Concepts correlate to the way plan files are created and administered in the application we’ll move on to become comfortable in the project environment learning how to navigate around so you’ll be acclimated to that environment we’ll dive into creating a project plan file defining a project and assigning a project calendar then we will begin to create and organize task we will manually enter tasks into project as well as import some from another application we will organize our tasks by creating a work breakdown structure defining tasks relationships and scheduling tasks all of this occurs in the first module in the second module we’ll focus on managing project plan resources and finalizing a project plan we’ll start by adding resources to a project plan creating a resource calendar entering resource cost and assigning resources to tasks we’ll also learn how to effectively manage resource conflicts well in this module by optimizing our project plan setting a Baseline and sharing the plan our first module consists of three lessons lesson one is getting started well we’ll go over project management Concepts and you’ll learn how to navigate the project environment our second lesson is defining a project where we’ll create a project plan from scratch Define the project and assign a project calendar and in our final lesson in this module is creating and organizing our tasks we’ll be adding tasks to our project plan we’ll also import tasks from other programs specifically there is an Excel file in the video description named tasks for import that we’ll be using so before we get started in this lesson you might want to go ahead and grab that file and put it somewhere in your system for easy access then we’ll move on to creating a work breakdown structure it is a way of organizing your tasks it’s known commonly as WBS will Define task relationships and schedule tasks the first phase of project management is conception and initiation and that’s the phase where the purpose of the project is determined whether it can be done or not and what would be needed for a successful completion we’re not going to be covering that phase of project management in this course we’ll start with the definition and planning phase which really lines up with how you’re going to be working in Microsoft Project and this is where you determine the scope of the project and the budget you set up your work breakdown structure which organize your task and you look at risk management techniques that you may need to implement at any point in the project then you move on to the launch and execution phase this is where you’re tracking the status of your project you’re updating your tasks your resource assignments and schedules and your reporting on status to your project stakeholders the next phase is performance and control and this is where you are checking to make sure that your objectives are on track and if not what tools can you use to get them back on track if possible whether the deliverables the end results are of quality you’re also going to be doing effort and cost tracking as well as performance of the overall project and then you have the project close phase which typically consists of some sort of post-mortem where you go over Lessons Learned and the end of project reporting I’ve launched project and I’m sitting on the welcoming screen and I’m going to just click on blank project under the new heading so that it takes us into the interface and this is where I’m going to give you the grand tour so I’m going to start at the very top of the screen where it says project run project professional of course every window has a title bar and that’s what you’re seeing there to the right you have your login information and your traditional window management buttons I always like to point out that when you have two x’s one on the top and one on the bottom the top one controls the application the bottom One controls the current file to the left of your title bar you have a little bit of a quick access toolbar which can be customized like in all your other Microsoft programs there is a useful thing that we’ll be using throughout the course so I’m going to show you one way to customize that quick access toolbar and so we’re going to go to the project tab on the ribbon and in the Properties Group you’ll see several different icons and the group names are at the bottom so in the Properties Group we’re looking for the project information icon and what you’re going to do is you’re going to right click on it and choose add to quick access toolbar so now that project information dialog box can be easily accessed from the quick access toolbar and we’ll be using it several times throughout the course so that’s a good place for it the project ribbon starts with your task tab everything pretty much that you need to do about tasks can be done from this tab you have a resource Tab and the same is true here anything having to do with your resource could potentially be handled from this ribbon tab you have a report tab so we mentioned in the introduction that you have these built in interactive reports this is where you can access them as well as visual reports and you can create your own custom reports from this ribbon tab as well your project tab is an overall tab we’ll be using multiple things on this tab throughout the course and it’s where you can find spell check by the way you have a view tab where you have lots of different views in Project sometimes when you’re new to project it can be overwhelming but what you’ll find are the views that are useful for you and you’ll learn how to customize them as necessary you have a help tab on the ribbon everything about help or giving feedback about the program finding out what’s new and this particular version of project versus previous versions and because when we selected a new blank project the default view is Gantt chart with timeline so you get that contextual tab on your Ribbon which is the Gantt chart format tab that tab is there because it is view we’re in to the right of that you have another way of navigating the program or getting help and that’s your tell me what you want to do box and underneath your Ribbon this default view is called Gantt chart with timeline so you have a timeline that’s a good high level reporting tool or good for you if you’re managing the project plan it’s a quick at a glance of where your project is as you’ll see when we populate it throughout the course underneath your timeline you have a split screen on the left side of the screen you have what’s known as the entry table and on the right side of your screen you have your Gantt chart which when populated will be a visual representation of your task duration as well as some other things about your tasks so you’ll see how these views change as we populate when we start working on our project to the left of your table you have a view indicator and that’s where it says currently Gantt chart that’s the view that we’re currently in so the view indicator says Gantt chart now you can use the view menu to change the different views or you can right click on that view indicator and you’ll see other views that you can switch to all the way at the bottom of the screen in the gray band you’ll see and in my case it starts with the word ready down there and that whole gray area is called your status bar all the way at the bottom so it tells you that it’s ready so if you wanted to start putting in things into your project plan file you could it lets you know that new tasks are manually scheduled down there which you’ll learn about shortly and over to the right side you have a series of view buttons kind of shortcuts that you can use instead of using the view indicator or the view tab of the ribbon you have five different views that you can switch to by using those buttons so the first one is kind of shaded already that’s our default view the view you’re currently in Gantt chart you can get to task usage team planner resource sheet and blank report views from there and then finally to the right you have a zoom slider now it doesn’t function in here the way it does in Excel and in word where it increases the size of your font on the screen for easier viewing and here if you look above the Gantt chart portion of your screen you have what’s known as a time scales when you’re in this View and you use the zoom slider it changes the time scale it does nothing to zoom your text in so it’s larger or smaller the type of project plan that we’re going to be working on during this course is the rollout of a training initiative so it could be that your company is getting a new piece of proprietary software and everyone or most people need to be trained on it or it could be that your company wants everyone trained on Microsoft Project and they need to roll out this initiative so the training is conducted appropriately so we could use this new blank template that we created before but let’s just go to the file tab of the ribbon and on the left side click on new and we’ll just start with another new blank project so now you see it has project two up in the title bar if we had closed project and went back in and did new we would get project one again we hadn’t saved it or named it so that’s kind of how that works it will just keep assigning sequential numbers until you give it a name now a best practice here is to set up your project plan file before actual work starts on your project now we know in the real world that’s not always possible but if you can aim toward that that is a best practice now when you first set up your project plan file you need to Define your project and that means that you have to set the way that the project is going to be scheduled and either its start or finish date and so we’re going to do that from that project information dialog box and we put it up on our quick access toolbar if you didn’t get it up there it resides on the project tab of the ribbon in the Properties Group whichever way you want to access it you can now notice in this project information for project 2 dialog box it has the finished date dimmed out can access the finished date field and that’s because the project by default is scheduled from its start date and let’s just have a brief conversation about that for a moment there’s only two ways you can schedule your project from its start date or finish date now you might think okay well I have this project plan and let’s say it has a deadline of October 31st you might want to schedule it from the Finish date and put in October 31st but in the background project does reverse logic in a lot of areas so for example it defaults to being scheduled from the project start date and right underneath that it says all tasks begin as soon as possible if you schedule it from the Finish date then it changes that constraint to all tasks begin as late as possible and that could actually end up jamming you up in your project schedule so I typically recommend scheduling from your project start date there are things that you’ll learn throughout the course let’s say usually October 31st as a perspective end date again let’s say you get to a certain point in your project that you scheduled from the start date and you realize that you may not make your end date there are ways that you can it’s called crashing your schedule so you can gain some time back in your plan that could potentially help you meet that end date even if you’re scheduling from the start date so for our start date what we’re going to do here is I’m going to just choose the following Monday from whatever date I’m currently on as the start date of this project actually I’m not going to do that I’m going to do the next day as the start date of my project here and we also so let’s let me do this one step at a time we put in the next day as our start date and we’re going to click ok and a couple of things change during your screen first of all if you look over on the right at the Gantt chart portion of your screen you now have a vertical line that’s going down the current where your current date is and to the right of that you have a dotted vertical line that indicates your Project’s start date also this task zero that showed up and that’s a default setting if you don’t have it I’ll tell you shortly how to get that default task there that also updated to the start date that you set now I’m going to show you how to control whether this default task shows up and so one way we can control it it’s set as a default in my options but we can go to that Gantt chart format tab and over to the right in the show hide group you’ll see that project summary task is checked what I’m going to do for right now is uncheck it and we’ll talk about the project summary task a little bit later in the course but we don’t need to have it there right now after you’ve set a start date or finish date for your project you’re going to want to assign a project calendar the project calendar lists all the exceptions so days that no work will happen on the project this is not like an Outlook calendar where you can import the holidays and stuff like that you have to manually enter them but the good news is if you set up a project calendar and you have other projects that are going to be using that same calendar or those same exceptions you can actually share that calendar across different project plans and you’ll learn how to do that later in the course for right now we’re going to go ahead and set up our project calendar and we’re going to go to the project tab of the ribbon and in that Properties Group we’re going to click on change working time and so project has three built-in calendars if you look up at the top of the change working time dialog box there’s a four calendar box and it’s set to the standard project calendar so your standard project calendar is for a standard working times of eight to five so eight to noon and then an hour off for lunch and one to five as you’ll see on the right side of that screen so that is a built-in calendar if I go to the drop down arrow next to where it says standard project calendar you’ll see that there’s also a night shift calendar that’s built in and that goes from 11 at night well it says as for June 20th it has one hour no 11 pm to 12 a.m the next day so we can adjust the hours for that but if you have a project where people are working on different shifts and there is a night shift you can base it off of that calendar and then you have your 24 hour calendar and no we don’t work people 24 hours however you might have equipment that is running continuously on your project and a 24-hour calendar could be assigned to it so you have these three built-in calendars but you really don’t want to use any of them you want to leave those alone and intact we’re going to go to the drop down and switch back to standard project calendar and over to the right we’re going to choose create new calendar and we’re going to make it a copy it’s going to be based off of that copy of standard so eight to five with an hour break for lunch and we’re going to give it a name and we’ll just call it training roll out training rollout initiative and we’ll click ok so by default when project schedules work it never schedules on a weekend now you can override that if necessary but it will never schedule on a Saturday or a Sunday so what we need to do for our training rollout initiative calendar is put exceptions on there for days that we know no work is going to happen with the exception of the weekends so if I look at this mini calendar if I do the down arrow to scroll down it will take me to the following month and so we’ll notice that Independence Day is on July 4th I’m going to go ahead and click on the 4th of July on that mini calendar and then in on the lower half of the screen you have two tabs exceptions and work weeks we’re on the exceptions Tab and in the name box we’re going to just type Independence Day and when you press your tab key it will populate the start and the Finish dates for July 4th because we selected it on the calendar now if you click on the next name line underneath Independence Day and then back on Independence Day you’ll notice that the details button on the right side will become available to you go ahead and click details and this is where you can set up Independence Day as recurring so underneath recurrence pattern we’re going to select the option button in front of yearly and we’re going to put we’ll leave it on July 4th and then what I usually do you can end after a certain amount of occurrences I’m going to choose End by and I’m going to change the year 22. to the year I’m Gonna Change it to the year 2050 so 50. and then click ok so somewhere far out so I don’t have to worry about it so that’s our first exception is you look at the little mini calendar again you’ll see that July 4th right it tells you it’s a non-working day it’s based on the particular exception of Independence Day on the calendar so now let’s navigate our little mini calendar and let’s go to September and we’re going to do September 5th make sure that date is selected put in Labor Day as an exception on the next name line and tab click away from the line and back on it so you can get to details and make that recurring yearly on the first Monday of September and ended in the year 2050 the recurrence and those are the two exceptions we’ll put on and again later you can okay your way out of there later on in the course you’ll learn how that calendar can be utilized by other project plans so you don’t always have to recreate the wheel once you’ve added the exceptions to your calendar we just need to tell your project plan file to use that calendar and we’re going to go back to our project information icon on the quick access Toolbar to do that on the right side of the project information dialog box you’ll notice the calendar defaults to the standard calendar we’re going to do the drop down next to standard and choose training rollout initiatives and click ok so it won’t assign any work on the project for the 4th of July or for Labor Day based on the exceptions that we put on our calendar before we start manually entering tasks into our project plan file we should probably go ahead and save the work that we’ve done so far so I’m going to go ahead and you can click the save icon or go to file save or save as it’s going to take you to save as I’m going to browse for where I want to place this and I’m going to just navigate to where I want to place my project plan file and I’m going to name it training roll out initiative and save it so now of course our title bar updated with the proper name for our file and we’re ready to start manually entering tasks now there are two modes if you will when you enter tasks there’s manually scheduled and earlier I pointed out that it says that new tasks are by default manually scheduled and then there’s the automatic schedule if I click down there I can Auto schedule new tasks we’re going to leave it on manually scheduled right now manually scheduled gives us the ability to put placeholder text for a task duration start or finish date so typically you’re entering you’re starting your project plan file well before work starts on your project you may not quite have all the information so you want to give yourself the ability to put placeholder text and then before work starts on the project I always switch it to an automatic schedule and in that Way project takes over the scheduling right now we’re going to enter our cast names and durations and so if we look at our column headings in our entry table we have an informational column we have a task mode column and you’ll see the indicator for a manually scheduled tasks there in a moment we have task name duration start finish predecessors resource names we’ll deal with start finish predecessors and resource names later for right now we’re going to click in the first task name cell and you want your task names to be fairly short noun verb combinations so we’re going to type Define project objectives and describe mission statement and press enter so and you could have pressed tab I’ll go back up Arrow you could press tab to get over to duration the default unit for a duration is days so you don’t have to type the D which would normally represent days if the duration is in days and that duration so we’re going to type the number two and press enter and notice how it gives it days now a couple of things happened I want to direct your attention to the task mode column and the push pin with the question mark is indicative of a manually scheduled task there’s only two modes manual and Auto if you look over at your Gantt chart you have a bar on your Gantt chart that is representing the duration of the task which is two days if you hover over that bar it will give you a screen tip that says duration only and the task start date is the date that we set our project to start on its finish date is the following day because we made the duration two days let’s put our next task in the next one is ensure total participation by training team and support staff and I’m going to tab after that one and that’s a one day duration so I’m going to just type the number one and press enter we’re going to add several more tasks at this point I’m going to go ahead and get them entered in and then when I resume you’ll see them and you can copy them from my screen I’ve completed our initial task list and I’ve widened the task name column so it doesn’t word wrap so you’re going to complete the other entries on this list on your own so now I’m showing the task for import Excel file that’s in the video description and the file has two tabs the first tab the manually enter tab those are the tasks that we’ve already entered into project now we have another tab at the bottom the import Tab and we’re actually going to use this tab to bring the rest of the project plan tasks into the file now we don’t need to import the task ID that’s in column A so I’m going to just click in cell B1 hold down my shift and my control keys I’m going to tap my right arrow and my down arrow to select everything on this import sheet except column A and then I’m going to do control C just to copy it and now I’m ready to switch back over to my project plan and I’m going to click in the first blank task name cell and by the way notice the row numbers on the left those correspond to the task numbers right now so task one is Define project objectives and describe mission statement and now I’m going to press Ctrl Z to paste the rest of the information in so didn’t have to type all of that stuff and some of the rows are kind of weird I’m seeing some kind of row deviations here in terms of the size so I’m going to just expand my task name column so we don’t get any text wrap and I’m just dragging it putting my mouse between the divider between it and the duration column headings and that just fixed my little role issue that I had you may not have had that issue it could be a resolution thing so we have our task list completed in here now and that’s as of right now now again we may not know all the information and since we’re in manually scheduled mode we can use placeholder text as I mentioned for duration start or finish date so if you look at tasks eight by row number for that duration which is currently 1.5 days I’m going to just go into the duration field and I’m going to type ask coordinator and press enter so it allows me to put placeholder text there notice that the corresponding bar on the Gantt chart portion disappeared because we no longer have a duration now once we put it into Auto schedule mode once project takes over the schedule you won’t be able to type that kind of placeholder text in the duration or start and finish date fields we’re going to change that duration back to 1.5 days so that’s only again because you’re in manually scheduled mode will it allow that let’s say that our task list is as complete as we think it could be at this point and so we want project to take over our scheduling we want to change it all to Auto scheduled and so what I’m going to do and this is very similar to in Excel I can click in the gray box between the row and column headings the intersection box at for your table on the left to select everything and then on the task tab of the ribbon in the task group you will see a manually scheduled icon which is already shaded because everything is manually scheduled and right next to it you have Auto schedule go ahead and click Auto schedule and then you can just click away from any on any cell in your table to get rid of the selection so a couple of things happened first take a look at your task mode column it now has a different icon in there and that icon represents an auto schedule task and it matches the icon that’s on the task tab of the ribbon for auto schedule the other thing that happened is the color of the bars in your Gantt chart changed they’re a deeper color now before it was a lighter color and that’s lighter for a manually scheduled task versus darker for auto schedule tasks and last but certainly not least based on our project start date it has populated the start and the Finish dates for our entire project now you’ll notice if you look at the start date column all of the tasks are starting on the project start date and that’s where creating a work breakdown structure to start organizing our tasks and relating them to each other will make our start and finish dates adjust and that’s the section we’re going to be going into now one way to organize our tasks is to start creating summary tasks before applying a work breakdown structure series of codes to each task so we had earlier seen task zero on my screen and I got rid of it before we really started doing anything when we had our blank template and so now it’s time to bring back task zero so on the ribbon I’m going to go to the Gantt chart format tab and over in the show hide group to the right you’re going to check the box in front of project summary task and when you do that you get a new task at the very top it takes on the name of your project it is in bold if you look at the row number it’s row zero that’s why it’s known as task zero and that is an example of a summary task that is your whole Project based on the information in here right now the whole project will take 10 days based on the start and finish dates so a summary task like this one is its information comes from its subtasks all the tasks underneath it so task zero the project summary task is a good example of a summary task if I want it to collapse it notice right in front of the task name you have that collapse Arrow if I click that everything in the project is collapsed and then I have the expand Arrow so I can expand it again so what I’ve done is I’ve gone ahead and entered two other summary tasks for stage one underneath stage one and they’re showing on my screen so you want to get those entered seek input from training vendor and perform end user skill assessment using indent and outdent as necessary and then when you’re done getting those in you can pause the video so you can just stare at my screen and get those done when you’re done you can unpause and I will have the stage two summary tasks set up on the screen for you to complete on your end now you’re seeing the stage 2 project commencement summary tasks and its other summary tasks so you can pause again and get those set up for stage two and when you unpause I’ll have stage three and four ready for you and now here’s how you’re gonna set up stage three and stage four stage three is a summary task it only has one subtask stage four includes two summary tasks with subtasks and now I’ve collapsed all my stages and your row numbers should match up to mine so I have task 0 1 22 46 and 48 showing on my screen and so when you were working on your summary and subtasks to make it more automated you could have gone down to your status bar where it said new tasks manually scheduled and just change that down there to new tasks Auto scheduled so you wouldn’t have to change it in the task mode column now what we’re going to do is we’re going to add some Milestone tasks to our project plan a milestone task is a task with zero days duration it’s meant to just note a particular milestone in your project plan so let’s expand stage two stages one and two if they’re not already expanded and so my stage two is on row 22. I’m going to just right click on that row heading and insert task and a new task I’m going to name it stage one project planning complete and I’m gonna give it a zero day duration so Milestone tasks show up on your Gantt chart as that little Diamond icon right and with the date next to it so that’s how it shows up on your Gantt chart zero day task is a milestone task now for that task we want to out Dent it so it’s at the same level as stage one so I’m gonna just out Dent as far as it can be out dented and then I’m going to collapse stage one and you see it and it’s Milestone task of zero days we’re gonna expand stage three and right click on its row header and insert task and this one’s going to be another Milestone it’s going to be stage 2 Dash project commencement complete with zero days and out Dent it appropriately and then we’re going to have row 50 where stage four is and insert a task and get your stage three project implementation and control complete milestone in and I’m gonna go ahead and do my out denting on that one and then for stage four I’m going to expand it and right before the last task which is the party we’re going to put in the milestone for stage four being completed so just noting significant events in your Project’s lifeline we have our Milestone tasks we have our subtasks our summary tasks and our project is pretty well defined at this point with the exception of one of the most critical components and that’s task relationships and we’re going to be reviewing them now and then coming back and setting them up to finish defining our project we need to learn about task relationships and a little bit of terminology so there are only four types of relationships in Microsoft Project there’s finish to start also you’ll see it represented as FS and that means when one task finishes another task starts that is the default relationship type so if you create a relationship between tasks and you don’t do anything else it will be a finish to start relationship we have start to start when one task starts another task starts and that’s one that you might review once you start tracking what’s going on in your project and you feel like you may not be able to make your end date your projected end date you can crash the schedule is what it’s called by reviewing some of your tasks and figuring out ones that can start at the same time and that can gain you more time back in your schedule you also have finish to finish when one task finishes another task finishes so you need them to finish at the same date and finally you have start to finish this one is infrequently used when one task starts another task finishes so you want a task to start and another task to finish at the same time and then there’s some definitions you need to know about your predecessor task is the task that precedes another task the successor task is the task that follows another task so let’s just use for example task one precedes task two task one is the predecessor task and task 2 would be your successor tasks in addition to your relationships you need to know about lead time and lag time so let’s say you’re using the Finish to start relationship when one task finishes another task starts well maybe when the first task is 50 finish the next task can start that would be known as lead time it allows for task overlap outside of the relationship that’s defined and then you have lag time which is a task delay so let’s say you have a task that’s like um we won’t have one in this project but let’s say you’re painting a room and that’s a task and let’s say it takes three days well you need another day for the paint to dry before the next task which we’ll say is like hanging the paintings would start you don’t want to make it from a three-day painting task to a four day painting task because then you’ll get resource costs for that extra day so you build in lag time that says it’s a three-day task after it’s finished wait one day before the next task will start and now that I’m back in my project plan I we’re ready to set up relationships I’ve expanded all of my stages so my full task list is visible to me and so what we’re going to do is we’re going to select task two and I’m just clicking the row header holding down my control key oh I did that wrong okay so row header two control key row header five to select those two tasks we want to set up a relationship a finish to start relationship that when task 2 is finished Task 5 will start so we have them selected and we’re going to be working on the task tab of the ribbon and we’re going to be using an icon in the schedule group here and if you hover over that icon it looks like the infinity symbol if you hover over that icon it says link the selected tasks go ahead and click it so a couple of things happened first of all look at your predecessors column so for Task 5 it’s saying that it’s predecessor tasks the task that has to happen before it can start is Task two and also if you look at your Gantt chart remember I said the default relationship type is finished to start so when task 2 finishes Task 5 will start and you can see that type of relationship on your can get chart if you look at the line with the Arrow coming out of the end of task 2 and the arrows pointing to the beginning of task five when task 2 finishes Task 5 will start so you just successfully set up a relationship now we have more to set up now we’re going to set up additional relationships so this time let’s select tasks three and using the control key task six and Link those tasks together now select task 6 7 and 8. I’m going to just click and drag row header six seven and eight and then link those tasks together notice it gives task seven the predecessor of six and task eight the predecessor of seven link test 5 and 9 to each other and then link Task 5 and 10 to each other so predecessor for 9 and 10 will be task 5. Now link 10 and 12 together make 12 the predecessor for 13. and then we’re at task 14. in order for task 14 to begin we need tasks 12 and 13 to be finished so I’m going to start by selecting 12 and 14. and linking those and then I can actually click in that predecessors box after 12 type a comma and a space and type 13 and then press enter so that one has two predecessors link test 13 and 15. to each other and for task 17 we’ll do this a different way just go to the predecessor cell for task 17. and do the drop down and you’ll see a list of all of your tasks you’re going to want to scroll up and check the box in front of task 8 and then just click away from there or you could have just typed in eight so some say it’s easier to do it that way than select it is certainly more efficient so we have eight as a predecessor for 17. I’m going to go to the predecessor box for task 18 and just type 17 and press enter and for task 19 I’m going to press 18 and press enter task 20 we’re going to do 19. and then we’re at task 21 that’s also going to be 19. as its predecessor and at this point I’m just typing them in you’ll know just like any other Microsoft product there’s multiple ways of doing the same thing so we have our predecessors in through task 21. at this point the predecessor for 22 which is one of our Milestone tasks is Task 21. so we’ll go ahead and get that in so we have our stage one relationships set up now we’ll address our stage two relationships so I’m going to collapse stage one and I have my stage two ready we’ll be starting and we’ll be working in the predecessors column we’ll just type all of these in we’re going to start with task 25 and I’m in that predecessor column and I’m going to just type 20 and press enter so now you’re on task 26 and that’s going to be 25 for your predecessor 27 and 28 are also going to be 25 as predecessor and then 29 its predecessor is going to be task 26. 30s predecessor is task 25. and then we’re going to go down to 32 and its predecessor is also 25. 33’s predecessor is 32. 34’s predecessor is 33. and 35’s predecessor is 34. and then we go to task 37 its predecessor is 33 38 is 37 39 is also 37. and 40 is also 37. and then you can go down to 42. so we’re skipping our summary tasks here although it is possible to link them to each other as well both 42 and 43 have 26 as a predecessor and then we’re at 45 and 45 has a predecessor 45 and 46 rather both have a predecessor of 26. and then we get to our Milestone task for the completion of stage two and for this one we’re actually going to use a summary task so we’re going to put in 36 as the predecessor for 47. task 49 conduct training and track attendees or it should be attendance I have a typo there I’ll fix it that one is going to be 47 as its predecessor so 49 has 47 as a predecessor so now I’m going to make sure in my task 49 I believe we bought that in from Excel so I just double clicked it and I’m going to just fix the typo on attendance and then I noticed my stage 3 Milestone task doesn’t say complete at the end so I’m going to just add that word there and then we’re into stage four with task 53 and actually I forgot the stage three one but that’s okay we’ll just for task 50 let’s go ahead and make that predecessor 49. and then we’ll go down to 53 and 53 we’re gonna give it a predecessor of 50. task 54 has 53 as its predecessor task 55 has two predecessors and that would be 53 comma 54. and task 56 has three predecessors and that would be 53 54 and 55. so I’m just typing those in separated by commas almost done here so task 58 has 52 as its predecessor another summary task there 59 has 58 as its predecessor and 60 has 59 as its predecessor and finally the last test task 62 we’re going to be using task 50 as its predecessor and go ahead and save your project plan now because we set up our relationships let’s talk about the things that have changed in our project plan notice your start and finish dates have adjusted according to the relationship also if you look at task zero you’ll see now the duration of our project is 63.5 days and that’s all the stages rolled up to that duration so our schedule is our tasks have been scheduled at this point because of the relationships now I’m going to expand all my stages again and we’re going to add the work breakdown structure codes work breakdown structure codes are universally known great way to talk about particular tasks in meetings and stuff like that and often your tasks are referred to by their code numbers their WBS codes rather than the task name so I’m going to show you two ways of where you can display your WBS codes so the first way I’m going to show you is this if you right click on your task name column heading and choose insert column start typing WBS and you’ll see it shows up on the list and once it’s highlighted on the list you can just press enter so now we have another column in this table with the WBS codes in them that’s one way of getting your codes to display let’s right click on the WBS column heading and in Project hide column means delete column I mean you could get it back by inserting it again but notice the symbol next to high column has the little X the red deletion x on it so we’re going to delete that column and I’ll show you another way of displaying your WBS codes without inserting another column this is my preferred way we’re going to go to the ribbon to the Gantt chart format tab on the ribbon and all the way to the right in the show hide group where we got our project summary task check box earlier for task zero you’ll see another box in there called outline number go ahead and check it and now if you look in your task name column each task has its WBS code before the task name so the first task task one is our stage one project planning task a summary task it’s subtasks are 1.1 and 1.2 and then the next summary task that we have in there is 1.3 its subtasks are 1.3.1 1.3.2 so on and so forth so a nice way of being able to refer to your task are by using the WBS codes now later on you’ll see if we edit tasks if we add more tasks the WBS codes will automatically update if we delete tasks so on and so forth once they’re there they’re there and you can make any modifications necessary so now we’re going to build in some lead and or lag time for some of our tasks let’s start with task seven so I’m still using the row numbers we don’t have to refer to them by the WBS codes I’m still using our row numbers so we made task six its predecessor and we want to have some lag time there so these are all finished to start relationships what we would like to happen is when task 6 is finished wait four days before starting task seven so we want to give it some lag time what you’re going to do is just double click on task 7. and when you double click a task the task information dialog box opens you have several tabs across the top General predecessors resources so on and so forth you’re going to go to the predecessor Tab and notice all the way to the right there’s a column called lag there is no lead column in Microsoft Project when you want to do lag time you represent it as negative it could be days it could be percentages and that’s how the system knows its lag if it starts off with a negative if it’s lead time you’re going to put it in the lag column it can be represented as percentages or days as well and you use that a positive number for that so we want four days of lag here before this task starts so in that lag column we’re going to type minus four and I’m going to type the D for days and press enter and now click ok so notice now in the predecessors column it says for task seven six FS which is finished to start minus four days so it’s showing the lag there right so if you look at it on the Gantt chart right the line is coming out of the end of task six and it’s lagging before it goes into minus four days minus four days of lag time before it starts the next task is what we’re telling it to do there right so lag time is represented as a negative lead time is represented as a positive now go to task 20 and give it two days of lag time and when you’re done its predecessor should say 19 FS minus two days let’s double click on task 26 to get into its task information box and for this one we want to give it a half day of lead time so in the lag box I’m going to just type 0.5 and enter and click ok so now you’ll see its predecessor says 25 FS for finish to start plus this one is going to start a half a day before task 25 is complete it’s overlap so if you have problems finding the Gantt Bar for a particular task like right now on my screen I’m not seeing the Gantt bar for task 26. I’m going to right click on the task name and I’m going to choose scroll to task and it brings that bar into view give tasks 33 two days of lag time and your predecessor’s column for that task should look like mine change the type of relationship to start to start for task 37 as well and do the same for task 39. make it in a start to start relationship add two days of lead time to task 40. you’re also going to add two days of lead time to task 45. three days of lead time to task 46. and you can see the results of those on my screen we’re going to add one day of lead time to task 47 and two days to task 49. let’s go ahead and give task 53 two days of lead time and for task 58 we’re going to do 990 days of lead time and you can see the results on my screen and then the next task task 59 we’re going to give it one day of lag so that’s going to be your minus 1 there so now if I look at task zero we’re up to 146 and a half days duration we added that 90-day lead so that means wait 90 days after that task before the next one or it’s successor task will start and so our start and finish dates have updated our project is Thoroughly scheduled and designed right now except for some more tasks so I noticed that I had accidentally deleted some of my stage 3 tasks I rebuilt that part of the project plan and put in the correct duration and predecessors so I just want to make sure your stage 3 is exactly like mine as highlighted on the screen and then in stage three what we’re going to do is we’re going to change the duration of task 49 to 10 days so we want that to be a 10-day task now your stage 3’s duration should have updated when you change that to 10 days but I want you to scroll to the very top and I want you to look at task zero the project summary task that has been off that is only showing the duration I’m going to collapse my stages now just so we can see clearly what’s going on here so our project summary task is only showing the duration of stage four and it should be showing the duration of all of the stages cumulative so one way that you can jog project into doing its job when it comes to this if your project summary task task zero doesn’t update you can link your stages to each other to get it to update so what we’re going to do is we’re going to just click and drag row headings 1 through 55 so basically selecting our stages and on the task tab of the ribbon you’re going to go ahead and Link those tasks together and now you’ll notice that your stage four actually adjusted it really is 108 days and that’s where we put that 90-day lead time so it is 108 days but cumulatively our project is 153 days if you add up the stage durations so you need to kind of know about that little shortcut sometimes it won’t update sometimes it will and this has happened in various versions of project we’ve decided that when we get to stage three which I’m going to expand we want to have conference calls for one hour every day during that stage so we just want the whole team to get together talk about how things are going are there any risk assessments so we want to add those recurring calls to our project plan file and the way to do that so so far when we’ve been inserting new tasks we’ve been right clicking on a row heading and choosing insert tasks to get the recurrence schedule you can’t use that method for a recurring task so I’m going to just select row header 49 just so that task is selected and on the task tab of the ribbon in the insert group I’m going to do the drop down arrow underneath task so when I do the drop down I can see where I can create a recurring task so I’m going to select recurring tasks there and we’re going to name the task status call and notice it defaults to a one day duration be careful of that go to your duration box to the right and change the D to an H which represents one hour and we’re gonna do this call so we’re going to do the call Daily so we’re going to do that option button and we’re going to say everyone workday and then we’re going to start it so we say stage three the actual work begins on stage three on it looks like Wednesday 8 10 with the training starting so we’re going to start the calls we’ll just change it to August 10th as our start date so we just want to start them with that phase when that phase is up and running and we’ll say end after so we have 12 days in that we’ll end it after 10 occurrences so we want to have 10 of these status calls during stage three and go ahead and click ok so now right underneath stage three you have your 10 incidents of the status calls each one for one hour right every weekday starting on August 10th is what we set up so you want to have them as close to the top of the summary task as possible so they’re not just blending in with your other stage 3 tasks and we want to change the name of that status call summary task um before we do that look at your indicators column so you have a recurring call and it has the recurrence circular arrows in the indicator column and then for each occurrence of the call it has a little calendar icon and if you hover over a calendar icon it says this task has a start no earlier constraint start no earlier than constraint on Wednesday August 10th so for each one it gives the same constraint the call is on every day starting on the 10th so just more icons you’ll see in your indicators column we’re going to double click on 3.1 status call and we’re going to change the name of it to daily conference call daily we’ll just say daily call and then in parentheses to address issues and close your parentheses and then click ok so it’s going to rename every instance of that call that way and that’s fine by us so we added those also notice that your work breakdown structure codes Just Adjust if you add or delete like I mentioned earlier and we can go ahead and collapse stage three and the last thing we’re going to do in module one is I’m going to show you a way to capture additional information about tasks we’ll only address three tasks in this section out of our extensive list of tasks and we’re going to start by adding a note to task one I’m going to just expand stage one I don’t have to expand it to do this and then I’m going to double click on it to get into the task information dialog box and in there you have a notes tab at the top now I suggest that you date an initial notes and if multiple people are going to be working in this plan file that the newest note should be at the top of the note list so I’m going to just go in and put in the date and I’m going to put in my initials and then I’m going to press enter and the note is going to be assumptions colon you could take it off of my screen and the first assumption is software will be rolled out to the participants workstations during training the next line is going to be HR and training management has given their approval and allocated the funds and budget for this project and our last assumption for this task is all necessary compliance and Regulatory issues have been addressed and then you’re going to click ok and so if you look at your indicators column you’ll have that sticky note icon and in order to see the note you can just hover over that icon and you’ll see most of the note but it cuts off so you would have to double click to get to the notes tab to see the rest of it so they’re indicated by the sticky note in the indicators column we’re going to put on two more notes let’s go to task 11 so that’s another summary task I’m going to just double click it and I’m going to date the note and initial it and then this one is going to just be can be skipped if instructors and training are done in-house and then click ok and we have one more note that we’re going to add here and that’s going to be for stage three so task 48 and let me just show you another way of getting to the task information dialog box this time I’m going to right click on stage three or line 48 and I’m going to click on information and that’s just another way other than double clicking you could also get to it from the task tab at a ribbon in the Properties Group there’s an information box so in here I want to go to notes and I’m going to date an initial it and this one is also going to start with assumption and in a colon the rollout will take place over two weeks and then in parentheses 10 business days to train 75-80 users and the next sentence each session can have up to eight users for optimal learning and then I’m going to just put another sentence this is the start of the hands on training and click ok so great way to capture additional information I’ve seen project plans where the name the task name is not just the name of the task but all these notes about the task so you have to have some place to put this additional information notes would be it task name would not be to recap what we’ve covered in module one we started by going over project management Concepts specifically to phases of project management we started our work in Microsoft Project in the definition and planning stage of project management and then you got a grand tour of the project environment and how to navigate within it and then we created a project plan from a blank template we defined the project by setting by deciding to schedule it from its start date and setting the start date and then we created a project calendar based off of the built-in standard calendar we listed a couple of holidays as exceptions on the calendar and then we assigned that calendar to our project plan in lesson three we started adding tasks to the project plan we manually entered some tasks and then we imported tasks from an Excel file that’s in the video description we started creating our work breakdown structure by organizing our task into different groupings so we grouped our tasks by stages we have four stages in our project plan and we got our summary task and our subtasks and then we learned about the task relationships as well as some definitions like successor tasks and predecessor tasks and you learned about lag and lead time and then we created the relationships between tasks by linking them we then went and changed some of the relationship types and we added lag and or lead time to some of our tasks and by doing that we were able to schedule our task we had already switched to automatic scheduling so then the start dates and the finished dates are based on the nature of the relationships and any lag or lead time after that we got our work breakdown structure codes to show in the task name column so that the task can be referenced by their WBS code as opposed to their name we’ve been referencing them by row number in this course we moved on and set up a recurring task for a series of 10 daily calls that will take place when the training starts in our project plan and you learned how to create that recurring task and set up its recurrent schedule and then finally we added some notes to some tasks to capture some additional information now that we have our project plan file as complete as it can be right now in terms of our task list we’re going to move into module two module two has two lessons Lesson Four and lesson five and Lesson Four we’ll be managing project plan Resources by adding resources to a project plan we’ll also be creating a resource calendar entering cost for resources assigning resources to tasks and resolving resource conflicts in lesson five we’ll be finalizing our project plan and this is typically the last step before you start running your plan so work starts on the project you want to optimize your project plan there’s a couple of steps for that you’re going to set a Baseline and learn what that is and also learn how to share your project Plan before work begins on the project before we begin adding resources to our plan file it’s important to understand the three different types of resources that are utilized in Microsoft Project you have work resources which is the default resource type and that type of resource is associated with and tracked by time it also allows for costs to be tracked it can be people and they can be listed as individual or Consolidated groups or a work resource could also be equipment that is necessary to be used on the project then you have material resources they’re assigned by quantity rather than time gravel paper concrete and paint are examples of material resources when you enter a material resource you have to enter its measurement so for example if you entered paper as a material resource its measurement would be reams and then you have a cost resource type these are based on costs without time or quantity consideration these can include travel costs costs for building permits or end of project celebration costs and their total the amount that they are like let’s say you had a lot of travel on your project each travel cost would be noted at that task level so if someone has a task to teach a class and it’s in a different city they have to travel to get to that City their travel costs would be noted on that task so you’ll learn how to deal with all three resource types in just a few moments to add resources to your project plan file you’re going to want to use resource sheet view so on the left side of your screen to the left of your entry table where it says Gantt chart remember that’s your view indicator we’re going to right click there and we’re going to choose resource sheet so it looks like an Excel spreadsheet a couple of things I will point out is when you’re in this view if you look up at your Ribbon the last tab is resource sheet format because you’re in resource sheet view so just want to point out how tabs change depending on views changing so we have an information column here I’ll go over to columns before we start entering our resources your resource name column if it’s a work resource it could be the actual name of the person if you know it if you don’t know the person’s name when you’re putting your plan file together you could give like a title like trainer one or something like that if you’re gonna have a group of people that can perform the same task like if you’re going to have five trainers you can list them individually by their names or trainer one two three four five so on and so forth or you could do one line item and I’m going to jump over from resource name to the max units column here it just says Max but it’s Max units if I had five trainers and I wanted one line item I would make their Max units 500 percent so if there are five trainers available to work on my project 100 of their time their Max units would be 500 percent so for work resources you can enter them quite a few ways and right now we’re going to use a combination of those ways your type column is a drop down for work material or cost it will default to work your material column as mentioned if you’re using a material resource for example paper you have to put in its measurement which would be reams the initials will populate with the first letter of your resource name group is a column that you can use for whatever you want if you need to track internal resources versus external resources you can use the column for that for example and it’s a column that can show on reports your maximum units is how much time and percentage your resource is available to your project and then you have your cost column so you have the standard rate if you have rate information you can put it in hourly weekly monthly annually daily and you can specify an overtime rate if necessary project note will never switch from the standard rate to the overtime rate it’s something you would have to tell project to do overtime is calculated differently in different states and then you have cost per use so let’s say you’re renting a training room for example how much does it cost each time you use that training room you have an accrual column your costs are normally prorated across the task right or you can have them accrue at the start or the end of the task and then the base calendar is the same calendar as your project calendar you also have another free field code which is like group you can use it for anything that you may need to use it for in the First Resource name cell we’re going to type Emily with the last name Barrington and we’re going to leave it on the default type of work resource so we can skip I’m using my Tab Key to material column notice that the first letter of the resource name populates automatically in the initials column for the group I’m gonna type internal and she is our training director I’m gonna say that she’s available to our project 50 of the time of her time now it just so happens that we have her raid information so part of her salary will be charged to this project for the time that she spends on this project at her normal rate so we’re going to just put in her normal rate now sometimes you won’t have cost information for resources sometimes you will if tracking cost is your responsibility then you should or at least get estimated costs if necessary so we’re gonna say we’re gonna type in 75 000 slash y for year and we’re not going to give her an overtime rate or cost per use we’re not going to change anything else and I’m just double clicking between standard rate and overtime columns so I can see her salary and so her 50 availability means project won’t schedule her more than 50 percent of her time on our project all right so now we have our next person and this person is Teresa Brown she’s also a work resource and she’s also in the internal group she’s our training manager when our project is up and running she’ll be available 100 of the time so we can leave her at 100 Max units and her salary is 50 000 slash y we have our next one now we’re not certain the training department has several training coordinators and we’re gonna need two of them to help on our project so what we’re gonna do is we know that we’ll be given their actual names before work starts so we’re gonna just list them as training coordinator one make them internal 100 of their time and we know that the coordinator’s rate is 35 000 slash y for a year and then we’re going to put in a training coordinator two with the same group and standard rate and we can always come in and fill in their real names when we get them and anywhere if we’ve already assigned them to tasks the task will update with their real names and then we have so we have our training coordinators our training director training manager our coordinators now we’re going to put in our HR director and his name is Randy Allison another work resource who’s also internal he’s available like 25 of his time for our project and he’s at 75 000 a year as well our HR manager’s name is Alan and the last name is Otto another work resource that’s internal and he’s available 50 of his time his salary is fifty thousand per year and we have just a few more so we’re going to have let’s see where I am here we’ll just do all of our work ones first we know we’re probably going to be using two trainers from a vendor so we don’t know their names yet we’ll put them in as vendor trainer one and their group is external they’ll be available 100 of their time once that part of the project starts and the rate for the vendor is 1500 a

day so I’m doing fifteen hundred slash d and then we’re going to do the same for vendor trainer 2. and now we’re ready to do a material resource so we’re going to have posters that are displayed advertising these classes and we’re going to use we’ll put in the resource name as posters and when you tab over the type if you type the letter M it will populate material and we’ll say it’s measured in sheets and notice the standard rate is just a flat rate there so we’re going to just put in 10. for ten dollars and then we have a cost resource and we’re going to name it entertainment and change the type to cost and we don’t need to note anything else here for a cost resource again that’s assigned at the task level so we have our resource sheet completed so another thing just to note here and we’ll deal with it in a later module is sometimes you’ll inherit a project plan file and it doesn’t have any task lists or Gantt chart or anything it only has a resource sheet in it and that can be used across projects it’s called a resource pool and we’ll revisit that later on in this course go ahead and save your project plan so we get our resource sheet filled out and we look at it and realize we forgot to put our marketing manager Alice on here so we want her to be included with our internal work resources we’re going to right click on row heading 7 here in resource sheet view and go to insert resource just to get that blank line just like when we were in the entry table in Gantt chart View so in that blank line we’re going to get her name in there and so her name is Alice Peak she is a work resource we’re going to put her in the internal group she’ll be available 100 of her time and she is a manager so we’re putting her salary at fifty thousand per year like our other managers now the thing about Alice that we need to know all of our other resources will be available to us for the duration of the project except Alice she already has some time off and so we need to note that and the way that we note it is by creating a resource calendar for Alice so to do that we’re going to just double click on Alice and it opens up the resource information dialog box just like when you double click on a task it opens up task information and on the right side we’re going to click that change working time button and so this is if you look at the top this is very similar to when we created our training rollout initiative calendar if you look at the top it says that is our base calendar but now we’re at the resource calendar for Alice so if your resources have time off it needs to be noted but not on the project calendar so by going into change working time for Alice we’re creating her resource calendar and we’re going to navigate to July 22nd on that mini calendar and we’re going to select July 22nd in the exception box the first name box under the exceptions tab we’re going to type personal day and press our Tab Key and we’re gonna click on July 25th on the mini calendar and put another personal day entry for that date there for Alice and then we’re going to click ok and okay now July 25th and July 22nd are working days for everybody else on the project but Alice won’t be scheduled for any work on those days and we can right click on our resource sheet view indicator on the left and go back to Gantt chart View and just save your project again there are quite a few ways that you can assign resources to tasks we’re going to start by using the resource name column on our entry table and Gantt chart View so it’s the last column before you get to add column Right add new column and so for task 2 we’re going to do the drop down in the resource names column and you’ll see all your resources regardless of how you enter them in on the resource sheet they will be alphabetical on this drop down list and we’re going to check Emily Barrington and then just click away from it so now if you right click on task 2 and you go to scroll to task if you look at the Gantt bar it shows Emily Barrington and it’s also showing that she’s only available 50 percent of her time for tasks three we’re going to assign Teresa Brown and go ahead and assign Theresa Brown to Task 5 6 and 7. so a couple of things happened when you did that you got three little red people in your indicators column and that means that Teresa Brown is now over allocated and we will take care of that a little bit later in this lesson but the other thing I want to show you is how I did that task how I assigned her to task five six and seven I didn’t do them individually in the resource name column what I did was I just clicked and dragged row headers five through seven right click within the row headers that are selected and I went to information so notice there’s no task name there because I have multiple tasks selected but then I went to the resources tab and I just did the drop down there so that’s how I got them in there Teresa Connor Brown three times just a little bit more efficient way it caused an over allocation and again we will address resolving over allocations later in this lesson for right now I’m Gonna Fill in the rest of the resource name assignments for stage one and then you’ll be able to pause and put them in on your screen so now you have on my screen I got rid of some of my columns in my table so you’re just seeing the task name and resource names you can go ahead and finish filling out the resource assignments for stage one and pause the video while you’re doing that so you can see my screen clearly and then when you resume the video I’ll have stage two up on the screen you’ll pause and get those in resume stage three so on and so forth so you’re going to be doing these assignments on your own and I showed you how like you have a lot where training coordinator is assigned you can select all four of those tasks at the same time and either right click to get to information or click information up here on the task tab of the ribbon so you don’t have to do them as individuals so go ahead and get started on this and here are your stage two resource assignments again pause here’s stage three and finally here’s stage four now that we have all of our work resources assigned we are going to go ahead and assign our material resource and we’re going to do this one a different way so go ahead and select task 33 and go to the resource tab on your Ribbon and in the assignments group you’re going to click on assigned resources so notice that we have Alice Peak assigned to that resource right create posters and place them in high traffic areas and it calculated her cost for that particular task but we also want to I’m going to scroll down here and we’re gonna click on the posters resource and choose the assign button on the right so we have the posters assigned there and for the units we have one sheet because we put in the material measurement as a sheet and we’re going to change that to 500 sheets trying to get into that field can be a little challenging try to type 500 in there yeah so it calculates the cost for me and so we have multiple resources assigned to that now we have Alice as the work resource and then we have the posters and we put the number of units based on the material measurement and its cost and so we can close that assign resources box and we’re going to do a similar thing let’s go to the bottom of the project plan our last task task 77 go ahead and select that one and go up to assign resources on the resource tab and for this one we’re going to assign entertainment so that’s our cost resource right and we’re going to go ahead and put in a cost of ten thousand and then do a sign so we have ten thousand dollars budgeted for this huge party at the end of everything and we’re going to go ahead and do the X and so if you notice the resource name for task 77 says entertainment and it has the ten thousand for that one and if we go up to task 33 you’ll see the resource name has Alice Peak and then the posters 500 sheets and if I I’m going to move my divider bar backwards and I’m going to right click on create posters and scroll to tasks so it shows on the Gantt chart as well when you have a material or a cost resource so at this point before we resolve our resource conflicts we’re making believe here that we just got the information of which two training coordinators will be working on our project so let’s go to our resource sheet view and we’ll update that information so here’s another view where you can see where you have over allocated resources they’re in red they have the little red people in the indicator column for training coordinator one we’re just going to change the name and that name is Eugenia Washington and for training coordinator two it’s Anita Redman and we’re gonna save and then go back to our Gantt chart View and you’ll notice that anywhere that we assigned training coordinator one so if I look at the beginning I have my stage one collapsed there right but they weren’t in that stage but anywhere where we had training coordinator one it now is Eugenia Washington and so in addition to receiving the training coordinator names we’ve also received the information on how they’re going to divvy up their responsibilities on the project so they’re doing it by stage and and summary tasks so Eugenia is assigned to stage one identify departments that’s where their assignments start and so she’s gonna tackle that what we’re gonna do for tasks 12 13 and 14 I’m going to select those as a group go up to the task Tab and go to information in the properties and I’m going to go to the resources Tab and change the assignment to Anita Redmond and then click ok so it put in it has Eugenia and Anita there I’m going to go to Resource name column and just access the drop down I made that column super wide so let me fix that a little bit and I want to get rid of Eugenia so just unchecker click away from it and you get that little warning symbol when you click away click on that and we’re going to decrease the amount of work but keep the same duration that’s the option we want and we’ll talk about that setting later but we want to go with the default and go ahead and remove Eugenia from the next two tasks as well and keep that same default and so this is how they’ve determined they’re going to work together so we have Eugenia in identifying departments and so on and so forth Anita will seek input from the training vendor Eugenia will perform the end user skill assessment and we’ll switch and I’m going to just do this from the drop down in stage two um tasks starting with tasks 25 I’m going to switch Eugenia to Anita in that summary task list and in that way we don’t get that confirmation if I select you Anita and then uncheck Eugenia it just does it in that section okay so the next section well we’re gonna oh there’s another one in that section that we need to assign to yeah task 30 also needs to be assigned to Anita our next one marketing strategy um the one email is going to be Eugenia and we’ll leave her in the training sessions registration and then in schedule instructors and courseware evaluations so task 42 43 45 and 46 switch those to Anita instead of Eugenia and then I think we should be done with the training coordinators I’ll double check that in a moment but after we do those because it already updated in the um the daily calls that we have so we don’t have to we had a we had assigned both training coordinators to those calls so we don’t have to do anything with that section and the next section underneath the calls we do have Eugenia that’s fine and then they’re working together and we’re good for the rest of this all right and just some of our over allocations for Eugenia have disappeared so in order to resolve resource conflicts like over allocations you can let project do it for you or you can do it manually I’m going to show you where you would have to do it manually and you’ll be able to make your choice as to what’s the best way for you so I’m going to right click on Gantt chart on our view indicator on the left and I’m going to go to Resource usage View and in resource usage view you have a time phased scale on the right side of your screen and on the left side you have any unassigned resources and then your resources that are assigned and the tasks that they’re assigned to any over-allocated resources will show there in red with the little red person in the indicator column and it gives you the amount of work hours assigned to that resource if you look at Teresa Brown in that list and you’re seeing the work that she’s scheduled for on a daily basis right you can see her over allocations in red so on this particular date I guess this is in the week of June 19th so 20th 21st 22nd on the 23rd so Thursday she’s scheduled for two eight-hour tasks in the same day and the same for Friday you can see on the following Monday she scheduled for 20 hours worth of work so if you were going to try to resolve this over allocation manually this is what you would need you would need a paper and a pencil you would need to go look at the resources calendar before you do anything and it would go something like this now we’re not going to do it this way but I’ll explain it to you so I’m gonna look at that first day where she has an over-allocation that Thursday so she has two tasks that are eight hours each and what I’d have to do is take one of those tasks away from her on that day by making it zero hours and then I would have to scroll to the right until I find another day that she has an opening and the first weekday that I see where she may have an opening here as far as I can see she’s not over allocated is on the Thursday after the 4th of July that kind of thing order Friday so I would have to change one of her tasks on that first day to zero hours and then put that eight hours for that task on another day that she has availability only if I’ve looked at the resources scheduled the resources calendar because they might have time off so you can see where this can be a tedious not only tedious but it lends itself to mistakes so you can let project do this for you I’m going to switch back to Gantt chart View and we’re gonna go to the resource tab of the ribbon so the last group on the resource tab is the level group and that’s the way that you can let project help you resolve your resource conflicts over allocations um when it’s resolved it’s called leveling the project so you have a couple of options here you could level the entire project or you could just level by specific resources this is what I normally do so I start by going to Resource sheet view it’s just an easier way of seeing which resources are over allocated so we have four that are over allocated I’m going to go back to Gantt chart View and in that level group on the resource tab I’m going to choose level resource before we do that we need to look at task zero so right now the duration of the project is 155 days it starts on June 21st and it ends on January 25th and the next year and you want to make note of that once you make note of that you’re going to click on level resource and we’ll start since they’re in alphabetical order here it looks like by first name this time we will start with Let’s see we have Theresa Eugenia Anita and Alice so we’ll start with Alice and then we’re going to just click the level Now button and then we’re going to go back to level resource and we’re going to choose Anita and level now and you see things are adjusting if you look at project zero the duration to start the Finish dates are adjusting right and then we’re going to go to level resource again and we’re going to level Eugenia and then we’ll go back one more time and select Teresa so and sometimes that causes other things so I’m going to go back to Resource sheet view and it’s still showing that they’re all over allocated so we have to do some other work on this we’re going to go back to Gantt chart View and this is pretty typical sometimes when you just do level your resources like we did it fixes everything other times it doesn’t so this time we’re going to make note of where we are now with the duration so it’s pushed out our project and its finish date is pushed out as well as its duration has expanded so this time I’m going to click the level all button and it gets rid of everything it also pushed it out by another four days okay so originally it was scheduled to end on January 25th but after we level everything it pushed it out about three weeks and we’re gonna just say that that three weeks is tolerable for us now there are some other ways that you can gain time back in your project we talked about using the start to start relationship type and I forgot to I’m in my Gantt chart view I forgot to add back in my predecessors column let me get that back in there and so you can review let’s say that three weeks is intolerable you need to gain like a week back you could look at your relationships and figure out can any of these tasks get started on the same date right and if so you can change them to start relationship that gains you more time in your schedule so if we look at let me give you a good example of this if we look at task six and that’s a seven day task in duration so task seven is set to start we put a lag time on that so it’s set to start four days after task six is completed because we put that lag on there and then we look at this we have to perform the training needs analysis before we compile the results so we can’t really do anything about those two right but then I look for another opportunity right of where I can start especially if I can use some of the training you know we have two training coordinators so maybe if I can start some of the other tasks on the same day that would gain us back a week in our schedule so those are decisions you’ll have to make as you’re going through your schedule you’re probably always going to end up with some over allocation of resources if you let project level it for you it could push out your finish date to an intolerable level and then you’ll have to use the other techniques like we talked about start to start relationship type or some more um lead time between two tasks so there’s that overlap to gain time back in your schedule so now we’re moving into lesson five and this is where we’re going to spend some time optimizing our plan we’re going to set a baseline And before that you’ll learn what a baseline is and then we’ll also go over how to share a project plan and these are the final steps before work begins on the project hopefully so we’re going to start when we’re talking about optimizing a project plan we’ve already discussed some of that and that could be changing the relationship type from Finish to start in order to gain some more time back in your schedule it’s also finalizing resource assignments and it is resolving any over allocations that haven’t been resolved through leveling so if we scroll down in the project we’ll start seeing little red people again and so we have and a lot of it is Eugenia Washington and she’s our training coordinator one so because she’s over allocated there and this is for let’s see so task 34 37 38 and 39. what I’m going to do is I’m going to change those over to Anita Redman who is training coordinator too so I’m going to change the resource for all of those tasks to Anita from Eugenia and now I actually have some more over allocations for Anita so let’s change that back let’s change 34 back to Eugenia and we’ll say that we’re so we’re in a situation now oh wow when I changed it back it got rid of all of my over-allocations that’s very strange but anyway I changed it and then I changed it back and it’s magically cleared all my over-allocations so if you need to go ahead and change yours so they’re not over allocated if necessary and that’s one thing that you’ll do when you’re optimizing your plan that was very strange I’m gonna just save my project now and yeah I got rid of all the over allocations that must be some kind of a glitch because it doesn’t typically work that way and then the other thing that we’re going to do here is we want to assign the two vendor trainers to the actual training so that’s going to be down at task 60 we’re gonna change that assignment so it’s 10 days what we’re going to do is we’re gonna go to the drop down in the resource name column we’re going to uncheck Eugenia and check vendor trainer one and vendor trainer 2. and the setup is they’ll probably be alternating the days of training and when you get that warning we’re going to leave it on the default keep the same duration so we have that set up there and that’s really how you optimize your project you just make sure that your task list is correct in terms of relationships if there’s any way of truncating the project by using start to start relationship type you would want to do that or by adding lead time to task if necessary making sure your final resource assignments are done and any over allocations are resolved and once you do all that save your project so this lesson is all about finalizing your project plan and so the next step in finalizing your plan for certain is setting a baseline plan now you may or may not need an interim plan but you’re definitely going to need to set a baseline Plan before work starts on your project and that is the only way you’ll be able to track the progress of your project so this slide is talking about the Baseline plan and you can set up to 11 Baseline plans for each project plan file well that begs the question why would you need more than one well maybe you want a baseline for your external customer and another one for your internal team that has other tasks on it that you don’t necessarily need to share with the external customer maybe you’re preparing for a risk event so you have an alternate plan in case some things occur and it impacts the project or you know that there’s a big change request that’s going to be implemented on this project and so you want a baseline of your original plan Just for future reference so those are some of the reasons why you would have multiple base lamp Baseline plans now your Baseline tracks your durations the start and finish dates of your tasks the amount of work and the cost you also have the ability to set an interim plan and that only saves the current start and finish dates it can be used just as a project marker it’s much more simple than your Baseline so we’re going to go in and we’re going to learn how to set a baseline in our project plan we’re going to go to the project tab of the ribbon to set our Baseline and on the project tab you’ll find set Baseline in the schedule group and so if I go to the drop down arrow I can set or clear the Baseline I’m going to choose set Baseline so it defaults to setting a Baseline and it’s just called Baseline if you do the drop down arrow next to Baseline you’ll see that you can have up to 11 in a project plan file as we discussed so we’re going to leave it on Baseline if you wanted to set an interim plan you could do that from the same dialog box we’re going to just focus on the Baseline you could set a baseline for the entire project or just for selected tasks we’re going to leave it on entire project and we’re going to click ok now it doesn’t look like anything happened but I can show you how you can verify that it did set a baseline there are two different ways let’s go back to set Baseline and you’ll see that now Baseline tells you when it was last saved so you know if a baseline has been set because it would be saved and we can cancel out of there another way is we’re going to go up to our quick access toolbar and go to our project information dialog box and in the lower left hand corner you’re going to click on statistics so if your Baseline values are populated here that means that a baseline has been set and so when I was managing projects actively I would be in Project statistics multiple times a day once work began on the project just to keep apprised I worked on some really huge projects and so I needed to be a prize at that level so it captures your start and finish dates all of these are the same now the duration of the project the amount of work on the project and the total cost of the project and at the bottom left corner you can see that it also captures the duration percent complete and the work percent complete so once work starts on the project and you come into your plan and you start tracking your actuals these values will fluctuate you can go ahead and click close on your project statistics dialog box and go ahead and save your project again now that we’ve optimized our plan and set a baseline there may be at this point occasion to share your plan with some of your stakeholders and so short of sharing your project plan file which I’m when I was managing projects I was very reluctant to do because people get in there they play around a lot of them don’t know what they’re doing and I’ve had to recreate some plans that way however there are other ways we’re going to start with the least efficient way the way that I’m going to suggest you never use and let’s go to the file tab of the ribbon and click on print so when you just go to print your plan it puts a legend at the bottom of the page showing what all the different icons that are found on Nagant chart mean and it generated if I look at the very bottom it generated 28 pages now I’m going to show you why I say this is the least efficient way I’m going to go in the lower right hand corner to the multiple Pages icon and I can see that there are plenty of blank pages from blank areas of the Gantt chart so in my opinion this is not an efficient way to share your plan by printing it out and distributing the print out I’m going to use the back arrow at the top of the green band to go backwards so let’s say you have stakeholders that want to see just the list of task names and their durations for the entire project so what I’m going to do is I’m going to start with task zero and I’m going to select the task name cell and the duration cell then I’m going to hold down my shift and control keys on my keyboard and tap my down arrow so it selects the rest of the tasks and their durations now on the task tab in the clipboard group you’re going to click on the copy button right on the word copy and not its drop down arrow we’ll address the drop down arrow in a few minutes so just click on copy nothing visible happens it just copied it to the clipboard now I have a blank document open in Word and I’m just going to switch to that and I’m going to do control V to paste so I get two pages and it’s just a list of all the tasks and their durations and I could distribute this as an email attachment or whichever way that the stakeholders want to receive it and while I’m in word I’m going to do control and the letter N to bring up a new blank document and then I’m going to switch back over to my project plan and I’m just going to click on any cell so that I don’t have anything selected now at this point you want to make sure that you can see all of the resource names in your resource name column and your Gantt chart whatever part of it is visible can be shown I’m going to right click on task zero and choose scroll to task well that’s not going to help me there so the way it’s configured right now now this time without selecting anything and even if you had something selected it’s going to override your selection we’re going to go to the drop down arrow next to the copy button on the task Tab and we’re going to choose copy picture so it’s going to make a picture of our project plan that can be rendered for the screen directly to the printer or to a gif image file we’re going to leave it on for screen we’re going to leave the copy setting to rows on the screen and the time scale as shown on the screen we’re going to leave those defaults and we’re going to click ok I’m going to switch back over to my blank Word document and I’m going to do control V again to paste and so it’s only showing what was shown on the screen the time scale on the screen and so it gives me all of the tasks the entry table that it can see it cut off my resources here and it shows the part of the Gantt chart that is showing and I’m gonna just close word without saving any changes and I’m back in my project plan so my favorite built-in tool to use to do high level reporting to stakeholders at this stage of the project is the timeline so the timeline has been sitting underneath our ribbon the whole time and what I’m going to have you do is Click anywhere up in the timeline so that it’s selected and you see the timeline format tab on your Ribbon and so the first thing we’re going to do if I drag my divider bar backwards so I can see more of my Gantt chart you’ll notice in the timeline it has this green box I’m hovering over it right now and that’s basically representing what’s showing what’s visible on the Gantt chart at this point and so the first thing I want to do is put my mouse at the green border at the top of that box so I get a four-headed Arrow and I’m going to just drag it backwards to around the start date of the project and you see the start date at the beginning of the timeline so I’m going to just adjust that so it starts at the beginning of the project and now I’m going to grab the right most green vertical line so my mouse looks like a two-headed pointer two-headed Arrow I’m going to click and hold and drag it all the way across so that the Finish date is showing and mine went a little bit more but so now it’s showing more of the project in the Gantt chart so that’s what that green area covers it’s what’s showing in the grant chart in the grant chart now we’re going to add some tasks to this timeline on that timeline format Tab and the insert group you’re going to choose existing tasks and it’ll bring up a dialog box with all the tasks in your project and for this example we’re just going to put our stage one task on the timeline so I’m gonna put a check mark in every task in stage one the summary task and there’s subtasks I’m gonna just check them all until I get to the bottom of stage one and it’s Milestone completion task so I’m just checking the boxes just to make sure we get all the tasks and as a matter of fact when you get everything checked don’t check the stage one project planning complete Milestone task I’ll show you another way of getting that in the timeline so after you check all the others you’re going to click ok and the timeline is kind of overwhelmed with all of those tasks so we have a lot of white space in the timeline and because the timeline is going from the start date to the Finish date when I look at stage one it goes from June 21st to July 28th so one thing that can help is changing the date range to get rid of some of that white space so on that timeline format tab in the show hide group I’m going to click on date range and I’m going to choose that custom dates and for the start date I’m going to select June 21st and the Finish date is going to be July 28th and then I’m going to click ok so it has more space to breathe and space out the different tasks that are in that timeline for that stage so another thing we can do to make it look better the first task in that stage stage one project planning that’s its initial summary task we’re going to select that task and right click on it and choose display as call out so it takes it out of the timeline proper and it puts it outside of it as a call out and it just makes the timeline less cluttered right now it’s still going to be looking kind of cluttered here we can go through and we can let’s see what this one is ensure total participation so this one I can barely see when I click on it and I hover over it I can see the details of it but what I’m going to do is I’m going to grab that one I’m actually going to drag down my divider bar between the table and the timeline to get more working space and what I’m going to do with that one is click and hold on it and drag it outside of the timeline so it displays as a call out so you can see it better and these are the things we have to do so the there’s another one create list of Target departments I’m going to drag that above the timeline make it a call out so they’re not all just bunched together and unreadable so there’s one here that starts with inform and I’m going to drag that one down compile I’m going to drag up there’s one that looks like it starts with Define vendor deliverables I’m going to drag that one down and I’m just picking and choosing based on how they look on my timeline there’s one that starts with obtain and I’m going to drag that up create a list of it’s going to come out to the bottom as is send skill assessment forms I’m going to drag that one out and just drop it a little bit lower than the other one so they don’t interfere with each other it’s kind of how you do that and then there’s an initiate end user and I’m going to drag that one up and so the timeline is looking much better for me now now there’s another thing that you can do here we’re going to so we look at the way the dates are formatted in the timeline and if you wanted to change the date format you could use that date format drop down I’m going to leave mine the way it is and what I want to do is I want to give this timeline a name so the bar label button in the show hide group and I’m going to just call this stage one and so that shows up here I’m going to just drag my green band out of the way because it’s showing that part of the project okay so stage one is showing real close to that ensure total participation task so I’m going to move that task down a little bit so I can see the name of the timeline more clearly and so now that I have my timeline set up again it’s a very high level reporting tool I’m going to on the timeline format tab I’m going to click on copy timeline and we’ll do full size and then I’m going to just bring up word again and on the layout tab I’m going to go to the second button orientation and change it to landscape and let’s see if I can find my eight and a half by fourteen not finding my bigger paper size here but I normally change that but in either case I can do control Z to paste it in and you’ll see I mean it pasted in kind of like a picture so I can make it smaller it pasted in rather like a shape so I can make it smaller and I’ll make the width of it like eight see what happens it might be too small but it’s kind of all fitting on the page now so this is another way and it’s a visual way of giving stakeholders initial information about your project before work begins on it so just as a recap for our second module which included lessons four and five we started by adding resources to our project plan file and we reviewed the columns on in resource sheet view and then we input some resources we input work material and cost resources we entered the cost for our resources as we were adding them to the project plan and then we created a resource calendar to note some days off for one of our resources so no work will be scheduled for them on those days we moved on to assigning our resources to tasks you learned a couple of different ways of doing that and then you learned how to resolve resource conflicts in particular over allocated resources in the next lesson we finalized our project plan by optimizing it that’s when we reviewed whether we needed to change any relationship types where or add some lead or lag time to task we also added some other resources we actually performed some more resource assignments that needed to be done and updated a couple of existing resources and watched how that filtered through to the tasks they were already assigned to after that we set a baseline so that we’ll be able to compare our plan to what actually happens on the project when work starts on the project and we start tracking the actuals and then we went over a few ways to share the project plan short of sharing the file we talked about how printing is the most inefficient way you learned the difference between copying and the copy picture commands and then lastly you learned how to populate the timeline and the ways that you can share it for high level reporting for some of your stakeholders hi everyone Trish Connor Cato here I just wanted to officially thank you for attending this Microsoft Project 2021 video course and just to recap everything that we covered in this course we started with a brief review of project management Concepts before you learned how to navigate around in the project environment and then we dove into creating a project plan from a blank template defining the project by scheduling it from its start date and creating and assigning a project calendar to the plan then we started manually entering some tasks and then we actually pasted some in from within Excel we began to organize our tasks by creating a work breakdown structure we created summary and subtasks we also defined the task relationships and at that point Microsoft Project took over the scheduling of our tasks when we got to the second module we focused on managing project resources and how to finalize a project plan so we started adding resources and resource sheet view including their cost we created a resource calendar to note a resources exceptions and we assigned resources to our tasks we also learned about leveling to resolve over-allocated resource conflicts and then we got into optimizing our project plan setting a baseline so that we could track our progress on it once work starts and sharing the plan once again my sincere thanks hi everyone Trish Connor Cato here welcome to Microsoft Project 2021 this video is for users who are looking to gain skills in Microsoft Project to create administer Monitor and report on a project plans progress project is a powerful scheduling tool used to track tasks resources and costs it also provides powerful and interactive reporting tools used through each stage of a project as you will see during the course executing a project monitoring project progress and controlling a project plan we’ll learn how to execute the project by entering task project updating the work done on task and updating task costs globally this is known as tracking actuals we’ll switch our Focus to monitoring the progress of the project plan by viewing the project in a number of ways adding custom Fields creating custom views creating a network diagram so we can look at the project in the flow chart type visual and analyzing the plan and viewing progress by using task boards and defining sprints we’ll finish the third module after learning ways to control the project plan this includes editing the task list rescheduling tasks splitting tasks and updating the Baseline the final module of this course zeroes in on how to report on a project and customizing the application we’ll start by formatting and sharing a chart View ing the interactive existing reports creating custom reports and creating a visual report which tie in with Excel and or Vizio will end the course after reviewing project options which give you the ability to customize the application to meet your needs you’ll also learn how to create a project plan template which can be used as a starting point for a future project of a similar type and you will learn how to share resources across project plans and how to link project plan files for more efficient oversight so now we’re gonna get into the launch slash execution phase of project management starting with our third module so we have three lessons in this module the first one is executing a project and this is known as tracking actuals so we’ll be entering task progress updating task progress with SharePoint updating work and updating costs during that lesson we may also update resource assignments in the second lesson we’re going to start monitoring project progress by viewing it we’ll also be adding custom fields to our project plan creating custom views creating a network diagram View analyzing a project plan and you’ll get introduced to task boards which are another way of monitoring your project progress and Sprints which allow you to monitor by set segments of time and in our final lesson in this module is controlling a project plan that may include editing the task list rescheduling tasks and updating a Baseline before we start tracking actuals we’re going to give ourselves more working Space by hiding the timeline now this is known as a split view this is the default view in Microsoft Project it’s called Gantt chart with timeline so it has the timeline at the top of the screen the entry table on the left and the Gantt chart on the right on the bottom half of the screen we’re going to get rid of that timeline especially since we added all the tasks to it and it’s taking up a lot of space so if you go to the view tab on your Ribbon toward the right side you will see a split view group and you’ll see a check mark in the Box in front of timeline you’re going to go ahead and uncheck it and we get lots more working space so now the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to start tracking actuals and the first one we’re going to track is percent complete we’re going to say that task 2 and 3 are 100 percent complete so we can do that by selecting I’m just dragging the row handle from two down to three and go to the task tab of the ribbon in the schedule group you’ll see a series and this is just one way of doing this but you’ll see a series of percentage icons starting with zero percent then 25 50 75 and 100. with those two tasks selected we’re going to go ahead and click on 100 percent and you’ll notice a couple of things happened first the indicator column now has a check mark for each of those tasks and if you hover over the check mark it will let you know the date that the task was completed on on your Gantt chart if you look at the Gantt bars for those two tasks they have a Thin Blue Line going all the way through them which indicates 100 percent complete even with a 25 completion anything above zero you’ll see a Thin Blue Line in the Gantt bar so then we decide you know that was a mistake task 3 is only 50 percent complete so I’m gonna just select task three and use my fifty percent complete preset button the check mark disappears from the indicator column because that represents a hundred percent complete and you can see that The Thin Blue Bar is going halfway through the Gantt bar on the Gantt chart so far during this course we’ve been using this entry table now there is another table that we’re going to access that is better suited for tracking actuals and it’s called the tracking table to get to it we’re going to go to the view tab on the ribbon and you’ll see in the data group you have a tables drop down we’re going to go ahead and click it and select tracking off of the list now our Gantt chart doesn’t change on the right side of the screen the only thing that changed is our entry table and it has different columns now so you have your task name column I’m going to just expand this and then you have the actual start an actual finish date columns we have percent complete and physical percent complete and you can see in the percent complete column that it has a hundred percent for task two and fifty percent for task three you also have the physical percent complete column so let’s say a task is 50 percent complete that’s based on the duration so if it’s a one day task like task three is and it’s fifty percent complete then it has a half a day duration remaining when it’s a hundred percent complete there are zero days remaining duration and you can see the actual and remaining duration columns but the other thing is you can have a task that’s 50 complete in terms of the duration but maybe only 40 percent of the actual work has been done and that’s what’s captured by physical percent complete so if you need to track at that level you have two different columns the percent complete is duration based physical percent complete is the amount the percentage of the work that has been done and they could be different when we marked tasks to a hundred percent complete it automatically changed the remaining duration to zero days and since it was a two-day task that’s what the actual duration is noted as we’re going to say that it actually took one day to complete that task so we’re going to change the actual duration for task two to one day and when we click away from it you’ll see that the remaining duration has also updated and it is now one day it was originally a two-day task we marked it a hundred percent complete and then we change the actual duration to one day it also changed the percent complete to 50 percent we’re going to say no this really only took one day so we’re going to go to the remaining duration and we’re going to change it to zero days and we’ll click away from it so now it marked it a hundred percent complete again and it noted that it is only a one day task and I had collapsed my expansion so we also have the actual cost and actual work columns in there as well so based on the resource cost that we put in it’s calculating the actual cost so the next thing we’re going to do here is we’re going to do a little bit more tracking on task three and for this one this was originally a one day task and so we marked it fifty percent complete half day of actual duration half day of remaining duration we want to say that this is a two-day task so we’re gonna go to the remaining duration and we’re going to change it to 1.5 days so now you’ll see that it marked it 25 percent complete half day has already elapsed another one and a half days remain and so when you make a change in project and you’ve seen this throughout the course when you change one thing and then it blue Shades other things in the table those are things that have also updated and so you can see that our project summary task has updated right now it’s one percent complete that’s the entire project actual duration of 2.05 days remaining duration and actual cost and actual work so it captures everything based on what you’re doing in here so our project was scheduled to start in my case I have June 21st of 2022 and we’re going to say that it actually started a day early so in a situation like that what I like to do is go back to project information and change the project start date first so we’re going to do that that’s project information that we put on a quick access toolbar and I’m going to just change the start date of the project to the previous working day now notice the actual start column is still showing the following day the original start date but we actually updated the start date for the previous day and so one of the reasons why I wanted to do that is because tasks two and three actually got started on the previous day so now I’m going to go to the actual start date for task 2 and change it to the previous workday and I’m going to do the same for task three and at that point the actual start date of task zero the entire project and stage one updated as well now if we hadn’t gone and changed the start date you would have gotten the message so here let me just demonstrate this for you you don’t have to do this so I went back to project information and changed it to the original start date and I undid these date changes for task two and three so now when I go to change it to the previous day it’s going to give me this planning wizard error it’s not really an error it’s informational it’s letting me know that I move this task to start before the project start date and I can either continue and have that happen or cancel I’m going to cancel out of here and go back and change the start date and then it avoids getting that pop-up so I changed this project start date and now I can set both of these to the 20th and see the shading the corresponding blue shading nowadays you can sync your project plan file onto a SharePoint site if you have the ability to access a SharePoint site or the ability to create one you will be able to do Hands-On with this section if not and you do gain access in the future you can always come back and view this portion of the video it’s a two-way sync so if I update tasks in SharePoint they flow down to my project plan and vice versa and let’s go ahead and save our project plan file first and then we’re going to go to the file tab of the ribbon and we’re going to choose save as on the left on the bottom of the save as list you’ll see sync with SharePoint go ahead and click that so pardon my privacy blockers on my screen but you’ll notice it says it wants to sync with in my case a new SharePoint site or you can do the drop down and select an existing one I’m going to let mine be a new one and then it gives the project name as the same name of our project plan file and it gives the site address the URL to the site address and it ends with the name of the project plan file and so it lets you know that a new SharePoint site with a task list will be created at the address above and the project file will also be saved to the SharePoint site so we’re going to go ahead and click on Save it will go through several steps and then it will launch the site in your browser window and now we’ll review the site so right now you’re seeing the timeline you could edit the list and all of this kind of stuff from here but what normally you’re going to want to do is go to tasks on the left side navigation and when you click on task and you scroll down you’ll see your task list and so the thing is is that you’ll notice this is our task that we marked 100 complete if we click on ensure total participation task the next one you’ll see that that is marked 25 complete we did that in the plan file and we also changed the start dates for both of those tasks we’re going to close this and we’re going to go down in the task list and open a task that says create list of Target departments and so you can’t change anything in here unless you click the edit item the first icon on that view tab of the ribbon and then it opens everything up we’ll leave it on the same start date and let’s just mark it 60 percent six zero percent complete and then save thank you and so now we’re going to switch back over to our project plan file when I look at Task 5 and my tracking table now I can see the percent complete has been updated go ahead and save your project plan file and it’s syncing so going forward any changes you make in your plan file when you save it will sync with that SharePoint list let’s do another change another update for task three let’s go ahead and make it 100 complete oops so many different ways of doing the same thing so we made it into a two-day task right and so the actual work is 16 hours let’s go over to the actual work and change it to 20 hours so notice it changed the actual duration now to two and a half days to accommodate that the cost and everything will have updated so when you do one thing project logic kicks in and the application can do several other things that’s one of the reasons why project is so hard to learn from scratch like if you’re self-taught a lot of things happen nowadays there’s Google so that makes it a lot easier but it can be a little bit tricky and it’s behind the scenes logic let’s go down to task 33. that’s the one where we have the material resources assigned so we’re going to go ahead and this is again just for training purposes we’re getting ahead in our schedule which is fine but let’s mark that one 100 complete and it calculates the actual cost for that material resource as 5769.23 we’re gonna change that there was a price increase and so we’re gonna make it 6500 the actual cost of that one and so now when we look up at task zero as of right now with everything we’ve tracked the actual cost of the project is seven thousand two hundred and forty dollars and 38 cents go ahead and save your project plan file now that we’ve tracked our actuals we’re going to go ahead and start looking at a few different ways to view our project progress to date so we’re going to start by using a different View there is another view called tracking Gantt that we’re going to switch to so on my left side of the screen I’m going to go to my Gantt chart view indicator and right click and I’m going to select tracking Gantt now we were on our tracking table but when we switched to the tracking Gantt view it switched us back to the entry table and the focus is on the differences in the Gantt chart here so you’ll notice a lot of the taskbars have a percentage next to them everything except Milestone tasks will have the percentage and then you have two different colored bars the blue bar is your taskbar and the gray bar would be your Baseline so if you look at I’ll show you a good example that’s really good to see on the Gantt chart and this one is for task number two on the Gantt chart you’ll notice the taskbar the blue bar is in front of the gray bar that task started early the Baseline start date was June 21st in my case and we changed it to the 20th so you can see that that one is ahead of schedule and so is the next one task three it’s ahead of schedule and so the tracking again and it shows you the ones that have any percentage of completion noted including your summary task it will show that as the percentage so that’s just one way just a visual way of tracking the progress of your project another way of viewing your Project’s progress in a table format is by using the variance table I’m going to switch back to Gantt chart View and because we were in our tracking table it’s still in that table and we’re going to just simply switch to another table so we’re going to go to the view tab go back to your tables drop down and this time select variance so this table shows you your start and finish dates compared to your Baseline start and finish dates and then it shows the start and or finish variance so notice tasks two and three they started early so they have a negative one day start variance and task 2 also has a negative two day finish variance so this is another way of seeing how you’re doing right now our project is in pretty good shape but we haven’t tracked a lot of the actuals in here and that can change over time and a really simple way to view your Project’s progress is from the project information dialog box so I’m going to access it from the quick access toolbar and in the lower left corner I’m going to click on statistics and so now we have where we currently are our start and finish dates versus the Baseline and our actuals we also have our variances listed in the top half of the screen the bottom half deals with duration work and cost so we can see our current and our Baseline so duration we’re ahead of where we should be we’re also ahead in work and we’re a little bit over cost right now but we added a significant amount to that material resource so that explains that and then we see what we have actually and then what is remaining in the lower left corner we’ll see our percent complete for duration and work for the overall project and we can close project statistics now when we get to the next module you’ll learn how to view your Project’s progress by using the reporting features in Microsoft Project for right now let’s go ahead and save our project plan and then you’re going to learn how to add custom fields to your plan file earlier when we were working in resource sheet view we saw a couple of fields group and code that project added to that view that you can use for whatever you want and you can report on them we use the group field to say whether it was an internal resource or an external resource type of thing but in addition to that you can create additional custom fields in project and this is pretty cool feature let’s start by going to the project tab on the ribbon and in your Properties Group you’ll see custom fields and go ahead and click on it so you have basically two types of fields starting at the top it’s defaulting to task Fields you also have resource fields and if you’re on Project server you will have project Fields there so for your task Fields if you go over to the right and you look at the text drop down right there’s a variety of different types of fields that you can have so text cost date so on and so forth and then you also have resource fields and again they come in multiple types just like text fields go back to task and it defaults to text and if you scroll down that field list where it starts with text one through you have up to 30 tasks text fields that you can add to your project plan file go to your text drop down and choose cost you have 10 cost fields for a task that you can add to your project plan file and take it back to text so we’ve decided that we want to add a field and resource sheet view that lists a department for our resources so for the type of field we’re going to switch to Resource here we’re going to leave it on text and it’s on text one right under the list of text fields with text one selected we’re going to click the rename button and we’re going to just name it Department now Project’s name for it will remain text 1. so when you look in the field list now you’ll see that that is in parentheses after your name for IT department we want this to be a drop down list field so the users or you whoever’s working in the plan file can just use the drop down list to select a department as opposed to having to type it in so under custom attributes we’re going to do the option button for lookup and then click on the look up button and we’re basically going to type in our list of departments here pressing enter after each one so you don’t have to type them in alphabetical order we’re going to type training and then enter the next one is human resources marketing and then we’re going to have one called vendor and the reason why we don’t have to have them in alphabetical order is we because we can change the display order for the lookup table down below so I’m going to expand that by clicking the plus sign so it defaults to by row number so that means it would be in the order that we typed it in we’re going to select sort ascending and then on the right you’re going to click the sort button and down at the bottom we can click close and we can click OK on the custom Fields box go ahead and navigate to Resource sheet view and we have more over allocations that have been happening as we’ve been updating our task progress but for right now what we want to do is we want to add that department column but I would like to add it right next to the resource name column to the right of the resource name column so I’m going to right click on the type column heading and choose insert column and I’m going to start typing department and you’ll see Department text one comes up and you can press enter and notice it now has and I’ll just expand that field has a drop down arrow so starting from the top I’ll give you the Departments Emily Teresa Eugenia and Anita are in training so you can go ahead and use your drop down and this keeps more consistency in here as well if people are typing it in it could be you know could be interesting and then we have Randy and Alan and R in human resources Alice is in marketing and then our two vendors are our vendor it’s not really a department but we want to note it that way so that is our first example of a custom field so now we’re going to add another custom field this one is going to be a text excuse me a task text lookup field and it’s also going to be using a graphical indicator to display in the field so we can on the project tab we can go back into custom fields we’re going to change it make sure it’s on task at the top we’re going to leave it on text and we’re going to rename text one in here to progress go down to custom attributes do your option button for lookup and then click on look up and we’re going to type early on track and then behind schedule and we’re going to leave them in that order so we’re not going to change the display order we’ll leave it by row number and we’re going to click close at the bottom and then on the custom field screen all the way at the bottom under values to display you’re going to select the option button for graphical indicators and then click on the graphical indicators button so we’re going to be working where it says test for Progress values and then image up here we’re doing this for our non-summary rows so in the first test for Progress you’re going to do a drop down and select equals and then in the values column to the right of that you’re going to type early just like we put on our lookup list and then you’re going to go over to the image and do the drop down and we’re going to select the green flag we’re going to go to the next test for progress and choose equals again this time we want the value to be on track and we’re going to give it the yellow flag as an image and set up the last one so it equals behind schedule and give it the red flag and since since we have our three tests set up we can go ahead and click ok and we can okay again and then switch to Gantt chart View and we’re going to add oh let’s switch to our entry table so let’s go to the view tab tables drop down entry and I’m going to expand it and we’re going to put this to be this wide we’re going to put this all the way to the right so where it says add new column I’m going to click right there on add new column and I’m going to start typing progress and you see your progress text one is highlighted I’m going to press enter and then I’m going to go down to task 2 and do the drop down and I’m going to select early and it shows the green flag I’m going to do the same for task 3. so that’s a combination lookup and graphical indicator text field you can also create custom views in Microsoft Project so we’re going to create a split view we want our Gantt chart and then we want a task details form on the bottom half of the screen so we’ll have our entry table and Gantt chart just as it is but we’re going to have a split on the bottom of the screen when we’re done so the create a custom view you’re going to start on The View tab of the ribbon and in the task views group you’re going to click on the other views drop down and at the very bottom you’re going to click on more views and then on the right you’re going to click on new so we’re going to do a combination view because we want a split view as opposed to a single view so go ahead and click combination View and click ok so now it wants you to give your view a name and we’re going to call it Gantt with task details and then we’re going to have our primary view we’re going to do the drop down and select Gantt chart and then the details we’re going to select a view named task details form and we want to be able to show it from the other views menu or any view menu so we’ll leave that box checked and we’ll click ok and then we’ll click apply and you’ll see now that the Gantt chart and the entry table are on the upper half of your screen and you have a task form on the bottom half so in the upper half I’m on task two if I click into task 3

my task form updates so this is a way that I can get to additional information about the task and even use that form at the bottom to change information so I don’t always have to go to task information and get into all of that stuff so that is a benefit of having a split view now if you go to your other views drop down again on The View tab you’ll see that it’s just showing some of your built-in views go back to more views and if you scroll through the list you will see your Gantt with task details because we said show it in the menu and you can cancel out of that now if you wanted to at this point just get back to your Gantt chart view you can double click the divider line between the upper and lower half of your screen and it will make your secondary view go away now there’s another thing go to your other views in the task views group drop down go back to more views and select your Gantt with task details view again you can double click it or click it once and do apply and so if you look at the view tab in the split view group you can see that we’re not showing the timeline here so that’s unchecked but details is checked now and the details section is the bottom half of the screen and it’s showing your task details form so another way of getting rid of it is just by unchecking details some people like to look at their project plans and a flow chart type format and so there is another view that I’m going to show you now let’s right click on our view indicator and we’re going to go to network diagram View so in network diagram View it has that flowchart field and let me explain what’s going on here so your parallelogram shapes those are all your summary tasks so task zero it shows the name of the task its start date its ID the Finish date the duration and the percent complete you’ll notice that these have a slash through them and that’s because work has started on them so training rollout initiative that’s our task zero and stage one work has started on so there’s a slash mark through there parallelograms and then you have your rectangles which are your subtasks so we have one here this is stage one right so before I start looking at the subtask let me do this differently we have this line coming out and going down from stage one if I scroll down you’ll see that it’s then pointing the stage two if I continue scrolling down you’ll see stage three so they’re all connected kind of in that way your summary task starting with your summaries not task zero and then up top you have the sub tasks for stage one so Define objectives and describe and that has a double slash through it because that is a hundred percent complete right we have another one here and then we have this one that is partially complete showing here and this is another summary task and these are its subtasks so you can see the slash is partially complete and if I scroll across to the right I’ll be able to view continue viewing so you have the ability to view your project in this manner and when you’re in this view Network diagram view you get a network diagram format tab on your Ribbon so you can show and hide different things if you want so if I want to uncheck progress marks you see those slashes go away if I want to not see project summary task I can uncheck it there if you check link labels so you’re seeing your finish to start relationship types showing on those link lines and then you also have straight links so it’s kind of pointing to everything that’s associated with it and we can go back to Gantt chart View before we get into analyzing our project plan let’s go over some definitions so the first one is what is slack you have two different types of slack in Microsoft Project free slack is the number of days that a task can have before it starts delaying its successor task so if task one is going to be delayed it could potentially delay task 2 or whatever it’s successor task is so free slack would be the number of days that it has the amount of wiggle room that it has before it starts delaying its successor tasks and in total slack is the number of days a task can have before it starts delaying the entire project so free slack is task to task total slack is tasked to entire project and in other definitions you’re going to need to know are about slipping and late tasks so they’re slightly different slipping tasks or tasks that have a forecasted finish date that is greater than the Baseline finish date they may be scheduled to start late have already started late or are taking longer than planned then you have late tasks and that one is running behind both the Baseline start and finish dates they may or may not have started they may have started on time but will finish late they may have started early but will finish late or they might just be finishing late so keep those in your back your mind while we analyze our project plan before we get started let’s go ahead and level our plan again we’ve been tracking actuals and doing other things in here that has caused us to have over-allocated resources again so this time what we’re going to do on the resource tab in the level group we’re going to just select level all and we still have some minor allocations there’s several surrounding those daily calls but there are only an hour that wouldn’t really raise a flag for me and so we only have a few left and that’s good so now we can actually start analyzing our plan the first thing we’re going to do is go to the Gantt chart format tab on the ribbon and in the bar Styles group you’ll see that you have a series of three check boxes critical tasks slack and late tasks so we talked about slack and late tasks on the slide on what you’re not seeing here are slipping task and we didn’t talk about critical tasks because you’re going to learn about those right now so let’s check the box in front of critical task and look at your Gantt chart and you’ll see that you have several tasks if you scroll across it and down that now are not with a blue bar but they have like a salmon colored bar based on my color scheme those are critical tasks so what is a critical task a critical task is a task that could potentially delay the Project’s finish date if it goes off schedule now typically and what we have here is a highly sequential task list we usually with a task list you put the task in the order that they’re going to happen on your project you outline your tasks by creating summary tasks and so on and so forth and so whenever you have a highly sequential task list there’s always going to be critical tasks and that’s how they show up on the Gantt chart we’re going to uncheck critical tasks on the ribbon so now we’re going to take a look at slack and that’s on the same bar Styles group on the Gantt chart format tab you can check the box in front of Slack and you’ll notice if you right click on task 9 and scroll to task you’ll see your taskbar right your blue bar to the right of it the resource and the resource name seems to be sitting on top of like a thin black line that is the line that indicates Slack and if I hover my mouse just so over that line a screen tip will pop up and it’s telling me it’s showing the free slack not total slack it’s telling me this task is scheduled to be finished on the 27th but you can let it go until August 4th without having an impact on any successor tasks perhaps forcing them to cause the project to go over schedule so that’s a lot of slack on that task now there are other ways that you can view your slack your critical tasks and I’ll show those to you in a moment in the meantime go ahead and uncheck the slack box they are check boxes so you could have critical slack and late task check and this time click on late task and I don’t think I’m looking to see no we don’t have any in our project plan so we can uncheck that so I’m going to show you how to create a custom table that shows all of these fields that you can use to analyze your plan like whether a task is critical both free and total slack if it’s late if it’s slipping so on The View tab of the ribbon you’re going to go to your tables drop down and at the bottom select more tables on the right side choose new and we’re going to name it project analysis on the right side this one doesn’t default so the right side of where you put the name you’re going to check show in menu and then what we’re going to do is click in the first field name do the drop down or you can start typing and we’re going to start typing critical and when critical pops up we’re going to just tab we’re going to go down to the second field name and start typing free and free slack will pop up and tab underneath free slack we’re going to do total Slack and underneath total Slack will put um late so it has late finish or late start we’ll leave late off of here and let’s try slipping and that doesn’t show up either so we’ll be able to see oops okay I gotta get rid of that we’ll be able to see our critical and free Slack critical free and total slack in this new table that we create so we’re going to go ahead and click OK there why am I getting this I have something in the field that shouldn’t be there and now that I work through that when I clicked OK project analysis is selected and I can apply and so now I can see free and total slack well actually I guess we should have put the task name in there so let’s go back we’ll edit what we did We’ll add the task name that would be helpful and I noticed we didn’t uncheck the default of lock First Column so we’ll fix that as well so we’re going to go back to our tables drop down more tables with project analysis selected go to edit on the right and let’s insert a row so critical is already selected insert a row to go above it and let’s type name in there so we get the task name that will be helpful and then underneath where your check boxes are you’re going to uncheck lock First Column and click OK and apply so now I can expand the name column and just expand everything so I can see what’s critical and the amount of free and total Slack they’ll often be the same number but sometimes they’ll be different if there’s both for example if you look at stage one project planning it has zero days of free slack so we can’t push that stage back at all without impacting a successor task but we do have five and a half days of total slack for a wiggle room that won’t impact the project end date and we can go back to our tables drop down and switch it back to your entry table and now we’ll view slippage on our Gantt chart so we’re on that Gantt chart format ribbon Tab and the bar Styles group we’re going to do the slippage drop down and select Baseline so now you will have these little thin bars on your Gantt chart I’m hovering over one now and the screen tip pops up slippage right it gives me to name it a task its Baseline start date is August 2nd but the task start date is scheduled for August 10th so that’s why it’s coming up with slippage and I’m going to go back to the slippage drop down and uncheck Baseline now we’re going to go into sorting filtering highlighting and grouping and this will be mostly in your entry table so I’m going to drag my Gantt chart divider bar all the way over to the right I just want to focus on the table for right now and so if you go to the view tab of the menu and it’s in the same group where you have your tables drop down you have your highlight there you have your filter you have your group by and you also have your sort so if I go to the sort drop down I can sort my project by start date finish date cost or ID and so let’s do by cost and so we’re not showing a cost field here let’s right click on the duration column heading go to insert column start typing in cost and press enter so you can see that we have it sorted by cost so what’s happened here stage three came up to the top underneath task zero because stage 3 has the highest cost that’s kind of how that’s working and then stage four and then stage two and then stage one now to undo that sort we’re going to go back to the sort drop down and you’re going to choose buy ID so that’s the row numbers so that’s how you can undo that sort you can also group your task list in addition to you know your default groupings of summary tasks and subtasks so in that data group on The View tab go to the no group drop down and choose duration yeah so by the way when you have a grouping applied you don’t even want to try to look at your Gantt chart because it’s crazy it’s based off of the grouping so what it’s done is it looked for everything that had a duration of zero days that’s our Milestone tasks they’re all grouped together our roll numbers are all over the place then our calls are like 0.13 days then we have our one day task one and a half 1.6 two days so on and so forth so we Group by duration now go back to your duration now duration drop down for group by and at the top click on no group in Project you have two different types of filters that you can apply to your plan I call the first one a column filter which is specific to a particular column and then you have more of a global filter you can use them separately or you can use them together we’re going to use both of them now the first one we’re going to do is a column level filter on the cost column so we’re going to go to the drop down arrow to the right of the cost column heading hover over filters and choose between so it says show rows where cost it goes to is within we’re going to do the drop down next to is within and we’re going to choose is greater than or equal to in the text box to the right we’re going to type 300 we’re going to go to the next text box under the and or and do is less than or equal to and then we’re gonna put in 500. so we want to show rows where the cost is basically between 300 and 500 including both of those numbers and we’re going to click ok so now your entire task list for your sub task okay this doesn’t apply to your summary task but it’s only showing those that are between 300 and 500 dollars now we can apply a more Global filter on top of this so what we’re going to do is on The View tab in the data group we’re going to go to the no filter drop down and we’re going to click on using resource and we’re going to do the drop down and select Teresa Brown and click ok so now it’s showing the tasks that Teresa Brown is assigned to that are between 300 and 500 in cost now let’s clear those filters we’re gonna go to what used to be the drop down arrow next to the cost column heading we’re gonna click that funnel and just click on clear filter from cost and then we’re gonna go to the filter drop down that says using resource and at the top select no filter go ahead and save your plan file let’s do another Global filter using a resource so I’m going to my no filter drop down using resource and this time let’s do the drop down and select Anita Redmond and click ok so it’s only showing tasks that she’s involved in now notice it collapse your list you know you’re not seeing your whole list you can see that by looking at your row numbers it skips from Row 1 to row 11 it skips from 14 to 23 so you’re not seeing your entire task list you’re only seeing the rows of Interest which are the ones that Anita Redman is assigned to now you might want your list to be intact and have the effect of a filter so let’s go up to the filter using resource and choose no filter and right above that go to no highlight drop down choose using resource and then do the drop down and select Anita Redmond again and click ok so your list stays intact and your rows of Interest are highlighted go ahead and go to your highlight drop down and choose no highlight at the top another way that you can analyze your project plan and you may be familiar with some of these terms if your team uses agile or the scrum method there is now a tie-in in project using what are known as task boards and Sprints and so it’s another way of analyzing your plan and we’re going to start by using setting up our task boards and we can access task boards from The View tab it’s in the task views group you can do the drop down and select task board and you’ll notice that there are tasks already all of your tasks basically are on the not started section of this task board and so we’re going to modify this what we’re going to do is for not started we’re going to leave it named that way and you’ll learn how to move these completed tasks in a little while right we’re not going to use the next up one so I’m going to right click on that and delete it we just want not started in progress and done that’s all we want but we want to change what shows on the cards so right now it’s just showing the name the resource and the check mark for percent you know 100 complete so we’re going to go to the task board format Tab and in the customize group we’re going to click on customize cards we want to check the box in front of show task ID and then you can add up to five additional fields in addition to these three base fields so we’re going to do the first drop down and we’re going to select percent complete and we’re going to do the second drop down and start typing Sprint and you can press enter when it shows on the list now we haven’t set up Sprints yet you’ll learn about those in just a few moments we’re going to click ok so now if we look at any task card we have the percent complete we have Sprint and all of it says no Sprint because we haven’t done anything with the Sprints yet and we have the task ID which is our row numbers showing the first first button on the task board format tab is sheet click on it and it takes you to task board sheet view and you can see you have your no Sprint column there you have your indicators column your task may be slightly out of order on this view at this moment but what I can do let’s see what we want to focus on here is how to move it from task board to task board so if you notice the ones that have the check marks in the indicator column you see the board status says not started and we’re going to do the drop down where it says not started and choose done so do that for everything that has a check mark I think there’s only three of them there with a check mark done and that’s kind of how that works and then we know that we can add a new column here this might be helpful and we’re going to just choose percent complete and so we have this other task at the top that is sixty percent complete so task five and I’m going to go to board status and I’m going to choose in progress for that one and then I can go back to my view tab and go back to and you can click the upper half of the task board button to get into it and you can see how your tasks are now distributed between the three different boards that we have there go ahead and save your project so your task boards work in conjunction with sprints Sprint is like a Time phase layer in addition to like your tasks start and finish dates so you can look at your project by Sprint meaning by the duration of this time phase layer we’re going to set up one month Sprints for our project plan and we can do that by going to the project tab of the ribbon and in the Properties Group you’re going to click on manage sprints so it gives you a default no Sprint with zero days length and then it gives you a beginning Sprint Sprint one right and and it’s two weeks we’re going to change that to four weeks now you may if you use the up arrow button to change the time you’ll get three ew that’s estimated week I’m going to keep going up and I get 4ew I don’t want the E I just want the W so just four week Sprints and when I tab it starts with my project start date and it goes out for a period of four weeks and then down at the bottom I’m going to click add Sprint and this one is giving me a two weeker as well I want it to be four so I’m going to just change these to four weeks if you wanted to do two weeks for inch you’re set because that’s what its default is otherwise oops I have to go back into my manage Sprints I move too fast there and so and normally I would do this for the duration of the project we’re just going to add two more Sprints and make them four weeks just so we don’t have to keep going all the way until next February is when it ends just so you can see how this kind of works then I’ll add the last one and make that one four weeks as well oops and then I’m going to click OK at the bottom and you have your on the Sprints tab of the ribbon now and you can get back into managing your Sprints from that ribbon tab and then you have views if you go to your Sprint view drop down arrow you can see current Sprint board let’s go there first right and it’s just showing the current Sprint which is the current the beginning of the project for the first month right and then we’re going to go and you don’t see any tasks here you’re going to go back to your Sprint drop down and go to current Sprint sheet and you don’t see anything here either because we don’t have any tasks assigned to any Sprints at this point you’re going to go to your task 4 drop down and go to task board sheet and when I scroll up here you’ll see everything is assigned to no Sprint so what I’m going to do here is I’m going to get rid of the percent complete column because I don’t need it here right now so I’m going to right click on its heading and hide column and then I’m going to add a new column and I’m going to start typing start so I want the start date of the task and we’re going to put it in Sprints by the start date so for the first two tasks right two and three we’re going to do the drop down and select Sprint one so all the tasks up to an including task 18 are in Sprint one go ahead and set that up and just put 19 through 21 in Sprint 2. now let’s go to your Sprint drop down and go to current Sprint board so this is Sprint one and we’re seeing it populate with tasks right and with the task cards not started in progress and done we can go back to the Sprint drop down and from there you just have your Sprints and you have your current Sprint sheet if you want to take a look at that now so this is just Sprint one it’s the current time phase that we’re in and then we’re going to go to the planning drop down and we can go to Sprint planning board and here you have your no Sprint so all the tasks that are in no Sprint the ones that we assigned to Sprint one and the ones that we’ve assigned to Sprint too so if you know that you’re looking at a month at a time that’s a different view of your project you could name your Sprints stuff like that but I’m just saying this is another way that you can analyze how your project is doing you’re looking at it with this time phase overlay of a month right and so and we based it I base the Sprints off of the start date of the tasks for those months so just another way of analyzing your project go ahead and save your project plan file so I’m gonna go back to manage on that Sprints tab and I’m going to have you do this on your own you’re going to rename Sprints one through four month one month two month three month four something like that go ahead and do that and then click ok so now that they’re named appropriately it will make more sense when you’re analyzing now we’re going to get started on the last lesson in this module which is controlling a project plan we’ll be editing the tasks list by deleting a task and setting what’s known as a deadline task we are also going to be splitting tasks learning about task constraints rescheduling tasks and updating a Baseline so I’m going to challenge you now I’m going to have you switch back to Gantt chart View and delete task 46. once you’ve done that go to the very bottom of your task list and click in the first blank task name cell so we’re going to set a deadline task here I notice the finished date of the project let me go take another peek at that February yeah February 17 2023 so I’m going to say that we have a couple of weeks wiggle room at the absolute latest this project needs to be finished by February 28th so I’m going to set a deadline of February 28th and what it does is only helpful kind of after the fact right so it will put an indicator a green arrow on your Gantt chart for the deadline date and if you blow past the deadline that Arrow will turn red and you’ll get a indicator in the indicator column so in that last the first empty task name we’re going to just type project deadline that’s what we’ll name this deadline task and press enter and then click on it and out Dent it one level from the task tab and now what we’re going to do is we’re going to double click it to get into task information dialog box and on the advanced tab you’ll see the deadline is set to non-applicable we’re going to do the drop down there navigate to February of the following year and select the last day of the month and click ok now on your Gantt chart you can scroll to the right until you get to February of next year in that particular week the last week of the month and you’ll see the Green Arrow indicating your deadline date on your Gantt chart and like I said if you go past February 28th that Arrow will turn red and you’ll get an indicator in the indicators column so that’s what a deadline task does for you in Project now let’s say you have a resource that starts work on a task and then let’s say it’s a multi-day task and they put in like two days of the work and then they call out sick for two days there’s not another resource that can be assigned to that task so you have to be able to note that in your project plan file somehow and the way you do that is by splitting the task and then adding a task note so what we’re going to do is we’re going to go up to task six and you’re going to right click on it and scroll to task so the Gantt bar comes into view and we can see that Teresa is assigned to that seven day task and so the task is starting on a Friday and we’re going to say that she works Friday Monday and Tuesday of the following week and then she’s out sick Wednesday and Thursday so that’ll be our scenario she works Friday Monday Tuesday then she’s out sick Wednesday and Thursday then she returns on Friday so what we want to do is we want to make sure we’re on the right task bar on the Gantt chart perform departmental training needs analysis and on the task Tab and you may want to watch me do this first and then do it on the task tab of the ribbon in the schedule group you will see the split task button and so what I’m going to do is I’m going to click on it and you’ll notice a couple of things as I move my mouse around there’s like a white pop-up box that seems to be attached to my weird looking Mouse pointer looks like two vertical lines in the right pointing Arrow and so what I want to do is I want to hover over that taskbar for task six on the Gantt chart and as I move my mouse to the right over that bar you’ll see on the right side the schedule start date comes up right and it’s going to Sunday so it starts on a Friday and then I’m on Saturday Sunday I’m going to get to Monday so she worked on Friday Monday and Tuesday and when it gets to Wednesday the 29th I’m gonna click my mouse on that bar and it splits the taskbar Now it only split it for one day so in the scenario she’s having Wednesday and Thursday off sick so I’m gonna put my mouse on top of the right side of the split bar looks like a four-headed Arrow I’m going to click and hold and drag that side to the right one more day until the task starts says Friday in the white pop-up box so now she worked on Friday Monday and Tuesday she called out sick Wednesday and Thursday and then she resumed her work on the task on Friday and that’s how it’s represented on the Gantt chart and by the way when you’re leveling when you’re having project level for you one of the things it may do to get rid of the over allocation for a resource is it may split some tasks so if you see a taskbar with a split and a dotted line in between it it means it’s been split once you split a task you may want to document the reason why and you do that via task notes I’m going to double click task six to get into the task information dialog box and on the notes tab I’m going to date the no it’s going to be weird because I’m doing the split in advance but I’m gonna date an initial to know and I’m going to say Teresa called out due to illness on 6 28-29 [Music] 22. and then I’ll just go ahead and click ok so it’s documented another situation you may run into when you’re controlling your project plan is having to apply a constraint to a task let’s take a look at task 69. it’s discussing the results with the vendor for any improvements and it’s currently scheduled to start on September 26th it’s a two-day task so it’ll end on Tuesday the 27th right okay so this is the thing the vendor says that they are unable to meet at all that week they’re going to be out of town and they will be able to meet toward the end of the following week so we need to apply a constraint on that task and we do it from task information so let’s double click task 69 and if you go to the advanced tab you’ll see the constraint type it defaults to as soon as possible now we talked about that very early in the course when we scheduled our project from its start date it gives all tasks the constraint type of as soon as possible so whenever there’s room in the schedule that task can start as soon as possible and then when you do the drop down arrow you’ll see as late as possible that’s the default if you schedule your project from a finish date so it does reverse Logic on almost everything then you have enosa considered fairly flexible constraints the as soon as possible and as late as possible constraints then you have semi-flexible constraints finish no earlier than or finish no later than the task can finish no earlier than a particular date or no later than a particular date and if you select one of those then you have to give it a constraint date on the right side and then back to the list I’m going to skip the must finish on and must start on for right now at the bottom of the list you have start no earlier then and start no later than they also require a constraint date and they’re also semi-flexible the ones that you want to avoid as much as possible is what we call hard constraints the task must finish on a specific date or must start on a specific date if you choose those constraints one of those constraints for a task then project cannot reschedule that task no matter what is going on in the schedule whether it comes to leveling or anything else it is set in stone so you want to avoid those as much as possible so I said that the vendor is not available until late in the following week and so what I’m going to do is I’m going to say the constraint type is start no earlier than that’s semi-flexible so this task this meeting with the vendor can’t start any earlier than and then for the constraint date I’m going to put in the following let’s see that would be the week of September 26th it was scheduled so I’m gonna put in October 6th so that’s semi-flexible project can schedule around it and it’s going to shift our schedule so we’re going to click ok and then you get all your blue shading of everything that was pushed back you know your successor task would be pushed back and the phase changed as well we look at tasks 76 and we realize that we have the party scheduled for Tuesday and everybody’s agreed that they’re available on the following Saturday well Saturday and Sundays are not considered working days in project but we can change it anyway and that’s what we’re going to do now so we’re dealing with tasks 76 and we’re simply going to go to its start date field and do the drop down arrow and we’re going to select Saturday September 24th now as soon as we do that the planning wizard pops up it’s very helpful so it’s a couple of things have happened here right it’s telling us that we are moving it away we’re attempting to move it away from a link task and now the link between the tasks will not drive the start date of this task in addition a new start date is a non-working day so we can we this is a two-part process here because it’s a link task if it wasn’t a linked task we would only get the message about the new start date is a non-working day but so the first thing we have to do is remove the link and it’s going to move it to start the following working day after the Saturday that we chose so we’re gonna remove the link we’re gonna click ok and so now it changed it to the following workday but it no longer has a link we’re going to go to the start date drop down and we’re going to choose Saturday September 24th and this is where we get you moved it to a non-working day but we can override that by making Saturday September 24th a working day and that would only apply to this task so it’s not going to schedule any other task on that day just this task so make that choice and click OK and now we’ll have the party on that Saturday now notice that you have an a calendar icon in your indicator so by doing that it created a start no earlier constraint for that task it can’t start any earlier than that Saturday go ahead and save your project plan file so a lot of times many unexpected or a few unexpected things may happen during the life cycle of a project and so I’m going to give you two scenarios here and how you would handle them in your project plan file and for this we’re going to be focusing on our stage four tasks except for task 69. and the party task so we’re gonna do two things let’s say that the stakeholders have informed you that you may have to push stage four out we’ll just say due to budget reasons and so we at this point it’s not confirmed we don’t want to remove them from the project schedule but we need to start looking at the schedule as if those tasks may not be in it on the schedule so we’re going to go ahead and select from task 65. to task 68 and then hold down your control key and select from 70 down to 75 and we’ll leave the deadline there for and the party okay is fine so now what we want to do is we want to go to the project pass tab of the ribbon for this one so we have the tasks selected that may or may not have to be rescheduled or even removed from the project plan and on the task tab in the schedule group you’re going to click inactivate and it leaves those tasks in your project plan they’re dimmed out they’re crossed out and the only thing that you would have to do so task 69 somehow got inactivated to so I just manually I guess my selection wasn’t right but I manually reactivated that one and I’m going to reactivate the party one as well and so if they say hey everything is fine all we have to do is Select them and clicking inactivate will reactivate them now there is one thing you have to be aware of when you do that out of the inactivated task let’s say task 67 for example is now inactive if that is a predecessor for task 76 we would have to go to task 76 and change its predecessor manually because task 67 is now inactive and in vice versa if we reactivate it we would have to then re-link it to task 67. if that were the situation we’re going to select the inactive tasks and you’re going to click your inactivate button to activate them again and I did the opposite my selecting skills here are not very admirable so that whole stage is activated again so that’s one scenario nothing set in stone they may run but in the meantime let’s just temporarily inactivate them so they’re not interfering with our other work on the project the other scenario is we’re not going to be able to do stage four until starting in May of next year for financial reasons the entire stage except for the meeting with the vendor will keep that meeting so I’m going to start selecting the tasks and then I’m going to select the rest of the tasks I know why I’m clicking the wrong button I’m doing my shift instead of control here we go and so I’m gonna leave the party intact and the deadline so all the other stage 4 tasks are selected and this time we’re going to go to the project tab of the ribbon on the project tab toward the right side of the ribbon in the status group you will see update project and we’re going to click on it so by the way if everything is going like gravy on your project and all your tasks are starting on time and completing on time you can use this box to say update work as complete through and pick a date and you can set it to either of these choices right and then you can use this update Project Box for our purpose here which is to reschedule uncompleted work to start after we’re going to do the drop down there and we’re going to navigate to May of next year and we’ll start we’ll select May 1st and it’s not for the entire project be careful here it’s only for those selected tasks now if you did leave entire project and you did okay you could do Ctrl Z to undo we’re going to click ok so now you’re seeing how it pushed out all of that work we said start after May 1st so it’s literal it’s starting them on May 2nd that’s how that’s working so they’ve been pushed out which means that if I go to the top now the finished date is not until October of next year and if I go to my deadline marker which was set for February 28th of next year on The Gantt chart let me get into February here we are and then scroll down to the deadline task and scroll to it so we can see at this point we haven’t gotten to that date yet right in reality we haven’t gotten to that date we’re just scrolling to it but at this point if that is going to be pushed out that far we might want to consider updating our deadline and making a note about why we’re updating it so that deadline arrow is still fine for February 28th it will flip to Red on February 29th now that we’ve made all of these changes to our project plan particularly rescheduling stage four we should probably update our Baseline so let’s do this let’s um go to the view tab and go to our tables drop down and select variance and let’s see so we see if we look down at stage four we have a two month variance there start date variance right that’s a lot I mean if we go to let’s go back to our entry table and we’re going to just update our existing Baseline at this point so we can go to the project tab and before we do that I just want to point out something here that I think is particularly useful let’s say that we’re already in like January of next year and we want to look at something in our project we want to get the status of what the project was like in August of this year so you can put in a status state in this status group on the project tab you can click on that n a and select a status date and then you can run reports and see the status of the project as of that date it lets you go back in time during the life cycle of your project so I just think that’s very useful to know what we’re going to do is in the schedule group we’re going to click on set Baseline and then set Baseline and so we we want to update the Baseline that we already saved so I’m not going to change to a new one I’m going to just leave it on that one for the entire project and then I’m going to click OK at the bottom so it lets you know that it has already been used are you sure you want to overwrite the data and we’re going to select yes so now if we go back to set Baseline set Baseline you can see it updated its last saved date so we have a more accurate point to continue tracking from at this stage of our project to recap module 3 we started with executing a project and that was really tracking actuals so we marked tasks percentage complete and we did a hundred percent fifty percent a couple of different percentages we use the tracking table to track actuals we changed actual durations we even changed a remaining duration making a two-day task into a one-day task you learned about the different fields and the table on the tracking table and then you learned about how to sync your project plan file with SharePoint and that when you update a task progress on SharePoint it flows back down to your project plan we updated the work on a task and we also updated costs for a task we moved into lesson two which was monitoring our project progress and we learned how to use the tracking Gantt View we also looked at the variance table to see the differences between our Baseline and where we were and we also use project statistics to view where we are compared to our Baseline after that you learned how to add custom fields to your project we added a lookup field for the resource sheet so we could have the Departments for the resource and we also added a look up and graphical indicator field for our entry table where it could show the progress of a task using Flags we went on to creating a custom view we did a split view you learned how to work in network diagram View and we analyzed our project plan by viewing critical tasks we looked at both free and total Slack we actually created a custom table in this section so that we could look at critical tasks and free and total Slack we also talked about late tasks and slipping tasks and we were able to view this stuff in a table as well as on the Gantt chart then we moved in how to sort and group your tasks list as well as how to apply filters and or highlights to it then we moved on to using task boards and Sprint as another way to analyze your project plan so it’s just another way of looking at your task list we have them on task boards we were able to customize the cards you learned how to use task board sheet and then we set up sprints which are time phased overlays on tasks so we set up one month block sprints and you learned how to use the current Sprint board and the current Sprint sheet you learned how to move your tasks onto different task cards and you learned how to assign your tasks to the appropriate Sprint then we moved into controlling a project plan by editing the task list we deleted a task and set a deadline task we then moved into splitting a task that’s not on this list here but we did split a task and we documented the reason for the split as a task note we added a constraint to a task and we also rescheduled a task to a non-working day and we had to break its link to its predecessor task in order to do that and then you learned how to Mark a group of tasks as inactive and then how to reactivate them and then you learned how to move how to reschedule a group of tasks for a later date and because we made all of those changes we ended up updating our Baseline so we overwrote it in our last and final module we have two lessons Lesson Four is reporting on a project so you’ll learn how to format and share a chart view how to view existing reports how to create custom reports and how to create a visual report which is really a way of exporting project information either to Excel and or Vizio and then lesson five is where we’ll get to customize the application you’ll learn how to change some key project options how to create a project plan template so if you’re going to be doing another similar project you don’t have to start from scratch you’ll have a template that you’ll be able to work from you’ll also learn how to share resources I mentioned that you may happen upon a project plan file that only has a resource sheet filled out and that would be known as a resource pool and that’s how you can share resources across project plans and then lastly you’ll learn how to link project plan files to each other we’re going to start this lesson by formatting the Gantt chart and learning ways that you could share just that portion of your project plan so just so our focus is on the Gantt chart I’m going to grab my divider between the chart and the entry table and just drag it all the way to the left and on the Gantt chart the first thing I’m going to start with is the Gantt chart Style Gallery and so you can use that to change the coloration of the bars on your Gantt chart and you have a wide range of choices if you want to see more choices so you’re seeing one row of choices you can access this Arrow downward pointing arrow on the right side of the gallery with the horizontal line above it and that opens up the whole gallery so you can see you have presentation Styles and you have scheduling styles really you can use any style that you want at any point so I am going to just pick a presentation style here and I’m going to go with the orange the next thing we’re going to do is change the font so the first button on the Gantt chart format tab is text Styles and let’s go ahead and click that button in the text Styles box you’ll see at the top item to change is currently set to all so if I do the drop down next to all I can see everything that’s included on that list right so what I want to do is we just want to we want to change the font for everything we want to make the font size larger so I’m going to select 12 point for my font size and I’m going to click ok and so notice it changed the font size for all objects my row headers are larger the Gantt chart is larger my time scale at the top is larger and if I expand the divider I’ll see that the table looks the same so now what we’re going to do actually it did get a little bit larger let me check here yeah now the table does not look the same the table is also 12 point that’s right it was set to all and so now we want to do another font type change so let’s go back to Gantt chart format and back into text styles and this time let’s do the drop down next to all and we will choose summary tasks on that list and for our summary task we’re going to give a background color and I’m going to choose just like an orangey color and I’m going to click ok so that impacts the table portion right because that’s where our summary tasks are showing there and that’s what we selected from the items to change drop down in addition you can put drawings on your Gantt chart all kinds of shapes and things so on the Gantt chart format tab the last button is drawing go ahead and click it and select text box now your mouse looks like a Crosshair and so you can click and hold and draw a text box about that size and we’re going to type Emily can have more than 50 percent availability is necessary I’m going to type a period then I’m going to click away from the box and then go back and reselect it and then I can see I can move it I have sizing arrows around it if I want to resize it I can do that and then what I want to do is I want to make sure that the text box is pointing to this Gantt bar where Emily Barrington is listed at 50 percent so I’m going to go back to the drawing drop down and this time I’m going to select Arrow and I’m going to click on the left side and hold on the left side of the text box and just draw an arrow pointing to where it says Emily Barrington so you can do things like that on your Gantt chart as well so let’s say that you have stakeholders that you need to share your Gantt chart with we are going to do that next go ahead and save your project plan now let’s make our entry table a viewable again so I’m going to just grab my divider bar and really we just need to see the task name columns at this point up through task name and what we’re going to do is we’re going to in this scenario we’re going to say that we need to share stage one with our stakeholders and they want to see the Gantt chart portion not the table so what we’re going to do is in your task list on the entry table I’m going to include task zero I’m going to just click and hold on row heading 0 and drag down until I have row 22 selected so that’s all of stage one as well as task zero and now that I have those selected I’m going to drag that divider bar backwards so I don’t see any of the table anymore and just my Gantt chart and so before we do this let’s go to the view tab and in the zoom group make sure your time scale is set to weeks so it will look like how my Gantt chart looks on my screen and what we’re going to do is go to the task tab of the ribbon we’re going to do our copy drop down and select copy picture this time we’re going to save the image as a gif image file so we’re going to do that option button and then navigate to wherever you want to save the file it might automatically want to take you up to your SharePoint site since we’ve synced this to SharePoint and at that at this point you can just put it on your local computer if you’d like and then we’re going to say in the copy group we’re going to leave it on selected rows so all of stage one and task zero and then for the time scale we’re going to leave it on as shown on screen and we’re going to click ok so I’ve navigated to my local directory and I’ve opened the gif file and this is what it looks like and so this is a picture I can put it into a PowerPoint presentation Word document email I can edit it and get rid of because even though we had the table hidden it still shows the role IDs and the information column I can crop it I can do all sorts of things with it and then share it with my stakeholders and we can go ahead and close that file now we’re going to use the built-in reporting tools by going to the report tab of the ribbon and you can expand so you can see your entry table again and you can deselect those tasks so on the report tab of the ribbon we’ll start in the view report section and what I normally do here is we just do a grand tour of all of the reports and all of the categories of reports so we’re going to start like that and so the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to click on dashboards and we’re going to look at the burn down report now all of these reports are highly interactive they’re also very descriptive so it’s showing the entire life cycle of the project up here the name of the report these are just text boxes which means you can modify them you can delete them it comes with two charts on the left you have your work burned down and it gives you a description shows how much work you’ve completed and how much you have left if the remaining cumulative work line is steeper so that would be a blue line here and we don’t have one then the project may be late and then you have a task burn down shows how many tasks you’ve completed and how many you have left if the remaining task line is steeper which is the orange line on that one then your project may be late so it’s fine it’s not steeper so that is an example of a burn down report now as we go through the tour of the reports I’ll point out several things we’ll actually modify some of the default reports as we go one of the things I want to point out is this if you click in a blank area of your report and you look up at your Ribbon you have that report design contextual tab now click on your burn down text box and in addition to the report design tab you get a shape format tab click on your work burn down chart now you have report design chart design and format so depending on what object on a report you’re working with the appropriate contextual tabs will show up on the ribbon we’ll talk about the field list that just popped up on the right separately now we’re going to go back to the report tab of the ribbon and back to dashboards and this time let’s choose cost overview so this report comes with two charts and a table it has the name of the report the date range of the Project Life Cycle you get a box here which is actually a table showing the cost and the remaining cost and percent complete underneath that you have a table the cost status table only for your top level tasks showing the name actual and remaining costs Baseline costs cost and any variance you have a progress versus cost chart on the right in again with instructions if percent complete line is below the cumulative cost line your project may be over budget and then you have a cost status chart for the top level task showing remaining actual and Baseline cost now the field list on the right side of your screen you can use that to change what shows in any of these report objects so let’s click on that cost status table to select it and if you look in the field list you’ll see that the fields that are showing in that table have check marks in them and there are different categories of field so we have your ID name and resource name at the top then you have your cost fields includes all your baselines you have your custom Fields here these are more cost Fields actual cost costs cost variance remaining cost right and so we’re not using any date fields in there or duration flag number work or other and underneath all of the other fields that are collapsed you’ll see the fields that are in that table underneath that you’ll see it says filter all tasks Group by no group and outline level one outline level one are your top level tasks so we’re going to do the drop down arrow there and we’re going to select all subtasks we want to see the cost status for all of the subtasks so now the table has expanded and all of the subtasks are in there and then if you were going to keep that that way I would change the text box above because it says cost status for top level tasks and I would just put for subtasks now let’s select that table again I just want to click anywhere in it to have it selected and go up to the table design tab on the ribbon and we can give the table a different style so I’m going to use that more button on the right of the table Styles gallery to open it you’ll notice that there are light medium and dark Styles they give you Styles at the top that are best match for this particular document I’m gonna go with a medium orange style with banded Rose so light dark light dark and then click on your cumulative cost chart just somewhere in a blank area of the chart go to chart design and to the left of the chart Styles Gallery there’s a change colors tool and I’m gonna just try it I may not like the color once I apply it and I don’t like that color so I’m just did Ctrl Z which is undo and I decide I’ll just leave these charts alone so if we wanted to see what this report would look like if we were going to print it right we could go to the file Tab and just choose print and you’ll see your print preview and this is where you learn that you may have to change margins so on and so forth It’s generating 10 pages of this report so you can see that that table obviously since we did it for all subtasks is expanding over several pages and then it’s creating some blank pages so when I go to the back arrow to get out of there and I look at the report design tab on the ribbon I can get to in the page setup group I can go to orientation and maybe make it portrait I don’t think that’s going to do any good but I could go to page breaks and then you’re seeing the page breaks on the screen right so I know where that table is breaking and what I might choose to do is something like move the table to another page so you may have to manually massage your stuff to get it to look right if you’re going to be printing the report just put it back where it was for right now you can also change your paper size here and that might help with some of them so what I’m going to have you do is I’m gonna have you take that table back to just showing your level one task your top level task and one other thing that needs to be done here this is why um with the exception and we adjusted that table back but this is why it’s generating more pages because of these charts on the right I’m putting them inside that margin there so that it won’t be bleeding over to another page and now if we go to file print we’re still getting a blank page there I’m getting one of two pages oh because this this text box I can see it bleeding over so just have to go back and clean it up a little bit more so it’s the text box above this table that’s going over there that’s what I’m on so that way if you need to print your report you can do it that way now the other things that you have on that report design tab are important to review as well it’s very rare that I actually print out the reports let’s take a look on report design tab in the report group you have manage which is you can rename your report here or you can get to the global organizer which we will cover later or you can copy the report so when you hover over copy report it says copy it so you can paste it into another application like word PowerPoint or even Excel so a lot of times I’ll do the report as it just paste it into a Word document or PowerPoint or something like that so you can test that feature out by clicking copy report so now I’ve switched to PowerPoint and I’m going to just do a blank presentation here and I want to go on the Home tab to the new slide drop down and choose blank and then I’m going to right click on slide one and delete it on the blank slide I just have my guides showing on the slide and if you want to see guides you can go to the view Tab and check your guides in the show group and I’m going to just right click and I’m going to look at my paste options I can use the destination theme so if I had a theme in this presentation and I wanted the report to look like that theme I would choose that option we just have a blank presentation with no theme I can keep the source formatting so the way that it’s formatted from Project or I can copy it in as a picture I’m going to use picture and then I can resize it so it actually fits on the slide I’m using the bottom right sizing handle and I’m going to just size it so it fits better on that slide and then I would do another new blank slide and put the next report in and send the presentation out or conduct the presentation with the reports in it for my stakeholders another group on this report design tab is the insert group so we’ll revisit this group when we develop a custom report where you can insert images shapes charts tables text boxes onto it and we’ll visit the themes section at the same time because you can apply a theme which is a series of colors fonts and effects to your report to make it more visually appealing so for right now we’re going to go back to the report Tab and back to the dashboards drop down and let’s view the project overview report so this one has your percent complete and then it has Milestones that are coming soon so these are our Milestone tasks that are coming soon right listed in a table form we have a status for all of our top level tasks or our summary tasks percent complete right so stage one is nine percent complete stage two ten percent our other stages are not and then we have late tasks because we have a project deadline a deadline task in there for some reason set for 6 20. I might have done that by accident this is another good report that can be utilized throughout your project and now we’ll go back to report dashboards again we have two other dashboard reports upcoming tasks and work overview let’s look at upcoming tasks this is one that I like to use pretty frequently right um again it shows the percent of work complete the status of remaining tasks that are due this week with their percentage of completions and then tasks starting soon and that’s the status of tasks that are starting in the next week the following week this is a really handy report to keep an eye on and we’ll go back to report dashboards and work overview so this one it has you’ve already seen the work burn down report on the burn down report right it has that chart there it has a work stats chart actual remaining and Baseline work for all of our stages of our project it’s giving you the percent of work complete remaining work and actual work you have your resource stats chart on the left so actual and remaining work per resource and then you have remaining availability for all of your work resources so these are just work resources here not Material or cost and let’s go back to report dashboards one more time so down at the bottom it’s kind of misleading it says more reports but if you click on more reports it’s just showing you the categories and there are no other dashboard reports just those fives that we’ve looked at so you can cancel out of there and our next category of reports are resource reports you see we have two over allocated resources this is another way of looking at them right so you can see and we still have some over allegations in our plan so you see the work status for over allocated resources in the form of a column chart and then you have your over allocation chart right so the orange lines are over allocation for Teresa Brown we have some for Anita Redmond you can look at the Legend at the bottom of that chart and we’ll go back to report resources and resource overview you saw the resource stats in a previous report and here’s our work status the percent of work that’s been done by all your resources and then you have your resource status in the form of a table as well and we can go back to the report tab the cost reports are pretty important here so if if you’re tracking cost in your project these are the reports that you can share with your budget people and so we have a cash flow report let’s take a look at that so you’re seeing your actual Baseline and remaining costs as well as any variance you have a chart and it tells you this chart shows the Project’s cumulative cost and the cost per quarter to see the cost for a different time period select the edit option from the field list so what that means is Select that chart and I’m going to get rid of this format plot area pane that’s what happens when you kind of double click a chart and in the field list up at the top it says select category and it’s set on time and then there’s an edit button click on edit and see that it’s defaulting the quarters do the drop down for quarters and choose weeks and then click ok so now you see the chart updated and if you were going to keep that update then you would want to change the text here if you’re going to keep the text box and say cost per week what we’re going to do is we’re going to go back to edit and we’re going to change it back to quarters and I think we had I’ll just do a q1 Q2 format I think that’s what they had in there and we’ll click ok so yeah you can change that it I love the informational text that’s given on the reports and and a lot of times I’ll leave them there when I’m sharing reports for stakeholders because they explain to them what they’re looking at too and then you have the data at the bottom in the form of a table and it includes a couple of other fields so you have your remaining and actual cost and then your cost field acwp actual cost of work performed then you have budgeted cost of work performed and budgeted costs of work scheduled and we’re going to go back to the report tab and now we’re ready to look at our cost overruns report so you get a task cost variance the cost variance for all your top level tasks resource cost variance and then you have supporting tables and we don’t have any cost variance so the charts are not populated but you have supporting tables for task costs and resource costs we can go back to report cost earned value report so we don’t have a lot of data in our project plan right now so we have our EAC is estimated at completion actual cost of work performed and budgeted cost of work performed values are showing then you have your earned value over time chart which is not super populated right now you have variance over time it’s showing cost variance and

schedule variance and indices over time you have your schedule and cost performance indices for the project so again we haven’t tracked very many actuals in our project plan so at this point a lot of these charts are not going to be super populated we can go back to report cost resource cost overview so you see your cost status for work resources the cost distribution over the different resource types so most of the costs are work resources which is pretty typical and then you have your cost details for all of the work resources and we’re going to go back one more time to the cost and you have your task cost overview so your cost distribution based on the status of the task and this chart is kind of I’m going to move this text box out of the way so I can see it so you have your Legend at the bottom we have very few tasks that are marked complete I’m going to move this text box out of the way as well it’s kind of yeah so and then you have on schedule and most of it is future tasks we have our cost details table our next category on the report tab is in progress now these I would access more often than perhaps some of the others so we’ve talked and we’ve seen like on the Gantt chart and in different tables how to view critical tasks late tasks milestones and also slipping tasks so let’s look at the critical task report right so remember if you have a highly sequential task list a lot of your tasks will be on what’s known as the critical path meaning that there’s really not a lot of wiggle room for it to slip without pushing out the project end date so these are a list of our critical tasks might want to keep a careful eye on them in terms of their start dates and how they’re progressing we’re going to go back to reports in progress late tasks well I’ve got that project deadline of the project start date up there for some reason so that is actually late now hopefully you won’t have anything that is late at this point we’re going to go back to in progress our Milestone report so late Milestones Milestones that are due this month and Milestones that are 100 complete and then you have it in the form of a chart on the right and one more time to end progress and slipping tasks so where the Finish date is past the Baseline finish date we haven’t gone that far in our project tracking actuals to have any slipping tasks and you can go back to your report tab now back on the report tab I’m going to skip getting started custom for right now if you look at your recent drop down you’ll see the car you know in the last one you were on is at the top of the list it stores like maybe five there or six and then because we set up Sprints and create a task boards we can go to view board reports so let’s click on task boards and go to boards task status report this is kind of meaty nice one so tasked by board status so we have our not started in progress and done boards we have our remaining tasks chart remaining tasked by resources and then we have a table on the right which is your tasks summary the summary task name the name of the sub task resource name and the board status let’s go back to report task boards and let’s look at boards work status so this one has your remaining work by task board remaining work by resource remaining work over time the number of hours of work that I’ve completed and the number of hours left and then remaining tasks all of the tasks in task boards that are not marked 100 complete we’re going to go back to report task boards current Sprint task status and so some of the same you know remaining tasks remaining tasks by resource we’re going to go back again current Sprint work status just showing it by Sprint as opposed by your task board or although it does have the board status in this table and we’ll go back again and we’ll do Sprint status so now this is focused squarely on the Sprints task for Sprint work per Sprint and we can go back to report now let’s look at the getting started category on the report tab so some of these are not really reports let’s start with best practice analyzer so this is actually a report right it shows remaining work tasks that have no actual work unassigned work tasked with no resources assigned tasked with durations less than eight hours and summary tasks with assigned resources so out of that group getting started this is a report let’s go back to report getting started and click on create reports so this is more like a tutorial for you it’s guiding you through like you can go up here and click on welcome welcome to project you can go through this you can start and go how to organize your tasks and then you can go next and all about creating reports and then next all about how to share with your team kind of thing so that’s not really what I consider a report it’s a tutorial we’re going to go back to report getting started so create reports get started with project organize task and share with your team all lead you to the same tutorial so they’re not actual reports other than the best practice analyzer now we’re going to go ahead and create two custom reports so on the report tab once you create a custom report then it will show under custom but to create one you’re going to start with the new report drop down and you’ll see that you can create it from blank with just a text box on it you can have a chart a table or the comparison one has a chart and like a table on it we are going to choose the table template there and we’re going to want to give this report a name and we’re going to call it resource info and click ok so now it gives us the text box with our name in it the name of the report in it it has a table and it picks certain fields to put in it so in this case name start finish and percent complete we’re going to use the field list to change the table to the fields that we want so we are going to keep first of all we in the field list is showing the tasks we need to click on resources and we’ll see that name is selected and we’re going to leave that selected and it also has the date category expanded and finish and start are selected and we’re going to deselect those and we can collapse the date group we are going to go to the other fields expansion Arrow and expand it and under custom there we’re going to select group and that’s that free field that we use to say whether the resource was internal or external we can collapse other fields now and we’re going to expand the number category and under number we want to check Max units and lastly we’re going to expand other fields again and then right underneath other fields expand custom and we’re going to check Department which is our drop down our lookup field that we created for the resource sheet view so we have our table set up this is the information that we want and so what I’m going to do is I’m going to move the text box to the left and I’m going to move the table underneath it and in that field list I only want the table to show our work resources so the lower half of the field list where it says filter you’re going to do the drop down and select resources Dash work so it’s only showing our work resources now for that table I’m going to format it a little bit I want the names to show where I don’t have to have a word wrap going on and the same for the Departments so I’m just resizing those columns and we want to add a chart so I want to make sure nothing is selected and on the report design tab of the ribbon you’re going to click on chart and on the left side we’re going to select line and we’ll use the 3D line chart the last one at the top so you can double click it or click it once and choose ok I’m going to move the chart so it’s to the right of the table and in the field list we’re going to start by removing the fields that are currently in the chart and they’re expanded in the work so we’re going to uncheck remaining cumulative actual and remaining cumulative work and then we’re going to go to the resources tab at the top of the field list so the first one we want it already has name selected in that select category name is already there so we’re going to expand cost and we’re going to select cost so it’s showing all of the resources and on the line the 3D line it’s showing their cost and we notice down here this filter is for all resources we want the material and the cost resource included so we have that set up now with the chart still selected go up to the Chart design tab of the ribbon and you can use the more button to open up the chart Styles Gallery where it’s only a couple so that’s not going to work we don’t need to do anything there we could go to change colors and I’m going to pick like an orange color or colorful it’s blocks of colors so let me try this one yeah so I picked one so it looks a little orangey in the chart and then I’m going to select my table by just clicking in it and go to the table design tab at a ribbon and I’m going to give my table a style that kind of matches the chart and that’s kind of how that goes so you successfully created a custom report and we’re going to do another our second custom report is going to focus on our sprints so I’m going to go back to the report tab new report and we’ll base this one off of a table as well and this one we’ll call Sprint info and click ok so it does the same thing it gives us the text box with what we named it and a table with some fields in it we’re going to make sure the table is selected and in the fields list on the tasks tab we’re going to uncheck the finish and start dates and we’re actually also going to uncheck and then I’m going to collapse that date category and we’re going to uncheck percent complete under number and you can collapse the number category for now so we have the name of the task and right now if you look down at the very bottom of the field list the outline level says project summary that’s why we’re only seeing task zero we’re going to do the drop down there and change it to level one for right now so we get to see our stages we’re going to expand the date category and offer the list you’re going to choose Sprint start and then Sprint finish and the reason why the dates are showing as non-applicable is because we’re looking at our stages and you don’t assign your summary tasks to Sprints only the subtasks so we’re going to go down and change our outline level to level two and you’ll see the ones that are in a Sprint or populated in a Sprint you’re getting the start and the Finish dates and we really don’t want that level of detail in this report we really want essentially the start and finish dates of the Sprints so the bottom of the field list we’re going to go to group by where it says no group and we’re going to choose Sprint so now our table is just showing the Sprint and their names and their start and finish dates which is what we want now we’re going to create a visual report which is our last section in this lesson and a visual report you notice on a report tab it’s in the export group it’s a great way of getting data from your project plan file into either Excel and or Vizio so we’re going to be utilizing the Excel visual reports let’s go ahead and click on visual reports and at the top you can say you see where it says show report templates created in and they have Excel and Vizio checked we’re going to uncheck Vizio so we’re just looking at all of the Excel reports so there’s tabs underneath we’re looking at all reports if you want to look at them by category you have the categories there we’re going to select the Baseline cost report and at the bottom we’re going to click View and what it’s going to do is it’s going to export the data and it’s going to open Excel for you so it opens Excel and IT put the data in in the form of a pivot chart so you’re on the chart page notice there’s two tabs in Excel chart one and assignment usage and that’s the actual pivot table so if your Finance people are using a lot of pivot tables in Excel this is a great way of getting the budget information to them from your project plan file and so it’s showing the Baseline costs the action the cost and the actual cost so it has that Legend at the top of the chart right so the Baseline cost is the darker purple cost is the one next to it and you can barely see actual cost in stage one and I’ll show you how to change that in just a moment and then it’s showing your stages down at the bottom now you have these gray tabs on your chart and you can use them to filter and everything but typically they don’t need to be there so if you look at the pivot chart analyze tab on the Excel ribbon the last button is field buttons you’re going to do the drop down and choose hide all so all of those gray buttons disappear from the chart now we’re going to address how to make this so that you can actually see that actual cost its value is so much lower than the other values you can barely see it in stage one so we’re going to go up to the design tab on the ribbon and on the design tab the next to the last button is change chart type and what we’re going to do on the left side is we’re going to make it a combo chart so we have our clustered column for Baseline cost and cost and the actual cost is going to be shown in the form of a line and we want it to have a secondary axis because its number was so low compared to the numbers for Baseline cost and cost we want it to have its own separate axis on the right representing its range of values and we’re going to click ok so now you can see your secondary axis on the right side because some of them haven’t started yet right some of the stages your actual cost is like at zero and the next one up would be 50 and so on whereas this on the left side is showing 5000 up to thirty five thousand so it’s good to have a secondary axis when your number ranges are extremely variant now the other thing we can do with this pivot chart is let’s scroll down the field list and you’ll see it only has value fields on there we’re going to scroll down until we see type and we’re going to check type so now it’s showing the type of resource at the bottom of the chart so one key thing to mention here I mentioned that it’s a good way to export some of your project data to either Excel and or Vizio but it is not a live link so if your Finance people are interested in getting these pivot tables and pivot chart reports from you maybe you can work out the frequency that they would need them and do the export from visual reports once a week or on whatever schedule as necessary these are now two independent data sets so you can go ahead and close Excel and when you’re back in Project you can just close the visual reports dialog box now we’re up to our last lesson in this course which is customizing the application we’ll be reviewing and changing some project options creating a project plan template learning how to share custom items that we’ve created how to share resources and how to link a project plan so to get started we’re going to go to the file tab of the ribbon and all the way at the bottom of the band on the left we’re going to click on options so for any of the Microsoft programs you’re using you should become familiar with their options they’re all on the file tab because that gives you a way to further customize the program for your particular needs so you’ll notice on the left of the project options dialog box you have different tabs we are currently on the general tab so just some examples I’m not going to go over every option with you but you’ll notice under the project view the default view is Gantt with timeline so when we started our project plan file it brought us to that view with the entry table on the left the Gantt chart on the right and the timeline visible beneath the ribbon so that is the default view if you want a different view to be your default whenever you go into project you can change it there you can also control the way dates are formatted in Project from there the next tab we’re going to go to on the left is the display tab so here you’ll notice that you have currency options for this project and it gives you the name of your file right some of the options are only for the current file some could be for the current file or all project files and you’ll see that shortly if you always want to have two decimal places you can change that here or leave it the way it is if you want a space between a currency symbol and the number you can change the placement there let’s go to the schedule tab on the left if you’re weak does not start on Sunday or your fiscal year does not start in January this is where you would want to change it now for this one it says calendar options for this project and this is an example where you can change it for all new projects or just for this project we’re going to leave it on the training rollout initiatives if your default start and end times are not 8 to 5 you can change them here all of these things can be changed so there’s something else here scheduling options for this project when we first started this project plan file new task by default or manually scheduled we changed it to Auto scheduled at some point but if you want to change all new projects if you do all new projects you can see the default there you could change it there to Auto scheduled if you should want to we’re going to leave it and go back to training rollout initiatives so we talked about when we scheduled our tasks the difference between scheduling it from the start date and the end date and when we went into project information it was defaulting to start date because that is the default there are some other things that you need to look for let me look at a couple of other things on this schedule tab and I think we’re good for schedule on the left side let’s go to the save tab so what’s important here if you want it to auto save every 10 minutes or whatever amount of minutes you can do that here it gives you your default file location so where when you’re saving project plan files if you want to change that you can and then it has where save templates default personal templates location all personal templates need to be saved in this custom office templates folder which is under your documents folder on your local drive so you want to make sure you save your templates there if they’re not saved there you cannot access them from within the program and then lastly on the left let’s go to Advanced so you know when we started our project plan as soon as we use the blank template the first thing we did was go to project information so that we could set our project start date you can have it prompt you for project info for new projects if you’d like by checking that box we’ve noticed a couple of times when we went to schedule a linked task on a scat on a Saturday the planning wizard came up and that’s happening because of these check marks here in the planning wizard section if all of your resources on your project were getting the same default standard and or overtime rates you could fill them in here and then they would just populate on the resource sheet and then I’m going to scroll down to display options for this project so you notice when we put in a three-day task it says the word day well you could change that you might want it to just have a d that shows or a d y you can have it now this show project summary test that’s task zero that is checked here for this project because we made it show if you go to display options for this project and do the drop down next to training roll out initiatives and go to all new projects right you could then make sure that it’s going to show the project summary tasks for all new projects if you want it to I’m going to change it back to this project there’s one more one more so the very last one on Advanced is tasks are critical if slack is less than or equal to zero days okay so we talked about critical tasks in a highly organized sequential task list you’re going to have critical tasks and so if you don’t want as many to show up you can increase the amount of slack here for it to be tagged as a critical task and I’m going to just click ok to get out of project options you may have noticed when you’re in a report your view indicator on the left is not active it just simply shows the name of your report and we want to get back to Gantt chart view so on the report design tab they have Gantt chart as the first button and we can click the upper half of that to get back into Gantt chart View now we’re going to play a little bit of Make-Believe here we’re going to make believe that we’re pretty much completed this entire project all the tasks have been completed so on and so forth and now we want to save it as a template because next year in June we’re going to have another training roll out and this one works so well we don’t want to have to build another project plan from scratch so in order to do that we’re going to go to the file tab and we’re going to click on export on the left under export you’re going to choose save project as file and on the right side it gives you all these file formats and we’re going to select project template and then you’re going to click on save as now when you do that it should take you to your custom office templates folder if that was set in Project options but I will say that there has been a glitch where sometimes it doesn’t do that so you need to navigate to your custom office templates folder if it didn’t take you there and we’re going to change the file name to just say instead of initiative we’re going to put template and notice the save as type right underneath it is a project template and we’re going to choose save so when you do that the save as template dialog box comes up you’re about to save a file as a template you can choose to remove the following data items from the template so we would want to remove the values of all the baselines because this is for a future date and time and we’ll want to set up our baselines when we start working in that plan file we probably want to get rid of actual values your resources may change so you want to get rid of your resource rates and we didn’t have any fixed cost in here fixed cost would be something like if you’re doing a remodel project or something and you buy an aquarium how much did that aquarium cost and that is just a column that you can put in any table to enter a fixed cost so we definitely want to strip out the first three you might as well check fixed costs because usually it would be those if you’ve been using the project web app you might want to remove the data about whether they’ve been published from the template as well and we’re going to choose save so now what we’re going to do is we’re going to close the template so I’m going to use that bottom X in the upper right hand corner where I’m trying to draw an arrow right now you’re going to use that bottom X to close the template if you don’t close the template what happens if you just start filling it out you’re actually updating the template itself so you want just like any other template right you want to be able to access the template and it turns it into a plan file and the template itself is not being impacted if you do need to change the template at some point you can go to your custom office templates folder and open it from there and then that way you’re directly changing the template but to access it you’re going to go when you closed out it took you to the new tab and if you look right above where it says search for online templates you have an office category and you have a personal category click on personal if you don’t save your template in custom office templates you won’t have a personal category there and your template won’t be there so now what you’re going to do is go ahead and click on the template and when you select it you can give it a start date from here but we’re just going to leave it the start date on today and we’re going to go create and so if we go to Resource sheet view for example you’ll notice that we stripped out the rates for our resources and then you can go back to Gantt chart View so this template you might have different stages or shorter stages you can modify it but you don’t have to start from scratch now what we’re going to want to do is we’re going to want to save this project plan foreign whatever directory you need it to be in you just navigate to where I want it and you’re going to name it training roll out initiatives 2023. and then you’re going to close it so now I’m going to show you how to share your custom objects with other project plan files we created a project calendar in here a custom view custom table and a couple of custom reports as well as some custom Fields so I’m going to show you how you can make those things available or some of those things available to all of your project plan files new or existing and we do that by going to the file tab of the ribbon and on the left side clicking on info right there you’ll see an organizer button and it says organize the global template let’s click on organizer on the left side of the organizer screen you have your Global template so in this case these are all the views that are included with Microsoft project on the left side and you’ll see at the top there’s several tabs and it defaults to the first tab which is the views tab on the right side you will have the views that are available or being utilized in your particular project and so what we’re going to do is we want the Gantt with task details view the split view that we created to be available and all project plan files new or existing so we’re going to click on it on the right side and then in the middle of the screen do your copy button and you’ll see that the Gantt with task details is now part of the global template and then we’re going to go up to the reports Tab and on the right we have our two re custom reports so I’m going to select each one and copy and then we’ll go up to to the tables Tab and on the right side we’ll select project analysis and copy and then I’ve gone to the fields Tab and at the top I selected resource we want that department drop down field that we created so I’m going to do copy and then we can do the X in the upper right hand corner to close the organizer and you can do the back arrow to get back into your plan file now you’re going to learn how to share resources across different project plan files and so the first thing I’m going to have you do we’re going to leave this training rollout initiative file open and I’m going to have you open your training rollout initiative 2023 project plan so you’ll have both plan files open once that’s done if you go to the view tab of the ribbon almost all the way to the right in the window group you’ll see your switch Windows drop down and you’ll see that you have both files open and you can switch between them that way now we need to have a new blank project plan file also open so we’re just going to go to the file Tab and we’re going to click on blank project and now the project information box popped up automatically and that’s because when we went through project options there was a setting that says prompt for this box every time you create a new project so we’re going to just cancel that if it came up for you you can cancel it and what we’re going to do is go to the Gantt chart format tab and over in the show hide group uncheck project summary task and we’re going to switch to Resource sheet view and then we’re going to save this file and we’re going to name it training resource pool so before we copy and paste the resource information into our resource pool file we need to make sure that the columns are consistent remember on our original resource sheet we added a custom field that we created for the Department we made it a lookup field so it had the drop down list so this shows you what copying things to the global organizer can do for you we’re in the training resource pool file and we’re going to right click on the type column heading and choose insert column and start typing Department all of our custom objects are now available to this file which is a new file and any other existing project plan file so you can select Department and now we’re going to use the switch Windows button to switch over to training rollout initiative and before we copy this stuff because we have these over-allocated resources I’m going to show you a little trick here if we copy them and paste them into our resource pool they’re going to be red but they’re not going to have the little red people they’re not going to be noted in the system as over allocated but they’re red bold font will carry over and you won’t be able to change it so what we’re going to do here is we’re going to go to the resource sheet format tab on the ribbon and the first button is text styles we saw this in Gantt chart format at the very top where it says item to change all we’re going to do the drop down and select over allocated resources and notice it has that deep red color and it’s also bold we’re going to change bold to regular and we’re going to do the color drop down and select the black color under theme colors and click ok and we’ll change it back afterwards but for right now we’re going to select from the First Resource name all the way over to their standard rate making sure all of our resources are selected and we’re going to do control C to copy that information go to your view Tab and using switch Windows go back to your resource pool click in the First Resource name cell and control Z and notice like I said the little red icons in the indicators column so the system would not have thought that they were over allocated in this file there’s no task there’s just a resource pool but you would not have been able to get rid of that shading even if you had gone to the resource sheet format Tab and went into text Styles in there it wouldn’t adjust it so we have this in our training resource pool let’s go ahead and save this file and then switch back over to your training rollout initiative file and we’re going to go back to Resource sheet format text styles and make sure that our over-allocated resources show up bold and then for the color all the way at the bottom under standard colors I’m going to use that first dark red and click ok so we put it back the way it was now that we have our training resource pool set up let’s switch back over to our training rollout initiative 2023 file and the first thing we’re going to do there is go to the project information on the quick access toolbar let’s go in there so this is the file that we created from the template that we saved and so it kept the original start dates and stuff like that and we want to change our project start date at this point so let’s do the start date drop down and let’s navigate to let’s say June of 2023 and let’s select June 5th and then click ok so that adjusted that file and now the second thing we’re going to do because we created this from the template and we chose to keep our resource information minus their rates in the template we want to delete everything off of this resource sheet so I’m going to select the gray box at the intersection of the row and column headings to select everything and just press delete on my keyboard then I’m going to just click on the first resource name cell and I’m going to go to the resource tab on the ribbon and the assignments group you’re going to select resource pool and then share resources so if you were using your own resources they would be populated on the resource sheet and we just deleted everything we want to use resources and it says it requires at least one open resource pool when we select that option button our resource pool should populate if not you can get to it from the drop down it needs to be open and then on the bottom on conflict with calendar or resource information we’re going to leave it on pool takes precedence and we’ll talk about that in just a few moments so we’ll click ok so now we have our resource pool information in this project plan file so let’s switch back over to our training rollout initiatives plan and this is the one that has the over allocated resources on its resource sheet so let me show you why if you’re going to be using a resource pool you should use it before any work is tracked on your project before any work assignments are done on your project you should already have it attached to the resource pool like we just did with the 2023 file because if you don’t and you try to attach it to a resource pool when assignments have already been done when work has already been done this is what’s going to happen let’s go to the resource tab on the ribbon and we’re not going to delete these resources on purpose you’ll see why in a moment and we’re going to go to Resource pool share resources so if we choose to use resources from the pool at this time we’re going to end up getting errors which you’ll see in a moment but this is a good screen to talk to you about the pool and the sharer taking precedence at the bottom of the screen so if I have my own resources here and then let’s say no work has started no actuals have been tracked and then I decide to attach it to a resource pool but I don’t delete my resources my original resources are known as the sharer resources so in a situation like that it would have a duplicate set of resources and so if I come in and I update the resource sheet depending on what set of resources I’m doing to update in it could cause a conflict and you could end up with wrong information so when you’re using a resource pool you want the pool to take precedence in our other file we deleted everything on the resource sheet so everything in there is from the pool and if we wanted to update any resources we would do them in the training resource pool file since it’s attached to the rollout initiative 2023 file all the updates will automatically flow there so if we change somebody’s standard rate or maximum units or if there is a name change if someone marries or something we can make sure that those changes are consistent across the files that the pool is attached to if we make those changes only in the resource pool file so I’m going to show you the error that’s going to get here we’re going to leave it on pool takes precedence go ahead and click ok so there’s a problem it says Resources with the same name different types that’s not really the issue here right material Resources with the names same name but different labels that’s not it either we’re going to click OK on that and so we don’t really have to our list some of it repeated right so this is one of the things the issues you can get into so we don’t want that to happen our posters are on there twice um once with the material once without the material and so what we’re going to do is go back to Resource pool share resources and choose use own resources and click ok and so now we’re just using the resources that we originally had in here again if you want to use a resourceful do it before you do any resource assignments or any actual work starts on the project or you could have issues so for this particular project plan we’re going to use its own resources as opposed to the resource pool which is unfortunate for us because let’s say Emily barrington’s salary gets raised we would have to update it in two places at this point but this is a good lesson learned for you if you’re going to be using resource pools let’s say you’re going to be working on multiple projects at the same time so in our situation the scenario would be that because we pushed a bunch of tasks back in this project when we had to reschedule a bunch of tasks that there might be some overlap between this project finishing and our 2023 project starting so we would want to be working on the plan file for the 2023 plan at the same time instead of having to manage two different plan files you can create a project within a project file and we’re going to do that now you can go ahead and close your training rollout initiative 2023 files and your resource pool file and I just switched to Gantt chart view in our original training rollout initiative file and for this one what we’re going to do is we’re going to collapse our project so I’m going to collapse test zero and I’m going to click on the first blank task name cell after that and I’m going to go to the project tab on the ribbon and the first group is the insert group and it has sub project there go ahead and click on sub project navigate to where your project plan files are and you’re going to select training rollout initiative 2023 and notice at the bottom it says link to project and we’re going to click insert so when you do that it puts it in as like a sub task a summary subtask and so what we’re going to do is when we try to expand it it lets you know that you have to have the resource pool open so we’re going to go ahead and click ok and it did that so the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to rename this one so training rollout template is what it came in on I’m going to double click it to get into and this is inserted project information and I’m going to call it training roll out initiative and then at the beginning of it I’m going to put 2023 and a Dash and click ok so now I can be working on my original training rollout I can expand it I can be collapsing stages within it right doing all that kind of stuff and then when I need to work on both I can expand the next one and maybe do some assignments we don’t have resources assigned in the 2023 training rollout initiative so when I expand it I’m going to go to its task two notice each one has a separate set of row numbers starting over so that task 2 I’m going to go to Resource names column and choose Emily Barrington and so anything that I do in here will reflect in its original plan project plan file so go ahead and save your training rollout initiative file and reopen and then close it reopen your training rollout initiative 2023 file and you’ll see that change so with the 2023 version of the file open I can see that Emily is a resource name there and it works both ways if I do anything in this file it goes back up to the shared file or the sub project file and vice versa and you can go ahead and save and close that file so just to recap what we learned in this last module we started with reporting on a project and so you learned how to format and share your Gantt chart View and then we had a comprehensive tour of each and every existing report couple of which we modified we also created two custom reports and then exported to Excel via a visual report then in our last lesson we got into customizing the application we reviewed several project options we learned how to share custom objects across project plan files that’s not on the list here then we created a project plan template and accessed it to create a new project plan we learned how to create a resource pool file and how to share resources with other plan files and then lastly we learned how to link project plans which is an efficiency tool so if you’re managing multiple projects you can be managing them from one file instead of multiple files hi everyone Trish Connor Cato here I just wanted to officially thank you for attending this Microsoft Project 2021 video course and just to recap everything that we covered in this course focused on executing the project and that’s when we started tracking our actuals we also monitored project progress and learned how to control a project plan so after we updated our actuals we viewed the progress in a variety of different ways of our plan we went into adding custom Fields custom views custom table we learned how to work in network diagram View and how to analyze the plan and view progress by using task boards and defining sprints we also learned ways to control the plan and that included editing the task list splitting tasks rescheduling tasks and we forced a task to begin on a non-working day and updated the Baseline the final module we learned everything there is to learn about reporting on a project and then we went into customizing the application by learning about project options some of which are very useful we actually formatted our Gantt chart added a text box to it learned how to share it before we got into the interactive reports and then we exported project data to excel in the form of a pivot table and a pivot chart by creating a visual report we created a project plan template after learning how to share custom objects using the global organizer and then we learned how to access our template and create a new plan file based on it we ultimately learned how to set up a resource pool and then attached it to a plan file which is the way that you can share resources across project plans and then we ended up by linking project plan files together for more efficient oversight so that if you’re managing multiple projects you can manage them from within one plan file once again my sincere thanks [Music] for watching to earn certificates and watch our courses without ads check out learnitanytime.com foreign foreign [Music]

By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog

Affiliate Disclosure: This blog may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you click on the link and make a purchase. This comes at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products or services that I believe will add value to my readers. Your support helps keep this blog running and allows me to continue providing you with quality content. Thank you for your support!