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By Amjad Izhar
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https://amjadizhar.blog
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This video explains how to manage accounts receivable in QuickBooks Online. It covers the workflow from creating estimates to invoicing customers and receiving payments, including handling partial payments and using undeposited funds. The video also demonstrates creating invoices directly without estimates and managing overdue invoices with credit memos. Furthermore, it explores recording customer payments received via various methods, such as cash and credit cards, addressing bank fees, and utilizing the bank feed for matching transactions. Finally, the video illustrates managing billable time and expenses, utilizing delayed charges and credits, and generating customer statements for tracking transaction history.
Date: October 26, 2023 (Based on the context of the provided text referencing December 2023 and February 2024) Source: Excerpts from “Pasted Text” (Video Transcription on QuickBooks Online Accounts Receivable)
Overview:
This briefing document summarizes the main themes, concepts, and procedures for managing accounts receivable (AR) and recognizing income in QuickBooks Online (QBO) as described in the provided video transcription. The video focuses on the end-to-end AR workflow, starting from the pre-sale stage to receiving payments and handling various scenarios like credit memos, billable time, billable expenses, and adjustments. It also touches upon utilizing bank feeds for transaction matching and generating customer statements.
Main Themes and Important Ideas:
Key Takeaways:
Next Steps:
1. What is the accounts receivable workflow in QuickBooks Online, and when should I use it?
The accounts receivable (A/R) workflow in QuickBooks Online is used to manage income recognition when you make a sale to a customer who agrees to buy now and potentially pay later. This involves several steps, starting with a pre-sale cycle (like creating an estimate), followed by invoicing the customer for the goods or services provided, and finally recording the payment when it is received. You should use this workflow when you don’t receive payment at the exact time of the sale. If you receive payment immediately, you can use a simpler method of recording income directly as a sales receipt or within the bank feed.
2. What is the typical pre-sale cycle within the accounts receivable workflow in QuickBooks Online?
The pre-sale cycle often begins when a customer expresses interest in purchasing something from your business. The first step is usually to create an estimate (or quote) outlining the proposed products or services, their quantities, and prices. If the customer accepts the estimate, you then convert the estimate into an invoice, which is the official bill you send to the customer requesting payment.
3. How do I create and manage invoices in QuickBooks Online?
You can create an invoice in QuickBooks Online by clicking the “New” button and selecting “Invoice.” You’ll then choose an existing customer or add a new one, specify the products or services being sold (including descriptions, quantities, and rates), and set the invoice date and due date based on your payment terms. You can customize the invoice and then save it, save and send it to the customer, or print it. Once created, you can track your invoices in the “Sales” tab under “Invoices,” where you can filter by all invoices or just unpaid ones to manage your accounts receivable.
4. What are the different ways to record customer payments in QuickBooks Online, and what is “undeposited funds”?
There are several ways to record customer payments:
Undeposited funds (or sometimes “Payments to deposit”) is a temporary holding account for customer payments that you’ve received but haven’t yet deposited into your bank account. This is particularly useful if you receive multiple payments that you deposit together as a single sum. By using undeposited funds, you can then record a single bank deposit in QuickBooks that matches your bank statement, making reconciliation easier.
5. How do I handle situations where a customer is due a credit or when an invoice needs adjustment after it has been issued?
For situations where you need to reduce the amount a customer owes without directly editing a previously issued invoice (especially from a prior accounting period), you can create a credit memo. A credit memo reduces the customer’s outstanding balance. To apply a credit memo to an invoice, you typically go to “New,” then “Receive Payment,” select the customer, and ensure both the invoice and the credit memo are checked. QuickBooks will then link the credit memo to the invoice, reducing the outstanding balance.
6. How can I account for bank fees or transaction fees when customers pay via credit card in QuickBooks Online?
When you receive a credit card payment, the amount deposited into your bank might be less than the invoice total due to transaction fees charged by the bank or payment processor. To accurately record this, you can initially record the full payment received into “undeposited funds.” When you then record the bank deposit (“New” > “Bank Deposit”), you’ll enter the actual amount deposited. The difference can be accounted for by adding a line item to the deposit screen with a negative amount, categorized to an expense account such as “Merchant Fees” or “Transaction Fees.” You can optionally specify the payment processor (e.g., Stripe) as the “Payee.”
7. How can I link billable time and expenses to customer invoices in QuickBooks Online?
QuickBooks Online (Essentials and Plus versions) allows you to track billable time and expenses. You can enter billable time through “New” > “Single time activity,” associating the time with a specific customer, service, and billable rate. When you later create an invoice for that customer, QuickBooks will show a drawer on the right side listing any pending billable time that can be added to the invoice. Similarly, in QuickBooks Online Plus, you can mark expenses as billable when entering them (“New” > “Expense”) by checking the “Billable” box and assigning the expense to a customer. These billable expenses will also appear as items to add when creating an invoice for that customer.
8. What are delayed charges and delayed credits, and how can they be used for invoicing?
Delayed charges and delayed credits (available in QuickBooks Online Essentials and above) are non-posting transactions used to track services or credits that you want to invoice to a customer at a later date. A delayed charge records work or services provided without immediately creating an invoice. A delayed credit records an amount you intend to credit to a customer’s future invoice. You can enter these through the “New” button. When you’re ready to invoice the customer, you can create a new invoice, and QuickBooks will display any outstanding delayed charges and credits for that customer, allowing you to add them to the invoice. This is useful for consolidating multiple charges or credits into a single invoice, often done at the end of a month or project.
Based on the video transcript you provided, QuickBooks Online offers a comprehensive system for managing income recognition through the accounts receivable workflow. This workflow is particularly useful when a sale is recognized before payment is received.
Here’s a breakdown of the key aspects of using QuickBooks Online for this purpose, as described in the video:
In summary, QuickBooks Online, as described in the video, provides a robust set of tools for managing the entire accounts receivable cycle, from creating initial estimates to receiving and recording payments, handling various payment scenarios, and generating customer statements. It also includes features for handling more complex situations like credit memos, petty cash, credit card fees, billable time and expenses, and adjustments via journal entries. The integration with bank feeds further streamlines the process of matching payments to invoices.
Based on the video transcript and our previous discussion, Accounts Receivable (AR), as described in the context of QuickBooks Online, is the process of recognizing income when a sale is made (i.e., when a customer agrees to buy something) and managing the money owed by customers who will pay in the future. It’s a crucial aspect of business operations when payment is not received at the time of the sale.
Here are the key concepts related to Accounts Receivable as discussed in the source:
In essence, Accounts Receivable management within QuickBooks Online, as described in the source, is a systematic approach to tracking sales made on credit, ensuring timely invoicing, diligently recording customer payments, and managing any necessary adjustments or credits to maintain accurate financial records. The various workflows and features aim to streamline this process, providing businesses with a clear overview of the money owed to them.
Based on the video transcript, invoicing customers is a central part of the accounts receivable workflow in QuickBooks Online. It’s the process of formally billing a customer for goods sold or services rendered, thereby establishing the amount they owe to the business.
Here’s a breakdown of how invoicing customers is discussed in the source:
In summary, the source emphasizes that invoicing is the formal step in the accounts receivable process where a business communicates to its customers the details of a sale and the amount due. QuickBooks Online offers various features to create, customize, send, and manage these invoices, ensuring that businesses can effectively track and collect the money owed to them.
Based on the video transcript, receiving payments is a crucial step in the accounts receivable workflow in QuickBooks Online. The source outlines several ways to record customer payments and important considerations during this process.
Here’s a detailed discussion of receiving payments as described in the source:
The source emphasizes the importance of choosing the correct “Deposit To” account to ensure accurate bank reconciliation. It also highlights that while there are multiple workflows to initiate receiving a payment, they all lead to the same “Receive Payment” screen for recording the details.
Based on the video transcript, bank deposits are a critical part of the accounts receivable workflow in QuickBooks Online, representing the final step where customer payments are recorded as entering your bank account. The source details several scenarios and methods for handling bank deposits.
Here’s a breakdown of how bank deposits are discussed:
In summary, the video highlights that accurately recording bank deposits is essential for maintaining correct financial records in QuickBooks Online and for successful bank reconciliation. It emphasizes the importance of using “Undeposited Funds” for batched payments and correctly accounting for bank fees associated with credit card transactions, either through the manual “Bank Deposit” function or by utilizing the “Find Match” and “Resolve the Difference” features within the bank feed.
in this video we’re going to talk about how to recognize income in QuickBooks Online using the accounts receivable workflow accounts receivable simply means that you’re going to recognize a sale whenever the customer agrees to buy something from the business and then possibly you will get a payment on that in the future if you were recognizing a sale at the same time that you’re getting paid then there would be no need for you to use the accounts receivable workflow and you want to check out another video that I have focused on recognizing income or recording income in QuickBooks by skipping everything we’re going to talk about in this video so check that video out the link should be on description we’re going to get started in QuickBooks online and we’re going to start with sort of the pre-sale cycle so a customer calls you and says hey I want to buy something from you a product or a service and the first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to give them an estimate essentially you’ll recognize that uh you’re going to make them an offer and then the customer will at some point email you back or call you back and say I’m ready to accept the offer let’s move forward and then we turn that into an invoice later on so let’s start by creating an estimate I’m just going to click on the drop- down menu select the customer I want to send the estimate to I could click on add new and create the customer on the fly so if I have a new customer and her name is Mary S Smith and I can add her address her phone number email all that information and then I click on Save and then that customer gets loaded into my database in QuickBooks you can have a build to address and also a ship to address so if you’re shipping products or delivering services on site you can use that shipping address to identify that then the estimate number is going to follow a natural sequence QuickBooks will start when one01 but you can create your own sequence if you want to when you’re first getting started so I’m going to do 4,000 501 and that would be the first one then every time I do an estimate then the next one will follow soon then I’m going to click on the drop- down menu to confirm the estimate date and then we’re going to scroll down onto products and services and then we pick the specific product and service that we are estimating or quoting this customer I’m going to pick Services here and I’m going to do two two quantity2 $75 and then on the description I’m going to put $75 per hour for support okay whatever service you’re providing you just put there the description of what you’re what you’re want to sell that customer you can add any additional notes any additional lines if you want to if you’re working with QuickBooks Online plus you can even add inventory that you’re selling them you can actually sell inventory products and then at the end simply we have an estimate for $150 I’m going to go ahead and click on Save and now the estimate has been saved into the system now by default estimates start in pending status so hopefully your customer will say yes agree to buying this service from you and essentially the best thing to do is to switch the estimate from pending down to accepted now notice that when it gets converted from pending to accepted a link to convert to invoice shows immediately essentially guiding you to the process that you should at this point invoice your client so they can pay you so I’m going to click on convert to invoice and then QuickBooks will take the same estimate that we just created and essentially create the invoice for you copy over all the information like the products and the services that you’re selling including descriptions prices all that stuff you actually allowed to change uh an invoice after the estimate so let’s say this actually took three hours and at two hours you can make that change now you do have a um a connected transaction next to it you see that is highlighted green letting you know that that’s a link transaction and if I screw up to the top it says link transactions as well I can actually click on that and it’ll open the estimate for me so it creates this history so you know exactly that this invoice came from an estimate originally then we can accept uh the invoice number where it is we can change the invoice date to whenever you actually provided that service or deliver that product you can select the due date uh based on your net terms so if it’s you know 15 days QuickBooks will calculate 15 days from the invoice date if you select 30 or 60 it will calculate the due date from that invoice date and that’s the essence of account receivable management which is you’re generating a bunch of invoices and you’re keeping track of the customers that owe you money and eventually they need to pay you so once we’re done we can either click save or we can click on review and send if you want to actually email the invoice to our customer so we’re going to go ahead and send the invoice to a customer or print it and mail it to them and that’s it now that customer officially owes us money now I want to create an invoice without regard of the estimate so you can see that that workflow flow you actually don’t need to create the estimate prior that was just an example for those that need to do that so I’m going to click on the new button on the top left and then click on invoice and that can take me straight into the invoice screen no linkages or workflow from an estimate if I click on the drop down menu I can pick a customer from the existing list or maybe a different customer let me pick customer a and then I’m going to scroll down and then select the products and services that I want to sell that customer so let’s say I want to sell this customer customer services I’m going to put um hourly support and I’m going to put here level two Tech and let’s say that we have for our level two technician we actually charge uh $100 an hour so I’m going to put here three hours for $100 an hour and you see that the total adds up to 300 now if I also have uh maybe a product that I’m selling them where there’s inventory or not you can add that additional line and we can put here miscellaneous cables and let’s say say this is a charge for $25 now if you have sales tax enabled and I have an entirely different video that focuses on sales tax I’ll put the link in the description whichever item you mark As taxable QuickBooks will calculate tax for that item I’m going to go ahead and uncheck both the items because we’re going to make the assumption that these items are not taxable or the sale is not taxable here at the right hand side you have some information about billable time we’re actually going to go back to that so now we have a total down here of $325 for the invoice again we can save it we can do save and close or we can save and send to our customers let me click on Save and close and now we have officially created uh two invoices now once you create your invoices you can actually go into the sales tab on the left hand side and then click on where it says invoices and then you’re going to get a list of all the invoices that you have in the system you can actually filter by all invoices including every invoice you ever created and you’ve been paid for already or just invoices are unpaid which are the ones that are currently in accounts receivable you see up here that there’s a $550 due it says not yet that means they’re not overdue yet and if you see down here in the bottom you get to see both amounts 225 and 325 we just created notice that there’s a status here in terms of due date based on what terms we use to create those invoices so that’s that was the first step just essentially just creating an invoice the Second Step would be to receive payments so there’s a couple of ways to receive payments we can simply go into the new button on the left hand side and then under invoice there is a button that says receive payment we can start the process from there if we start the process from there we’re going to go into a blank receive payment screen and then I have to click from the drop- down menu which customer paid me so I’m going to go ahead and select Mary Smith and then once I select the customer QuickBooks will show show me all the outstanding invoices are for this specific customer I’m going to pick the date in which the customer the date that I actually received the payment the payment method and there’s a pre-built set of payment methods you can create your own this is just for internal tracking so let’s say I’m going to put check and note if you have payments enabled in QuickBooks Online which is an additional service you can actually get a credit card number from your customer and charge it electronically through here or you can send the invoice to the customer they can pay you and if you use that service the payment gets automatically recorded in your behalf so you actually don’t have to go into this extra step and record the payment because QuickBooks is smart enough to know that if the customer paid you through their system they might as well create the payment for you now when you receive the payment and let’s say for example it’s a check I can put here the check number that the customer gave me so their check number I can put in here and there where it says amount received I can either select a part partial amount so if your customer underpay you you can put let’s say if they only pay you $100 you receive a partial amount and then you select the invoice that you want to apply the $100 to and then you select um the amount that you’re going to apply to that specific invoice if the customer pay you in full just type there the full amount and the full amount here in the top should um calculate for you as well so make sure that if they did pay you in full that you have both the full amount in the top and then the full amount up apply to the specific invoice you want to apply to now before we click save and close and accept this payment it’s really important to make the decision and this this is based on what’s happening with your business on whether or not this specific payment is going to go straight into the bank one to one so you’re going to have one payment and you’re going to make one deposit with a single payment or if you often receive multiple payments through the week and maybe once or twice a week you take a bunch of payments and make one single deposit now maybe you do electronic deposits with your with with your phone or with a scanner but essentially if you lump all the deposits together uh into a single deposit and then when you look at the bank statement you don’t see each individual payment you see one lump sum deposit then what you want to use instead of using the bank account as a deposit to account you want to use this account called undeposited funds so I’m going to do an example of that for now I’m just going to put it here in this Chase payroll account and we’re just going to have that to 25 bucks itself go in there and then when we do the other example it’s going to make sense when we show you that and then I click on Save and close and then essentially that completes the account’s receivable workflow when we go from in this case from estimate to invoice and then for to payment straight into the bank now let’s create one more invoice I’m going to go to new invoice and then I’m going to select a different customer click on the drop down menu and click customer B I’m going to select my services item and then put here here 5 hours at $75 an hour and we’ll put here hourly support again and then we’ll click on Save and close so now we have uh two outstanding invoices as if we go back into this screen here I’m going to refresh the all invoices screen now we have two outstanding invoices the one for customer a and one for customer B and I’m going to receive payments for each of these invoices but now I’m going to use this on dep positive funds account because I’m actually going to make one sum deposit for the whole 700 and I want that to match my bank whenever I go reconcile my bank so I’m going to receive the payments uh for these invoices but instead of going into new receive payment I’m going to use a different technique which is I’m going to open the invoice directly and then while I’m looking at the invoice on the screen I’m actually going to click on receive payment so I’m going to click on the actions button and then click on receive payment when I do that the payment screen opens but then one more step happens in your behalf which is it automatically selects the customer for you so you don’t have to go out there and select the customer again and it also automatically applies the invoice for you implying that this is exactly what you’re trying to do because you open the invoice in the first place and then clicked on receive payment so it just saves you a step because contextually that’s what you were trying to do now because I’m going to lump suum this deposit together with a different payment I don’t want to put this deposit in the bank on this screen I want to put it in this account called undeposited funds sometimes that’s called payments to deposit depending on how your QuickBooks file is set up but on depositor funds or payments to deposit should be a current asset account designed to hold your customer payments until you make the deposit we’re going to show you what that workflow looks like so let’s say they paid me with a check and we’ll put here the check number from the customer and then we’ll click on Save and close now I’m going to show you one more different workflow for receiving that payment I’m going to go into sales and click on all invoices and then notice that next to the invoice there’s a button that says receive payment so you can basically click on that and it will take you into the receive payment screen but I’m going to show you one more workflow I’m going to ex out of that going to uh sales and then under customers and let’s say I’m looking at the specific customer in the customer details window and then I’m looking looking at the specific invoice and then from here I can actually click on receive payment with within the options that it gives you notice it gives you tons of options but receive payment is one of the options so we’re going to go ahead and click on that so whichever way you decide to do it it’s going to end end you up at the exact same screen on the received payment screen then I’m going to select check let’s say this customer also pay me with a check and then we also have to make the decision to put this either on the bank account or in the undeposited funds or pay P to deposit account because again we want to choose this option that way we can do one more transaction which is Lum suum those payments together so I’m going to go ahead and click on Save and close and now I have both of those payments received and they’re sitting there in undeposited funds waiting for me to make or record that deposit so the next step to record the deposit is to click on new and then we’re going to go here where it says other we’re going to click on bank deposit once we click on bank deposit it you will notice that QuickBooks actually keeps track of every single payment you have received that you put into this account called on deposited funds essentially what you see here which is this group of transactions that are sitting here under the select the payments included in this deposit these are your undeposited funds and essentially you click on one then the other you see how it adds up to $700 here on the top right and essentially you’re going to say okay I got both of those payments on Monday but I didn’t make it into the bank until maybe Wednesday the 7th that’s the day that both of these Depo payments are going to be deposited into a single deposit and then we select the bank account that we’re going to deposit it into and then we click on Save and close so that’s how you do that workflow where you receive the payments into undeposited funds and deposit them together okay we’re going to talk about a little bit of more advanced technique which is working with credit memos so I’m going to go into the new button and create another invoice I’m going to click on new invoice and then I’ll select my customer we’ll select customer a one more time and then we’ll select any product or service and we’ll put we’ll put an amount here we’ll just put 1,000 now I’m going to backdate this invoice a couple of months ago we’ll put this back in December of 2023 and then we’ll click on Save and close and now there’s a $1,000 invoice outstanding now I’m going to click on sales and invoices and then click on unpaid so we can see the totality of our open invoices notice that this invoice is overdue $1,000 because it’s way past the payment deadline now let’s say that during this process I don’t want to edit or change an invoice from the prior year but I want to recognize that we maybe made a mistake on the job and we’re going to give this customer a $300 credit for example so instead of going back and editing the invoice which is generally not suggested especially when it’s from previous periods what you want to do is you want to recognize a reduction of that account’s receivable a reduction of the money the customer owes you by creating a credit memo so we’re going to click on the new button and then click on credit memo and then we’re going to select the customer that we’re giving the credit memo to click on the drop down menu and click on customer a then we’re going to select which product or service essentially we are refunding them it’s not really a refund because we’re not giving them cash we’re just adjusting their uh their open invoice but it’s technically a refund from a sales perspective because we had a sale in 2023 but now we’re refunding it in 2024 so it’s technically a an income refund but there’s no cash being exchanged we’re just going to receive the balance of the payment when the customer gets to gets to pay us so we’re going to select the product or service that we’re adjusting we’ll put here $300 and we can put uh recognizing our mistake for late delivery or something like that okay now depending on exactly whatever the circumstances are you want to make sure that that memo and that description it’s uh is well understood by any user in QuickBooks so we’ll go ahead and click on Save and close and now the credit memo is um entered automatically now this invoice if I open this invoice it still shows as it having an outstanding $11,000 and the reason for that is because credit memos don’t always automatic Ally apply to the invoice you actually have to take the credit memo and apply to the invoice by using the payments screen so I’m going to go into new and click on receive payment even though I’m actually not receiving a cash payment all I’m doing is I’m going to match that credit memo to that invoice so I’m going to select customer a and then I’m just going to make sure that this credit memo is checked so a quick books starts the process for you notice that you put a check mark on it and as long as you see that credit memo check box they’re being applied to the invoice and then here where it says amount received is nothing because essentially you’re not actually receiving the payment QuickBooks will through this transaction as long as you save it now match that credit memo to the invoice now you could put in the in the memo down here at the bottom you can put applying uh credit memo or something like that you really don’t need to do it it should be pretty self-explanatory but that’s essentially what this does it takes that that credit memo that was was sitting by itself unapplied and applies it to the invoice so then when I click on Save and close now I go back into this screen I can click on refresh and now this invoice should show up as an open balance of 700 uh no longer an open balance of uh 1,000 so I just click on the invoice and notice here that says balance du 700 Now by default in this screen it shows you the original amount of the invoice if I actually click on this little gear button on the right hand site where it says action I can actually click on the little checkbox for balance and I can actually see both the $1,000 that are from the original invoice amount and the actual open balance from the invoice it gives you a little bit better visual so let’s say that now the customer is ready to pay you and they’re going to pay you the $700 so I’m going to click on new receive payment and I’m going to add one more wrench into this whole thing just to give you a new example is I’m going to go ahead and select the customer but this time around my C your customer is paying you in cash but the cash is not even being deposited so I’m going to instead of putting it on deposited funds I’m actually going to put it into something called a petty cash account so I’m going to go into add new and then I’m going to create an account called petty cash click on Save and close and then I’m recognizing that I received $700 in cash to pay off the invoice but the money is not even going into the bank I’m going to put it in the petty cash and I as the invoice is being applied here you have it going into petty cash then you click on Save and close so perfect you have no more invoice open if I refresh on the screen it should show that we have zero amount due for invoices now once it comes time to put the cash from the petty cash account into the bank you can simply just do a transfer so we’re going to go to the new button and then click on transfer and let’s say that you know something happened with that cash it was maybe used for some business purpose purposes and I’ll do an entirely different video about managing petty cash cuz that’s a whole another world but let’s say that the the cash that was in the petty cash account that ended up uh that came from the customer but ended up making it into the bank was maybe $500 and not $200 then you end up doing the transfer here you can put in the memo saying you know uh customer a payment and then put uh $200 where used for gas or something like that but you actually need to go back into that Payday Cash account and record those expenses again that’s an entirely different video entirely different workflow but I think it is important to understand that sometimes you will get payments are in cash now I’m going to show you one more interesting workflow which is when you receive payment with a credit card and then when you deposit money into the bank you actually don’t get the entire invoice amount in the bank the bank actually charges you a transaction fee for being able to use a credit card to receive the money so I’m going to go to the new button and create a new invoice I’ll select one of these customers again pick a product or service I’m going to choose $1,000 one more time and then I’m going to click on Save and close and let’s say now that the money for that in customer payment came into the bank it actually came in for $971 31 right because the bank took a percent as a fee so we’re going to go into new receive payment we’re actually going to receive the payment uh as a whole so we’re not going to record in the receive payment screen the fee and we’re going to select here a credit card let’s say American Express deposit to we are going to send it on deposited funds just like when you get a bunch of checks and deposit them together same thing happens with credit cards where a multiple people pay you with a credit card and essentially the whole amount settles with the fee so we’ll go ahead and click on Save and close so now that payment is sitting in on deposited funds and you can have maybe multiple invoices with payments in undeposited funds and you’re going to do one more step which is going to go into new bank deposit and then we’re going to select the the the the payment but you’re not going to receive $1,000 you’re going to receive 97131 as I mentioned earlier so that difference is a fee so if I take $11,000 minus 97131 I get a amount of 28.6 and that’s the amount that the bank took from you to be able to receive uh a payment through a credit card now that’s going to be a negative amount so that’s a really important piece because once you put that into negative you notice in the top the total is 97131 now the most important thing is to put the account that this belongs to so normally it would be an account called Merchant fees or transaction fees or something like that uh in my particular chart of accounts is called merchant account fees so as long as you have an account called again Merchant fees credit card fees transaction fees stripe fees PayPal fees uh whatever account you create that’s represents that you put that in there now on the receive from you actually don’t need to put anything here if you want to you can put the actual bank’s name the bank that is taking the money away so let’s say this is a stripe or something like that we can actually create stripe uh in there as a vendor I typically like to do that as a vendor not a customer and that way you know okay that’s a fee that we’re paying to stripe so it becomes uh very clear so that’s up to you you actually don’t need to put U the receipt from vendor’s name there I know it’s a little confusing because you’re not really receiving anything they’re actually taking money away which is why is a negative amount so it’s like a negative receiving right it means that they’re taking away but essentially that illustrates it you can have multiple invoice payments in here that are going to be paid in full because the customer from their side they’re paying you 100% essentially the bank is the one that’s taking a fee at the very end which is why you’re receiving a lesser amount at the end so that little piece here that’s really important some people actually will break it up so if you have like three payments they’ll go inad and break up for the first invoice it was this amount for second invoice is this amount for third invoice is this amount if you want to keep that level of detail normally I just add all the fees for that one deposit and put it in there so we’ll click on Save and close and that completes that process now we’re going to shift gears to a slightly different workflow which is when you uh create re invoices and you manage accounts receivable but when you go record the deposits you actually don’t use the new record deposit screen you actually use the bank feed screen so I’m going to go into transactions and go into bank transactions and let’s say for example that you’re going to want to match your uh transactions from whatever you’re seeing in the bank feed screen so for example we see a teller deposit for $5,000 and then we see a stripe deposit for $96.89 so I’m going to recreate the type of transactions that you would basically match into your bank feed so I’m going to start with a couple of uh invoices that add up to the 5,000 so I’m going to go to new go to invoice go to customer a and then quickly create an invoice let’s say for $2,000 and then I’m going to click on uh save and new and I’ll create the other invoice that adds up to $3,000 so let’s go in here and we’ll make this one $33,000 and then we’ll do save and new again so now we have a $5,000 deposit that’s coming in through the bank feed and now we need to match the two invoices that add up to the5 ,000 so I’m going to click on the 5,000 transaction that’s in there and instead of selecting categorize I’m going to click on where it says find match then when I click on find match I’m going to get a list of all my open invoices and all the payments that I have received and then QuickBooks will attempt to try to match the two invoices for you now if QuickBooks doesn’t match them you can manually go and select the combination of invoices that would match that deposit and of course you need to verify with your records if that’s actually the customers are paying you not just because the dollar amounts match you have to make sure it’s the correct one because if you end up telling the wrong customer that they owe you money when they actually did pay you because you confused a different customer’s invoice that had the same dollar amount that’s going to be pretty embarrassing but that it’s a pretty simple workflow you just selected to invoices that match that amount and you click on Save and essentially you didn’t have to click on receive payment and you didn’t have to click on record deposit because the money was already downloaded as a transaction through the bank feed you can simply just match at that payment with outstanding invoices I’m going to do the exact same thing with this 9689 but instead I’m going to create two transactions that add up to $100 and I show you how to record the fee with uh within the bank feed so I’m going to go to new and go to invoice and then let’s say we have an invoice for customer a in this case for $60 and then we’ll do save a new and do an invoice for customer B now for $40 and the addition of those two should add up to 100 so it should be pretty simple and then we can save and close perfect now going back into the bank feed there’s my $96.89 I’m going to click on that I’m not going to click on ADD and I’m not going to click on categorize I’m actually going to click on where it says find match we’ll click on find match we’ll select the two invoices that add up to $100 now you will notice that QuickBooks automatically assumes that one of the invoices is being short paid so you have to be very careful about this particular step here you actually have to click on that amount and put 40 and then once I click tab to recalculate QuickBook is actually telling you there’s a difference for $311 so now you have to do what’s called resolve the difference which means add the fee so we’re going to click on resolve the difference and additional line adds in the bottom we’re going to come down here and put – 3.11 and essentially it gives you now a difference of zero and then under category this is where we’re going to put that merchant account fees account or whatever is called in your chart of accounts we’re going to select that and then the pay in this case is stripe or whatever that’s optional and then we click on save so essentially you want to make sure that the the all the invoices are being marked as 100% paid and then that the difference it’s a negative amount which is your credit card fee that you click on Save and then essentially you finish that workflow completely I’m going to show you one more workflow which is to take your billable time billable expenses and convert them into an invoice so I’m going to click on the gear menu and click on subscriptions and billing because I’m currently in The Simple Start version of QuickBooks Online which doesn’t support this specific feature I actually need to be at least on I need to be at least on Essentials and above to be able to do this piece so I’m going to click on change plans so let’s start by going into the new button and then clicking on single time activity so I’m going to create a time sheet item or enter a time activity that I want to Mark billable to the customer so I’m going to select my employee or my contractor that I’m using their time to then create into into a billable invoice I’m going to select let’s say salary item and then under customer I’ll pick customer B and then under service I’ll put here services and then I’ll put here that they worked let’s say 8 hours and 45 minutes and then on the description I can put a support on their issue or something like that you can also click on start start and end times so if you want to put put the times that they actually worked and then have QuickBooks calculate the hours based on that you can you can do that as well so that’s really up to you and how you want to do it and then on under here where it says billable here you put the rate that you want to invoice your client for so in here it tells you hey that was 2 hours and 15 minutes and based on that you’re going to be able to invoice your customer $918 with. 75 keep in mind that this doesn’t automatically invoice your customer it just keeps it pending for you to be able to invoice them later in the future when it’s time to invoice them so I’m going to click on Save and close and then I’m going to go create an invoice for this customer B so I’m going to go to new invoice I’m going to select customer B from the drop- down menu I notice that immediately on the right hand side there’s a drawer that tells me all of the potential transactions I can add to the invoice based on previous billable time so I’m going to click on ADD and essentially once I click on ADD automatically that billable time translates over to the invoice including the description the quantity and the rate so I don’t have to enter it again so that’s how you take billable time and add it to the invoices now notice that there’s a little uh link button here that says linked to a billable time because if you click on that you can actually see the time entry uh by itself so that’s what that’s for so you can actually inspect the transaction or even edit the transaction by itself so let’s go back into the invoice here and then we’re going to click on Save and close now I’m going to show you a really neat feature that you can only have in QuickBooks Online Essentials or up which is called delayed charges or delayed credits so I’m going to start by clicking on the new button and then I’m going to click on a delayed charge so a delay charge is when you want to sort of remind yourself to invoice that customer maybe at the end of the month for a particular service that you provided but you don’t want to create invoice just yet so let’s say for example back in February 1st for customer a we did some work so I’m going to put here under Services I’m going to put 2 hours for $75 an hour and that happened back in February 1st so I’m going to click on save a new and let’s say the next day on February 2nd we did more work for that customer B and we did uh Services let’s say this time around we did 3 hours and 40 3.45 hours at $75 an hour and then we’re going to click on Save and new and let’s say then on Monday the 5th we did some more work for this customer B and we did let’s say only 75 hours uh times $75 an hour and again the purpose of this is that you’re not creating an invoice each time you’re just entering a record in the system that you want to invoice this customer eventually for all of this work okay then I’m going to click on Save and close then let’s say I realize that I’ve overcharged them an hour for whatever reason I can go into to new and do a delayed credit which would be like the opposite of a charge and then I come back into customer B and let’s say I recognize that on the six and I can put uh uh recognizing we overcharged one hour for whatever reason right so we’re going to put quantity one 75 we don’t need to put a negative or anything like that I mean the but by default uh QuickBooks understands that we uh that we’re doing that then we’re going to go ahead and click on save and close and we’re done so now let’s say it’s the end of the month and we want to invoice our customer for all those charges and even the credits against those charges we’re going to go into the new button that we’re going to click on invoice then we’re going to select our customer customer B and then we’re going to notice on the right hand side that we see both the delayed credits delayed charges and also maybe some additional billable time that we did in another exercise so I can click on the filter button and say you know what only show me delayed charges okay and then I click on apply filter and then I can inspect each of these by clicking on the little link if I want to and I can click on ADD and then add and then basically you add each of the lines from the previously entered delay charges I can ex out this filter and then maybe only show the credits and then click on apply filter and then click on ADD and then in this case we didn’t put a negative on the credit transaction itself but quick books enters this one as a negative because that’s what a delayed credit is so then at the end of the day the math is the customer now also $24 and let’s say this happened right at the end of the month February 29th and then we click on save save and close save and send and then we’re done using our delayed credit and delayed charges now I going show you one more thing which is a billable expense I’m going to click on the gear menu and click on subscriptions and Billings and I’m going to upgrade to now the plus Edition I need to be at least in plus to be able to do this specific part which is the uh billable expenses so with QuickBooks Online plus you’re able to assign an expense to a specific customer so then when we Mark that expense billable uh you’ll be able to create an invoice with that specific line item so for example I’m going to go to new and click on expense and let’s say I went to H FedEx so we’ll put here FedEx I’ll create a new vendor and we Shi some documents for a customer that we weren’t supposed to pay for we did it for them anyway but we’re going to ask them to pay us back so under category I’m going to put here uh shipping or something like that if I have any sort of uh shipping account then on the description we’re going to put here overnighted uh documents as per customer let’s say we paid $27.96 and then here’s the key we’re going to click under the check boox that says billable basically uh reminding us that we have to invoice our customer for that and then most importantly we have to select our customer in here so we’re going to select our customer Mary Smith and essentially we’re going to put uh zero markup now you can actually mark up your billable expenses and make some profit in the process but if you don’t intend to market up or make additional income from that all you really need to know do is leave the mark up at zero then we’re going to click on Save and close and then when we go invoice our customer I’m going to click on the new button and then invoice I’m going to select from the drop- down menu go back to my new customer Mary Smith and then down here in the in the right we’re going to see billable expense we click on ADD and as we scroll down we see that the specific text that we had on the description comes in the amount comes in on the drop down menu you’re going to see that bank and that’s kind of on purpose is because this is actually reversing an expense and there’s no product or Services tied to that so this will be the only situation in which you will see uh nothing selected under products and services because this is in fact a billable expense and then that’s it then you you can maybe add some additional services to this if you want to let’s say I’m going to also charge them $75 for like going to FedEx and shipping the document or whatever um you you can add additional services on top of the billable expenses that you’re getting reimbursed for and then you click on Save and close and that finishes that workflow I’m going show you one more thing which is using a journal entry to adjust like an old accounts receivable sort of just to clean up your old accounts receivable now this is more of an advanced technique and maybe only an accounting professional that understands debits credits and what a journal entry is quite frankly are the ones that should be doing this but I’m goingon to show show you regardless because it is part of account receivable Management in one way shape or form so I’m going to go into reports and I’m going to look for the accounts receivable um aging report I’m going to go into accounts receivable aging and then I’m going to notice that I have maybe an old customer here with a $5,000 balance that’s really really old and I want to just make an adjustment and get rid of that $5,000 balance or maybe I want to get rid of half of it or whatever it happens to be so I want to use a journal entry to adjust that balance so the way that will work is we go in the new button then we click on journal entry and as I mentioned again this is more of an advanced technique I’m going to go in the first account and click accounts receivable and accounts receivable is going to be reduced by $5,000 which will be a credit and again this is more of a something accountants would do and then we can put uh writing off old balance or something like that so we come in here and put our our comment writing off all balance and under name we’re going to put our customer’s name we’re going to find our customer here called Old customer and then generally when you write off the old balance you’re going to go against a sales account and income account or if you have something called returns or refunds or something like that you can also do like a income refunds account or sometimes there will be an account called Bat debt or something like that so that that could also be the account so depends how your account is set up it could be a sales account a refunds account a returns account or or a bad debt account those are typically the accounts that we use to write off all balances so we use a journal entry we use the power of debits and credits and double entry accounting to reduce our accounts receivable and at the same time to uh record the expense or the reduction of income which is to reduce um an open invoice so then we click on Save and close and that essentially writes off the balance notice that now old customer has a net balance of zero but now I need to apply that journal entry into that old invoice simply by clicking on the new button and then clicking on uh receive payment it’s a little bit counterintuitive cuz you really never got paid for that but we’re going to use receive payment then we’re going to select our old customer here and then as long as again our invoice is checked and our journal entry is checked and notice this is like an old invoice from 2022 as long as those two things are checked and at the end the amount received is zero so there’s actually no new money coming into the bank we click on Save and close and that will apply that uh journal entry to adjust your account receivable make the open invoice disappear and you essentially will be done with that the very last thing I’ll show you is uh how to create a customer statement that shows you the history of all the invoices and payments you ever had for that specific customer so I’m going to click on the new button then I’m going to go into statement it’s under other so interesting enough it’s not under customer is under other I’m going to go to statement and then I’m going to select which customer I want to see uh sort of a history of statement for so I’m going to select which is the one that I want to uh select then I’m going to click on print or preview that way I get to see the history and then QuickBooks will show me all of the transactions that are open that essentially add up to the $918 so you get to see all the positives and all the negatives that carry over a balance to eventually show you what the ending balance for that customer is if I excit that and I go from instead of clicking on balance forward I click on transaction statement and then click on apply and then I’m going to just select customer B and click on print preview you’re going to see that the statement looks slightly different so depending on what type of statement you want to see you’re going to have a transaction statement statement you’re going to have an open item statement or you’re going to have a balance forward statement and you want to play with each one of these to see which is the one that makes the most sense to you and the one that your customer will understand probably the best you want to uh go through and try all the different type of statements that you have before you make a decision in terms of what’s the actual statement that you want to send to your clients so anyway I hope you enjoy this video on the accounts receivable workflow and how to record income using these workflows make sure you check the description below there’s tons of other videos that talk about other things accounts payable workflow deeper into bank feeds deeper into reports and how to record income without accounts receivable there’s a separate video that explains that in there which skips invoices skips payments it just goes straight into deposits or Bank feeds anyway I hope you enjoyed it and I see you in the next one
By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog
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These resources offer a comprehensive introduction to Microsoft SharePoint Online and its integration within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. They guide users through accessing SharePoint, understanding different site types like team and communication sites, and navigating their features. The materials also explain how to manage and customize SharePoint sites, including navigation, appearance, and the application of site templates. Furthermore, they cover collaboration tools such as Microsoft 365 Groups, file management with OneDrive for Business, and methods for discovering and managing content and user profiles within the platform. Finally, the resources touch upon site administration, including site creation, deletion, and restoration.
Date: October 26, 2023 Prepared For: Individuals seeking to understand and utilize Microsoft SharePoint Online. Sources: Excerpts from “Pasted Text” (a transcript of a Microsoft SharePoint Online introductory course).
This document summarizes the key themes and concepts introduced in the initial modules of a Microsoft SharePoint Online course. The course aims to equip new users and prospective site owners with the foundational knowledge to manage and share content, create engaging web pages, and understand the roles and potential of the SharePoint Online platform within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The primary focus is on accessing SharePoint Online through Microsoft 365, navigating its environment, understanding different site types (Team and Communication), and basic site management principles.
The initial modules of this Microsoft SharePoint Online course provide a comprehensive introduction to the platform, covering essential aspects from accessing the service through Microsoft 365 to understanding different site types, managing their look and feel, and basic administrative tasks like site deletion and restoration. The emphasis on planning, understanding site terminology, and leveraging collaboration tools like Microsoft 365 Groups lays a solid foundation for new users and aspiring site owners to effectively utilize SharePoint Online within their organizations. The course encourages hands-on exploration of the platform’s features to solidify understanding.
Microsoft SharePoint Online is a cloud-based service from Microsoft designed to help organizations manage and share content, knowledge, and applications. It enables the creation of engaging web pages and facilitates seamless collaboration through the web. SharePoint Online is a key part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
Here’s a breakdown of important aspects of SharePoint Online based on the sources:
Accessing SharePoint Online:
Key Capabilities and Features:
Roles in SharePoint Online:
Integration with Microsoft 365:
Types of SharePoint Sites:
Managing SharePoint Sites:
Modern vs. Classic SharePoint Experience:
In summary, SharePoint Online is a powerful and versatile platform within Microsoft 365 that enables organizations to effectively manage information, collaborate on projects, and communicate with their users through customizable websites and integrated tools.
Based on the sources and our previous discussion, Microsoft 365 is a line of subscription web-based services offered by Microsoft. It encompasses a rich amount of tools, features, and functionalities accessible directly from a web browser. Formerly known as Office 365, the suite was renamed to Microsoft 365 in 2017.
Here’s a breakdown of key aspects of Microsoft 365, drawing on the sources and our conversation:
In essence, Microsoft 365 is a comprehensive suite of online services and applications designed to enhance productivity, communication, and collaboration within organizations, with SharePoint Online being a central platform for content management and teamwork.
Based on the sources, managing SharePoint Online sites involves several key aspects, ranging from initial planning and creation to ongoing maintenance and even deletion when a site is no longer needed. Here’s a discussion of site management drawing on the provided text:
Planning Your Site
Before creating a SharePoint site, strategic planning is crucial for maintainability and user productivity. This involves considering:
Creating a Site
To create a SharePoint site, you typically need the necessary permissions, which are often granted by a SharePoint administrator or an M365 Global administrator. From the SharePoint start page, you can choose to create a site, selecting between a team site (for collaboration and file sharing among a team) or a communication site (for broadcasting information to a broad audience).
When creating a site, you’ll need to:
Utilizing Site Templates
SharePoint Online offers site templates that provide pre-built content and layouts for various purposes (e.g., event planning, project management). Applying a template can quickly add structure and features to your site, though it won’t delete existing content. You can access site templates through the site settings (gear icon) and “Apply a site template”. There are templates provided by Microsoft and potentially templates created by your own organization.
Understanding Site Structure
Managing the Site Look and Feel
Maintaining Your Site
Site End-of-Life Management
By understanding and utilizing these site management features, site owners can create effective, well-organized, and easily navigable SharePoint Online environments for their teams and organizations.
Based on the sources, a SharePoint team site is designed to connect you and your team together to share resources and content. It serves as a central place for teams to store and collaborate on files, and to create and manage lists of information. Team sites are a key component of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and are closely integrated with other Microsoft services.
Here’s a more detailed discussion of team sites based on the provided information:
In summary, SharePoint team sites are powerful platforms designed to foster collaboration and information sharing within teams in an organization utilizing Microsoft 365. They provide a range of integrated tools and features accessible through a web browser, making it easier for teams to work together effectively.
Based on the sources, a SharePoint communication site is designed to share news, reports, status updates, and other information in a visually compelling way with a broad audience. It serves as a portal for broadcasting information across a large group of people within an organization. Many organizations utilize communication sites as their intranet sites.
Here’s a more detailed discussion of communication sites based on the provided information:
In summary, SharePoint communication sites are powerful tools for organizations to effectively share information with a broad audience in a visually appealing manner. Their design and features prioritize the broadcast of news, updates, and resources over the collaborative functionalities found in team sites, and they are distinct in their lack of an associated Microsoft 365 group.
hey everyone welcome to Microsoft SharePoint online during this series of modules or courses we’re going to learn all about SharePoint online and how you can manage and share content and also create really engaging web pages using this amazing platform we’re going to discuss what it’s like to be a typical user in a SharePoint site and also a site owner this is a great course to go through if you’re looking to create your own SharePoint sites and manage them also if you’re going to become a new SharePoint site owner you’ll be amazed at the great potential that SharePoint online has for both the site owner and the end user so join us on our journey through SharePoint online hi everyone Welcome to our first module in our Microsoft SharePoint online Series this class is designed for someone who is new to SharePoint in this course we’re going to explore how to access SharePoint online through office 365. after completing this course you should be able to understand why to use SharePoint online the different roles in accessing SharePoint how to log into Office 365 and also successfully navigate in a SharePoint online site as always if there are any exercise files that go at this course you’ll find them in the video description so join us on our SharePoint online Journey hi everyone Welcome to our module one of SharePoint online now the first thing we need to do to access SharePoint online is actually go into another Microsoft platform called Microsoft Office 365 or Microsoft 365. in 2017 Microsoft introduced a line of subscription web-based Services through Microsoft that also includes Microsoft Office and they called it office 365. it’s been recently renamed to Microsoft 365 but one of the doorways to SharePoint online is to go through office 365. now the other thing we’ll be doing is accessing SharePoint and just a reminder of what SharePoint online is there are previous versions of SharePoint that have been created by Microsoft over the years but now we’re looking at a web-based platform called Microsoft SharePoint online SharePoint online is also a cloud-based service some organizations use it in conjunction with Microsoft 365 and some of them use it as a standalone web-based application or platform but the great thing about SharePoint online is that it really helps organizations to share and manage content and knowledge by empowering teamwork quickly helping them to find information and creating seamless collaboration through the web so the first thing we need to do is access office 365. to do that we’re going to be logging into the office.com site in my training environment I’m going to be using Microsoft Edge this is a Microsoft training platform but you could really use any browser you prefer for example Microsoft Edge or even Google Chrome now I’m going to go ahead and click right here and go into my browser now as I do this I’m going to come up to my address bar and type in office.com this is going to take you directly to the login page for M365 or Microsoft 365. right here I need to click on sign in and then of course I’m going to paste in my email address I’m playing the lovely Megan today and then I’m going to click on next I’ll need to provide my organizational email address because I will be logging into a work Office 365 account it’ll also ask me about reducing the number of times I have to sign in this is a great thing to do and I do suggest checking this box because if you sign into different applications that are part of Office 365 this will help you not have to log into each one separately now we’re going to be going to my home base or my Office 365 home page so let’s just really briefly look at a few common elements of this home page number one top left hand corner I have the app launcher next to it I might see my organization’s name and then that I’m in office but this is the online version of office so again this will be our jumping point to get into SharePoint online hi everyone welcome back now if you’ve already logged into your Microsoft 365 account it’s really easy to get back using your default browser because your computer is going to remember that you’ve already logged in using your company password and also your email account so I’m going to click back here again on my browser of choice which is Microsoft Edge and this is going to take me into my browser then to access again my Office 365 account I’m going to come up here and just type in office.com this time it’s going to remember that I’ve already logged in and not require me to log in again let’s look at some more common elements that you’re going to see when you log into Microsoft Office 365. in the top right hand corner you’re either going to see your profile picture or your initials I’m playing Megan Bowen right now so we’re seeing cute smiley Megan up there not every company will put your profile picture in there but some of your companies will allow you to do that it’s also important to remember that I’ve logged into a work or school account that’s why sometimes people call Office 365 their Microsoft for work or their Microsoft for school but it’s also important to remember that when we’re talking about Microsoft 365 we’re talking about web-based applications these are cloud-based applications meaning that all you need for them to run is actually your computer a web browser and the internet and this is one of the really powerful things about the cloud Revolution that’s begun happening is we don’t have to be actually logged into the same computer all the time our information can be accessible through a website now another thing we’re going to see that’s very common in the Office 365 home page is it gives me access to things that I use all the time so notice for example here I’m seeing files that I’ve recently opened or updated also if I come down I’m going to see basically a list of files that I might need to access and you’ll see here that it’s telling me I recently accessed these files and have worked with them so it’s basically giving me a jumping board to get back to them again if I scroll down towards the bottom I’m also going to see options where I can go in and see all my content this is really kind of a jumping board like you’ve heard me talk about to get to files I work with a lot and also the online versions of the Microsoft applications now speaking of those let’s scroll back up to the top and notice that in my case I have an option here to install office now chances are this has already been done for you on your computer but the idea is that with Microsoft 365 the way that my organization has it set up I also get access to Outlook OneDrive for business word excel and other Microsoft applications so Microsoft 365 Works in conjunction with my Microsoft Office desktop applications remember when we say the word desktop we’re talking about the Microsoft applications that install locally on your computer’s hard drive or a network and they would require you to be on that specific computer to access the soft software now again this is a great opportunity to check Office 365 out so go into your own computer and if you have an Office 365 account try logging in to office.com and spend a little bit of time exploring this home page and see all the great things that are packed in it hey everyone when it comes to Microsoft 365 it’s amazing how much you get so the Microsoft 365 applications include a rich amount of tools and features and functionalities that help you do so many things just from your web browser one great way to see some of the different applications that are part of the Microsoft 365 family is to come over to the left hand side to what we call the navigation pane of your Office 365 home page you’ll see over here on the left that I see a list of application tiles and some of these are familiar Microsoft Word Excel PowerPoint and Outlook but the thing to remember is that from The Office 365 homepage these are doorways to the online or web-based applications there are also going to be desktop applications that install locally on your computer but this isn’t all there are actually more apps if I come right here to the apps tile at the bottom and click on it it will actually show me additional applications that I don’t currently see in my navigation pane also if I go to the very top left hand corner we’re going to see a very familiar feature of Microsoft 365. this is called the app launcher sometimes people give it other names like the Rubik’s Cube or the waffle but the correct term is app launcher and from anywhere where you are in Microsoft 365 this allows you to see a list of all your M365 applications if I come down to the very bottom I’m going to see it say all apps and this is a list of the different applications that are part of my organization’s Microsoft 365 environment some of these I use all the time and some of them I don’t use as often now when I come back and look at this list I’m not going to see all of them on the list when I go to all apps I see everything I could potentially use if there’s something in this list that I’d like to add to the main menu I can actually come to the item the app and the app tile in this case and I’ll see a vertical ellipses on the side of it this is going to take me into a menu for options to manage this particular app tile if I select pin to launcher what this does when I return back to the main menu is it takes that particular app tile and it pins it in this case I’ve actually pinned the lists application which is a great way to create lists to put in SharePoint sites by the way and I’ve pinned it to my app launcher so the next time I need to go in and access it all I have to do is click on it and it will be there in addition if you’ve pinned something and then decide you don’t need it you can actually come to the tile click on the three dots at the side and say unpin from launcher this is not going to remove it from your all apps list notice if I go back I will still see good old Yammer down here at the bottom but from my main app launcher list I won’t see it there anymore so you can control which apps you see on the app launcher and which ones you don’t and again it’s a great way to really customize your Office 365 environment go in and check it out in your own account hi everybody now I know that this is a SharePoint course but we want to spend just a tiny bit more time helping you understand how amazing The Office 365 home page is over on the left hand side in my navigation pane I have the ability to create new content using Microsoft 365. when I click on this create button you’re going to see that it gives me options to create new Word documents PowerPoint presentations even Excel files using the online versions of the Microsoft applications so for example if I need a new spreadsheet I can click right here on workbook it’s going to open up a new browser tab notice here that I still have my Microsoft Office 365 homepage browser tab open but now Microsoft Excel online has also opened in a browser tab of its own I’m in a blank workbook and I’m ready to start working now for example if I want to start typing in this particular cell all I have to do is click and start typing now a few things that are unique about working in the Microsoft 365 applications you’re in a web browser but you can still type and create new content this content is automatically being saved to my OneDrive for business which is again my own personal work storage for files also I don’t have to worry about saving things because we’re working in a web browser so everything saves in the background automatically now how can I know that’s going on well notice if I come in and add some additional information to the spreadsheet in short increments what I’m going to see it do up here is say saving it happens so fast though sometimes it’s really difficult to notice that it’s occurring but everything is saving for me in the background as I do it and as I mentioned the default save location is OneDrive for business that we’re going to talk about in just a few minutes by the way now if I’d like to give my spreadsheet an updated name because right now it’s defaulting to call it book one I can actually click right here where it says the name and I can just come in and type in the name that I want and as soon as I hit enter it’s going to update the name because by default it’s going to give my new spreadsheets the same name as a new blank workbook and now you can see that on the browser tab I see the updated name so again as far as Office 365 goes it’s just like creating a spreadsheet on your normal computer but you’re doing it through a web browser application and you don’t have to worry about saving things and again this is something that you can try out yourself go into Office 365 and try using one of the Microsoft Office 365 applications it’s a great way to get familiar with the platform all right what if you need to find something in your Office 365 homepage well Microsoft has you covered it has one of the most powerful search capacities of any website I’ve ever used when you do a search on your Microsoft Office 365 home page it’s not only going to be searching through the titles of files it searches through their contents let me show you what I mean up here at the top of my Microsoft 365 homepage I have a search button when I click on it I’m going to type in the name of a contract that I’ve been working on in this company you’ll see that it already starts looking for search results for me but I want to delve even further into these search results so I’m going to come right here and select show more results it’s going to take me to a comprehensive list of search results and it actually filters them for me so convenient the first tab is all the content and notice I could come in actually right here and filter even by PDFs and photo types if you come down you’ll see other options as well but if you’d rather just use the tabs you can actually work your way to the right the first tab is for any files that have that word Northwind either in their title or within their contents so we won’t see it actually in all the titles because in some places it actually appears within the content and you’ll see here where it shows me a little quick quip or a little shot of where the word is occurring within the content of the file then I have sites these would be SharePoint sites where this word is located within the site I actually don’t have any when I go to people these would be people that are involved with the Northwind project and it includes both their email address and a phone number news are going to be news postings on SharePoint sites and you can see here how the word Northwind is actually occurring within the text of that particular news posting conversations is an interesting one you’ll see this includes content from Outlook and also from Microsoft teams and this is where the word Northwind has been included in either email content or within a team’s chat or a posting within a channel you might be saying that’s not part of Microsoft 365 but believe it or not it actually is especially if you’re off your company is using Exchange online all of your outlook information is now housed online and is part of your Office 365 account this is my favorite one images you’re going to see here a ping or a screenshot of what we call a dashboard but in this screenshot again this is just a picture we see the word Northwind actually inside and so it comes up in the search results Isn’t that cool it’s actually looking through not only the words but it’s looking through images and finding words in the images now the final thing I want to show you here is power bi this is a dashboard report building tool that’s part of Office 365 and I actually don’t have any North winds inside any of my current dashboards or reports but if I did they’d come up in my search results now if I want to actually go back and open one of these files up notice I can come in I can search based on file type I can also come in and filter based on the last time the file was modified and based on that information that will help me to refine my search results and if I see something that I want to open up all I have to do is come in click on it and it opens and again the browser-based version of the application so in this case it’s Excel online that’s opened and I’m able to access the content because you’ll never see something surfaced in the search results of Office 365 that you don’t have permission to access when I’m done all I have to do is click on the browser tab for Excel online to close the search results go back to my office 365 home page if I actually just come back over to the left hand side and click on the home button that’s right underneath my app launcher it’ll clear my search but the big takeaway from this is that searching in Office 365 is global through your entire Office 365 account and we can do this right through a web browser so it’s super cool if you have access to Office 365 go into your own account and try it out and and see how powerful the search can be hi everyone now with Office 365 what can you do to customize the environment and get to your stuff this is a great question first of all if I go to the top right hand corner of my Microsoft 365 home page you’re going to see a little white gear this is something that you will see throughout Office 365 web-based applications this represents the way to basically get into your defaults for your Microsoft 365 account when you click on it you’re going to see it open up a settings task pane when I come in I can do things like update for example the theme of my Microsoft 365 account you can see how it’s added it here in the background also I can go from the default color scheme of Microsoft 365 to dark mode this is actually really good for people that might be visually impaired or colorblind so there’s a reason for it and believe it or not it’s supposed to be easier on your eyes when you’re staring at a screen all day I’m going to keep mine on the default which is the white on white background you’ll also see some other options like change your password but keep in mind some of these settings may be controlled by your it Department to keep things secure and safe when I’m done making these changes I can come up to the X in the top right hand corner and click on it and the settings pane will close now another place that you can go to get information about your Microsoft 365 account is by going up to your initials or your profile picture that are directly to the right of the settings gear this will let you know whose account you’re logged into and if you want to see for example your account information if you click on view account it will open it up and actually take you in so that you can see your account information inside of Microsoft 365. this all opens in its own separate browser Tab and that’s the thing we’ve got to remember about Microsoft 365. it’s a browser-based application so everything runs inside the web browser we’re going to close that Tab and go back to our home page now another great thing they’ve added recently is the my content folder tile this is over in the navigation pane I love this because when I click on it it’s going to take me to a list of recent files that I’ve used in different areas of Microsoft 365 that I’ve accessed so any file from any application that I’ve opened using Office 365 I’ll see on this list and it’s a great way to quickly jump to the file or to the location all I have to do is come in and click on it and it’s going to open of course it will use the Microsoft 365 version of the application to open so this particular word document opened in word online in its own browser tab because that’s what it will default to we are using a web-based platform so it’s going to default to the web-based applications the other thing that’s really powerful about this platform is that it will interface with your desktop applications and I just want to show you that briefly so you can have ease of mind that you’re not going to lose the ability to get to them I’m going to open this PowerPoint presentation and of course it’s going to open in good old PowerPoint web application or powerpoint online but if I would prefer to edit this presentation in the desktop version of PowerPoint as long as powerpoint’s installed on my computer notice that next to the ribbons of powerpoint online I have an editing button this lets me choose how I will have this file be edited so right now I’m in editing within the browser-based version of PowerPoint but I can also come down and select open in desktop app what will happen is my computer will actually launch Microsoft PowerPoint it’s not open right now so it can take a few moments for it to open but the other great thing about this is then the same PowerPoint presentation that was just opened in powerpoint online will actually open on my desktop so notice down here I see good old PowerPoints open and it’s the exact same PowerPoint presentation a few unique things happen when you do this when you open something that’s been stored from an online Source now in a desktop app your auto save button will be turned on to let you know that if you make any changes for example if I come in and add some content it will automatically save this back to wherever this particular PowerPoint file is stored online if I close it everything’s still going to be saved and it will take me back to powerpoint online if I say continue here it will refresh and what we’ll see is any changes I made to the file in the desktop platform are still being added to the file here because it doesn’t matter if the file is open in powerpoint online or in PowerPoint desktop it’s both saving back to the internet and to my Microsoft 365 account it’s really powerful because you get the best of both worlds you can use powerpoint online you can use PowerPoint desktop it doesn’t matter and you can choose which one you utilize to update your files check it out welcome back everyone I want to show you one of my favorite tools that’s part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and it’s also important to Microsoft SharePoint online it’s actually called a Microsoft 365 group now groups are a service that work inside Microsoft 365. they help you really to connect different tools that you need to collaborate with a Microsoft 365 group you can take a group of people and actually write documents create spreadsheets work on project plans even schedule meetings or send email to that group of people so it’s more than just a glorified inbox for a group of people because it allows you to do many more things also know that Office 365 groups are actually really important in things like Microsoft teams SharePoint team sites and even inside of the planner application when you want to share a plan with co-workers so first of all where some of the doorways to access a Microsoft 365 group one of the really common places is through Microsoft Outlook now we’re going to start by using Outlook online so I’m actually going to come over to my navigation bar in Office 365 I’m on my home page and I’m going to click on the Outlook tile this is in a separate browser tab is going to take me into outlook on the web or Outlook online this is of course all the great utility of Outlook but from a web browser now inside of Outlook online to access my groups I’m going to come over to my folder pane remember that this is going to be next to your navigation bar and it’s not uncommon for it to be minimized so make sure it’s Again full so that you can see the folder task pane then to access your groups you’re going to want to scroll all the way down to the bottom you’ll see that groups are also something that can be expanded and collapsed so make sure that you have them open so that you can see them now what exactly are these groups well first of all they have a name and in most cases they are a group of people inside an organization that need a way to collaborate doing things like sending email to each other having a shared calendar and even using other tools like a plan inside of Microsoft planner now can I include guests in my groups I can if that’s been turned on by your Office 365 admin but let’s just take a minute and look at some of these groups and the tools that you get with them the first thing I want to do to access my group is click on its name now when I do that I leave my inbox and I actually come to an inbox specific to my group notice it has the same name as my group now some people might look at this and say oh great another glorified distribution list or email group Office 365 or Microsoft groups are actually a lot more than that the first thing though that you can do is send emails so if I come right here and click on the send email button it’ll actually allow me to send an email to everyone who’s part of my group notice how my group has an email right here that’s specific to them and anyone who’s part of this group will get this email there are a lot of additional great tools that you can get with groups so we’re going to explore that that in a future lesson so make sure you come back and if you have access to Outlook on the web try going in and seeing if you have any groups hi everyone while we’re exploring Microsoft 365 groups I want to show you some of the great collaboration tools that come with this service so right now I’m in Microsoft on the web or Outlook online and I’m going to access my groups by going over to my folder Pane and scrolling down towards the bottom where I see the different groups that I have access to the group that I want to go to is called my market project team group this is actually a group created for this company internally to help a group of people manage a project that they’re working on I see some great information at the group up at the top of the group name I’m going to see that it’s a public group this means that it’s discoverable to other people inside my organization using tools like the delve application it also shows me how many team members I have inside my group now Beyond sending group email like we’ve already explored another great thing that a group can do is give me a shared repository for files that this group needs to work on their project to access that area and come directly to this little piece of paper button this is actually way to go to the shared files that this group has in common when I click on it it takes me to what’s called a document Library this is actually part of a SharePoint site but we’re able to access it here from inside the Outlook web application which really helps to streamline things because if I’m sending an email and think about one of the files I need to work with with this group I can automatically get to it the top I’m going to see recent files that different group members have worked on recently and then down below I’m going to see the files and folders that the group has shared in common as part of this group experience another great tool is a shared calendar so I’m going to come up now again and click on the shared calendar button this takes me into another browser tab for the calendar web application and it’s going to take me specifically to the group calendar that’s been set up notice over here on the left that my market project team group calendar is checked off and I can see all the different calendar events that again are viewable and editable to any member of our group if I close the tab it will take me back to Outlook on the web now I have some additional really awesome tools here that I want to show you that are part of the collaboration that a Microsoft 365 group provides I’m going to come again up to those same buttons that allowed me to access the group calendar and the email and I will see an ellipses we see these all over in Office 365 they help us get to other great tools when I click another one of the tools that a group will have in common is an empty OneNote notebook this is created when the group is created and it allows them to have a notebook where they can do things like add meeting minutes store FAQs and again it’s part of the group experience and every member of the group has permission to access this notebook you’ll see right here the name of the notebook is always part of the group name and again it’s a great way for the group to have collaboration to exit out of the notebook all I’m going to do is just click on the browser Tab and I’ll go back to Outlook on the web we’d love to have you try this out so please go into to your outlook online and see if you have any current groups that you’re part of and explore hi everyone we’re back in Outlook online exploring Microsoft 365 groups there’s still just a couple more great collaboration features inside a group that I want you to see so from the Outlook online or web application I’m going to come to my folder Pane and again travel down to the bottom where I can see the different groups that I’m part of in the Mark 8 project team group we’ve already explored that groups allow you to have a shared inbox for every member of your group also shared files and even assured calendar and if we come to the ellipses under the group name we’re also going to see a thing called planner now planner is a task application that’s part of your Microsoft 365 platform and when you click on planner it opens up the Microsoft planner application inside of a browser tab now planner is a great application for viewing tasks inside of what are called buckets so here I’m seeing a plan that’s already been created for my Microsoft group and it allows every member of the group to be able to access the plan go into the different tasks that are part of this plan and edit the tasks and work on them together when I’m done viewing my plan I’m going to click back on the little X to close the planner app and go back to Microsoft again and Outlook online from here the next item that you have access to from an Office 365 group when you click on the ellipses is a site and notice the letter s next to this this is actually our SharePoint Online logo that we’re going to see as we start exploring SharePoint online in more detail when I click on site I’m going to see another browser tab open this is taking me to a SharePoint site it’s actually what we call a team site it’s a site that’s been created to allow my Microsoft group to have a place to collaborate within a website and right here I’m actually seeing the plan that I was just in inside of the Microsoft group so another again element or collaboration function of a group is a SharePoint site now to go out of the SharePoint site I’m just going to click on the X on the tab and it will take me back to Microsoft again and back to the Microsoft Outlook web application what we’re going to explore next is how to create groups so again try going into Outlook online and see if you are part of any groups welcome back everyone we want to now look at how easy it is to create your own Microsoft 365 group for this I’m an Outlook online or outlook on the web and I’m going to come over to the folder Pane and scroll down to the bottom to access the different groups that I’m already part of down towards the bottom I’m going to see that there are options to allow me to create a new group discover groups or manage groups that I’m part of to make a new group of my own I’m going to select new group this is going to take me into where I can give my new group a name as I do this it’s going to create an email account for my group I can update this by just changing this name up here I’m also going to include a description this would help other people if they were discovering my group to know what my group is about now before I’m done I also want to come in and edit the default settings of my group this has to do with the privacy of my group so when I click on edit we’re going to see that I have two choices for the privacy setting private would mean only members of the group can see what’s going on inside public would allow other people to view what’s going on inside of the group both of these settings will allow people to request or join the group I’m going to keep my group private because I’d like more control and I only want people who are part of the group to know what’s going on inside the final setting is do you want members of your group to receive notifications in their inboxes when there are group conversations or events going on I’m going to turn that off because it can add a lot of traffic to my inbox and to my also to my group members and boxes and I’m going to click on create now I’m not done because the next thing I need to do is invite again co-workers and others to join my group now this right here is a list of people who are already part of groups that I’m in and I can just double click on their names and it will automatically add them but then I can also come in and just start typing in the first few letters of a co-worker’s name and it will also allow me from my company address list or active directory to add people to my group this way I can always come back in later and edit this group membership after the group’s already been created it’s really easy to do let me quick and just add a few more people to my group now if someone is outside my organization and my company allows for guests to be added to my group I can type in their email address up here and it will allow me to add them when I’m done adding everyone to my group The One Last Choice I need to make is if I want some additional owners notice next to each group member’s name they can either be a member or an owner I’m going to make both Lydia and Patty owners now what’s the difference between a member and an owner a member can fully participate in all the group’s great functionality but an owner is actually someone who can edit the membership of the group so owners have a little bit more ability to do things also if you create the group you’ll automatically be again an owner of the group now I’m going to click on ADD we’re going to see that when I’m done my group is going to be created in fact it takes me directly to my group notice right here we can see again my group over here on the left if I click on it also if I want to access that group all I have to do is come in here click on the three dots at the side side and come down to settings settings allows me to go in and again decide how those if you notice right here how I decide how notifications will be sent for the group and also if I want to come in and edit the group itself I can also come right here and edit its name now we’d love to have you try this out so go ahead and try creating a group of your own inside of Microsoft 365 and start using some of the Great functionalities welcome back everybody I want to show you how to manage Microsoft 365 groups so from Outlook online I’m going to come over to the groups that I’m already part of in my folder pane now what I have here is the ability to discover groups these are going to be groups that I’m not currently part of right here I’ve already come in and I’m going to type in the name of a group that I’d like to join I’ve just typed in us and then I’m going to come down and you’ll see here there is a group that I’m not currently part of that it’s giving me an option to request to join it’s even showing me a contact card so I can see who’s currently part of this group when I click on request to join I can include a message that will allow me to become part of that group and then one of the owners of the group will have to give me permission to join to leave a group what I need to do is come into the settings of the group so I’m actually going to come down to one of the groups that I no longer need to access and click on the group now at the top I’m again going to see the name of the group whether it’s public or private but also the ellipses that allows me to get into the settings for the group I’m going to come down to the settings gear and on the right I’ll see my group settings task pane Open Notice down here at the bottom it gives me an option to leave this group this would mean that I would no longer see this group over in the list of groups that I’m part of on the left hand side in my folder pane of Outlook online now finally what about just managing all the different groups that I’m part of for this I have a manage groups option when I click here it’s going to take me and show me the different groups that I’m currently part of in fact it refreshes and opens up the People application because this is where my group membership is managed from as I come in and look at the different groups that I’m part of if I’m an owner of a group I’ll see that so when I come here I can see that there is again a list of the group members and if I expand it out it actually takes me in so that I can see each individual member and if they’re an owner or a member remember you can also have guests depending on the security inside of your organization’s Office 365 or Microsoft 365. so right here I could actually come in and take one of my current members of my group and make them an owner and remember owners are people who can manage the settings of the group when I’m done all I have to do to access my group is Just Close My People app it will update all those settings and allow me to come back in and in normal Outlook online I can start managing my groups from there so remember groups are a tool to help you collaborate the reason we’re showing you how to get to groups from Outlook is because we use outlooks for so many things already it’s a great place for all the different collaboration options of groups to come into play because you’re already in the Outlook online web application and try it out on your own create some groups and start using them to help you manage products or I should say projects within your organization hi everyone we’ve been exploring Microsoft 365 groups and we’ve been doing it from Outlook online but another great Doorway to your Office 365 groups is from inside Outlook desktop because we know a lot of organizations use Outlook desktop because it gives you all the great tools that we’re used to in an email platform now I’m inside Outlook desktop and I want to access my groups notice over here that I have my folder task pane open and if I come down towards the bottom I’m going to see the groups that I’m part of inside my organization now from here all I need to do to access a given group is actually just click on its name and we’ll see that specific groups inbox open so again this is the shared inbox where we can receive mail through our group and then up on the top I’ll see the home ribbon tab is going to customize because I’m now in a group I’ll see buttons that allow me to access the shared calendar that’s part of my group experience it will open its own separate window so we’re seeing all the calendar events that are specific to my market project team the group that I have selected I also have a doorway to the shared files that are available through or complement some SharePoint online and when I click on this it will actually take me to my SharePoint site associated with my group and into the files and folders that this particular group has in common and this will of course take me online now the other option I have is to get to my OneNote notebook that’s part of my group experience this will take me to OneNote online so this is the online version of the OneNote application and I haven’t yet put any content in my notebook so it’s empty and last but not least the other doorway I have is to the group settings that you’ll see here these allow me to go in and add members to my group edit my group settings and again really decide how I will get notifications about the group now is there a way to discover new groups while you’re inside Outlook desktop there is I’m going to go back to my inbox and up to my home ribbon Tab and come over to the far right hand side to the ellipses we can’t escape it right from the ellipses you’ll see that there is a browse groups option this is going to take me to groups inside my organization that I might or already be part of or are again public groups where I could either request to join these could also be private groups I need to say or I can just automatically join them so for example if I want to join the All company group I can click on join and it will automatically add me to the group if there’s a group that I need to request before I can join it I will have to again type a little message but again we’re seeing that you can access all great utilities of groups for the most part from Outlook desktop if you’d like to use this as your Doorway to get to them but again everything is really happening because of office 365. so please go in and try accessing groups creating some groups of your own there are great collaboration tool hey everyone welcome back now part of your Microsoft 365 account is called your Office 365 profile or Microsoft 365 profile with your profile Microsoft keeps track of where you go files that you work on even people that you work with inside your organization now this might sound scary but it’s not they use an application called Dell to help you manage this information and it’s really made to help you discover and organize the info the other thing to know is that delve is never going to change any permissions you’ll only see documents that you already have access to and other people will never see your private documents now how do we access the delve or the Microsoft 365 profile inside of office 365. well from my home page I’m going to come to the top right hand corner to my picture or initials and click and down here I’ll see a hyperlink that will give me access to my office profile when I click on this it’s going to take me to an application called Dell now the screen that I’m on right now is all about the person I’m playing who is Megan Bowen so we’re gonna see that it shows us her email address her contact information and if I’d like to update any of this content I can click right here on update profile and it will take me in so that I can see the different information that Megan’s provided and if I want to add to it I can keep in mind that depending on the info that you provide some of it might be discoverable to your co-workers now if I’m done updating this information I can come right here and click back on my name and it will take me back to the main me screen from here I’m going to see great information like recent documents I’ve worked on and also below people that I’ve recently worked with and you’ll also see here that if I hover over one of these people and click it will actually take me to an informational page about that person so delve is also about helping me find people that I work with and contact them it’s not about surfacing anything I don’t have permission to see now there’s one more view in delve called the home screen when I go to my home screen I’m going to see recent documents that co-workers have worked on they’re going to appear on little cards that are called content cards and the idea is that it tells me the type of file when it was last updated and also where it’s stored you’re going to see that at the bottom of these files I have options to add these files to my favorites over here on the left you’ll see my favorites view if it’s something that I would like to go back in and work on later also you’ll see here that I can actually create my own cards through boards and if I see a file that I would like for example to send a link to someone too it gives me that ability if there’s something here that I would like to open I can actually come to the file name click on the file and in this case using powerpoint online the file is going to open up it will only let me open files that I have permission to open when I’m done viewing the file I can click on the X and the file will close so delve is all about helping me to manage my information within Microsoft 365 and also discover other people and files that other co-workers might be working on as well hi everyone I want to show you how to access the delve application from your Office 365 home page so I have several different options number one I can come up to the search bar and type in delve there or I can go over to my app launcher and I can come down to all apps and it will of course be in my list if it’s an app that I’m going to access a lot I can always of course make sure that it’s pinned to my launcher which it is when Delph opens it’s going to open in its own browser tab when I come in I will always start on my home screen this is where I’ll see content cards showing popular documents that co-workers have recently worked on and one thing I want to mention if you’re ever feeling nervous that delve is going to surface content that doesn’t belong to you or you don’t want people to see right down here they actually have a little article telling you about how delve works this is just to help reiterate that yes your documents are safe inside of delve delve will never change permissions for your documents and only you can see your private documents in delve and also your files aren’t actually stored in Dell delve is just the tool to help you access the files I’m going to go ahead and close that because one of the things I can also do through delve is discover files that might be helpful to me I’m going to come here to the top left hand corner and do a search and this could be for any topic that someone that I’ve worked with or that I might be working on and notice it’s even making suggestions as I’m typing it in if I come down and ask Dell to show all its results I’m going to see that it’s showing me both people that may have worked with the Northwind project it’s also showing me documents and if I keep scrolling down I can see it’s all kinds of files with any of these files I can come in and bookmark the file to add it to my favorites I can also come up and hover over a person and when I click on their profile picture it will actually take me to their profile page inside of delve so delve is a great way for me to not only discover files but also people and any of those files that I favorite I can actually come right here and click on favorites and it will take me in and show me those files that I’ve favorited and I’m never going to see a file that I don’t have permission to see and access this is also going to tell me where the file is stored and if I want to open it all I have to do is just click on the file’s name and using the online version of the application it’s going to open up so delve is not about again discovering anything that you shouldn’t see it’s about discovering things that you should see and again locating people who might be subject matter experts that can help you get things accomplished more quickly and again when I’m finished I can close the file and I can even close delve and go back to my office 365 homepage if your organization does use the delve application go in and try playing with it and see what you can Discover it can be really exciting hey everyone learning about SharePoint online would not work if you don’t understand another application that is part of your Microsoft 365 account called OneDrive for business it’s also sometimes called OneDrive for work or school so what is OneDrive OneDrive is really the cloud storage that is part of your Office 365 account just for you it lets you store and protect your files and share them with others and get them from any device when you use OneDrive for school or work it’s associated with your school or work email now it’s important to know that with Microsoft 365 you can get over one terabyte of space for storing your files if your OneDrive library is hosted on a SharePoint server then your organization’s administrators determine how much space you have but for many of us we have a terabyte of space I like to tell people OneDrive for business is like having your own personal filing cabinet where you go it goes because it’s stored in the cloud so how do we access OneDrive for business from our Office 365 home page well I of course can come right here and I can search for OneDrive we’re already going to see that OneDrive is represented by a blue cloud which stands for cloud storage I can also come over to my app launcher and I’ll see OneDrive there as well for me OneDrive is really the heart of your Microsoft 365 account because this is where you store your stuff it’s the most personalized part of the platform when I come into my Microsoft 365 application you’re going to see that it opens in a browser Tab and a few common interface settings is that you’ll see a command bar at the top also on the left you’re going to see a navigation pane the default view in OneDrive for business is called my files this is exactly what we’re seeing here we’re seeing my files for work or school that are stored right here inside of this cloud storage you’re also going to see access to recent files that you’ve worked on files that you may have shared with a co-worker or have been shared with you and a recycle bin now it’s also not uncommon under this to have other SharePoint document libraries that you also have permission to access again these may not be turned on in your organization but when you come into OneDrive for business if you see additional areas below your recycle bin it’s just because your organization also uses SharePoint and it’s giving you again a way to get to your SharePoint sites from inside OneDrive for business now as always we’d love to have you try OneDrive for business out yourself so go to your organizational Office 365 Microsoft 365 home page and try finding OneDrive and accessing it hey welcome back everybody we’ve been looking at OneDrive for business as we get ready to explore SharePoint online now I’m currently in my OneDrive for business account this is a OneDrive for work account and I’m seeing the different files that are again stored here one of the great things you can do is manage your files from your OneDrive and we’re going to spend a little bit of time doing that so up in the command bar I’m going to see options to help me manage content one of them is that I can create new folders and files using office 365. I’m going to create a new folder I can name it and then I can take my files and store them inside the folder now one of the ways I can do this is to drag and drop the applicable files in I don’t want to click on the file name because it will open it’s a hyperlink instead I’m going to come to the left hand side and you’ll see that I get a circle with a white check mark inside of it this is my way of selecting these files without actually having them open once they’re selected I can hover over any of the file names hold down my left Mouse button and drag the files up over the top of the new folder I’ve created release my left Mouse button and it will move the files into that folder you can see here in the top right hand corner it’s telling me that’s what I’ve just done to open the folder up I can click and I’ll see the folder open and the files inside of it so we can actually organize content using our OneDrive for business web application to go back out of the folder I’m just going to come at the top and click on my files because that’s the view I’m in now what about bringing content that’s stored locally on my hard drive or a network drive into my OneDrive for this I’m going to use my upload button with my upload button I can upload files and folders one warning with folders if they’re really large you’ll be using upload speed which can really slow down your internet speed so I would suggest uploading large folders when your computer is not busy doing things like attending a training or a meeting we’re going to click on files and come in and I’m going to locate the files that I’d like to upload I have a couple of PowerPoint presentations I’m going to use my shift key to select three of them and then click on open here in the top right hand corner we’re going to see it’s telling me it’s uploading three files into that again into my OneDrive when I upload I am copying them so the originals will still be back on my computer’s hard drive so at best practice would probably be to either delete those files or archive them so I always make sure I’m not getting confused at which ones I’m working with now the other thing that some people will do is synchronize their OneDrive files synchronizing can be important if you don’t want to have to come to this site to be able to access your OneDrive files it actually allows you after we’ve synchronized to access your files from your file explorer you only have to synchronize once on the device that you want to access them from it takes a few moments you’re seeing me go through the process right now and it may ask you to type in your password but what it’s going to do is actually take these files and make it so I can access them from my own file explorer in my computer and it can save a great deal of time the first time you do it like I said it takes a few moments but once you’re synchronized it can save time when I’m done synchronizing Office 365 will tell me that I’m finished it even waves goodbye then to access these synchronized files I’m going to actually go into my file explorer when I open up file explorer what I’m going to see is a new directory over here on the left in my folder pane I now see it says OneDrive Dash contoso it will be the name of your school or your organization that you work for and what’s exciting is the files that we were just looking at through the OneDrive web application I can now see all those files and folders right here from my file explorer if I want to open one of the files up all I have to do is double click on it the other exciting thing that happens is rather than opening in word online for example the files will default to open in the desktop client the auto save will be turned on because again the file is actually stored online in OneDrive for business but this allows me The Best of Both Worlds cloud storage and also the ability to utilize my desktop applications if for any reason I do make some changes to the file I’ll see that it will automatically start Auto saving to my OneDrive because again it’s open from cloud storage and when I’m done all I have to do is close the file without having to worry about saving so synchronizing is a really powerful way to access OneDrive files without actually having to be in your OneDrive for business web application hey everybody back in OneDrive for business I want to show you how to quickly and easily share a file with a co-worker to share a file from the OneDrive for business web application which I have open I need to select the file so I’m going to come to the left hand side I have a PowerPoint presentation that I want to share with a co-worker there are multiple ways to share but up in the command bar you’ll see a share button also if you come to the ellipses next to the file’s name you’ll have another option to share now remember sharing is not like emailing a file that’s attached through email because when we email file attachments it recreates a copy of the file once that person downloads it to open it when I share a file through OneDrive I’m giving my co-worker or the person I’m sharing the file with a link to the file it’s not creating copies of it up here notice I have to decide the type of link and a lot of organizations the only kind of link you can create is one that’s internal to your org that means only people inside your company or school could open that file up down here another exciting option is that you can allow people to edit your file or by unchecking this box you can make it so they can’t edit the file you can also turn on the ability to block downloading the file after I set those settings I need to type in the name of the person I’m sharing the file with this is a co-worker so I’m accessing their name through my company address list also the strikethrough on the pencil means that it will be a view only link that I’m providing to them I can also type a message because they’re going to get an email and in that email they’ll get a link to my file and then I’m going to click on send after the file has been shared we’re going to see that in my OneDrive one thing that changes and I’m refreshing it just so you can see this is that when we look at the file name rather than saying private it will say shared and that’s because any file in your OneDrive you own that file as an employee or student of your school when you share the file you still own the file but you’re giving a co-worker or fellow student access to it another place you can go to see files that you’ve shared or have been shared with you is the shared view over in your navigation pane when you come here there are two tabs the first one is shared with you these are files that you do not own co-workers or fellow students own but they’ve given you permission to access their files either through an editable link or a view only link shared by you these are the files that you own and we’re seeing that PowerPoint that I just shared right here in this list and this again is letting me see a list of all the files that I’ve either given co-workers permission to add edit or View and this is what makes again OneDrive for business such a great platform because not only can you store your work files and school files but you can also give co-workers and fellow students access to them so open OneDrive for business up in your own OneDrive for business account through Microsoft 365 and try sharing a file with a co-worker hey everyone with all the different parts of Microsoft 365 that we’ve explored we’re finally ready to actually explore SharePoint so from my Microsoft 365 home page I’m going to come up to the search bar and type in SharePoint now it’s important to know that the version of SharePoint we’re using here is SharePoint online as we’ve already managed and remember SharePoint online is a cloud-based service that helps your organization to share manage content knowledge and applications and it’s in my opinion the most powerful application that is in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem now as I come to SharePoint we’re going to see that I’m still in Office 365 so I can see the app launcher it’s very common to see the name of your organization in the top left-hand corner and also that I’m now inside of SharePoint and if I look at my search bar I’m going to see here that it also tells me that I’m in SharePoint now this area that I’m in right now is called the SharePoint start page instead of seeing a specific SharePoint site what I’m seeing are content cards that allow me to see different news updates or sites that are part of my organization it’s a great way to explore what kinds of sites your organization has when you first start using SharePoint each of these cards represents a different site and I’d never see a SharePoint site here that I don’t have permission to access to go into a specific site all I do is click on the card and that specific site will open some additional features that you have here are the ability to go to the top right hand corner of a frequent site click on the star and this will favorite that site and add it to the list of sites that you are following so I can actually use this as a way to create my own list of common sites and make it very easy for me to access them by coming to this followed list additionally another thing I can do from this SharePoint start page is a search if I come up here and do a search and it can be for people it can be for Content it can be for anything it’s a very very Global search because not only am I searching through SharePoint I’m searching through my OneDrive I’m searching through anything that’s stored within my Microsoft 365 account when I type in the word up here and I come to the results page you’re going to see that they are pre-filtered there’s an all Tab and then a tab that shows me any files any SharePoint sites that have that word with them any people that have been associated with that word any news feeds or updates any images that have that word inside of them on text and any power bi reports are dashboards this is one of the most powerful searches inside of Microsoft 365. when I come to files for example I can further refine my search results by picking a specific file type applying that and even going further by picking seeing files that have been recently modified if I want to open one of these files I can click on it and it’s going to open up right for me using whatever online application is applicable in this case word online so doing a search from the SharePoint start page is very powerful to get back all I’m going to do is come right here and click on SharePoint and it will take me back to my SharePoint start page welcome back everyone I’m ready to actually go to a SharePoint site and explore it so up on my search bar I’m just going to type in SharePoint this will take me to the SharePoint platform and to my SharePoint start page from here I’m going to see any sites that I frequently visit and also it’s not uncommon down here to even have my it Department suggest sites I might want to access now I have a few sites that I’ve favorited up here at the top to access one of them I’m going to click on it and that site will open up and again the same browser tab as my SharePoint start page I’m now on a SharePoint site this is what we call a SharePoint team site now a couple of common features that you’ll see in a SharePoint site we’re still inside of Office 365 so I see the app launcher also notice right now the search bar tells me that if I do a search it will default to just search the site that I’m in SharePoint is really good with keeping up with where you are and searching that area finally in the top right hand corner I’m going to see who I’m logged in as and then below that we’re going to see some additional important information this is a public group so it’s what we call a public SharePoint site which means other people in my organization can Discover it and request to become members of the site I’m also seeing how many members there are for this SharePoint site which is something that we’ll Explore More in some future lessons if you come over I’m going to see the title for the site and the letter T next to it it’s not uncommon in a SharePoint site for to have it attributed with a Microsoft team this just gives the team a website to go with their team also my navigation is on the left hand side and if I want to access any of the additional parts of this site I can click and it will actually take me to that particular area of my site I’ve just gone into the documents area of this site which is a document Library I’ll also see that there’s a recycle bin this allows me to delete content and then access it a lot like your deleted items folder inside of excel so when you click on the recycle bin that’s sort would take you to any of those deleted items this particular site doesn’t have any right now but if I deleted something I would see it there what we’re seeing with a SharePoint site is that it’s just like navigating in any website we’re just doing it in a website that’s specific to our organization to go back to the top of my site I’m just going to come up and actually click on the logo for the site and I’ll go back to the top of my SharePoint site so again we’d love to have you try this out in your own organization go to Office 365 access SharePoint and explore some of the different SharePoint sites that you have permission to access in your organization hey everyone thanks so much for joining us in this first module of our SharePoint online series we have spent time exploring office 365. we’ve spent time accessing the different applications that are part of our Office 365 account and even spending time looking at how we can customize the app launcher we’ve also spent time looking at the OneDrive for business web application and also delve and again we’re seeing that with Microsoft 365 you have an entire ecosystem of applications that you can access from inside a web browser we finalized our journey by actually going to a SharePoint page and looking at how easy it is from the SharePoint start page to actually navigate two different sites that you have permission to access inside your organization and we spend a little bit of time exploring how easy it is to navigate a SharePoint site because really it’s just a website and now we’re seeing how powerful SharePoint online can be for helping organizations to bring users together and give them a platform where they can both customize and collaborate please join us for the next module where we’re going to actually learn how to build SharePoint sites hi everyone Welcome to our Microsoft SharePoint online module 2. whether you’re managing existing SharePoint sites or you’re getting ready to become a site owner this course will complement your current situation in this course we’re going to help you understand how existing sites can be managed we’re also going to look at how you can plan out your own new SharePoint sites we want to help you get familiar with SharePoint online terminology and also how you can create your own site navigation we’re going to be looking at creating subsites and even being able to delete and update site content after completing this module we want you to be able to understand site templates and also how you can use site collections to help you really create sites that are powerful we also want to look at how to update site navigation and even delete and restore sites now as always if there are any course files they will be below in the video description so join us for this course hey everyone welcome to SharePoint online now there is a lot of terminology associated with the SharePoint online platform and as we’re getting started exploring the platform in more detail I want to help you have this again common terminology available to you in our practice files you will find a PowerPoint that has several of these terms in it and I just want to share a few of them with you as we’re getting started one of them you’ll see is the second bullet on this slide it’s a communication site this is a really common type of SharePoint site that’s made to share information with large groups of people we’re actually going to build a SharePoint communication site during this module another really common element that we’ll see in SharePoint sites is called a library or a document Library it’s basically a file folder full of files but it can also have files inside of it the great thing about document libraries is they give a place for SharePoint users to store all the content that they need as they work together another really common element is called a SharePoint list I like to tell people that lists are like the spreadsheets of SharePoint online lists are anything that can normally be stored in a table so in rows or columns you can put into a list so lists can include everything from contacts to task lists to even lists of products now in addition to these terms you’re also going to learn about things like a site a site is a website in SharePoint online and anytime you go to a different page that’s called a site page so all of these terms are available in this PowerPoint in our practice files also you’re going to see a link to the Microsoft glossary list for all of SharePoint and it’s much more detailed but before I bore you with any more terms let’s actually get in and explore SharePoint some more hey everyone welcome back to SharePoint we want to spend some time getting familiar with some really common types of content in a SharePoint site so from my Office 365 home page I’m going to come up and actually search for the SharePoint application I’m going to click on it it will take me to my SharePoint start page from here I can go to any sites that I have permission to access inside of SharePoint I have a few sites to the left that I’ve followed and I’m going to select one of those sites this sales and marketing site is a site that’s been created for the sales and marketing department of my organization and I want to point out some really common pieces of content on this site that we’re going to learn to create during this module now first of all you’re going to see the title of the site up in the top left corner this helps me to know that I’m in the right place also every SharePoint site has a URL this is again the website address remember when you’re in SharePoint you are in a web-based platform but I’d have to be logged into my office or 365 account to access this site now on the left I’m going to have my navigation this is how I get to the different parts of my site and what I’d like to do is take you to a really common piece of content called a document Library when I click on documents it’s going to take me to a list of folders and files that this department has stored inside their SharePoint site this is great because it’s cloud storage notice it’s made up of folders and also all different kinds of files these files do not have to be Microsoft related but it allows everyone who is in this department to have a website for all their stuff I like to call it a walk-in closet for the group that uses the site another really common element that we’re going to see in SharePoint sites is called a SharePoint list for this I’m going to come over to my site navigation and go to product list this is an example of a SharePoint list with products here I’m going to see information that would normally be stored in a spreadsheet but here it’s just right inside of my SharePoint site you can see that it’s a list of products but everything is organized into rows and columns it’s a great way to give people who use the site quick access to the different products that this organization works with and depending on their permission they can also update this content which means everyone else can also get to it now a few other common elements in a SharePoint site notice in the top left hand corner we still see the app launcher so we’re still in Office 365 because this organization uses SharePoint online in conjunction with their office 365. also it tells me I’m in SharePoint and don’t forget the search bar at the top this is a great way to look for Content final thing to remember is that in the very top left you’re going to see the settings gear we’re going to use this a lot when we start to explore kind of the back side of our sites as a site owner this will give you access to allow you to update and edit the contents of your site so get into Office 365 navigate to a SharePoint site and start looking for some of these these common site elements so that you can get used to them and we’re going to start making some SharePoint sites hey everybody we’re ready to explore two of the most common types of SharePoint sites the first one is a communication site I actually have a communication site up on my shared screen right now now what exactly is a communication site in Microsoft 365 a communication site is a way to share news reports and status and other information in a visually compelling way a Communications site is really made to broadcast information to a broad audience usually a communication site only has a small set of members that contribute content but then that content is consumed by a much larger audience a lot of intranet sites for organizations are actually made into communication site when you create a communication site a Microsoft 365 group is not created so it’s a great way for again an organization to convey information let’s look at a couple of common things you’re going to see in a communication site when you come to this communication site we can see the title in the top left hand corner and again that we’re still in the Office 365 ecosystem with the app launcher and that it’s still part of the SharePoint platform my navigation is here along the top you’re also going to notice that if I come over to the right hand side I don’t see a list of members of this site because again this site is made to convey information it’s not as much made for collaboration it’s very common in communication sites as you scroll down to see things like news releases notice these allow me to get updates on the important things that have recently happened in this organization other common pieces of communication sites are going to be including links to things that I might need as an employee of this organization also if I scroll down a little bit I’m going to see it’s pretty common to have for example a calendar of things that are happening within my organization and also I’ll see here even an opportunity for example to meet with leadership through in this case a chat pane to find out about what’s going on and sometimes this will be hosted by platforms like Yammer but again the communication site is about sharing information it’s not about collaboration so go into your own organization’s SharePoint and see if you can find any communication site howdy everybody welcome back to SharePoint we want to explore a common type of SharePoint site called a team site now just a reminder to get to any of your SharePoint sites you can use your M365 home page I can either search for SharePoint here in my search bar or look for it over here in my navigation pane now once I find SharePoint I’m going to see different sites in my organization that I have permission to access here in the SharePoint start page I’ve actually favorited a couple of these sites and a few of these are what we call a team site I want to go into this team site called The Mark 8 project team now what exactly is the reason for a team site team sites allow you to connect you and your team together to share resources and content team sites are a great place to store and collaborate on files and even create and manage lists of information so we’re going to see some of these functionalities in this team site now a reminder we’re still in of course the M365 ecosystem I can see that because up here I have the app launcher the name of my organization and then of course a reminder that we’re still in the SharePoint online platform but under that I’m going to see the name of my site this particular site has been created for a project group inside the contoso electronics organization they’re going to use this site to help them get things done now a few common features in a team site are a left hand side navigation also when it comes to who can use this site if you go to the top right hand corner you’re going to see a list of team members when you click on this list you’re going to see that some of them are team owners and some of them are members but both a team owner and a team member have permission to edit content on this site at different levels this makes it really easy for me to come in and see who they are right here from the very top page of the site now what are some other common again functionalities in a team site over here on the left hand side in my site navigation we’re also going to see that it’s very common to have a recycle bin in a team site this is where deleted content goes right now my again recycle bin is empty but if I delete something it will be stored in my recycle bin it’s important to know what the retention policy is for the recycle bin in your organization so make sure you check with your it team on that fact another common functionality in a team site is a team calendar part of this is because often team sites are going to be regulated by an Office 365 group that is helping to manage the membership of your team this calendar will take me to exchange online and let me see a calendar that’s been created for my Mark 8 project team where I can actually have calendar events that have been created for the team in common another common element you’re going to see is a document Library team sites a really important part of what they do is to help the group of people using the site to manage the content there so here we’re actually seeing the different folders and files that this again cite have in common every member of the team site and owner has access and permission to use these files they can also co-author inside of them another common component in a team site is going to be a OneNote notebook when a team site is created for a group of people an empty OneNote notebook is created that can be accessed from the team site and here we’ll see it open up it’s empty right now and it opens in OneNote online but the idea is that this empty notebook is available for the team members to use from their site to put whatever kinds of information they would like and here we’re just viewing the notebook before it’s been used but it’s here part of the site ready for everyone to utilize and access very quickly from inside the again SharePoint site another common area that you’ll see inside of a team site as well are going to be planner apps now these planners are created again when the site is created this particular one when we open it up will open in planner this is of course a task management application that’s part of The Office 365 experience once you’re inside you’ll see that if there is a plan attributed to this group I can either create a new plan or I can actually go into a plan that might already be part of that SharePoint experience and this is what the plan looks like and think about it when a group of people are working together to get something done it’s very common for them to need to know who’s doing what and that’s exactly what the planner app helps them to keep track of from their SharePoint site so again we’re seeing that right from the SharePoint team site there are multiple tools allowing this group of people to come together collaborate on files communicate about tasks again and get stuff accomplished and that’s the main reason for a team hi everybody welcome back now if you’re ready to start creating some SharePoint online sites there’s some strategy that you want to go through before you begin that process when a site’s content is logically organized and easy to find it’s going to be easier to maintain and manage it also helps your site users to be more productive so as a site owner you need to plan out your site and there needs to be some strategy involved before you get started we’re going to explore a couple of sites and look at some of the different components that have been used in the site’s design to help make it easier for it to be maintained and also for users to be productive in the site right here we’re going to look at a site from the SharePoint starting page called The Landing this is actually the intranet site for this organization but it’s SharePoint online one of the things the designer of this particular site has done is put the navigation at the top across the very top now this is again a choice that can be made you’ll notice that in other sites the navigation will be along the left hand side like the sales and marketing site that’s been created for a sales and marketing department putting the navigation in an easy to see place will help your users be able to get to what they need more quickly other questions you should ask yourself as you create a site are what kinds of lists libraries or Pages you want to create libraries can be used to store documents and files lists can be used to track issues or tasks and pages are going to be the individual items within the site where you can display content you’ll see here that this particular site has a document library to help the members of the sales and marketing team to get to the files that they need to use another question to ask yourself is what kinds of apps you may want to include in your site apps help to support the users in the site and get things done apps do include document libraries and lists but they can also include things like news feeds to help keep users up to date with events that are happening inside an organization or department or even calendar events for upcoming events that might be occurring all of these are topics that you need to explore and decide the best placement for such elements within your site before it’s created remember with SharePoint online you will have what’s called a site collection which means the different pages that make up your site the document libraries the different applications all come together in a collection that is your SharePoint site hi everybody you are ready to create your first SharePoint site now keep in mind that to create a SharePoint site you have to have permission to do so in a lot of organizations normal users cannot create SharePoint sites and there is a request process that you need to go through and your site will be created for you a SharePoint admin or an M365 Global admin can give you the ability to create sites through permissioning now right now I’m on my SharePoint start page and in the top left hand corner I see two options one to create a site and one to create a News Post so in this particular company I do have permission to create SharePoint sites also please remember before you create your SharePoint site that you’ve planned the kind of content and the type of site that you need so I’m going to click on create site on the right hand side a panel opens up asking me the type of site I want to create now we’ve already explored these two again types of sites but just a quick review team sites are about a site that’s created for teams of people to collaborate together share files and basically get things done a communication site is a portal to share information make sure you pick the right one we’re going to do a team site now I need to name my site after my site’s named I’m also going to see that underneath it’s creating an Office 365 group and also a calendar this group and calendar are important because they’re going to help me manage calendar events and also communicate with the different users of my site using email the other thing that’s really critical here that’s created is your site URL this is something that cannot be changed very easily after the site is created your site name can always be updated later on it’s always a good idea to tell people about what your site is going to be doing so I suggest filling in the site description even though it’s extra then the privacy settings this is where you select how your site will be advertised to other people inside your company if it’s private only members people that you invite can access your site if it’s public anyone in the organization can see the site and access it they won’t be able to change content but it will be viewable to others we’re going to keep it private because I want to be able to control who has access to my team site also a default language then I’m going to click on next now remember I picked a team site so at this point I need to start typing in the names of my co-workers who will be able to access this site as I type these co-workers names in they’re actually populating from my company address list or my active directory this makes it really easy for me to go in and quickly start creating the members of my site these are again the people who will be able to access and edit content on my site now notice as I’m typing these names in that underneath their names it’s telling me that they are a site member I can actually at this point before I’m even done creating the site allocate either my different site members to be owners or site members now I’m playing Megan right now we can see her picture in the top right hand corner but what I want you to remember is that because Megan’s creating the site she will also automatically be assigned the role of a site owner and in this case I’ve also selected Patty after the site’s made can I edit this list of site owners and members absolutely and it’s really easy to do I’m going to click on finish and voila my site will be made now at this point if I close the different panels that are opening up we can see my new training opportunities site it’s already up and running and I already also have six members including myself and Patty as owners and my site is already ready to rock and roll so if you can create sites go in and try create creating your own team site hey everyone when you have a new SharePoint site you may want to update the way it looks one of the ways that you can do this is to apply a site template now after your site’s created the site templates box will pop up but also you can access it on your own in your new site so here in my training opportunities team site that I just created I’d like to go ahead and apply one of the site templates to this site to do that I’m going to go to my site settings site settings are located in the top right hand corner of SharePoint online directly from your SharePoint site so they’re really easy to get to so I’m going to come up and click on this white gear located in the top right hand corner of my screen and when I do I’ll see a menu of different tools to help me manage my site about fourth from the bottom in the top menu I’ll see apply a site template when I click on this it will open up the site templates now remember this is for my entire site so if I select one of these templates it’s going to update all the content of my my site there aren’t a whole ton you’ll see that there are two tabs at the top one are templates that are provided by Microsoft these templates are built around different core capabilities like event planning project management retail management team store collaboration team collaboration training and development and training in courses now to select one of these you just click on it you’ll see a details button this will take you into where you get a little blurb helping to describe what the site does also a preview of what it looks like and then in the bottom right corner you can click on the purple use template button and it will actually update your site to this template now remember if you’ve already added content to your site the template will not delete anything but it will update the color and add new content to your site and you’ll see that they come with a lot of pre-built content including web Parts which we haven’t explored yet but we will that can save you a tremendous amount of time now after I use one template but if I’d like to try a different one I just go through those same steps go to the top right hand corner click on the settings gear come back down to apply site template the Box will pop open and now I can pick a different site template and apply it so you can actually go through and try a few different ones until you find one that which you feel is applicable do you have to use site templates absolutely not but one real benefit of site templates is they help to add a lot of content to your site very quickly and then you can go in and customize the different content that is here one last thing to mention about the site templates when we go up to again the settings gear and go back down to the site templates options is that when you’re in the site templates box there’s also a tab for from your organization these are going to include templates that your own organization has created for SharePoint sites this particular company hasn’t made any yet and it’s because they’re so new to SharePoint on line but this is something that eventually an organization might build out so again we want you to try this go into a SharePoint site that you’ve created and check out the site templates and try applying one of them to your site to look at all the great content and updates that it can make all right welcome back to SharePoint we need to talk about sub sites now in older versions of SharePoint it was very common to have a sub site which is basically a site within a site especially when you’re looking at SharePoint server 2010 2013 2016 2019 subsites were very popular for the overall layout of a site however with modern SharePoint in M365 we really want to steer clear of subsites one of the reasons is that if you already have subsites and you’re migrating to SharePoint online and M365 it makes the migration process a lot more difficult what SharePoint online recommends instead is that you try to keep the architecture of your site flat instead of using subsites we want you to utilize team sites communication sites and what’s called a hub site to help keep the structure of your SharePoint site very flat now that being said if you need a subsite you can still do that so for example in my training opportunities site I’m a site owner so I can create sub sites also I need to create a subsite for a specific group of people who would like to manage content separately but within this site to do that I’m going to need to go into my site settings so to do that we’re going to come into the site and go to the top right hand corner to the settings gear and then I’m going to access an area called site contents now site contents is a great place to go to really see all the pages document libraries and different apps that are part of your site you’ll see when I come in that I’m looking at a list of the different components that make up my new SharePoint team site at the top there is a new button this new button will let me do things like add lists Pages document libraries apps and yes the unmatchinable the subsite we’re going to select subsite and when I do this I actually go into a view of SharePoint that’s a little bit different but this is where I can create my new sub site right here I’m going to go ahead and type in the name of this site notice I can include a description again the description’s arbitrary but it can help other people know what this site is for the other thing that’s a little bit different here it’s more manual I need to add everything in of course I can copy and paste but I even need to make sure that I come in and type in the rest of the URL I’m going to pick the language that my site will be in Additionally the template it’s based on notice here it can be a team site with no M365 group or it can be a team site based on having again an M365 group associated with it and then down below is it going to have the same permissions as the parent site and finally a create button so this will create my subsite for me so when it’s finished creating the site I will see that I’m no longer in the parent site but now I’ll be in my new sub site that I’ve made but again we’ve got to keep in mind that Microsoft does not really suggest doing subsites the other thing you’ll notice about this new site that it’s based on the classic experience because I based it on the classic template when I create created it so subsites are something you can do but we don’t recommend it all right everyone we need to take a minute and talk about SharePoint online URLs now just like a doctor has to know the anatomy of a body with a SharePoint site you’ve got to understand the makeup of your website address or your url now if we come up here in this site I’m in the sales and marketing team site of this organization I’m in a Microsoft environment so the URL is a little bit weird but we can still refer to it to help us understand the anatomy of a SharePoint site the first thing you’re going to notice is that it’s an https site this lets us know that it’s a modern site and it’s going to need the latest version of most browsers to run the next thing I’m going to see is the company name for me this is the m365x17718-452 it’s quite the number but normally this would be your company name and also this is the URL of your tenant now the next thing I’m going to see is I go over to the right it’s going to tell me that I’m in and SharePoint you’ll see that it says sharepointon.com this lets me know that I’m using SharePoint online some companies use SharePoint but not M365 this organization uses both the next thing I’m going to see is that I’m in a site this means that I’m in one of the sites that is part of this company’s collection of SharePoint sites then I finally see my site name which is sales and marketing now within that site if I come in and go for example to a document Library which I’m going to do what we’re going to notice is that my SharePoint online URL gets additional information at the end I’m still in the sales and marketing site but if I keep going over to the right we’ll see that it’s telling me I’m in shared documents this is letting me know that I’m in a document Library which I am if I go for example to a SharePoint list within that site again we’re going to see that now I’m still in the sales and marketing site but I’m looking at a list and specifically the product list so these SharePoint online site URLs give us a lot of information about where we are in the site the company that we’re in and also the SharePoint platform that we’re using and if you explore them you get pretty familiar with again what they tell you about where you are in your SharePoint ecosystem within your organization hey everybody welcome back in 2016 Microsoft introduced the modern SharePoint online experience previous to this time a lot of companies were using what they call SharePoint online classic now the modern experience was designed to be more compelling flexible and even available on mobile devices easier to use it was available in SharePoint online and also SharePoint server 2019 with some limitations but there are still organizations that are using the classic experience on my screen right now you’re seeing a document Library as viewed in the classic experience some of the biggest differences are that in the classic experience things are a little bit more tricky to edit and also the experience has a few functionalities that the modern experience doesn’t for example the modern experience doesn’t include some of the column types and customizations that you can make in the modern experience now if you view a modern document Library we’re going to see that it looks more like what we’re used to seeing in a SharePoint site things are easier to drag and drop and it’s also going to be an experience that’s a lot easier for users to come in and automatically start utilizing with the classic experience it required a little bit more time to get up to speed with how to make the sites work it’s not uncommon for some organizations to have some sites that continue to have the classic experience and then other sites that are already migrated to the modern experience become familiar so that you can know how to utilize both but count on for the most part sites being migrated to the modern SharePoint online experience because again with the modern online experience you’re going to have views document libraries and also lists that are optimized to make it really easy to pin filter and also sort which the classic experience it was a little bit more difficult hey SharePoint welcome back we want to talk about site collections now in previous versions of SharePoint like 2013 2016 2019 where SharePoint server was involved the architecture of a SharePoint site was to be a site collection now site collection was a group of websites that had the same owner and same administrative settings so that would mean things like permissions and quotas were all the same site collections were created in a web application like SharePoint and they would have a top level site that was automatically created and then all the other sites would be called sub sites well as we’ve already talked about we’re trying to get away from subsites in SharePoint online instead what Microsoft is recommending when you have a group of sites that are in common and managed by the same group or individual then is set up a site collection you create what’s called a hub site so our Hub site’s the new site collection no because they’re two different things but they accomplish publish a similar thing so what exactly is a hub site a hub site is where you unify your SharePoint site with common branding common navigation and everything can roll up into a centralized display also hubs help to enhance content Discovery by tying sites together with easy browsing so I want to actually take you to a hub site so you can see what it looks like I’m going to come over here and go to my Global sales site this is a site that I go to once in a while and it is a hub site so first of all how do I know I’m in a hub site notice right below again my SharePoint bar at the top that includes my search bar I see an additional navigation bar this is again an indicator that you’re probably in a hub site this is the global sales Hub site you’ll see to the right that it gives me navigation to sites that are all common to each other another element of a hub site is when you go to one of the sites that’s part of the Hub they all have the same branding this can include again the navigation bar at the top and then also the same theme so when I go to any of the sites that are part of the Hub I’m going to see that they all have a very similar look so that I know that I’m still in the hub experience even though I’m navigating to different sites within the Hub and again it’s very easy for me to go to the different sites of the Hub and then when I get to a different site like when I go back to my sales and marketing site again I’ll see that in addition to my navigation for the Hub at the top this site has its own internal navigation that will allow me to go to the different parts of the site but I can always get back out to the hub by coming to the top and again all of the sites within the Hub have the same theme and branding so that I know that I’m still within that Hub experience so this is kind of the next phase getting away from site Collections and again this is also part of the idea that we want to keep our SharePoint sites very flat and avoid doing site collections that include a lot of sub sites because it makes it a lot harder to manage and update content one more thing about Hub sites a hub site needs to be created for you buy one of your SharePoint admins or a global m a global admin in M365 so keep that in mind if you need a hub site and you want to assign some sites to it you’ll probably need to ask your SharePoint admin to enable The Hub site for you hey everyone we have explored a tool called a hub site which is a way to connect certain sites with common navigation and branding to make it really easy for users to navigate between them but now what we want to do is look at how you can manage Hub sites on your own especially if you’re a site owner so in my environment I’m playing Megan by the way I have a new site that was recently created to help manage sales for the Us sales team but they also use several other sites in common with other groups in their organization now currently these sites are all organized into a hub site called Global sales let’s take a look at it we’re going to see here how at the top you have the common horizontal navigation representing the Hub site and all the sites that are included in the hub site collection and notice when I click on any of them they still keep that hubsite navigation at the top and then they have the same theme to help me know that they’re all part of the hubsite experience but my U.S sales site that’s new is not currently part of that experience so I want to get it added so it’s going to make it easier for my users to get between those different sites when I go to my Us sales site right now it’s a standalone site so how do I get it added to that Hub well you have to be a site owner and you also have to have permission to do so if you’re not a site owner or you don’t have permission to do this ask your SharePoint admin they can set your site up to make it part of a hub site I have permission to do this so from my Us sales site I’m going to come in and go to my site settings gear we’ve spent a lot of time here hopefully you’re getting the idea of how many important options there are under this menu then I’m going to come down to site information now this is going to take me in and let me see things like the title of my site also the privacy settings and more importantly what we’re looking for is Hub site Association right now it says None So to allow me to associate this with a hub site I’d have to have permission to do so which I do and I need to know know the name of the Hub site for me it’s Global sales I’m going to select that and then I’m going to click on Save now one warning here sometimes when you set up a hubsite Association you will not see the Hub site Association come up as quickly as you want this is something that we tell people sometimes takes a little while to bake because there can be many sites that are being associated with a hub so when you first do this if you notice it doesn’t quite take effect as quickly as mine did it’s okay refresh the site maybe log in and out a couple of times it can take several hours for the hubsite association to connect but in our case it happened really quickly so it’s nice we’re gonna see again now the USL site has that common site navigation at the top and the same branding as the other sites so we’re moving a step forward and helping make it easier for those that use the Us sales site to also use the other sites that are part of the Hub site as always we want you to try this out so if you do use SharePoint go and look for some Hub sites in your own organization hey welcome back SharePoint fans here we are talking about Hub sites now this USL site that you see on my screen right now I recently added to the global sales Hub site collection we can see it here but there is one critical issue currently the U.S sales site is not part of the Hub site collection navigation so I need to take this USL site and add it to the global sales Hub site again I have to be a site owner of the Hub site for me to be able to do this Megan happens to be but if you are not request it from your SharePoint admin or the site owner of the Hub site now first of all I’m going to go up and take a look at the URL for my U.S sales site I’m going to copy it because I’ll need this URL when I go in to actually add it to the hubsite navigation quick ways to copy select it do control C right click and copy any of those are going to work they’ll all get that URL on your clipboard now I’m going to navigate to the hub site I’m going to do that by coming to the far left side where it says Global sales this will take me to the top of the site now from here if I am a site owner of this Hub site I will see that on the navigation bar I have an edit button on the far right hand side of the site navigation and keep in mind this is not just within this site this is connecting these sites together I’m going to edit this now you’ll see what’s interesting is that the editing is not horizontal it turns it vertically but once I’m done editing then it will be horizontal now I want to add that site to the site navigation so I’m going to come to the bottom of the current edit Hub navigation and I’ll see this little plus sign in a circle this is of course where I can add new content to the navigation bar at the top I need to type or choose what it is that I’m adding I’m going to be adding a link and then in the address bar I’m going to paste in the address of my US Cell Site I need to replace the HTTP so make sure you delete it out and then paste your url over the top I also need to include text to be the link in the actual navigation bar so I’m going to type in the name of the site then I’ll click on ok now I’m done I can see it here if I would like to move it further up I can either left drag it or I can come in and click on this ellipses on the right hand side and say move up or move down and of course this is the order that the sites will appear in from over from the left to the right I’m going to click on Save now I see if I look up here and I refresh my U.S sales is here now it didn’t quite move it over enough so I’m going to come back in again and say move up a couple of times because I thought I did but it looks like the change I made didn’t save so we’ll move it up with the move up button and then I’ll save that now it’s updated if I click on Us sales it takes me to the USL site which has the same branding and also that common navigation at the top and if I go to any of the other sites the users that use those sites can in turn get back to the Us sales site notice the navigation isn’t quite updating yet and that’s just because it takes a little bit of time for everything to connect but if I refresh those other sites once I go to them eventually the site navigation will be the same on all of them which puts us sales here in the middle so again try out some Hub sites see what they’re like play with them because again this is the updated way to do a site collection inside of SharePoint online hey everybody I want to be able to update some of the different facets of my site starting with the site navigation do I really want this navigation bar over here at the left hand side of my team site do I even want it on these are some of the questions you can ask when you start updating the look of a SharePoint site so where can I go to quickly make some of these changes well a great doorway is of course site settings so I’m going to go to the top right hand corner to the white gear and Microsoft is done a great job at putting some of these overall site navigation and look tools right here in this menu if you come down to the bottom we have an option that says change the look now this will give me three different primary areas that I can update in my site we want to start with the bottom one which is navigation how are people accessing content on my site now first of all I can turn my site navigation off completely notice right here I can say off save it and now my site has no left hand side navigation and sometimes people will do this because they want to keep the navigation within the content of the site if we go back to site settings again and come back down to change the look at the very bottom this time when I look at navigation I’m going to turn the navigation back on but I’m going to change the orientation to being horizontal now when I do this I get a few different styles of menus that I can pick from but these mostly work with again when you have drop downs within drop downs which I don’t but notice what’s happened now my navigation is along the top now are there benefits to this absolutely if my navigations along the top this might be something that the people I work with are more comfortable using they’re used to seeing the navigation up there so that’s where I’m going to keep the site navigation but remember you can always go in under change the look in site settings and you can again very quickly update where your site navigation is either Horizon horizontal or down the left hand side try it out in your own sights alright I want to update my site navigation a little bit more and just a reminder that to do many of these things that we’re talking about with updating the look of a site you need to be a site owner and how can you tell if you’re a site owner because you’ve heard me say that quite a bit you need to go in your team site because that’s what we’re looking at here to your site membership I’m going to come to the top right hand corner to where I see a list of everyone who’s either a site member or a site owner when I click on this menu I’m going to see all the different site owners and members and as I look through this menu I’m looking for myself I’m playing Megan and as I look through this list I can see Megan and under her name it tells me she is a site owner so this is important because sometimes you may go into a SharePoint site and try to do different things and it won’t allow you it’s because of your permissions in the site so we’ve ascertained that Megan’s a site owner and she wants to edit again her navigation bar first of all we’re going to come to the bottom of the navigation bar this is really easy to find there’s an edit button this will unlock the site navigation so that I can make changes to it notice how each item has an ellipses on the right hand side hopefully you know what these are for right when you click on them it gives you additional options to manage that specific item for me the first thing I want to do is remove the OneNote that’s associated with this site when I click on the ellipses towards the bottom of the menu I’ll see a remove option this does not delete the OneNote from my site it just removes the link to it from the navigation also you’ll see here that I can click on the ellipses and use it to move items up in the site navigation and sometimes the things are at the top it’s easier for people to find finally when I come to my site navigation I want to go to the documents area and I’d like to edit that content first of all we’re seeing that it’s a link in the site navigation and we’re seeing the URL to the site I just want to update the name rather than saying documents I’m going to update it to be team files because this is what my team refers to when they’re dealing with these again document storage for this site we can see how it’s been updated I’ll click on Save and now I’ll see that the navigation bar is back ready to be used and for example the updated team file still takes me to my site’s document Library it hasn’t changed any of the navigation it’s just again allowing me to personalize it to the people who use my site as always we want you to try this out so if you’re a site owner go into your site try modifying your site hi everyone what if I want to take my SharePoint site and really update the way it looks things like the color the logo you know give it a little bit more Pizzazz for that I need to go again to my site settings so from the site I’m going to come up to the white gear in the top right hand corner click on it and come down to change the look under change the look this time we’re going to head to the top to theme think of PowerPoints when you do this these are the different themes or color palettes that you can apply inside of a SharePoint site and as you click on them you can actually preview them this is also a place in some organizations where the organization will actually create branded themed colors so you come to this area and you might see some of them are very different but remember it’s what looks good according to your site and also company branding once I’m done picking my updated look I will click on OK or save I should say at the bottom and we’ll see that the new theme will be applied to the site keep in mind sometimes if someone goes to the site and they haven’t refreshed it they may not see the new theme applied so make sure people refresh the site and then we’ll see the updated theme inside the sites hey everybody welcome back to SharePoint nothing really recognizes a site more than its header so what is the header of a SharePoint site it’s the area at the top of your site that’s recognizable to the site and page it is below the SharePoint taskbar at the top but you’ll notice it has a logo it has a title and other important information to help me understand the site we want this to be branded we want it to be visually appealing so how can we help update the logo of our SharePoint site we’re going to head back to site settings click on the gear and come down to change the look this time we’re going to head into the header portion now in the header there are four different layouts minimal which is very thin compact which is a little bit taller standard and finally extended now you’ll see that for example extended is quite tall and takes up a lot of room vertically on my site if I want my site to not be scrolling forever I might want to go with the compact look it’s a little bit thinner doesn’t take up as much room at the top of the page now under the layouts I’ve got based on the theme that I’ve picked for my site the ability to customize the color applied at the top you want this again to pop so it’s usually better to pick a darker themed color now below that you can actually turn your site title off maybe you only want to see the theme and notice this just takes the title off now speaking of title on every SharePoint page you’ll see that next to the title there is a logo if you don’t provide a logo what does Microsoft do they will take the first letter of the first two words of your site name and those become your logo a little bit awkward but the good news is you can change it so as I come down it’s going to ask me for two different logos one is a thumbnail and one is a site logo the thumbnail is to represent your site when people search for it could you have two different logos here yes but I recommend doing the same one for consistency when people see that logo you want them to recognize that it’s your site so I’m going to click on change I have already downloaded my logo locally to my computer you can’t go online and find logo so you’ve got to already have them locally downloaded so that’s why I’m going in for each one and selecting it and we’ll see it get added now final thing I can do here is click on Save because now that I’ve made that change I I want to be able to see that logo update in my site and that’s what we’re actually seeing so again what we did here is we went to change the look we went to header and then we came down and we updated all this information for the site and the value of this is now I have a custom header that when my users see this header in my site they’re going to recognize it and know that they’re on the right site as always we want you to try this out so if you’re a site owner go in and try updating the header of your own sites all right we’re back in SharePoint land in this site you’re going to see an example of a team site where the logo was created by Microsoft and SharePoint online so right here in the top left hand corner notice the the name of this team site is event planning and so to provide a logo for the site all they do is take the first letter of each of the words in the site name and that becomes your logo it works when you’re first creating the site but really having a customized logo makes your site look more professional so we want to look at one more place you can go to update the site logo again my logo I’ve already got locally stored on my network or computer so I can’t go online to look for one when I add it to the site now to access where you can update the logo there are two different places this time we’re going to go to the second one I’m gonna head back to the settings gear again and I am a site owner another reminder of that from here what I want to do is come down to site information now site information is where you can do things like associate Hub sites also customize your site description and update the title of your site remember if the site’s title is updated it does not change the url in this case at the very top you’re going to see a location where you can update and change your site logo so I’m going to click on change navigate to the folder where my updated logo is located and then I’ll click on Save and you’ll see that this will then replace the logo that was originally provided by Microsoft with this new logo that’s what I want so again different ways to do the same thing but having a customized logo really does help to better brand and make your site more recognizable all right guys sometimes it happens a SharePoint site runs its course it’s time for it to die or maybe sites get created and they’re redundant two people create a site that can do the same thing that’s a bad idea so one of them needs to go away we want to have as few sites as possible so again if you’ve got extras get rid of the hangnail sites to do that I need to be a site owner also I’ve already done this I’m going to click on my site settings gear now before you delete a site do you have permission to delete it and what’s going to happen to all the stuff in that site we’re talking about the documents the calendar events the OneNote notebooks sites are not just web pages there’s a lot of content there you need to remember before you delete something that you know what’s going to happen to all that additional stuff so what I’m going to do from here is come up to my site settings gear and go down to site information this is where we’re going to see things like the name of the site it’s description I’ll so it’s privacy settings but notice at the bottom above the save button I have a delete site option before you delete a site Microsoft SharePoint online is always going to remind you about what you’re doing notice it’s telling me this will delete all the resources including the site the files the conversations do you want that to happen it’s asking me to back that content up now in this organization there actually is a backup that’s going on behind the scenes but you don’t know that’s going to happen for sure in your organization so please be sure before you delete anything you make triple sure that stuff is backed up yes I’m going to delete all the associated resources and the group notice that’s what it’s telling me and that group refers to the Office 365 group that works in tandem with this site to help manage the calendar events the conversations kind of that Outlook portion that happens within a SharePoint site I’m going to click on delete and suddenly I don’t see the side anymore it takes me back to my SharePoint start page and if I were to try to do a search for that site I would see that it’s not there anymore I can’t find it because the site is literally gone so again it’s a great way to manage sites but we’ve got to be super careful when we do delete a site hi everyone we want to talk about something bad that can happen and that’s when you delete a SharePoint site and you don’t mean to as a site owner that’s something all of us can do is delete a site we don’t need anymore but what if you do it accidentally and then realize you need that SharePoint site back really makes you feel sick doesn’t it but it does happen and there’s no magic undo button in SharePoint however if you’re a SharePoint admin or a global Office 365 admin you can help there is something there that can help restore a deleted SharePoint site the first thing we need to do is get into the admin portal for Office 365 and again this isn’t something that everyone has access to but I want to show you the process just so that if you work in an organization that’s new to SharePoint online you can help them through this process so I’m in my M365 home page and over here on the left hand side you’re going to see again my my navigation bar I am an admin a global admin actually so I can access my Office 365 admin tools I’m going to click on admin it opens up a new browser Tab and takes me to my M365 admin Center now we got to realize how important SharePoint is to The Office 365 or M365 experience it’s one of the biggest platforms so right here if I expand this lower section of the navigation pane I’m going to see that in the admin portal there’s a section called admin centers and some of the applications which are really more platforms have their own separate admin section SharePoint happens to be that way so I’m going to click on SharePoint another browser tab opens taking me to my SharePoint admin center it’s based on the same interface so it has again the ability to expand and collapse the navigation bar I do suggest you keep it pretty wide open the first few times you use it one of the very first things you’ll see when you come in here is that for SharePoint I have sites I have active sites these are the sites that are currently being used in the organization and then I have deleted sites well I recently deleted that event planning site and if you recall I didn’t mean to so my SharePoint admin can come in select the site and notice up here there’s a restore button the other thing I want to call out is that currently we’ll see that sites are retained for 93 days so I have a 93 or a three month retention policy and then they’re permanently deleted if you click right here on learn more it will take you in and give you a more in-depth description of what’s happening so this just tells me that deleted SharePoint sites will be retained for 93 days after 93 days the site and all its content will be permanently deleted this will include libraries lists pages and any subsites so it’s pretty specific I’ve selected my site I’m going to click on restore notice this tells me this site is connected to an Office 365 group restoring the site will also restore the group which means that all that great email content will be available to me notice it’s no longer here under deleted sites if I come back into active sites scroll down and look for event planning it’s back where it was before so it’s not an undo button but you’re again SharePoint online admin can help save the day if you are within that retention policy welcome back everybody what if you are in a SharePoint site and someone makes a change to one of your site Pages or a document Library anything in a site and it’s not a change that you like what can you do well built into M365 and also your SharePoint sites you have a tool called version history every time a user goes into a site and makes a change or an update it saves those changes under that user as a version and you can actually go in and revert back to a previous version if someone’s made a change that you don’t approve of as a site owner I’m looking at my market project team and I recently made a change to this site by adding this different styled header at the top or this text with an image underneath I don’t like it I want to revert back to the way the site page looked before the change was made the first thing I need to do is access my site pages to do this I need to go into a place of SharePoint in my site called site contents it’s kind of like going to the basement or the utility room of your site and it’s a great way to see what kinds of content are within the site to do this we’re going to go back up to site settings we’re going to come down to site contents now in the site contents list I’m going to see that I have contents and subsites and the different elements of my site are listed here including site Pages this would show me the individual pages of my site now right here I have my home page this was the page that I updated and again changes were made to this page that I don’t like so next to the name of the page I’ll see a vertical ellipses we all know what that does I’m going to click on it and then I’m going to come down and go to version history every time someone has been in the site or I should say in the page it shows me the date and time and then also the user I’m the one who again updated the page and I do not approve of it so what I’m going to do is go back to Lynn’s version click on the ellipses or in this case the arrow next to the date and time that particular version was created I can view properties of that version restore it or delete it in my case what I want to do is restore it so I’m going to click on the restore button notice what it tells me I’m about to replace the current version with the selected version I’m going to click on ok now I’m in a 2.1 version I’m going to go ahead and close out and then I’m going to leave my site contents view by just clicking on my site logo that’ll take me to the top of my site I’m going to see that when I come to it it’s reverted back to the previous version which is different than the way the site looked before but this version history being Again part of your site pages is a really great way if changes are being made to know that you can always revert back to a previous one if something gets changed and you don’t like it so go into a site of your own and check out the version history in one of your site pages hey everyone thank you so much for joining us for this SharePoint online training we’ve covered a lot of territory everything with how to access SharePoint online from your Office 365 homepage to utilizing the SharePoint start page as a great way to follow sites that you access a lot and also navigate to different parts of your SharePoint platform we’ve even spent some time exploring different kinds of SharePoint sites team sites that allow groups of people to come together communicate and collaborate and communication sites that help us to share information we’ve also spent time using the site settings gear to get familiar with great tools like changing the look accessing our site information to help start making edits to our sites once they’re created we even spent some time deleting sites and looking at how a SharePoint admin could go in and restore that site as always we want you to join us for more courses in the future and thanks for being here for SharePoint online thanks for watching don’t forget we also offer live classes and office applications professional development and private training visit learnit.com for more details please remember to like And subscribe and let us know your thoughts in the comments thank you for choosing learn it [Music]
By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog
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This source is a training module for using Microsoft Teams effectively as a trainer. It guides users through scheduling meetings, adjusting meeting options, and managing meetings within channels. The training covers utilizing meeting tools like chat, polls, breakout rooms, and screen sharing, including the Microsoft Whiteboard. Finally, it demonstrates how to access meeting recordings and attendance reports for post-meeting analysis.
Answer the following questions in 2-3 sentences each.
Date: October 26, 2023 Prepared By: Gemini AI Subject: Review of Microsoft Teams for Trainers Course
This briefing document summarizes the key themes, important ideas, and facts presented in the provided transcript of a Microsoft Teams for Trainers course led by Mo Jones. The course aims to equip trainers with the necessary skills to effectively conduct meetings using Microsoft Teams.
This briefing document provides a comprehensive overview of the Microsoft Teams for Trainers course, highlighting the essential knowledge and skills covered to effectively leverage Teams for conducting training sessions.
1. What are the key objectives for trainers conducting meetings with Microsoft Teams, as highlighted in this course? The primary learning outcomes for trainers using Microsoft Teams for meetings are to effectively schedule meetings and adjust meeting options beforehand to ensure success. Additionally, trainers should be able to effectively host meetings within a Teams channel, keeping all related information in one accessible location for pre- and post-meeting engagement. Finally, the course aims to familiarize trainers with essential meeting tools like breakout rooms and PowerPoint sharing to enhance meeting productivity.
2. Who is the intended audience for this Microsoft Teams for Trainers course? This course is designed for individuals in roles such as team supervisors, content managers, information managers, and project managers who are responsible for conducting meetings using Microsoft Teams.
3. How can trainers schedule a meeting within a Microsoft Teams channel? To schedule a meeting within a Teams channel, navigate to the desired channel. In the top right corner, click the “Meet” icon and select “Schedule a meeting.” This will open a new window where you can add a title, required and optional attendees, set the date and time, and add meeting details. Since you initiated the scheduling from the channel, the channel will automatically be populated in the meeting details, ensuring the meeting is associated with that specific channel. Note that scheduling meetings directly from private channels is not supported; you would need to use the calendar and invite members individually.
4. What meeting options can trainers configure before a meeting starts, and why is this important? Before a meeting begins, trainers can configure various meeting options to control the meeting environment. These options, accessible by editing a scheduled meeting and selecting “Meeting options,” include: * Who can bypass the lobby: Determine who joins the meeting directly versus waiting in a lobby. * Always let callers bypass the lobby: Allow participants joining via phone to enter directly. * Announce when callers join or leave: Receive notifications when participants join or leave (can be turned off to avoid distraction). * Who can present: Designate who has presenter privileges (e.g., everyone, specific people, only the organizer). * Allow mic and camera for attendees: Control whether attendees can use their microphones and cameras. * Record automatically: Start recording the meeting as soon as it begins. * Allow reactions: Enable or disable attendee reactions like thumbs up or applause. * Enable live captions: Turn on live transcription if a caption service is set up.
Configuring these options in advance allows trainers to set the stage for a productive and well-managed meeting.
5. How can trainers utilize the chat space associated with a scheduled Microsoft Teams meeting before, during, and after the meeting? The chat space associated with a scheduled Teams meeting, accessible via a tab in the meeting details, serves as a central communication hub. Before the meeting, trainers can share pre-reading materials, attach relevant files, and post introductory messages. During the meeting, the chat can be used for sharing links (like polls), answering questions without interrupting the flow, and general communication. After the meeting, the chat retains all conversations and shared resources, providing a record and a space for continued discussion.
6. How can trainers effectively use breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams meetings to facilitate focused discussions or activities? Microsoft Teams allows trainers to create and manage breakout rooms, even before a meeting starts. From the meeting details, trainers can access the “Breakout rooms” tab to create a specified number of rooms, rename them, and manually or automatically assign participants. During the meeting, trainers can open and close rooms, make announcements that are broadcast to all breakout rooms, set time limits for sessions, and choose whether to automatically move people to rooms and allow them to return to the main meeting. Assigning presenters to manage specific rooms is also an option. Setting up breakout rooms in advance saves valuable time during the live meeting.
7. What are some of the meeting tools available to trainers during a Microsoft Teams meeting to engage participants and manage the session effectively? During a Teams meeting, trainers have access to several tools to enhance engagement and management: * Participant Management: View and manage attendees, mute individuals or everyone, disable microphones or cameras, spotlight presenters, remove participants, and download an attendance list. * Chat: Facilitate real-time text-based communication and share links (e.g., for polls). * Breakout Rooms: Organize participants into smaller groups for focused discussions. * Screen Sharing: Share their entire screen, a specific window, or a presentation. Teams offers various presentation modes to integrate the presenter’s video feed with the content. * Microsoft Whiteboard: A collaborative digital canvas for brainstorming, note-taking, and interactive activities, with features like pens, sticky notes, shapes, templates, and the ability for participants to contribute. * Reactions: Allow attendees to provide non-verbal feedback (can be disabled). * Raising Hand: Attendees can virtually raise their hand to ask questions without interrupting.
8. How can trainers access and utilize post-meeting information and reports in Microsoft Teams? After a Teams meeting concludes, several pieces of information and reports become available within the associated channel. These include: * Meeting Recording: A recording of the meeting is automatically saved and accessible for playback directly within the channel or via a shareable link. * Attendance Report: A downloadable Excel file or an in-app view detailing attendee join and leave times, duration of participation, and roles. This report provides valuable insights into meeting participation. * Chat History: All messages and shared files within the meeting chat remain accessible in the channel. * Poll Results: If a poll was conducted, the results are typically collected and may be visible within the channel or the associated Forms application.
This post-meeting information allows trainers to review the session, track attendance, and share resources with attendees who may have missed the meeting or want to revisit the content.
Based on the sources, Microsoft Teams is a platform that can be used by trainers to conduct meetings. This course is designed to guide trainers on what they need to know when conducting meetings with Teams, and it emphasizes interactive learning with opportunities to pause and practice.
Here are some key aspects of using Microsoft Teams as highlighted in the sources:
The sources indicate that this Microsoft Teams training is intended for team supervisors, content managers, information managers, and project managers. The goal is to equip these individuals with the skills to effectively schedule and conduct meetings using Microsoft Teams.
Based on the sources, the training course provides significant guidance for trainers on how to effectively use Microsoft Teams for conducting meetings. The overall goal is to equip trainers with the knowledge and skills to schedule, set up, host, and follow up on meetings within the Teams environment.
Here is a breakdown of the trainer guidance offered:
In essence, the provided sources constitute a comprehensive guide for trainers looking to leverage the features of Microsoft Teams to deliver effective and engaging online training sessions. The guidance focuses on pre-meeting preparation, effective facilitation during the meeting, and post-meeting follow-up.
Based on the sources, Microsoft Teams offers a wide array of features designed to facilitate effective and engaging meetings for trainers and attendees alike. These features cover the entire meeting lifecycle, from scheduling to post-meeting follow-up.
Here’s a discussion of key meeting features in Microsoft Teams:
These features collectively make Microsoft Teams a robust platform for conducting various types of meetings, particularly for training purposes, as highlighted in the sources.
Based on the sources, Microsoft Teams offers a comprehensive Breakout Rooms feature designed to facilitate smaller group discussions and activities within a larger meeting. This feature allows meeting organizers and presenters to divide participants into separate, smaller rooms for focused collaboration. The sources provide detailed guidance on how to set up and manage breakout rooms both before and during a meeting.
Here’s a discussion of the Breakout Rooms feature:
In summary, the Breakout Rooms feature in Microsoft Teams is a powerful tool for trainers to enhance engagement and facilitate collaborative learning experiences by dividing larger groups into smaller, more focused discussion spaces. The platform allows for comprehensive pre-meeting configuration and provides organizers with significant control over the rooms and participants during the live session.
Based on the sources, Microsoft Teams provides meeting reports, primarily focused on attendance tracking, to help organizers understand participation in their meetings. These reports offer valuable insights into who attended, when they joined and left, and their overall presence during the session.
Here’s a breakdown of the meeting report features discussed in the sources:
In summary, Microsoft Teams automatically generates attendance reports that are readily accessible within the meeting’s channel and via the meeting details. These reports offer a comprehensive overview of participant activity, including join and leave times, duration of حضور, and roles, and can be downloaded for more detailed analysis. This feature is a valuable tool for trainers to track attendance and engagement in their sessions.
hello and welcome to our Microsoft teams for trainers my name is Mo Jones and I’ll be guiding you through this course today we’ll cover what you need to know as a trainer when you’re conducting meetings with teams this is interactive so be ready to pause the video and practice if you’re enjoying these videos please like And subscribe if you’re looking to earn certificates and watch videos without ads sign up for learn it anytime our dedicated online training Subscription Service check the link in the description for more information if you have any questions you want answered by one of our instructors please join our off-site community the link is in the description as well as always if this course has exercise files you’ll find them in the video description below let’s take a look at our learning outcomes for today notice that we have three primary outcomes that we want to accomplish for today we want to effectively schedule meetings and we want to be able to adjust those meeting options before our meeting starts so that we can be set up to win here we also want to be able to effectively host a meeting Within A team’s channel to be specific so we’ll take a look at that as well and the goal is we want to really be able to just keep all of the information in one spot so we can start the conversation before our meeting and we can continue the conversation after the meeting as well we want to go ahead and discover the use of meeting tools such as breakout rooms and sharing PowerPoints as well and we’ll take a look at some other useful tools that will help us to make the most out of our meetings so who should attend this is for team supervisors content managers information managers and project managers as well [Music] so we have a few tasks here in the form of mini lessons we want to go ahead and schedule a meeting we’ll spend some time using the chat space so we can start the conversation before the meeting actually takes place it’s a good idea to conduct a test call and have a run through so we can take a look at some of the hosting tools that are available for us we’re actually going to go ahead and start a meeting and we’ll take a look at some of the tools and after the meeting we’ll go ahead and download our attendance and take a look at the data that was gathered there as well so go ahead and open up your teams hopefully you have a team and a channel that’s already available if not go ahead and pause this video make sure that you have a team and a channel that you can modify and come right back welcome back well I went ahead and launched my Microsoft teams desktop app and if you take a look at current Curr have a team here it’s called the technology team and underneath this team I have two channels one is a standard Channel which is called Asset Management in which everyone that’s a member of my technology team will be able to interact with this Channel and then I have a private Channel inside of my team here called it budget where I only have a few specific people from my team that can access this channel here as well so at this point what I want to do I want to go ahead and actually schedule a meeting notice I’m currently on the asset management Channel I’m going to head on over to the top right of my screen and I want to take advantage of this meet icon here notice I can go ahead and conduct a meeting right now or I can use the drop down here to go ahead and schedule a meeting so I want to go ahead and do that I’ll go back to my budet my private channel here and currently as you can see you cannot schedule a meeting yet at least from a private Channel and so we would need to go to the calendar and invite those members individually there as well so I’ll go back to my Asset Management channel here and I want to go ahead and schedule a meeting it’s going to open up another window for me where I can enter some information regarding my meeting so here’s my meeting I just need to go ahead and fill this out here so I can go ahead and add the title I can go ahead and add some required attendees which I’ll go ahead and do and if I want to I can go ahead and add some details here do want to point out that because we use the feature to schedule the meeting right from our Channel it actually populates the channel right here for us right into our channels area so notice it’s on the technology team and the channel is the Asset Management so I’ll go ahead and fill this out call this monthly meeting and I’ll go ahead and set the date here maybe I’ll put it the first of the month here so April 1st and I’ll change the time give everyone some time after lunch here kind of get settled in then we’ll meet this point I’ll go ahead and add the required attendees just add a few here and maybe one more okay if I wanted to I can go ahead and add some optional attendees but I’m pretty much okay for now we can take advantage of the scheduling assistant we can have a sneak peek and into each person’s calendar here and just kind of look for any conflicts along the way so I’m pretty much good to go I’m going to go ahead and click on send and this will bring me back to my channel where I can have the opportunity to come back into this meeting and edit some of the meeting details so here we are we’re back to that channel here’s our asset management Channel and now we see the posting here for our monthly meeting so now if I were to go ahead and click on the more options here I can actually go back into that meeting so now that the meeting is scheduled I have some options in there that I can take advantage of and more specifically now that the meeting has been created I have this meeting options here that I can use and make sure that I can set up some things before my meeting actually takes place so I’ll do my due diligence I’ll make sure everything is set up so that my meeting can run very very very smoothly so I’ll go ahead and click on meeting options it’s going to open up in another browser so here’s the resulting meeting options screen that opens in a new browser we’ll go ahead and expand this here and we have some decisions to make in terms of getting ourselves set up before our meeting has started here so the first option is who can bypass the lobby and so we have different options in here we can say only I can bypass the lobby so I want to be able to let everyone in as they enter the meeting or I can say people in my organization I’ll leave it as people in my organization here the second option here is to always let callers bypass the lobby now a caller is someone that that’s actually calling in Via a phone number that’s provided when the meeting is scheduled so if your organization has the calling feature turned on when your attendees receive the email a phone number will be embedded in that email invitation and they can call in with their telephone and so I will let them bypass the lobby come straight in if they’re calling via phone I can set an alert to notify me when people either join or leave the meeting this could be distracting so it’s up to you I’ll turn that off here and then who can present we have different options here so we can say everyone can present people in my or organization and guests specific people or only me and so it’s your meeting you’ll have an idea of what you want to accomplish if you have specific people who are presenting you can go ahead and and just kind of choose specific people here all right so I can choose some specific people maybe Alex right and then and the other option is to allow microphones for attendees you can turn that off or on allow camera for attendees you can turn that off and on as well some sometimes you may forget to record the meeting and so we can actually just turn that on automatically I’ll toggle this on here and we can allow reactions different reactions such as thumbs up or clapping hands we can turn those off or on depending on the type of setting that you’re providing and then finally the last option is for some translation if you want to turn on live captions here we can enable this as long as you have a caption service that’s set up I’m going to go ahead and click on Save and I’m all done I’m going to go ahead and close that and I’ll go ahead and click close here so we’re all set for our meeting there’s a few more things that we can do but for now go ahead pause the video go ahead and schedule a meeting right from one of your channels maybe create a channel and go ahead and schedule a meeting once the meeting is scheduled go back and open up the meeting options and specify the options that you want before your meeting starts and come right back welcome back well hopefully you are able to schedule the meeting and set up your meeting options there as well I want to do a few more things I’m going to go back into my meeting options here so I’ll click on view meeting details under the more menu and there’s some other things in here that I want to go ahead and interact with so now that I’ve scheduled a meeting I also have this chat option here I also have the breakout rooms that I can go ahead and take care of so I want to go ahead and set up the breakout rooms ahead of time so I’ll go ahead and click on breakout rooms and just wait for that to be created here I’ll go ahead and create the rooms I want two rooms and I’ll just go ahead and add the rooms here so this is good because we can go ahead and set up our rooms ahead of time before the meeting sometimes it’s very difficult while you’re in the meeting spending a lot of time setting the rooms up and so well we can go ahead and take care of this right now so we have two rooms here so if I click on my room settings for room one I can go ahead and click on edit I can go ahead and rename this room if I want to maybe I’ll call this team one and then I’ll go ahead and call this one team [Music] two at this point I’ll go ahead and add or assign the participants so I can assign them manually or I can do it automatically in this case I I want to go ahead and manually assign my participants here and so it’s a matter of just clicking on someone’s name and assigning them to a particular room Alex will go to room uh Team one I want Megan on team two also want Diego on room one and Patty on room room two so just like that if I click on Alex I can also assign from here as well if I had a lot of participants I can find them by searching here but I’m pretty much good to go I’ll go ahead and click on assign so these are kind of the same things that we’ll be doing if we were in our meeting we have some other opts here up to the top right I can go ahead and add another room if I want to I can recreate the rooms I can delete the rooms or I can have some more settings here for my breakout rooms if I click on these settings gear here I can actually assign a presenter so when I set up my meeting options earlier in the web browser if I assigned a specific person to be a presenter I can actually assign them to manage a particular room right so Alex I can say Alex can manage one of the rooms if I want to okay I can set a time limit I can say we just want each breakout room to be let’s say maybe 15 minutes 15 minutes is okay we’ll leave it at that there we go and then the other option down here is automatically move people to Rooms I like to use this and if we want to allow people to return to the main room or the main meeting room we can toggle this option here as well so I’ll turn turn all of these on I’ll go ahead and click okay here I’ll turn off my presenter to manage the rooms and just like that we were able to go ahead and set up our breakout rooms ahead of time making things a lot more efficient for us when we actually run our meeting so go ahead and pause the video and go ahead and set up your breakout rooms sometimes it will be necessary if I go back into the meeting option here sometimes you’ll find it necessary to add some of your attendees here in the required attendees portion here otherwise you would need to wait for everyone to kind of accept the meeting before you can create the breakout rooms so go ahead pause the video set up your breakout rooms and come right back welcome back well so far we were able to schedule a meeting set up meeting options and set up breakout rooms now we’re going to go back into the meeting details and we’re going to make use of the chat space that’s available and we’re going to go ahead and create a poll that we can use for our meeting or for our Channel there as well so I just Clos my slide deck I’m right here back on my meeting details if you take a look on the top here we’ll see a tab for the chat I’ll go ahead and click on that chat icon here and so this is kind of the chat space that’s reserved for this meeting and so as you can see I was able to upload or attach a file for everyone to kind of take a look at before the actual meeting starts I just left a little message here that says please read before our meeting again we can always attach a file by clicking on the attachment icon right here now I just simply uploaded that from my computer here here are the team rules maybe I’ll upload another file here just book one file okay and maybe I’ll just say please complete okay so please complete your section of the spreadsheet so we’re just going to be using this space here to get anything ready before our meeting we could also if I click on close here we could also do that right here in our main chat space but it’s good to kind of just have that separate space that we can focus on right for the meeting here as well so at this point what I want to do I want to go ahead and actually create a poll you can do it from the chat so right here you can click on the form icon on and that will actually allow you to kind of create a quick poll here but I want to be able to create one so I’ll go ahead and click on the add a tab icon here and I’m going to go ahead and search for forms and so here’s my form so if I have any existing forms I can drop them in here I don’t currently have any so I want go ahead and create a new one here as well so the process of using a form in a meeting is different for a meeting that is scheduled within a channel as opposed to a meeting that is scheduled outside of a channel in this case what we can do is create the form and then share the link during our meeting as well so I’ll go ahead and just kind of write this up here so went ahead and said I’ll call this team event I don’t want to post to the channel about this yet so I’ll just kind of leave this here I’ll go ahead and click save so it’s setting up my form for me notice how it adds it here at the top of my channel it’s called edit team event and I’ll just go ahead and add a I’ll add a multiple choice question here and I’ll just keep it simple okay so we’ll choose an option we can have a barbecue at the [Music] beach hopefully it’s warm outside option two we’ll have a movie marathon and I’ll add one more option here and maybe my third option will be carryi night so we’ll do carry okay so at that point I can have a few options here I can say if it’s required or not maybe I will do I’ll leave that here have some other options here I can Shuffle the options so forth and so on some more advanced features here but I want to go ahead and keep it simple pretty much done so I’ll go ahead and click on the share icon here and I want to just copy this here right I’ll kind of just save this for a little later so I’ll copy this here I can shorten the URL if I want to so I’ll copy this and I’ll leave this later on for when I’m running my meeting I can go ahead and run this poll here so I’m going to go back to the posts if I wanted to I can drop it in right here in the form of a chat I can insert that link here but want to go ahead and save that for the meeting here as well so just a few ways take advantage of the chat and go ahead and just drop in some files or any special meeting related items that you need in there go ahead and create a poll as well copy that link make sure that you have it readily available for our meeting and come right back let’s go ahead and move on to the next section of our course here on teams for trainers we want to go ahead and make a test call just to make sure that our audio and our video is all working correctly and then we’re going to go ahead and run an instant meeting and just take a look at some of the tools that we need to be aware of before we conduct our meeting so I’m going to go ahead and click on my settings menu right next to my profile here so for settings and more I’m going to go ahead and click on settings and then I’ll go ahead and click on devices here so notice here you can go ahead and set up your audio and your video devices here so here are my speakers here’s my microphone and if I scroll down I can go ahead and take a look at my camera as well I’m having teams automatically adjust my camera controls there’s my HD webcam as well so at this point what we can do go ahead and click on make a test call it’s going to go through a video test and audio test and a microphone test for you it will provide you with instructions as you kind of go through the test call and if everything is okay you’re good to go otherwise just come back and make some changes to your devices there as well so pause the video and go ahead and make your test call my test call was completed now I’m back on my Asset Management channel here and so before my meeting starts I want to go ahead and just launch a quick meeting it will just be me by my myself here so I’ll go ahead and meet right away okay and at this point I just want to go ahead and join the meeting and take a look at some of the tools that I need to be aware of here so notice right here if I want to I can go ahead and copy the meeting link and if I want to invite any other people maybe someone is kind of you know not just kind of disconnected and they need that link they can have that option there as well so notice that we have the participants menu we can go ahead and show our participants our attendees are not here yet okay but we can kind of search through for our participants by typing in the search box on the more option here we can manage permissions we can go ahead and lock the meeting so that no one else can enter after a certain point as well and whenever we’re ready we can go ahead and download the attendance list terms of chat here is where we can drop in that link for our form or we can run the form there for everyone and in terms of breakout rooms right remember we did create the breakout rooms ahead of time so instead of setting these up they’ll automatically be created for us and we can just move things around as needed we’ll go ahead and cancel this here so the next thing here if I click on the more actions here so if I want to make any last minute changes I can go ahead and click on the meeting options and make some changes here as well someone ask about the meeting info we can always pull up the meeting info here and I can go ahead and copy the join info and I can share that with other people here as well so I’ll go back to my more options here one thing to not there will be different views that default view is the gallery view so we can kind of move things around here if you want to view more than nine videos at once we can choose to large Gallery the together mode is very popular you can share a virtual space with four more people and you can change the environment from an auditorium to a conference table as well there’s some other options here to show The Gallery at the top or to go ahead and focus on the content as well and so these are just some of the options that we can kind of be prepar appeared for here and again for the reactions we can remind people that they can press control shift plus K to be able to raise or lower their hand so once we’ve passed the equipment test and we’ve just taken a look around at some of the menus in here some of the host controls that we may need to use for our meeting we’re pretty much good to go I’m going to go ahead and leave this meeting here actually I’ll end the meeting and I’ll just miss this here all right so go ahead and pause the video finish your equipment test there and go ahead and launch a quick meeting and just make sure that you’re ready to use some of the host controls in preparation for your upcoming meeting welcome back well it’s time to go ahead and launch our meeting we’ll fast forward until that date here and we’ll start the meeting and we’ll go ahead and look at the overview of some of the meeting tools that we want to expl explain to our attendees we don’t want to assume that they understand or know how to use all the tools such as raising your hand or muting your microphone we’ll go ahead and present our screen we’ll open up our breakout rooms and we’ll demo a whiteboard activity as well so I’m going to go ahead and go back to my Asset Management channel here and I’ll go ahead and launch this meeting I’ll go ahead and click on join go ahead and join the meeting I’ll make sure that my microphone is turned off I’ll launch it here so once I launch the meeting here I just need to wait for my attendees to arrive now that we have a few people in here we want to go ahead and just remind them of some basic features uh such as raising your hand or using the chat okay using the chat here as well accessing the chat and we want to remind them of the shortcuts uh namely some of the meeting shortcuts such as raising or lowering your hand we can advise them that you can press control shift K if you want to raise or lower your hand so pressing it once will raise your hand in form of asking a question so as to not interrupt the speaker or the presentation and to lower your hand you can go ahead and toggle control shift K again as well you can ask everyone to make sure that they please mute themselves unless it is necessary they can use the shortcut key control shift M to go ahead and mute themselves as well at this point you can just kind of remind them of any kind of ground rules that was set forth before the meeting as well as you can see because we did choose the meeting option to have the recording to be automatic there we do see it here I’ll go ahead and dismiss this to kind of move this out of the way I’ll go ahead and click on my participants icon here and take a look at the menu now that we have some attendees in our actual meeting we have the option here to mute everyone maybe we want to mute everyone to kind of get things just organized here we can disable the microphones disable the cameras we can go ahead and manage any other permissions that we want to and whenever we’re ready we can go ahead and download the attendance list for individuals we can type a name to search for a particular person or as we Mouse over each of the individuals here notice that we can interact with them we can turn off their microphones right from here individually and we have some options here so we can Spotlight a particular person that will make their tile bigger on the team’s screen here as well we can remove the person from the meeting or we can go ahead and make the person a presenter so all these options here are available once our attendees are actually in the meeting and we’ll have those options there for them at this point we can go ahead and we can launch that poll actually that we created earlier so in the chat we can go ahead and paste that link right here and if we press enter all of our attendees have the opportunity to go ahead and click on that form which will open up in a new browser for them and they can enter that poll and the poll will be collected and updated in our teams channel here as well going to go ahead and close this side panel here for the meeting chat we do have our rooms here so here are our breakout rooms I’ll go ahead and click on here okay so we did have these breakout rooms set up ahead of time as you can see here’s team one with Alex and Diego and team two here with Megan and Patty so I can go ahead and open up these rooms here since Megan and Patty are here and that should pop them right into the room if I want to I can go ahead and add add a room if I want to if I had more participants here I can actually go ahead and assign them as well I can go ahead and recreate the breakout rooms I can go ahead and delete them and I can also go ahead and take a look at the options the the room settings here as well I’ll go ahead and open these rooms so my rooms are open now and well I have one room open because Megan and Patty were in the same room so I could do a few things here one of the nice features is I can make an announcement and so that I don’t have to pop into each room individually to to speak with everyone I can go ahead and just send a quick announcement here maybe I’ll say five minutes remaining and this will broadcast that message to all of the rooms here so we’ve sent your announcement to all rooms here as well okay so at this point I’m just kind of waiting for the rooms we did set a time limit of 15 minutes as well for the purposes of this demo we’ll go ahead and just close the room I’ll click on the more options next to room two and I’ll go ahead and close that room I’ll wait for the room to close and everyone to return here to the main session so my rooms have closed everyone is back here in the main session and uh at this point what I want to do is go ahead and actually share my screen so I’ll go ahead and click on the share icon here notice the shortcut key to share content is control shift plus e I’ll go ahead and click on share and uh we do have this present mode here we we have different types of presentations that we can use such as content only if our camera is turned on we can choose this layout where it kind of places us almost like augmented reality where it shows us and with our content behind us we have another layout where we’re kind of side by side and then we have kind of the news broadcast layout here as well so all these are available to us if we have our camera turned on so we have a few sections here if you have more one screen your screens will show up here so I can go ahead and share a screen or I can go ahead and share a window I’m going to go ahead and share a window here and let’s see I have quite a few I want to go ahead and open up my presentation here and if I want to play audio I want to make sure that I have include computer sound turned on here not playing audio just want to go ahead and open up this PowerPoint slide here okay and so now I’m presenting right here I can go back to my meeting by clicking on the small icon down here as well I can stop sharing by clicking on the X I do have my menu kind of up here at the top I’ll go back here there it is okay so I can give control to someone else if I want to I can stop presenting I can pin this bar so that it stays here so so that I can always see it if I turn on my camera I can switch to one of these other present views here as well going to go ahead and stop presenting and this will bring me back here to my main window if I want to share something else here I’ll go back to my share content and one of the features here is the Microsoft whiteboard and if I click on my whiteboard here will open up my whiteboard for me so here’s my whiteboard I’m going to go ahead and maximize my screen actually there we go and so from my whiteboard I can do a few things here notice I have my writing instruments here I have my Eraser my highlighter and as we just kind of mouse over these it kind of gives us some information as to what they are here’s my lasso that I can use to select anything that I’ve kind of marked up and the ruler says it’s coming soon so I can drop notes on here different types here I can have a note Grid or I can just simply drop a yellow note so kind of like a sticky so my sticky note and once I have that here on my whiteboard I can move my whiteboard around just by clicking on an empty space just kind of dragging things around here as well do I have my zoom controls down here in the bottom so I can zoom out or I can zoom in right so I can just go ahead and interact with this here as well now my attendees can actually mark this up as well so they do have the capability to go ahead and add some notes on here or maybe add a note grid I’ll go ahead and make use of the pen here and so the pen does give you some kind of Correction as you’re actually writing we’ll go ahead and try to reset that there we can change the size the color of that nature as well so I’m going to go ahead and close this pen window here and go ahead and click on here’s so here’s the inking and if I want to add some other things here I can such as text I can drop a text box right onto my canvas and then if I want to add some shapes I have various shapes that I can use here as well all right and if I go back there’s also some templates in here that we can use so there are a lot of built-in templates in here so for example such as brainstorming we have an affinity diagram a brainstorm we can drop this on here if we want to okay we have a topic brainstorm so we can brainstorm various topics with our team so we can do that as well so I’ll go ahead and delete these here here from my canvas and we’ll wrap up by just dropping in this topic brainstorm here I just need to go ahead and place it here and once it’s done I’ll do my best to kind of resize things here and this will give everyone an opportunity to go ahead and interact we can enter our topics and we can enter any brainstorming ideas in each of these topic columns here as well so very nice tool that Microsoft has provided for us various activities I challenge you to go ahead and just kind of explore all these different options here okay from brainstorming problem solving design all the way down to learning take a look at these and see if any of these will be helpful for your meeting once I’m done if I go ahead and click on the gear icon here I can export this as an image if I want to I can go ahead and actually open this in a separate window in the actual app if I want to and as always if I want my participants to be able to edit this I can go ahead and check this off here as well so go ahead and pause this video we covered quite a few here go ahead and launch that meeting that you scheduled and go ahead and take a look at the different tools that you have available to you to just kind of manage your meeting and your attendees open up that breakout room and play around with those breakout rooms as well well share your screen take a look at the different sharing options and go ahead and share that whiteboard and then come right back welcome back we covered quite a bit there when we started our meeting such as the overview of the meeting tools for our attendees presenting our screen the breakout rooms and the Whiteboard activity as well so now we want to go ahead and wrap up and see what teams has recorded for us and now that our meeting is over one of the things that we want to take a look at is the attendance here there are a few ways that we can do that I’ll go back to my channel here and so here we have this extensive report just based on our meeting so here are some of the files that we shared in the chat earlier we can see that the recording was started a form was shared and here is the attendance report we can actually go ahead and click on the attendance report right here it will open in an Excel sheet we can go ahead and take a look at that as well and if we go down a little further we can see that the meeting was recorded so we can play back the meeting right here on the more options we can open it or we can get a link here for it as well so I’ll click on the attendance report I’ll go ahead and save that maybe to my downloads folder here and once that’s ready I’ll go ahead and open that up another thing that I can do is I can go back to the meeting here to the meeting options I’ll click on view meeting details and once I’m here I can actually click on the attendance and if I just click on the appropriate meeting here here we can see all of our attendees when they joined when they left the meeting duration and their role as well so we don’t necessarily need to open the Excel file we can actually just take a look here and get all of our data we can also download our data from right here as well but let me go ahead and grab that Excel file so this is what the Excel file looks like okay just kind of move things around here a little bit and I’ll Auto expand all of these columns here okay so kind of the same information here the title of the meeting the start time the end time even the meeting ID and all of our attendees here as well so very nice if you want to have that you can share that or print that or distribute that as necessary and so it’s pretty cool right we’re able to just get a nice recap of our meeting notice that when we come back to our Channel kind of condenses everything for us right here if we want more details we can just click on the little icon here for replies and we can get a nice summary and overview of that as well so go ahead and pause the video and come back to the channel and observe some of the reporting that was provided by Microsoft teams here some of them will be very very useful especially going forward when you are scheduling future meetings so go ahead and pause the video visit the channel take a and see what was reported and come right back welcome back and congratulations on completing our course on Microsoft teams for trainers hopefully you’re more prepared and you’re more confident with scheduling meetings and conducting meetings in the future as well just a quick recap here we scheduled a meeting and we took a look at some of the meeting options and we’re able to create the breakout rooms ahead of time once the meeting was scheduled we’re able to use the chat space to share files and create a poll in the form of a link that we were able to use later on in the actual meeting we conducted a test call to make sure that our audio and video checked out and our microphone checked out as well and then we had a quick run through a quick meeting using the meet Now command on the top right of our Channel and we took a look at some of the host tools that we would need when we’re conducting our meeting we started a meeting and we notified our attendees of some of the common tools that they will need such as raising their hand or muting or unmuting themselves we’re able to present our screen we’re able to open our breakout rooms and close them and actually broadcast a message to the breakout rooms as well we had a preview of the Whiteboard feature that’s available in Microsoft teams and once the meeting was over we’re able to download the attendance take a look at it and we were able to look at the report that Microsoft teams created for US based on our meeting and we’re able to see that the meeting was recorded and available right there in our Channel space as well so congratulations on completing this course and I look forward to seeing all of you in a future learn it course have a wonderful day thanks for watching don’t forget we also offer live classes and office applications professional development and private training visit learn it.com for more details please remember to like And subscribe and let us know your thoughts in the comments thank you for choosing learn it [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!
Mufti Tariq Masood’s podcast discusses a controversy surrounding a bill passed in Pakistan’s Senate and Assembly concerning the regulation of madrasas (religious schools). The central conflict involves differing opinions among prominent religious scholars, particularly regarding the involvement of Jamaat-e-Rasheed and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, on whether madrasas should come under the Ministry of Education. The podcast features Masood expressing his neutral stance while addressing concerns raised by various parties, including the potential loss of autonomy for madrasas and the fairness of the government’s actions. Masood presents arguments from both sides, highlighting the complexities of the issue and the strong emotions it evokes. He concludes by calling for unity among religious scholars and a resolution that respects the rights of all stakeholders.
This study guide will focus on the key topics and figures discussed in the provided sources, which primarily consist of a podcast transcript discussing a conflict within the Islamic community regarding the management of Madaris (religious schools) in Pakistan.
By examining these key topics, figures, and conflicts, one can gain a better understanding of the complex issues surrounding the management of Madaris in Pakistan. It is also important to note the podcast host is trying to remain neutral and is presenting different points of view. This is not a simple issue and does not have a simple answer.
Okay, here is a briefing document based on the provided sources and our conversation history, focusing on the key issues surrounding the management of Madaris in Pakistan:
Background: This document provides a briefing on the ongoing conflict concerning the management of Madaris (religious schools) in Pakistan, drawing from a podcast transcript [1-3]. The conflict primarily revolves around a 2019 agreement between the government and various Ulama (religious scholars) and a subsequent bill passed under the Society Act, which is seen as a reversal of that agreement [4-6].
Key Issues:
Key Figures:
Core Conflicts:
Potential Solutions:
Analysis: The conflict is complex, with a mix of legal, political, and religious considerations. It is also important to note the podcast host is trying to remain neutral and is presenting different points of view. This is not a simple issue and does not have a simple answer. The differing opinions among the Ulama further complicate the situation. There is a clear desire to resolve the issues peacefully and to ensure the independence and well-being of Madaris and their students.
Okay, here’s an FAQ based on the provided sources and our conversation history, addressing common questions about the Madaris management conflict in Pakistan:
Q: What is the main issue of the Madaris conflict?
Q: What was the 2019 agreement about?
Q: What is the Society Act and why is it controversial?
Q: What is the difference between Wizarat Talim and Wizarat Dakhla?
Q: What is a “Darbari Mullah”?
Q: Who are the key figures involved in this conflict?
Q: Why are some Ulama against the Society Act?
Q: What are the benefits of being under Wizarat Talim?
Q: What is the proposed solution to this conflict?
Q: What is the significance of the 2019 agreement?
Q: What are the potential consequences of this conflict?
This FAQ should provide a comprehensive overview of the Madaris management conflict based on the provided sources and our conversation history.
Okay, here is a timeline of the key events related to the Madaris management conflict, based on the provided sources and our conversation history:
Timeline of Madaris Management Conflict:
This timeline highlights the key moments in the ongoing conflict, from the initial agreements to the recent controversies. The timeline makes clear the major points of contention and how the current issues emerged from past agreements and disagreements.
The sources reveal significant challenges to Ulama unity, particularly regarding the management of Madaris and differing views on government engagement [1-3]. Here’s a breakdown of the complexities:
In conclusion, the sources reveal that Ulama unity is severely challenged due to conflicting views on Madaris management, accusations of government alignment, varying interpretations of agreements, conflicting loyalties, lack of consultation, and a host of other factors. The path to unity remains complex, with calls for mutual respect and understanding in the midst of deeply entrenched disagreements.
The sources discuss Madaris registration as a complex and contentious issue, with multiple perspectives and significant disagreements. Here’s an overview of the key points regarding Madaris registration, drawing from the sources and our conversation history:
In conclusion, Madaris registration is a multifaceted issue with deep historical roots, and current debates are tied to power dynamics, differing opinions about autonomy, and the implementation of past agreements. The key point is that there is no simple answer and that a solution must address the legitimate needs and concerns of all stakeholders.
Government policies, as depicted in the sources, are a major source of contention and division, particularly regarding the regulation and oversight of Madaris [1-41]. Here’s a breakdown of the key government policies discussed and their implications:
In conclusion, government policies, particularly regarding the registration and oversight of Madaris, are a major source of tension and division. The government’s actions, the lack of consultation with stakeholders, and varying interpretations of past agreements have contributed to the complex situation. The sources reveal a need for more inclusive and respectful dialogue to find a solution that accommodates the diverse needs and perspectives of all stakeholders.
Jamaat Rasheed is a significant entity within the context of the Madaris (religious schools) and the controversies surrounding their registration and governance, as detailed in the sources. Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of Jamaat Rasheed, incorporating the information from the sources and our conversation history:
In summary, Jamaat Rasheed is a prominent entity within the Madaris system that has been embroiled in controversies regarding government policies and Madaris registration. They are often viewed with suspicion and accused of being too closely aligned with the government, which has made them a focal point in the ongoing conflict between different factions of the Ulama. The sources suggest that while they have been part of the system for a long time, they have also been a source of division and tension in the Madaris community.
Mufti Abdul Rahim is a significant figure in the context of the Madaris (religious schools) and the ongoing debates about their governance and registration, according to the sources. Here’s a detailed overview of Mufti Abdul Rahim’s role, views, and relationships, based on the information in the sources:
In summary, Mufti Abdul Rahim is portrayed as a complex figure who is highly respected within the Madaris community but also a point of conflict due to his views on government policies and his perceived alignment with Jamaat Rasheed. He is depicted as someone who values religious principles and autonomy, while also facing criticism for his views and actions. The sources show him to be a significant player in the ongoing debates, advocating for the rights and independence of Madaris.
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!
Multiple articles from the Al Riyadh newspaper discuss various topics including Saudi Arabia’s environmental initiatives, particularly the Riyadh Green project aimed at increasing green spaces and improving air quality in the capital. Coverage is also given to Eid al-Fitr celebrations and related activities, such as holiday shopping trends, the role of social media in festivities, and travel patterns. Additionally, the paper reports on economic matters, including Saudi Arabia’s real estate sector, global oil market trends and forecasts, and the impact of international policies on energy markets. Finally, diplomatic news is present, such as the Kingdom’s welcome of the new Syrian government and the Crown Prince’s discussions with Lebanese officials.
This study guide is designed to help you review and understand the provided excerpts from the “Al-Riyadh” newspaper published on March 31, 2025. It includes a quiz to test your comprehension, essay format questions to encourage deeper analysis, and a glossary of key terms.
Answer the following questions in 2-3 sentences each, based on the provided text.
Consider the following questions for essay writing. Develop well-structured arguments using evidence and examples from the provided text.
BRIEFING DOCUMENT
Date: October 26, 2023 (Assuming context based on future dates in the text – actual date will be different)
Subject: Review of “Al Riyadh” Newspaper Excerpts – Key Themes and Ideas
This briefing document summarizes the main themes and important ideas presented in the provided excerpts from the “Al Riyadh” newspaper (Issue 20728, dated Monday, March 31, 2025). The excerpts cover a range of topics, including environmental initiatives, Eid al-Fitr celebrations and related consumer behavior, international and domestic travel trends, oil market analysis, regional political developments, and local news.
**I. Environmental Initiatives and Sustainable Development:**
* **The Saudi Green Initiative:** This initiative is highlighted as a comprehensive plan with three main objectives: reducing carbon emissions, protecting land and sea areas, and afforestation and land reclamation.
* Quote: “وطويلة م�ستدامة خطة تنفيذ على اخل�سراء ال�سعودية مبادرة ت�سرف تقليل هي: �ساملة اأه��داف بثالثة املبادرة وت�سرت�سد املناخي، للعمل الأج�ل املناطق وحماية الأرا�سي، وا�ست�سالح والت�سجري الكربونية، النبعاثات الربية والبحرية.” (Translation: The Saudi Green Initiative aims to reduce emissions through a comprehensive three-pronged plan focusing on climate action, protecting land and coastal areas, and afforestation and reclamation.)
* **Kingdom’s Net-Zero Target:** Saudi Arabia announced its aim to reach net-zero emissions by 2060, positioning this target as a crucial benchmark for evaluating a nation’s commitment to addressing climate change and environmental protection.
* Quote: “ويف مواجهة اأزمة التغري املناخي اأُ�س�ست هذه املبادرة، والتي كانت قاعدة ال�سفري يف اإلى احلياد للو�سول تهدف اأنها اململكة اأعلنت النطالقة، حيث عام 2060، ول �سك اأن حتديد موعد للو�سول اإلى احلياد ال�سفري بات من اأهم املعايري لتحديد م�سار كل دولة يف معاجلة التغري املناخي وحماية البيئة على عملية يف هذا املجال البيئي.” (Translation: This initiative was established to confront the climate change crisis, with the Kingdom announcing its launch aiming to reach net-zero by 2060. Setting a net-zero target has become one of the most important criteria for determining each country’s path in addressing climate change and protecting the environment.)
* **The Riyadh Green Project:** This is identified as one of the largest afforestation projects globally and a key contributor to achieving the goals of Saudi Vision 2030.
* It aims to increase the per capita share of green space in Riyadh, expand the total green areas, and intensify tree planting across the city, utilizing treated water for irrigation.
* The project is expected to improve air quality and reduce city temperatures.
* An investment of thirty billion riyals is allocated for projects related to environmental protection and conservation, targeting the planting of over 15 million trees.
* The per capita share of green space is projected to increase from 1.7 square meters to 28 square meters by 2030, potentially reducing Riyadh’s temperature by 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius.
* Over 3,300 parks of various sizes and 43 large parks will be established to enhance the quality of life.
* Quote: “ويف هذا الإطار يعد م�سروع الريا�ض اخل�سراء واحدًا من اأكرث م�سروعات اأحد امل�ساهمة يف حتقيق م�سروعات اأحد العامل، وهو الت�سجري طموحًا يف الريا�ض بني نظرياتها مدينة ت�سنيف برفع »2030 ال�سعودية »روؤية اأهداف من مدن العامل مب�سيئة الله.” (Translation: In this context, the Riyadh Green Project is considered one of the largest projects globally and a significant contributor to achieving the goals of Saudi Vision 2030, aiming to elevate Riyadh’s ranking among world cities, God willing.)
* Quote: “ي�ساهم يف حت�سني جودة الهواء وخف�ض درجات احلرارة يف املدينة.” (Translation: It contributes to improving air quality and reducing temperatures in the city.)
* Quote: “ويف نطاق ال�ستثمار �سيتم يف م�سروع الريا�ض اخل�سراء تنفيذه بثالثني مليار ريال يف تاأ�سي�ض م�سروعات لها عالقة بحماية البيئة واملحافظة عليها، التي ت�ستهدف غر�ض ما يزيد على 15 مليون �سجرة، ورفع معدل ن�سيب الفرد النطاق احل�سري 28 مرتًا مربعًا داخل اإلى 1.7 امل�ساحات اخل�سراء من من 2030، مما �سي�سفر عن خف�ض ملمو�ض يف درج�ات احل�رارة يف بحلول عام الريا�ض من 1.5 درجة اإلى درجتني، بالإ�سافة اإلى ذلك �سيتم توفري اأكرث من 3300 حديقة متفاوتة احلجم و43 حديقة كبرية احلجم لأجل حت�سني جودة” (Translation: Within the scope of investment in the Riyadh Green Project, thirty billion riyals will be allocated to establish projects related to environmental protection and conservation, targeting the planting of over 15 million trees and increasing the per capita share of green spaces from 1.7 to 28 square meters within the city by 2030, which will result in a noticeable reduction in Riyadh’s temperatures by 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. Additionally, more than 3300 parks of varying sizes and 43 large parks will be provided to improve quality of life.)
**II. Eid al-Fitr Celebrations and Consumer Behavior:**
* **Royal Greetings and Prayers:** The excerpts detail the performance of Eid prayers by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and the Crown Prince in Jeddah and Mecca, respectively, along with greetings exchanged with officials and dignitaries.
* **Messages of Hope Regarding Real Estate:** Following directives from the Crown Prince concerning the provision of developed land in Riyadh, citizens expressed optimism about the real estate sector’s future, its ability to support other sectors, and its capacity to meet diverse needs.
* Citizens believe the measures will help regulate the market, increase land availability, prevent speculation, and balance supply and demand, ultimately leading to more suitable options for individuals.
* Emphasis is placed on transparency in land distribution, with conditions preventing immediate resale or exploitation by speculators.
* **Eid Festivities and Entertainment:** Various activities and celebrations are mentioned across Saudi Arabia, including cultural and recreational events, interactive games, and Quranic competitions. These are seen as aligning with Saudi Vision 2030 and fostering a sense of unity and participation.
* **Shift to Online Shopping:** Statistics indicate that 70% of Saudis prefer to shop online during Eid holidays, attributed to convenience, speed, and the ability to compare prices easily, aiding consumers in selecting high-quality products at suitable prices. E-commerce offers access to a wider range of products and efficient delivery services.
* **Domestic Tourism Growth:** Data from Wego (a travel platform) shows a rise in domestic travel during Eid al-Fitr 2025, indicating a shift in travel patterns within the Kingdom. While some expatriates return home, Saudi travelers are increasingly interested in cultural and recreational trips within the country.
* Popular domestic destinations, along with international destinations like Europe and parts of Asia, are highlighted.
* The average duration of Eid travel increased to four days in 2025 compared to two days in 2024.
* **Consumer Spending Trends:** A recent survey by “Toluna” and “Markettiers Lab” reveals a significant shift in consumer behavior during Eid al-Fitr 2025, with a focus on social gatherings, cultural activities, and luxury shopping, leading to increased spending across various sectors (gifts, retail, entertainment, and restaurants).
* Price discounts remain the top factor influencing purchasing decisions (49%), followed by bundled offers (40%) and extra quantity for the same price (38%).
* Cashback offers (33%) and free or discounted shipping (30%) are also important.
* The study emphasizes the importance for companies and brands to align their strategies with these new trends by offering exclusive deals, valuable experiences, or luxury products.
* **Riyadh Real Estate Market:** The Crown Prince’s directives regarding land development in Riyadh were met with relief and optimism by citizens, who anticipate the resolution of real estate challenges, increased supply, and price stabilization, ultimately supporting economic and real estate development.
**III. Oil Market Analysis:**
* **OPEC’s Demand Forecast:** OPEC expects strong oil demand growth to continue in 2026, projecting an increase of 1.4 million barrels per day globally. Non-OECD countries are expected to drive this growth.
* **Supply Outlook:** Non-OPEC+ liquid supply is anticipated to grow by 1.0 million barrels per day in both 2025 and 2026, with the United States, Norway, Canada, and Brazil being key contributors.
* **Oil Tanker Market:** Spot freight rates for clean and dirty tankers saw increases in February across most monitored routes, particularly for VLCCs due to new sanctions impacting supply.
* **Crude Oil and Product Trade:** U.S. crude oil imports declined but remained above 6 million barrels per day, while crude oil exports and product imports remained stable. Product exports generally remained at the upper end of the five-year range. European and Japanese crude oil imports also showed increases. India’s crude oil imports averaged 4.9 million barrels per day in January.
* **Commercial Stock Movements:** Preliminary data for January 2024 showed an overall increase in OECD commercial oil inventories by 1.0 million barrels, but they remained 188.1 million barrels below the 2015-2019 average. Crude oil stocks increased, while product stocks decreased.
* **OPEC+ Crude Oil Demand:** The demand for crude oil from OPEC+ participating countries remains unchanged from previous assessments, projected at 42.6 million barrels per day in 2025 and 42.9 million barrels per day in 2026.
* **Petrochemical Sector as Demand Driver:** The petrochemical sector is highlighted as a major driver of oil demand due to significant expansions globally.
* **OPEC Basket Price:** The OPEC basket price decreased by $2.57 per barrel in February, averaging $76.81 per barrel.
* **Impact of U.S. Policies:** U.S. customs duties and sanctions on Iranian and Venezuelan oil create mixed signals for oil markets. While sanctions reduce supply, economic policies could decrease long-term demand.
* **Analyst Perspectives:** BMI analysts maintain their Brent crude oil price forecast at an average of $76 per barrel in 2025, down from $80 per barrel in 2024, citing market consolidation.
* **Regional Oil Developments:** The article mentions developments in Iraq (BP’s Kirkuk field redevelopment), the Kurdistan oil exports, and China’s increasing imports of Canadian crude oil. It also touches upon Nigeria’s potential oil sector overhaul and Vitol’s reported exit from its U.S. shale oil assets.
* **Impact on India:** U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan oil are prompting Indian refiners to halt imports. India is also considering reducing taxes on LNG imports to address its trade deficit with the U.S.
* **Refining Industry:** Brazil’s Petrobras is increasing refinery capacity. Shell is shifting its focus towards fossil fuels and increasing shareholder returns while maintaining oil production. Mexico’s Pemex is reportedly in talks to jointly operate a major offshore oil field.
* **LNG Prices:** LNG prices for May delivery to Northeast Asia have fallen to their lowest in three months.
**IV. Regional Political Developments:**
* **Syria:** President Bashar al-Assad called on Alawi fighters in the northwest to surrender their weapons, warning of consequences. The government announced a security operation in the Latakia and Tartous governorates. The UN envoy expressed concern over civilian casualties and urged restraint. Russia also called for de-escalation. Iran condemned the killing of innocent Syrians.
* **Sudan:** Army Commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan vowed to fight until victory against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), ruling out peace unless the RSF lays down arms. The army claimed to have regained control of the presidential palace in Khartoum. The RSF acknowledged withdrawing from Khartoum but vowed to return. Al-Burhan dismissed any negotiations with the RSF. The conflict, ongoing for two years, has caused massive displacement and casualties. The country is effectively divided.
* **Gaza:** The Israeli occupation forces continued their operations in Gaza, resulting in numerous Palestinian casualties, including children, due to airstrikes and artillery shelling. Areas in Khan Younis, Rafah, and Jabalia were targeted, with homes destroyed.
* **Al-Aqsa Mosque:** Despite Israeli restrictions on entry, a large number of Muslims performed Eid prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Some Palestinians were prevented from entering.
* **Eid in the Middle East:** Dr. Fayez bin Abdullah Al-Shehri provides an overview of the significant political, economic, social, and security transformations in the Middle East between the last Eid al-Fitr (1445 AH – 2024 AD) and the current one (1446 AH – 2025 AD).
* He notes a decline in the influence of some prominent regional players and the emergence of new forces amidst shifting power balances.
* Lebanon witnessed a decline in Hezbollah’s effectiveness.
* Hamas’s role in Palestine has been severely impacted by the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
* Syria saw the fall of the Assad regime after decades, with a new system emerging.
* The Houthis in Yemen continue to operate despite losing Iranian support.
* Economically, the gap between the Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar) and other regional countries is widening due to the Gulf states’ diversification efforts.
* Turkey experienced a historic shift in local elections.
* Egypt and Turkey are normalizing relations.
* The author concludes that the Middle East is undergoing a profound reshaping, facing intertwined political, economic, and security challenges.
**V. Local News and Sports:**
* **Commencement of Riyadh Theatre Project:** The first phase of a theatre project, “Rimah in the Tent of My Uncle,” will tour various cities in Saudi Arabia starting in May 2025.
* **MBC’s Eid Coverage:** MBC1 offered extensive coverage of Eid al-Fitr, including morning and evening programs featuring celebrations from different regions of Saudi Arabia, along with movies and concerts.
* **Profile of Poet Nafal bin Ali Al-Harbi:** A brief profile highlights the wisdom and strong meanings in the poetry of the veteran poet Nafal bin Ali Al-Harbi.
* **Growth of Non-Oil Exports:** Saudi Arabia’s non-oil exports, including re-exports, increased by 10.7%, indicating a shift towards a more productive economy. The growth is attributed to investments in logistics and infrastructure under the National Industrial Development and Logistics Program (NIDLP). China remains a top trading partner.
* **Analysis of Trade Balance:** While imports also rose, the trade balance decline is seen as part of the economic transformation, with imports increasingly being intermediate goods for local industry.
* **Unique Religious Achievement During Ramadan:** The Kingdom hosted approximately 10 million Umrah pilgrims during Ramadan, a record number, showcasing the state’s efforts in managing the massive influx with efficient logistics and modern technologies. The smooth experience for pilgrims is highlighted as part of Vision 2030’s goals for developing the Hajj and Umrah sector.
* **200 Parks and Celebration Squares Prepared in Tabuk:** The Tabuk Municipality prepared over 200 parks and squares for Eid al-Fitr celebrations, including maintenance, cleaning, decorations, and various festive activities.
* **”SAR” Transports 1.2 Million Passengers in Ramadan:** The Saudi Railways Organization (“SAR”) successfully transported 1.2 million passengers during Ramadan, a 21% increase compared to the previous year, highlighting the efficiency and commitment to serving pilgrims.
* **Al-Ula’s Historical Significance:** The Incense Route is highlighted as a testament to Al-Ula’s historical role in trade and cultural exchange, making it a significant historical destination.
* **Al-Adalah Club Honors Legends:** Al-Adalah Football Club organized a friendly match and honored veteran players as part of its social responsibility program.
* **Marmoush Leads Man City to FA Cup Semi-Final:** Egyptian player Omar Marmoush scored as Manchester City advanced to the FA Cup semi-finals.
* **”Roshan” League Competition Heats Up:** The competition in the Saudi Professional League is intense among top teams like Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad, and Al-Ahli. Strong squads, star players, and tactical approaches are key factors.
* **Saudi Arabia to Host 2034 FIFA World Cup:** This is seen as a historic event reflecting the country’s development in the sports sector and infrastructure. The strong bid and government support were crucial. Modern stadiums, advanced technology, and a welcoming environment are expected.
* **Al-Fateh’s Struggle to Avoid Relegation:** Despite winning the league in 2013, Al-Fateh has been struggling to avoid relegation in recent seasons.
* **Significant Support and Development in Women’s Sports:** Women’s sports in Saudi Arabia have witnessed remarkable progress with official support, leading to increased participation in various sports locally and internationally. The establishment of women’s sports federations, participation in international events, and the launch of the women’s football league are highlighted.
* **Challenges Facing Sports Academies:** While sports academies in Saudi Arabia have made progress in developing talent, challenges remain in focusing on younger age groups, the need for stronger competition, and uneven investment across regions.
* **”Yelo” League Promotion Race:** The competition for promotion to the Saudi Professional League from the First Division (“Yelo” League) is tight, with Neom leading but closely followed by other teams.
* **Al-Saad and Al-Adalah Qualify for Handball League Semi-Finals:** Al-Saad and Al-Adalah handball clubs qualified for the semi-finals of the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Premier League.
* **Devotional Atmosphere During Eid Prayers:** The Ministry of Islamic Affairs prepared thousands of mosques and prayer grounds across Saudi Arabia for Eid al-Fitr prayers.
* **Farewell to Saad Al-Lathidh:** A column reflects on the challenges faced by Saad Al-Lathidh in his position, suggesting the immense pressures led to his resignation.
* **Simple Joys of Eid:** An article emphasizes the essence of Eid being about inner joy and genuine connections rather than superficial appearances.
This briefing provides a comprehensive overview of the diverse topics covered in the “Al Riyadh” excerpts, highlighting key initiatives, events, trends, and perspectives relevant to Saudi Arabia and the wider region as of late March 2025 (as indicated by the newspaper’s date).
1. What are the primary goals of Saudi Arabia’s “Green Initiative” (مبادرة السعودية الخضراء) as outlined in the Al Riyadh newspaper? The Saudi Green Initiative, according to the article, aims to reduce carbon emissions, protect and rehabilitate land and marine areas, and improve the climate in the long term. It is built upon three main objectives: combating climate change, protecting terrestrial and marine environments, and afforestation and land reclamation to reduce carbon emissions.
2. What is the significance of Saudi Arabia setting a target for reaching net-zero emissions, and what year is this target set for? The article emphasizes that setting a date to reach net-zero emissions has become a crucial benchmark for evaluating a country’s commitment to addressing climate change and environmental protection. Saudi Arabia has announced its aim to reach net-zero emissions by the year 2060, highlighting its serious approach to this global challenge.
3. Can you describe the “Riyadh Green Project” (مشروع الرياض الخضراء) and its objectives? The Riyadh Green Project is described as one of the largest afforestation projects globally and a significant contributor to achieving the goals of Saudi Vision 2030. Its objectives include increasing the per capita share of green space in Riyadh, boosting the total green area, intensifying tree planting across the city, optimizing the use of treated water for irrigation, improving air quality, and reducing urban heat.
4. What are the planned investments and expected outcomes of the Riyadh Green Project by 2030? The Riyadh Green Project involves an investment of thirty billion riyals dedicated to establishing environment protection and conservation projects. The target is to plant over 15 million trees and increase the per capita share of green spaces from 1.7 square meters to 28 square meters by 2030. This is expected to result in a noticeable reduction of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius in Riyadh’s temperature. Additionally, over 3,300 parks of varying sizes and 43 large parks will be developed to improve the overall quality of life.
5. Based on the article, what are some key observations regarding Eid Al Fitr in Saudi Arabia in 2025? The article indicates several trends for Eid Al Fitr in 2025: increased social gatherings and higher spending in markets, a rise of 15.57% in domestic travel, with Egypt, Pakistan, India, and Turkey being popular international destinations. There is also a noticeable shift in consumer behavior towards social activities, cultural events, and luxury shopping. Statistics suggest that 70% of Saudis prefer online shopping during holidays, and travelers are increasingly interested in cultural and recreational travel, exploring destinations in Europe and Asia.
6. What measures were reportedly being considered to address issues in the real estate sector in Riyadh? According to the article, the Crown Prince issued directives aimed at providing planned and developed land in Riyadh, which were received with optimism. There was an emphasis on releasing messages to citizens and implementing similar measures in other regions suffering from land scarcity and high prices. The measures were expected to facilitate land trading, prevent monopolies, and create a balance between supply and demand in the Riyadh real estate market, ultimately supporting economic and real estate development. Transparency in land distribution was also highlighted, with conditions being praised that would prevent speculators from acquiring land.
7. What does the article suggest about Saudi Arabia’s efforts in diversifying its economy beyond oil? The article highlights the significant increase in non-oil exports (including re-exports) by 10.7%, with chemical exports alone forming 23.7% of the total. This shift is attributed to strategic investments in developing logistical infrastructure and services (the “Nadaleb” program) that connect national industries with international markets more efficiently. Despite an increase in imports, the trade balance contraction is viewed positively, indicating a shift towards importing productive inputs for local industry rather than solely consumer goods, reflecting a move towards productive empowerment. The improved coverage ratio of non-oil exports to imports (from 35.7% to 36.5%) demonstrates greater self-sufficiency and resilience to external shocks, especially in global energy markets.
8. What were some of the key events and situations reported in the “Middle East: What is the State Between Two Eids?” section of the newspaper? This section of the article describes significant political, economic, social, and security transformations in the Middle East between the Eid Al Fitr of 2024 and 2025. Notable events included a reported decline in Hezbollah’s activity in Lebanon, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a focus on Gaza, a potential shift in Syria’s political landscape, the continuing Houthi issue in Yemen, a widening economic gap between Gulf states and others, Turkey’s municipal elections showing a shift in power, and a diplomatic thawing between Turkey and Egypt. Overall, the region was depicted as undergoing a period of significant upheaval and realignment.
The sources discuss a Climate Change Initiative led by Saudi Arabia, primarily referred to as the Saudi Green Initiative. This initiative is described as a comprehensive plan with three main objectives: reducing carbon emissions, protecting land and sea areas, and afforestation and land reclamation.
This initiative was established to confront the crisis of climate change. Saudi Arabia announced its launch, with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by the year 2060. The source emphasizes that setting a specific date for achieving carbon neutrality has become a crucial benchmark for evaluating each nation’s approach to tackling climate change and safeguarding the environment in the long run.
In response to climate change, Saudi Arabia has adopted a new policy and prepared a strategy aimed at protecting the environment and the Earth. However, the sources highlight that the effective implementation of this environmental protection and the adoption of concrete steps place a significant responsibility on individuals. This responsibility includes rationalizing water consumption, ceasing food wastage, and embracing a new lifestyle that fosters collective action in safeguarding the planet.
The sources also note that international policies have introduced numerous new terms in the context of combating climate change. The Saudi Green Initiative and similar efforts represent a significant shift in the endeavors to counter the impacts of climate change. Furthermore, these initiatives underscore the pivotal role that Saudi Arabia can play in identifying solutions to climate change.
Based on the sources and our previous discussion, the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by the year 2060 is a central aspect of Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Green Initiative.
Here’s a breakdown of what the sources indicate regarding reaching carbon neutrality:
In essence, the sources position the commitment to reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 as a fundamental pillar of Saudi Arabia’s comprehensive strategy to combat climate change through the Saudi Green Initiative.
Based on the provided sources, the Green Riyadh project is not explicitly mentioned. However, the concept of a greener capital city is alluded to in the “كلمة العاصمة الخضراء” (The Green Capital Word) section of the newspaper.
This section, written by Nawal Al-Jabir, appears on page 16 of the Monday, March 31, 2025 issue of Al-Riyadh newspaper. While the specific details and scope of a “Green Riyadh project” aren’t elaborated upon in the provided excerpts, the heading itself indicates an initiative or discussion related to making Riyadh a greener city.
Our conversation history discusses the broader Saudi Green Initiative, which aims to reduce carbon emissions, protect land and sea areas, and promote afforestation and land reclamation across Saudi Arabia [Me]. It is possible that the “Green Riyadh” concept, as suggested by the newspaper section heading, is a part or a regional implementation of this larger national initiative, focusing specifically on the city of Riyadh.
The sources also mention directives from the Crown Prince regarding the real estate sector in Riyadh, aiming to provide planned and developed residential lands for citizens. These directives are intended to revitalize construction and development in the capital. While not directly related to environmental greening, these efforts suggest a focus on the future development and enhancement of Riyadh.
In summary, while the “Green Riyadh project” isn’t detailed in the sources, the newspaper excerpt suggests an initiative or concept focused on making Riyadh a greener city. This could potentially be linked to the broader Saudi Green Initiative discussed in our previous conversation [Me].
The sources contain significant information regarding real estate development, particularly in Riyadh, following directives from the Crown Prince.
Here’s a breakdown of the key points:
In relation to our previous conversation, while the “Green Riyadh” project was not detailed in the sources, these real estate development initiatives suggest a broader focus on the future growth and enhancement of Riyadh. It’s possible that environmental considerations and green initiatives could be integrated into these development plans, although the current excerpts primarily focus on land provision, market regulation, and economic impact.
The sources contain several references to the online aspects of Eid celebrations:
In summary, the sources highlight a significant trend towards incorporating online platforms and technologies to enhance and broaden the reach of Eid celebrations, facilitating connections, sharing traditions, and creating virtual experiences, particularly for those who are geographically separated from their loved ones.
By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog
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This comprehensive Microsoft Teams course, led by Mo Jones, provides a detailed exploration of the platform’s features and benefits for individuals and teams. The course covers essential functionalities, such as team creation (public and private), integration with Office 365 tools (SharePoint, Planner, OneNote), meeting scheduling and management (lobby controls, presenter selection), and collaborative communication within channel-based workspaces. It addresses the challenges of using disparate communication methods by positioning Teams as a unified hub for chat, video calls, file sharing, and meetings. The course further examines the Teams interface, navigation shortcuts, customization options (themes, chat density), meeting settings, in-meeting controls (screen sharing, whiteboarding, attendance), and notable application settings.
Instructions: Answer the following questions in 2-3 sentences each.
Source: Excerpts from “Pasted Text” (Microsoft Teams Deep Dive Course Video)
Date: October 26, 2023 (based on the context of ongoing updates)
Prepared By: Gemini AI
Overview:
This briefing document summarizes the main themes and important ideas presented in the Microsoft Teams deep dive course video. The course aims to equip users with the knowledge and skills to effectively utilize Microsoft Teams for communication and collaboration, highlighting its role as a central hub for various workplace activities.
Main Themes:
Most Important Ideas and Facts:
This briefing document provides a comprehensive overview of the Microsoft Teams deep dive course, highlighting its key takeaways and practical guidance for effective Teams utilization.
1. What is Microsoft Teams and what are its primary benefits? Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform that integrates various features such as chat, video conferencing, file sharing, and application integration into a single interface. Its primary benefits include increased efficiency by serving as a “one-stop shop” for team communication, reducing the need to switch between multiple applications for email, chat, calls, and file sharing. It streamlines collaboration, enhances communication within teams and organizations, and allows for better organization of work through dedicated channels and integrated Office 365 tools.
2. What are the key steps involved in setting up a team in Microsoft Teams? What’s the difference between a public and a private team? To set up a team, you typically click on the “Join or create a team” option, then “Create a team.” You can choose to create a team from scratch or use a template. You’ll need to decide on a team name, and optionally a description. The crucial decision is whether to make the team public or private.
3. How can Microsoft Office 365 tools like SharePoint, Planner, and OneNote be integrated into a Microsoft Teams environment? Microsoft Teams allows seamless integration of various Office 365 tools as tabs within team channels.
4. What are the different options available when scheduling a meeting in Microsoft Teams? How can you manage meeting settings such as the lobby and presenter roles? You can schedule a Teams meeting directly from a channel or through the Calendar tab. When scheduling, you can set the date, time, add attendees (including entire channels), provide a title, and optionally add a location. The Scheduling Assistant helps find optimal meeting times based on attendees’ availability (within the organization). After scheduling, you can access meeting details and options, including:
5. How does collaboration in a channel-based workspace in Microsoft Teams differ from using an Outlook inbox for team communication? Collaboration in Teams channels is more organized and focused compared to using an Outlook inbox. In Teams:
6. What are some useful interface features and navigation tips within Microsoft Teams, such as using the navigation pane, search/command bar, and keyboard shortcuts? The Teams interface includes:
7. How can you manage a team effectively in Microsoft Teams, including adding/removing members, managing guest permissions, and adjusting member permissions? Team management can be done through the “More options” menu next to the team name, then “Manage team.”
8. What are some key features and options available during a Microsoft Teams meeting, such as managing participants, sharing content, using the whiteboard, and accessing post-meeting information? During a Teams meeting, you have several options:
Microsoft Teams is presented as a “One-Stop shop for communication and collaboration” designed to make team communication more efficient. It aims to address the challenges of using multiple platforms for different communication methods such as email, phone calls, video conferencing, chat, and file sharing.
Current Challenges Addressed by Microsoft Teams:
Key Benefits and Features of Microsoft Teams:
Target Audience: Microsoft Teams is designed for a wide range of users who work in a team environment, including content managers, information managers, project managers, supervisors, and business analysts.
In summary, Microsoft Teams provides a unified platform for communication, collaboration, and integration with Microsoft 365 services, aiming to enhance productivity and streamline workflows for individuals and teams.
Based on the sources, let’s delve into the creation and management of teams within Microsoft Teams.
Planning Team Creation
Before creating a team, it’s important to consider several factors:
Microsoft Teams provides a dialogue during the creation process to guide you through these considerations.
Creating a Team
To create a team, navigate to the teams feed and click on “Join or create a team”. You have a few options:
When creating a team, you can choose to create it from scratch or use a template. Templates can provide pre-configured features for various purposes like project management or onboarding employees. You can also create a team based on an existing group or team.
You must then decide whether the team will be private or public.
After selecting the privacy setting, you need to provide a team name and optionally a description.
Once the team is created, you’ll be prompted to add members, including individuals within your organization or even guests from outside (who will have limited capabilities). You can also add distribution lists or security groups. This step can be skipped and done later. The new team will appear in your teams feed with a default “General” channel. This “General” channel cannot be edited or deleted.
Managing a Team
You can manage a team through the “More options” menu next to the team name. This menu provides options such as:
Editing Team Details
You can edit the team’s name and description, and change a private team to public (but not vice-versa) by selecting “Edit team” from the more options menu.
Sharing a Team Link
Generating a team link allows you to invite members by sharing the link via chat or email.
Managing Members
The “Manage team” option allows you to view and manage team members and guests.
Team Settings
The “Settings” tab within “Manage team” offers various controls.
Channels
Within a team, you can create channels for focused collaboration.
In summary, Microsoft Teams offers robust features for creating and managing teams, allowing for customization of privacy, membership, and permissions to suit different collaboration needs. Channels further organize teamwork within a team structure.
Let’s discuss channel-based collaboration in Microsoft Teams. As highlighted in the sources, Teams aims to move away from relying solely on an Outlook inbox for team communication by providing channel-based workspaces.
The Core Idea:
Types of Channels:
How Collaboration Happens in a Channel:
Channel Management and Settings:
Benefits of Channel-Based Collaboration:
In essence, channel-based collaboration in Microsoft Teams provides a structured and integrated environment for teams to communicate, share information, and work together efficiently on specific tasks and projects, offering a significant alternative and often more effective approach compared to traditional email-centric communication.
Let’s discuss meeting scheduling and options within Microsoft Teams, drawing on the information in the sources.
Scheduling a Meeting
There are a couple of ways to schedule a meeting in Microsoft Teams:
Scheduling Options
When scheduling a meeting, you have several options:
Meeting Details and Post-Scheduling Options
Once a meeting is scheduled, a post entry will be created in the channel it was associated with, providing basic details about the meeting. By clicking on the “More options” (three dots) next to this post and selecting “View meeting details,” or by going back to your calendar and clicking on the meeting, you can access further options:
Meeting Options
Meeting options can be accessed by clicking on “Meeting options” within the meeting details. This will open a web browser page with the following settings:
Instant Meetings and In-Meeting Options
You can also start an instant meeting by clicking the “Meet” icon and selecting “Meet now“. This immediately opens a meeting for others to join.
During a meeting, you have several controls available:
By utilizing these scheduling features and meeting options, you can effectively plan and manage online meetings within Microsoft Teams to suit various collaboration needs and ensure a productive meeting experience.
Let’s discuss the Microsoft Teams Interface and Settings based on the information provided in the sources.
Overview of the Interface
The Microsoft Teams interface is designed for efficient navigation and access to various features. Key elements include:
Navigation and Efficiency
Microsoft Teams offers several ways to navigate the interface efficiently:
Settings Menu Options
The Settings menu, accessible from your profile area, allows you to customize various aspects of your Teams experience:
Other Notable Interface Features and Settings
By understanding and utilizing the various elements of the Microsoft Teams interface and its settings, users can personalize their experience, navigate efficiently, and optimize their collaboration within the platform.
hello and welcome to our Microsoft teams deep dive course my name is Mo Jones and I’m glad to guide you through this course of Microsoft teams today we’ll take a look at exactly what Microsoft teams is and we’ll take a look at some of the features that will benefit you your team and even your organization as well this is interactive so be ready to pause the video and practice and if you’re enjoying these videos please like And subscribe if you’re looking to earn certificates and watch videos without ads sign up for learn it anytime which is our dedicated online training subscription service check the link in the description for more information if you have any questions you want answered by one of our instructors please join our off-site community the link is in the description as well as always if this course has exercise files you’ll find them in the video description below welcome back well let’s go ahead and jump in let’s take a look at our learning outcomes for today notice that we do have three Primary Learning outcomes now keep in mind that we do have several topics that we’ll be covering today and they will fall under one of these three learning outcomes as well we’re going to set up a team and we’ll take a look at the difference between a public and a private team and once that team is created we’ll see how we can integrate Office 365 tools such as SharePoint Microsoft planner and OneNote as well after we create our team we’ll go ahead and schedule a team’s meeting and we’ll take a look at various options such as setting up the lobby who can enter and choosing a presenter and some other sought after features as well and then we’ll talk about just being able to collaborate in a channel based workspace as opposed to an Outlook inbox and this is where all the work gets done when a channel is created this is where all the collaboration takes place so who should attend this is for Content managers information managers project managers supervisors business analysts and anyone who works in a team environment so let’s go ahead and get started welcome back well before we start talking about what Microsoft teams is what the purpose is and how we can benefit you let’s take a look at the current challenges that we face when we’re communicating with our team now we communicate in various ways we can communicate using email we can pick up the phone and contact our team member or someone within our organization we can use various apps to conduct a video call we can use various apps to conduct a chat as well and maybe we have a cloud-based service that we can use to access our files and be able to share and collaborate our files as well so this is okay we can get work done but as we can see the challenge is that we’re using several different platforms here maybe we’re using one platform for email and video call but then we’re using another platform for phone we’re using another platform to conduct a chat and maybe we’re using several platforms for our cloud-based file Services there as well and so there has to be a way that we can just use one app to accomplish all of these communication strategies here so that we can save time and work more efficiently here as well and that’s where Microsoft teams comes in think of teams as a One-Stop shop for communication and collaboration it’s very common that we see a lot of people that are using Microsoft teams a lot more and using Outlook less because imagine being able to use one app to send a quick email and within that same thread you can conduct a quick chat with your team or an individual you can start a quick video conference based on that team that you created you can drop in different files from your cloud-based service right into that team where you can open it you can edit it and you can have collaboration on that as well no need to pick up a phone you can go ahead and use the phone service that’s integrated into Microsoft teams and you can make a quick phone call you can also access your calendar and schedule meetings and manage your meetings as well and so this is what Microsoft teams is for it’s a One-Stop shop for communication and collaboration and it’s going to make your communication a lot more efficient so with that understanding let’s go ahead and open up Microsoft teams we’ll take a look at the the basic interface and we’ll go ahead and get started okay welcome back I did launch my Microsoft teams application while we’re here let’s have a brief overview of the interface so if we take a look on the left we see our navigation pane here where we can view our activity feed our chat feed our teams feed calendar calls files and any other apps that you may have pinned here or connected foreign we also have our search bar which doubles as a command bar we can drop in some powerful commands by typing in the forward slash and finally over here on the right we have our profile area or we can make some changes to our account or via our account status and we also have a menu right here that allows us to apply some Universal changes to our Microsoft teams application I’m going to go ahead and click on this menu and for those of us who like to navigate applications via shortcuts well we do have the complete mapping of the keyboard shortcuts right here under the settings menu we can show all these keyboard shortcuts and as you can see it’s pretty exhaustive here so we have some general shortcuts that we can use we have some navigation shortcuts we have shortcuts that relates to messaging and if I were to scroll down I can see that we also have some that are applicable to meetings and so for example when you’re in a meeting to raise or lower your hand you can press Ctrl shift and K that will raise or lower your hand I’m currently on my activity tab here and what I want to do I’m going to go ahead and type some numbers here just to keep it simple I’ll just type three so one two and three and what you’ll notice is that our activity feed that’s at the top here that’s linked to this number one so if I press Ctrl 1 that will send me to my activity feed my chat feed is in position two if I press Ctrl 2 that will open up my chat feed and for my teams if I press Ctrl plus 3 that’s going to go ahead and open up my team’s feed there as well and so we can make use of these shortcuts so that we can quickly navigate this interface so as you can see in pressing Ctrl 2 that brings me to my chat feed and if I were to go ahead and press Ctrl 3 that will go ahead and bring me to my team’s feed I’ll go ahead and do that so here’s my team’s feed and I want to point out as well if we were to bring this back up here to keyboard shortcuts there’s actually a shortcut to actually bring up these shortcuts and right here to show the keyboard shortcuts we can just press control plus the period that will bring up all of those shortcuts for us so really nice way to just be able to navigate this interface here as well another useful feature under the settings menu here is actually adjusting the zoom control and so if I just increase the zoom notice how it’s zooming all of the all of the things that are visible on my screen at the moment for my app so I can go ahead and zoom in further right now I’m at 145 percent so this is very useful can make it you know maybe some of the text is too small or maybe some of the text is too large in that case you can zoom out even further like so okay so right now I’m at 85 percent I think 100 works pretty well for me so I’ll go ahead and use that they’re also keyboard shortcuts for zooming and so here’s the zooming so to zoom out control plus the minus sign zoom in control plus equal and to reset the zoom level Control Plus 0 and that will take care of that for you as well and so this just kind of helps you to move around and have the visual appeal that you’re looking for that’s comfortable for you another thing that we can do is we can go ahead and add some apps depending on the way that your organization is set up as you can see I have a Viva insights app here but we do have access to other apps by clicking on the menu that’s right here I’ll go ahead and click on there and it brings up some apps for you you can either search for an app that you’re looking for or you can scroll through the the menu of the existing apps that are in focus if you want access to more apps you can actually go ahead and click on more apps here and this brings up a really big community of apps here and as you can see Microsoft is growing very big here okay so what I want to do at this point I want to go ahead maybe I’ll maybe I want to go ahead and grab this Wiki app here I want to add that to my navigation pane so this is called pinning so what I’ll do is I’ll go ahead and right click on it on here and I’m going to go ahead and pin that app here and so now here is my Wiki if I click on air it’s just waiting for me to enter some information and there you go so that’s how we can search for apps and pin them as well so go ahead and pause this video go ahead and practice using the shortcut keys to move around and the different areas of your teams interface here go ahead and add an app and pin that app to your navigation Pane and come right back welcome back now let’s talk about planning and creating a team so currently I’m on my team’s feed here and on the bottom what I want to do is go ahead and click on join or create a team now when we’re planning to create a team there’s a few things that we want to take into consideration such as what should the name of the team be what are the goals for this team who should be a part of this team and what do we want to accomplish within this team and maybe even what are some of the permissions as well and finally maybe we want to ask should this be a private team or should we make it available to the public as well what we’ll find is that Microsoft has created a dialogue under the create a team so that we’re kind of asked these questions along the way and so it gives us the opportunity to kind of create our team while planning it at the same time I’ll go ahead and click on join or create a team and here you see I can go ahead and create a team I want to point out you can also join a team with a code and we can actually join one of these public teams here that are within our organization so because these have the public designation we’re able to join them because we’re a part of this organization here I want to go ahead and click on create a team and when you’re planning one of the things you want to ask yourself is well do you want to create a team from scratch or do you want to kind of use an existing template some really nice templates out here that can help you to accomplish your goal one of the things that we can do is create a team from a group from an existing group or an existing team so maybe you see a team that’s working well and you want to go ahead and create it from that that’s perfectly fine here we have our templates here is a project management template that we can use and we just need to go ahead and add our members and make some changes there as well but a lot of the features will be already there for us onboarding employees is becoming very popular organizing your help desk and if we just kind of scroll down go all the way down to managing volunteers quality and safety as well so maybe none of these are doing it for you we can go ahead and we can start from scratch with some help from Microsoft so at this point we have to make a decision here do we want our team to be a private team or a public team if our team is private people will need permission to join so we would need to specifically send them an invitation so that they can actually join the team if it’s public then anyone inside of our organization can join as we can see here we have some public teams here and I can join them because they have the public designation and I’m a part of the organization so I can go ahead and join one of these teams here without asking for permission but what I want to do I want to go ahead and create a private team because I just want a few people to be a part of this team here we have some very specific tasks that we want to accomplish and so I just need to go ahead and give this team a name I’ll just call this planning and if we want to we can go ahead and provide a description I’ll go ahead and do that okay so planning and will be for learning courses go ahead and create that it takes a few seconds here it says nice work and at this point what I need to do is I need to go ahead and add the add my my guests here or my members and notice we can start typing a distribution list or a security group or we can add people from outside our organization as well so depending on how your it department has your network set up we can enter a distribution list or a security group individual emails we can also go ahead and invite people outside of the organization they will have the guest designation though which means that they will have limited capabilities and rights when they’re added to the group so I’ll go ahead and I’ll just enter some fictitious emails here and what you’ll see is that it analyzes the email it recognizes that it’s not a part of my organization and so it assigns the guest designation and a little later on we can go in and take a look at some of the guest designation here as well I’ll go ahead and add another one so I’ll go ahead and click on ADD we can also skip this step and come back to it later but let’s see here let’s go ahead and add this one as well and once that’s done I can just go ahead and click on close and welcome to the team and again as you will notice we’re getting some help along the way here at this point we can go ahead and add more people if we want to we can go ahead and create more channels and we can open the FAQ we’ve already added some people here the channels what this is referring to is if you take a look over here on the left side here is that team that I just created it comes with a channel called General I noticed this this General tab we cannot edit it it’s by default it will say General and what we can do we can go ahead and create another channel that will appear right underneath general and this is where all the creative work will be taking place all the collaboration here as well and so what I want to do at this point is I want to go ahead and click on the menu for more options for planning I’ll take a look at this menu here and go ahead and manage the team from here I can add a channel add a member I can leave the team if I want to go ahead and make some edits to the team I can get a link to the team here as well where I can manage the tags and I can go ahead and delete the team so the next thing that we want to do is we want to go ahead and talk about just editing the team and taking a look at the management features but before we do that what I want you to do go ahead and create a team assign it the either the public or private designation add a few people and come right back now that we’ve created our team we can go ahead and take a look at the more options menu here for our newly created team maybe we want to go ahead and make some simple edits such as maybe changing the name of the team updating the description and maybe even changing it from private to public I’ll go ahead and click on more options here and I’ll go down to where it says edit team notice from here I can change the team name I can update the description of the team and maybe I changed my mind maybe instead of having it private I want to make it public so that anyone inside of my organization can join so I’ll just make some simple edits here I’ll change this to planning team and for my description I’ll just say learning courses Force I’ll leave it at private for the moment I’ll go ahead and click done it’s going to save my changes and once I have this updated the next reasonable thing to do is to get a link here so I’ll go ahead and click on more options and towards the bottom I’ll click on where it says get link to this team so from here we get a link I can go ahead and copy this link here and so now I can either start a new chat by entering a recipient’s name in the in the search bar here or I can just open up a new chat if I want to I can drop in a tag maybe I’ve created a tag for people either way I can post that link in the chat so that my members to be will have the opportunity to click on that link to join this team I can also send an email and they’ll be able to receive an invitation for this as well so go ahead and pause the video and go ahead and make some simple edits to this team that you just created and make a decision whether you want it to be public or whether you want it to be private and go ahead and share that link out just make sure that someone can join your team and come right back welcome back well now that we’ve shared our team we’ve made some simple edits it’s a good idea to go ahead and click on the more options here and let’s go ahead and manage our team and it’s a good idea to take a look at the current members here and also take a look at the settings that we can apply to this team so notice currently I’m on the members tab here and I can take a look at all of my members and guests notice I do have four guests here and they do have the guest designation in terms of a role notice I cannot change this row I can simply remove the person but I cannot change their role so I am the current owner and so if I were to click on my drop down here so I can toggle between owner or member it’s a good idea to have at least two owners for a 418 so at this point what you could do what you should do is go ahead and click on add a member and then once they’re populated in as long as they’re within your organization they’ll show up as a member you can go ahead and apply the owner designation here as well so this way if something happens you have a backup another person that can help you to actually manage the team here as well I’ll jump over to where it says settings here and what’s really nice is that there’s a lot of different layers of security here that you can apply to your team setting let’s talk about Guest permissions first so if I click on my guest permissions notice by default guests are not allowed to create and update channels and they cannot delete channels well in this demo I want to go ahead and allow them to do that so I’ll go ahead and accept this designation here and for so if you’re dealing with guests and you want them to have a little more control at least have them be able to create and update channels and let’s take a look at some of the member permissions I’ll collapse the guest permissions here and we have a much longer list here for the member permissions and these are decisions that you need to make talk with your team maybe you’re your co-owner and figure out what it is that you want your members to be able to do but we do have a lot of options in here such as creating and updating channels so by default they can create and update channels maybe you do not want them to do that you simply just want them to be able to navigate and get work done in the channels they can create private channels here as well we’ll talk about private channels in just a little bit here they can delete and restore channels add apps upload custom apps and these are the kind of things that we really just need to be mindful of and again it really depends on what you want to allow you can collaborate with your it Department maybe your it department has some already has some protocols you know set up here as well and they can create update and remove tags connectors okay and give members the option to delete their messages and finally allow message editing here as well so again a lot of different options here a lot of different decisions that you need to make as well another option here is the ad mentions okay so you can choose who can use the app mentions in the channels here now remember and that mention will go straight to the top of your activity feed and so if this is misused it can be very very unproductive so you want to kind of make it make a choice here in terms of what you want your guests and your members to be able to do as well while we’re in here it’s good to note that we can also generate a team code we can go ahead and generate a team code so that people can join directly now just keep a note that guests won’t be able to join with a team code so only members within your organization will be able to join with the team code so go ahead and pause the video take a look at some of the member permissions take a look at the guest permissions and go ahead and generate a team code and we’ll do that now actually go ahead and generate a team code and here’s my temporary code that I can use at this point I can go ahead and copy this code and again I can go ahead and send this out to my members to be so go ahead and generate a code take a look at some of the permissions welcome back well hopefully you’re able to dive into those permissions and you were able to generate a code for your team here as well now let’s go ahead and talk about channels using team channels so here’s my planning team and if you notice I have two tiers here so here’s my team and then I have this General tab this kind of default tab that we inherit when we create a team if I click on this more options for the general channel here notice I have a pretty short list here notice that I cannot edit this General Channel I cannot delete it okay and so it’s a good practice to go ahead and create another Channel so that you can have some collaboration taking place here now we can add several channels in this case we’ll go ahead and add to one private Channel and one standard Channel so I click on the more options here onto my team I’ll go ahead and click on add a channel and here’s my dialog box here and so I just need to go ahead and type the name I can type a description if I want to and then we have two choices to make whether we want to have a standard or a private Channel and then if we want to automatically show this Channel and everyone’s channel list so I’ll go ahead and give this a name this channel will be in charge of scheduling so I’ll type scheduling there yep it’s already taken okay scheduling two and so here I have two options I can make it standard so that everyone that is on this current team for example this planning team will have access to this Channel or I can click on private where only specific members of this team will have access to this channel I’ll go ahead and I’ll create the standard one first here and then I want it to automatically show in everyone’s channel list we are receiving some help along the way some guides here so the standard accessible to everyone on the team and the private Channel accessible only to a specific group of people within the team go ahead and click add and as you can see my scheduling 2 channel has been created if I click on the more options here notice that I have more options here so I can I can edit the channel if I want to I can delete the channel I have management capabilities within this channel here so I’ll go ahead and click on there and so I have some basic permissions here that I can use okay so Channel moderation do I want to kind of you know make sure that I approve everything before something gets posted I can turn that on if I want to I can designate who can start a new post such as everyone or everyone except guests so again we have several layers of security here or permissions that we can use if I go back to my more options here the channel notifications so here I have a few options you can use you know all activity which are posts replies and mentions they all come into your feed or we can turn them off or we only receive notifications for direct replies or personal mentions I currently have a custom setup here just based on my general settings here as well so at this point I want to go ahead and create another Channel and this one will be private and we’ll kind of take a look at some of the differences along the way here so I’ll go ahead and add another Channel and maybe I’ll call this scheduling three and I’ll just put the this is a private we’ll go ahead and designate that this is private and notice there’s no option here to send it to everyone’s feed because this is a private channel here we’ll go ahead and create that and from here I can go ahead and start adding my members so who do I want to be a part of this channel foreign so I was able to add two guests there and now notice here is my scheduling three and I see a small icon here looks like a lock and that tells me that this is actually private so if I click on more options here at the same options here that I do for my scheduling too but let’s take a look at the let’s go ahead and manage this Channel and let’s see what we can do here okay so we do have the same here right we do have some guess options here we can take a look at my members and I can go ahead and take a look at the settings so I can go ahead and take a look at the member permissions we have a few options here for the member permissions view up well just one option here for mentions here as well so go ahead and create those two channels create a standard Channel create a private Channel just keep in mind that for the private Channel you would need to actually add the members that you want to be able to be a part of that channel here as well and come right back and we’ll move on welcome back well hopefully you were able to create those two channels there I’m currently on the scheduling 2 Channel that I created here and now let’s start the conversation that’s what it’s saying here let’s get conversation started so I’m going to go ahead and start posting here so I’ll go ahead and click on new conversation and so notice this is our condensed chat menu here we can click on the format icon here so we can get some more advanced features here for our message so I’ll go ahead and open that up here and we do have a few options here all right so now we have some more complex options but I want to point out we do have this option here to kind of set the message format here so if I go ahead and click on this small icon I can go ahead and make this an important message notice how it kind of adds some of the framework here for me it’s marking it as important I can go ahead and add a subject if I want to I can go ahead and start typing my message here as well so in this case maybe I just want to talk about some rules here or maybe some guidelines so the subject will be guidelines and I’ll just say please [Music] read the document so I want to do is I want to go ahead and actually attach a file so I’ll go ahead and click on my attachment icon here now sometimes you will see this message it just says we’re setting up your files and um getting things ready for you once it’s ready I have an option here I can browse a few teams and channels for a file I can go right to my OneDrive or I can upload from my computer in this case I’ll go ahead and upload from my computer I’ll go my desktop here and I just have this little document here for team rules I’ll go ahead and insert that right in there so that’s in there and another thing that I can do what if I wanted to post this in multiple channels there is an option here now that I have enabled my formatting options here I can go ahead and post in multiple channels so if I click here notice it’s currently for scheduling two but I’m a part of several channels here if I click on where it says select channels I can go ahead and drop this in here so maybe Under The General planning and for scheduling too so this is a way that you can post across several channels here of course we want to be careful with this we want to make sure that we’re not overwhelming everyone here just make sure that it’s relevant so I’ll go ahead and update that and so here are my three channels that I am posting to so at this point I’m good to go I’ll go ahead and click on send and as you can see here is my message that shows up right here at the top of my feed for my scheduling 2. let’s head over to team Mojo here go to planning there it is it also shows up here as well now that I have this message here I’ll go back to my scheduling too and we also have more options right here for our actual post so notice here I can add one of these emojis here but if I click on the more options here as have some more options here so I can save this message so maybe this message is very important I want to go ahead and save that so I’ll click on Save and so now I did save that message so notice now I can unsave this message and to view my saved messages I can click on my avatar here and select saved or I can type in the saved command here in my search bar and that would show me all of my saved messages here as well so it’s a two-step process go ahead and save that message and then use either one of those two methods by clicking on your avatar and showing all of your saved messages or typing the saved in the search bar with the forward slash here another thing another thing that we can do is we can turn off notifications for this message maybe it’s going to be a very long thread so we can turn off the notifications there as well we can also share this to Outlook now we can share this to Outlook the only caveat is that your outlook for web needs to be enabled if it’s not enabled this will not work and this is according to Microsoft so maybe I want to go ahead and share the style look I’ll go ahead and click on there and it’ll take a little while it’s going to open up a kind of like a web you know a short web interface here or Outlook just a basic email box here I can add my recipients I can add attachments to here if I want to and I can further modify this message I’m going to go ahead and click on the X I’m not going to go ahead and send that so those are the options that you have when creating posts just remember to get those additional features just go ahead and click on the formatting options so you can get more options to do that as well so go ahead and start the conversation and your Channel and go ahead and mark the message as important go ahead and spread your message across several channels go ahead and save that post and go ahead and reveal all of your saved posts as well and we are done come right back now that we’ve created our first post let’s go ahead and take a look at the next section here of our Channel and we notice a few tabs here at the top of our page we’re currently on the posts tab and here we can see all of our posts that we have created here’s our first post with our attachment we can also take a look at files we can also take a look at a Wiki now the wiki will actually allow us to create our own Wiki so we do have our team rules here but another option instead of sending out a document we can just kind of create our own Wiki with various sections and drop in some guidelines there as well and then we’ll spend some time taking a look at the ad feature here so we can add this allows us to integrate various Services right here into our teams and again the whole goal is a One-Stop shop and so if we can integrate other services right here we can get our work done as opposed to going to SharePoint or going to OneDrive or going to OneNote or even going to Microsoft planner so we’ll take a look at how we can integrate those Services right here but first let’s go ahead and take a look at files so notice here’s that file that we posted in the chat it’s showing up in our repository here team rules and we can go ahead and open this up it will open up right inside of this window for us so we can go ahead and collaborate on it and we can make some changes to it here as well so a few things that we can do here’s just our file management we can go ahead and create a new folder we can drop in various Microsoft applications in here as well and so again this is kind of like your OneDrive or your SharePoint space you can create a structure here you can add your folders and you can drop in various types of files and applications as well I’m going to go ahead and click on my plus sign here to go ahead and add a tab and as you can see there are lots of tabs here that we can add I have some recent tabs here that I was looking at if we kind of scroll down we can see just a lot of different apps here that we can add we can also click on manage apps so we can further manage our apps here but what I want to do I can actually search let’s see if I search for task here so if we integrate this task this this will connect us to our Microsoft planner and then we have OneNote so here’s one note we can integrate one note right here and so we can collaborate we can either use an existing notebook or we can start from scratch and then we can talk about SharePoint and we have different SharePoint options here and what Microsoft is telling us is that when we add one of these SharePoint sites to our team’s Channel we can do all the same things that we would do on the site outside of the team’s Channel okay and so this kind of makes it more efficient for us instead of going to our SharePoint and this is for those of us who have a lot of content on SharePoint instead of going to that site as long as we are either the owner or we have permissions to that site we can integrate it right here and it will you know be just like navigating that site here as well so I’ll go ahead and click on SharePoint we’ll take a look at the options here now keep in mind the nature of SharePoint so teams is directly connected to SharePoint every time you create a team or a channel on the back end SharePoint is creating a space to host that team and or that channel and so everything that we’re doing now and this team is sending the data right to our SharePoint and so it is connected and so we can take advantage of that fact we can go ahead and Implement a few Services here so we do have a few options here I’m just going to go back here and take a look at those SharePoint see here I’ll go back to SharePoint so we do have our SharePoint here so these are basically our lists so if you have list and SharePoint we can integrate those we have the document library that we can use and we also have a SharePoint pages that we can integrate so it’s really your choice I’ll go ahead and click on SharePoint here and SharePoint Pages they basically allow you to share information and even things such as ideas images videos and links here as well so we do have a few layers here so I can either use one of you know one of my existing channels here so notice this is my planning Channel that’s over here so I do have some content in here that I can use I have some pages here also from planning lists no lists currently and I have a document Library here so it’s up to you we can also do is we can connect to any SharePoint site so if we have the link to that SharePoint site and we are the owner and if we have access or you know permissions to be able to to add that we can actually drop that in right here the last option is to post to the channel about this tab here as well so I don’t really have a lot here let’s see if I can go ahead and drop in this see if I can drop this in here I don’t think I have anything in there okay so here’s just some basic data here for my planning here that I can use okay so it drops it in right here as a tab and then I have some tab options here that I can use such as popping it out expanding reloading going to the actual website and some settings here as well let’s go ahead and add another one here let’s take a look at the dialog box for our other SharePoint this time we will do let’s see we’ll go to the we’ll go to the pages here so I’ll go ahead and type share and let’s take a look at what the pages dialog box looks like again kind of the same thing here we can go go ahead and post the channel about this tab if we want to but here it’s very simple we can use one from another team or child that we’re using or we can go ahead and add a page from any SharePoint site so in this case same process will will type the URL and that will actually pop that in for us here as well I’ll go back here and we’ll take a look at the last option here which is the document Library so here’s our document library and what we’ll notice on the relevant sites I have hidden this just for security purposes here but all the sites that we’re connected to I will actually show all of those sites right now I’m going to use a SharePoint link and so they all work the same way you can either insert a link or you can connect to a current resource that you can actually see so this is just a great way to get all your work done right here inside of teams as opposed to going to going to SharePoint there as well I’ll go ahead and click on the X here and I’m going to go ahead and search for OneNote OneNote is right here I’ll go ahead and click on OneNote and kind of the same idea here so we have a few options here for OneNote we can paste a OneNote link so we can do that or we can go ahead and create a new and new notebook or I can go ahead and drop in one of my existing notebooks here as well that will drop it in for us maybe I’ll just go ahead and maybe I’ll drop this one in here we’ll click on Save and so here is our notebook for excel introduction here okay just very basic I don’t have too much in here but as you can see you have your one note menu here that you can be used to interact with this document and you can drop that right in here as well we’ll do one more we’ll drop in our tasks so we can type the word tasks here and really connects to Microsoft planner so tasks make it easy to stay organized across all your planner and to do tasks so it kind of uses a combination of your to-do list and with your Microsoft planner as well so we can create a new plan and or we can use an existing plan from this team here now we don’t really have a plan here to use because this is all new here as well so we do have a few options here so if you’re familiar with these different apps OneNote and tasks it’s right here it’s all here for you but just as an example as you can see when you drop in one of these applications you have the full menu where you can go ahead and make some changes and get some work done here as well we can also collaborate our people on our team can actually see this document and come in and make modifications here as well as you can see we are syncing sinking perfectly fine over here so we have a lot to choose from but in this example we just wanted to add three resources SharePoint OneNote and the Microsoft planner so go ahead and click on your add button here to add some tabs and go ahead and add a few tabs maybe it’s time for you to drop in one of those applications that you use on a daily basis and then come right back welcome back well now that we’ve created a post we’ve added some files and we’ve added some tabs here at the top of our Channel let’s go ahead and talk about scheduling a meeting there’s a few ways that we we can actually schedule the meeting here so notice I’m currently on my scheduling 2 tab here and if we take a look at the top right we will notice that we see the meet icon and it has a small drop down here as well and so I have two options I can either go ahead and meet right now and if I click on meet right now it’s going to open up a meeting for everyone to join and as you can see I can go ahead and give a name to the meeting right here if I want to I can go ahead and set up my video my audio and my devices as well I’m going to hit cancel for now the other option is to schedule a meeting so if I click on schedule a meeting it’s going to open up the dialog that will allow me to actually schedule this meeting here and so here is my meeting dialogue which I was able to go ahead and create right from my scheduling 2 Channel and if you notice right here in the channel section it already has my my scheduling 2 channel right here so whoever’s a part of the scheduling 2 will receive the invitation here for this meeting so at this point we just need to go ahead and fill out the basics I’ll go ahead and I’ll change the state here maybe I’ll go to go a little further out here maybe May 31st from 2 to 2 30. quick meeting here and I’ll go ahead and give it a title I’ll just call this check in check in and we will review our projects you can add a location if I want to I’ll leave that here okay and one of the cool things here is if we take a look at the top we have some other options here that we can use such as the scheduling a system and so what this does this this gives you basically a sneak peek at everyone’s schedule that’s involved as long as a person is a part of your organization you will not be able to see the guest calendars here so if I click on scheduling assistant so notice I’m a part of my organization and so it shows me right it shows me as available for that day notice the day before that which is a holiday it shows me as busy so I’ll not be available so for every person that’s a part of this team we will show the actual slots here and additionally it will give you suggestions on the best time to meet based on everyone’s availability so the scheduling assistant is very very popular really nice option here as well over here we can turn on the response options such as you know allow forwarding or request responses we have registration such as none or for people in our organization or in this case for everyone here as well maybe you want to add required attendees we can go ahead and we can toggle this feature here now notice this is slightly different from just generating a regular calendar item because this is for my channel so a lot of the features here are not available so it’s slightly different here I’m going to go ahead and actually just close this out here I’m not going to send I’m going to actually go into discard this here and what I want to do is I’m going to go ahead and click on my calendar and actually use the other method to schedule a meeting by clicking on my calendar so I’ve opened up my calendar here and I want to go ahead and add a new meeting here and this time I’ll do check in and here I can go ahead and add some required attendees notice right here I can add my channel so they have quite a few channels here that I’m a part of I’ll just go to the planning team I’ll go ahead and click on schedule scheduling two notice that my private channel here is not showing up and so if you have private channel is not showing up in order to schedule a a meeting just speak to your I.T Department there has been some known issues with with scheduling meetings with private channels sometimes what you will need to do is just send out create a meeting and use each person’s individual email or maybe you created a distribution list for them as well but in either case go ahead and speak with your I.T Department and so in this case I can just go ahead I can use a scheduling assistant again and it will show me once everyone accepts the meeting I can take a look at their schedules if they are part of my organization here as well so I’ll just finish creating this meeting here and once we send this out what we’ll notice is when we come back to this meeting we’ll notice additional options here that will be available for us as well so this looks pretty good I have the check-in I have my attendees which are my scheduling 2 channel here and I’ll just type project review here I’ll go ahead and send this out and it’s taking just a little time here I’ll go back to my team and here we go so here’s the team as you can see on the bottom it creates a post entry here for the actual meeting and so now we have the opportunity to go ahead and take a look at some of the options here but go ahead and create a meeting you can either do it right from the channel where you can schedule a meeting or you can go ahead and click on your calendar and just make sure to utilize the channel section where you can type the name of the channel and schedule that meeting and come right back and we’ll take a look at some of the meeting details and some of the options that we can set up as well welcome back so now that we’ve scheduled that meeting what we can do now now we have the post entry for the meeting here it says check in give us some basic data here the day and the time but now I can go ahead and take a look at the meeting details so if I click on the more icon here I can go ahead and view the meeting details and so this essentially just brings me back to my calendar entry I could have also went back to my calendar entry and just clicked on that meeting as well and notice that we have a few more tabs up here okay so for example we have we have a chat dialog that is created for our schedule meeting here and we can take a look at the attendance and here is where we can set up our breakout rooms ahead of time as well and so we’ll take a look at some of these options here we can also go ahead and cancel this meeting at this point if you want to we can go ahead and copy the link to this meeting if we want to right now I can go ahead and join this meeting right now maybe we want to meet now we can go ahead and I can join this meeting and get things rolling here as well but let’s take a look at some other options here so here if we take a look at the attendance attendance may not be ready yet because no one has really responded yet here’s a breakout room option and so here is where you can actually create breakout rooms and then you can manage them here as well so we can add additional rooms we can recreate the rooms we can delete the rooms and we can take a look at further settings here as well here is our chat dialog so right now we can interact we can chat we have a chat that’s dedicated just to this meeting space here and allows us to get further collaboration so if I click on the details here are the details again okay and so the good thing to know is after you set up the meeting after you send out your invitations you will have more options to manage this meeting another useful option is the meeting options it’s a good idea to kind of get get things set up before your meeting here we can see that we can set up the breakout rooms ahead of time but we have some meeting options here that we can utilize so I’ll go ahead and click on this it’s going to open up the options in a web browser for me so I’ll go ahead and click on meeting options here and as you can see it gives me my meeting options here and so it gives me the quick details here of my meeting which is to to check in and over here I can make some decisions such as who can bypass the lobby I can always let callers bypass the lobby yes or no I can announce when callers join or leave who can present do I want everyone’s microphone turned on cameras should I recorded the meeting automatically here as well and should I go ahead and allow reactions and should I go ahead and provide car T captions here as well so these options are all available for us to go ahead and utilize in terms of who can bypass the lobby this is especially in this in this situation is it’s become very very popular to make sure that we kind of monitor who can enter the meeting here so everyone can bypass the lobby only people and my organization trusted organizations and guests people in my organization guests people in my organization or only me so I’ll make it only me here no one can bypass the lobby right you have to show yourself and I have to let you win so I can turn this on to announce when callers join or leave and who can present you have to make a decision here as well we can assign specific people and once the participants are here we can actually go ahead ahead of time and specify who can present so in this case I’ll just say people in my organization and guests we’ll allow the microphone with allow the cameras and we can go ahead and record this automatically we’ll upload to the cloud forest and if we want to allow reactions we can and if we want to assign some some captions we can do that as well so I just need to go ahead and click save and that will save for me and I am done and so all of these decisions I can make ahead of time before my meeting so that I’m not stumbling once my meeting starts to set up some of these options here as well so at this point go ahead and set up your meeting I’ll go back to your meeting details and make sure that you click on the meeting options and go ahead and make some of those decisions especially who can bypass the lobby and who can present during the meeting as well take a look at those features and come right back welcome back well it’s a great idea to make sure that you have some of your meeting options set up before your meeting actually takes place but uh let’s go ahead and launch an instant meeting and we’ll take a look at some of the end meeting options that are available so I’m on my scheduling 2 channel here I’m gonna go ahead and click on meet and I’m just going to go ahead I’ll make sure that just for now I’ll keep my camera off and my audio off as well I’m going to go ahead and join just so we can take a look at some of the meeting options here so notice at this point I can go ahead and add some participants if I want to and I can also copy the meeting link and share also share that out I’m gonna go ahead and close that here and if you take a look we do have a few options here such as we can take a look at the participants we can view the chat we can raise our hand and we have some other meeting options here that we can take a look at as well so I’m going to go ahead and click on some more actions here and one of the things that we see right here is our meeting options so if I click on meeting options so maybe you kind of forgot to set these things up maybe you arrived a little early you can go ahead and you can toggle these options here that we found earlier when we click on the meeting options for our calendar item and we were able to see this in the web interface so all the options are here you can toggle these off or on as well so these are the same options the only difference is now that you can go ahead and apply them inside of this meeting now remember this is not the meeting that we set up for May 31st otherwise these options would have been toggled already so I’ll go ahead and close that here here we have meeting notes and if we click on meeting notes kind of gives us a guide right here so we can start taking notes notes you take or shared with others and are accessible before during and after the meeting so we’ll turn that on go ahead and take some notes Here and while that’s coming up here go ahead and take a look at some more actions here and once this meeting concludes we’ll take a look and see the report that it provides for us after we finish the meeting here so here is our notes that we have here so we can capture meeting objectives important notes or action items I’ll go back to my window here I’ll go back to my more actions and so for me here the other things that we can do is we can turn on the transcription service if we want to we can start recording this meeting if we want to and there’s various modes that we can use for viewing purposes we have the large Gallery option we have the together mode option here as well so let’s talk about one of the things we like to do is actually raise our hand in meetings so we can actually raise our hand right here okay we can either lower it or raise it so notice I get the notification here that Mo Jones has raised his hand and so remember we have that shortcut that we learned in in the beginning Ctrl shift K so Ctrl shift K is going to toggle there I’ve lowered my hand Ctrl shift K I’m able to raise my hand again I’ll go ahead and lower that right now pretty good and so from here we can show the conversation um so here is our dialogue currently it’s telling us that meeting notes are being recorded here we can type our message in the chat and of course we have the more format options here for our chat as well we can drop in some stickers and various other options in here so a lot of options here to be able to communicate via the chat go ahead and lower that here so let’s talk about some things that we can present here I’m going to go ahead and just collapse this right pane and I want to go ahead and share content notice the shortcut key there’s Ctrl shift plus e and late last year Microsoft made some changes to this interface here we have various presenter modes the default mode is the content only and then if our camera is on we have these different modes here as well that we can use here’s a little pictorial view this is where your image will show up on the bottom right of the screen here for this one the other option with kind of side by side and this is kind of like your newscast here as well so we can do that and so at this point we can choose to share our entire screen or we can go ahead and capture it I have two monitors here so I can share either monitor what I want to do is I want to go ahead and share a window so I’ll go ahead and have eight windows open here and I think what I’ll share is that Microsoft will go ahead and open up Microsoft edge here and so it brings me right here to the meeting options here one that we used earlier here just kind of sharing this information here as well so we do have our toolbar that kind of shows up here at the top and so we can change our view here as long as our camera is turned on we can go ahead and do that we can give control who someone else is in the meeting we can assign control to someone I can also go ahead and pin this menu so that it shows here does not disappear from me notice it goes away but from right here I can make some changes and stop presenting as well on the bottom right we do see the option here we can either stop sharing by clicking on the X right here we can go ahead and end the call we can turn on our microphone or turn on our video or we can just go ahead and click right here to go back to the call screen now it can be a little confusing sometimes but we can go right back to the call screen so here’s our call screen notice that we’re still sharing I can go ahead and click on the x button or Ctrl shift e to stop my sharing here as well so I’m no longer sharing here and let’s go ahead and let’s see what else we can share here let’s go back under shared content and I want to share the Whiteboard Microsoft whiteboard and these are becoming very very popular in various apps are offering whiteboard options here as well they tend to call them different things but they all pretty much do the same thing it allows a collaborative space for yourself and your attendees to mark up an item together and so here’s our whiteboard as we can see let’s take a look at the settings here on the top right so when we finish with our whiteboard we can always export it as an image we can toggle the option for enhanced ink shapes so when we when we start drawing it will actually try to correct it and make the lines finer for us and the curves just give it a better visual appeal we can toggle the option to have others be able to edit the documents as well okay and so we can do that at this point you know we can go ahead and just make sure that everyone can see our document here and so if I click on the pen I can just start scribbling here like so we have this red pen here which provides some arrows kind of document things for us we have this other type of pen has some more glittery color options there for us notice how it’s just kind of changing the shapes for me as I type them and we have a highlighter so we can highlight things so it goes over and then we have our eraser here that we can use some popular features to use so here here are pen tools we can actually create so I can actually collapse this menu if I want to and I can go ahead and collapse everything just like that so here’s my select tool which is what I’m currently using here here’s my inking I can close that but if I want to get creative I can drop in some notes on here if I want to I can drop in some shapes I can drop in text I can also right click on the canvas and I can insert a new note I can insert text or I can paste something right into the canvas here as well okay I do have some other options here such as templates which are you know which are pretty popular here I’ll save that for last year I’ll drop in a note different types of notes here so we have notes and we have note grids that we can use so I’ll go ahead and drop in my note right here and I can just go ahead and maybe provide some instructions here maybe I can say caption [Music] and you pick and we can also go ahead and apply some emojis to this maybe someone likes this here as well so that’s notes we can drop in text as well so here is our text box [Music] so we can just say type here okay we can go ahead and change the colors here if we want to and we can move all these objects around so we can if you want them to show behind another object we can do that or if we want them to show in front we can do that here as well I’ll insert a shape here insert an arrow draw my arrow here so here’s my arrow once I have it there I can grab one of the handles here and rotate it as well and I can go ahead and move it move it all together here like so everything kind of in unison here if you see this so at this point I can just go ahead and delete these items here remove them from my canvas and maybe I’ll go ahead and insert a template so we have various templates here from brainstorming all the way down to learning maybe I’ll drop in a brainstorming template here anyway here we have various brainstorming templates maybe I’ll do this topic brainstorm here and we can just go ahead and drop it right on our canvas we can resize it if you want to we can move it around and so we can use a lot of this whiteboard space here okay we can zoom in we do have a zoom option right here we can also hold down the control key and scroll up that will zoom in for us hold down the control key and scroll down and that will zoom zoom out so it’s just a matter of getting that right field that you want here so when we’re finished with our whiteboard we can always just click on the settings menu here we can export this as an image we can choose a standard resolution or a high resolution it’s just a matter of exporting that here and so we can export that save it to our desktop and we are good to go so this one I can go ahead and click on and that will go ahead and close out my whiteboard for me so at this point what I can do I can just go ahead and end the meeting by clicking on the drop down here I can just leave the meeting or I can end the meeting for all I’m going to go ahead and end the meeting for everyone here and so let me go back to my so here we go and if we go back to our posts here we can see that it has actually recorded a meeting for us in different ways so we have the notes that we can show we can download the attendance report right here so if I download the attendance report I can go ahead and save that to my desktop as well and as soon as it downloads let’s see go ahead and grab that bring that over to the screen okay and so here we’ll go ahead and auto fit all these columns here okay so it gives us a lot of information here as you can see I was the only one that attended nobody else showed up hey so there we go all right and so really cool just the nature of the channel is going to provide these things here for you as well so go ahead and launch a meeting from your channel and if you’re able to have a few of your attendees join your call so you can take a look at some of the other options there as well but go ahead and take a look at those meeting options and come right back welcome back well now that we took a look at some of the in meeting controls let’s go ahead and take a look at some of the notable settings here inside of Microsoft teams I’m going to go ahead and click on the settings menu right next to my avatar here or my profile rather so I’ll click on here and I’ll go into my settings and the first thing you notice you can actually go ahead and change the theme so the default theme is what I’m currently using here you can get a preview of the theme by clicking on the Dark theme Here or the high contrast theme here as well let me go ahead and put that back on the default a new feature that was added recently is you can change the actual chat density so you have this compacted view the default view is comfy where your chats have kind of spread out if you want a more compact view you can change the view and it will compact those into the lines for you here as well another important feature is the read receipts so you’ll notice when read receipts are turned on by default and read receipts of what you it basically indicates or let’s notifies you when someone views or reads your message you’ll notice a small eyeball or you’ll see another type of confirmation there as well so the person needs to have read receipts turned on in order for you to be notified if they read or reviewed your message or not so if you want to turn this off if you don’t want other people to know whether or not you read their messages you can just toggle this off and they will not be able to determine whether or not you read their messages here as well so that is an option another option here is under the devices here is where we can go ahead and just basically go ahead and set up your devices one thing I recommend is making a test call okay a great way to go ahead and make sure that your audio and your video are working correctly it will go through the full test for you and to make sure that everything is okay so this is a viable option here as well I do have a custom setup because right now my speakers are my computer speakers and my microphone it’s actually my webcam here as well if I wanted to change these I could change them and I can change my microphone here as well I’ll actually change my microphone to my Blue Snowball here and then we have some other options here for noise suppression so we have a few levels here Auto so teams is basically cutting out the background noise for you anything that is not speech it’s trying to take care of that for you you can turn it off if you have a really nice microphone and you’re in a very quiet area and you can put this on low if you feel confident high is going to try to basically block out everything but keep in mind that does not work if live captions are running during a meeting or if the meeting is being recorded So these will not work you also have to need to have a special kind of processor and as of today Mac users will not have the capability to use the high noise suppression here as well another option that we have is for the files if you’ll notice when you open Excel word are PowerPoint files they open in teams you can change this to open in your desktop app or you can have them open in your browser as well so those are just a few examples here of some pretty nice features that you may want to take a look at here as well another thing to mention is that once you are inside of your channel here what we can do if we take a look on the top right next to our meeting icon we have some more options here and one of the options that are available is to actually go ahead and open this channel in SharePoint we did talk about SharePoint but if you wanted to see what it looks like here remember every time you create a team or a channel it creates a SharePoint space so if we click on open and SharePoint this is what it looks like here I’ll make this a little bigger so we can see okay so we only have one document kind of living here now which is that document I shared earlier as well another thing that we can do is we do have people calling in Via a phone when they are connecting to our meeting and so if you want those people to basically bypass the lobby they’re just calling in it’s kind of difficult for them to wait for someone to let them in we can toggle these options here so maybe I can say people in my organization and now I can allow people who are calling in via phone to the meeting as long as that feature is available for your admin for the number to actually show up in the meeting description or the meeting details we can allow them to come right through here as well so those are just a few options here that we can take a look at and one thing I like to do before we wrap up here is I like to take a look at what’s new so on the bottom left here we have this help button I’m going to go ahead and click on that and I want to see what updates have rolled out so I’ll click on my help menu here and I’ll click on what’s new and as you can see here in February we had a few had a few changes here so now we can pin a message in the chat so we can pin it all the way to the top of our chat regardless of the number of messages that are in there we can do that pretty useful and again we can change how many messages we see at one time so again we can change the spacing of the chat messages and teams and here we were talking about the comfy mode that we saw available here in our settings menu so here’s comfy and here’s Compact and that’s this is what it’s referring to if you’d like to see more spacing you can change that we have the turn off mirror my video this option is now available so you now have the option to stop mirroring the image of your video preview which is very helpful here as well so these are some new features that are available we can go back a little more but they’re constantly making updates to this product and it’s good just to be able to take a look and see what is new so go ahead and take a look around take a look at those settings and come right back and we will wrap up welcome back and congratulations on completing our Microsoft teams deep dive course we were able to set up public and private teams with Integrations to use Office 365 tools such as SharePoint planner and OneNote we’re able to view the SharePoint site as well that houses our Channel we’re able to schedule a team’s meeting and adjust meeting options before the meeting takes place and also in meeting options as well such as determining who can bypass the lobby and who can present we’re able to effectively collaborate in a channel-based workspace as opposed to an Outlook inbox and hopefully you’re enjoying Microsoft teams as a One-Stop shop for all of your communication and collaboration once again congratulations and I look forward to seeing you in a future learn it tutorial thanks for watching don’t forget we also offer live classes and office applications professional development and private training visit learnit.com for more details please remember to like And subscribe and let us know your thoughts in the comments thank you for choosing learn it [Music]
By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog
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This series of excerpts introduces advanced features within Microsoft Visio, guiding users through the creation of cross-functional flowcharts with swimlanes for process and team organization. It then demonstrates how to construct network diagrams, illustrating insecure and secured network routes with various components. Furthermore, the material covers customizing Visio by creating and saving personal stencils for frequently used shapes. Finally, it explains how to enhance diagrams with hyperlinks to external documents and internal page linking, as well as generating organizational charts and pivot diagrams directly from Excel data, concluding with methods for sharing Visio drawings.
Date: October 26, 2023 Prepared By: Gemini AI Subject: Review of Visio Advanced Course Content
This briefing document summarizes the main themes, important ideas, and facts presented in the provided excerpts from the Visio advanced course. The course covers a range of topics, including creating cross-functional flowcharts, network diagrams, personal stencils, using hyperlinks and the Process tab for sub-processes, generating organizational charts and pivot diagrams from Excel data, and sharing Visio drawings.
Main Theme: Creating visual representations of processes that involve multiple departments or phases.
Key Ideas & Facts:
Quotes:
Main Theme: Visually representing the structure and components of a network, including both secure and insecure routes, WLANS, and internetworking.
Key Ideas & Facts:
Quotes:
Main Theme: Saving frequently used or custom-formatted shapes into a personal stencil for easy access in future diagrams.
Key Ideas & Facts:
Quotes:
Main Theme: Creating interactive diagrams by linking shapes to external documents or other Visio pages representing sub-processes.
Key Ideas & Facts:
Quotes:
Main Theme: Generating organizational charts automatically from structured data in an Excel spreadsheet.
Key Ideas & Facts:
Quotes:
Main Theme: Generating interactive data visualizations from Excel data using the Pivot Diagram template.
Key Ideas & Facts:
Quotes:
Main Theme: Methods for sharing Visio diagrams with others.
Key Ideas & Facts:
Quotes:
This briefing document provides a comprehensive overview of the topics covered in the Visio advanced course excerpts. It highlights the key concepts, procedures, and functionalities demonstrated by the instructor, Joe. The inclusion of direct quotes helps to preserve the original context and emphasis.
The Vizio advanced course, as facilitated by Joe in the provided text, covers several topics building upon basic flowchart creation. Here’s a discussion of the key concepts and activities covered:
In summary, the Vizio advanced course focuses on enhancing diagramming capabilities beyond basic flowcharts by introducing techniques for visualizing complex processes, network structures, organizational hierarchies, and data summaries, as well as methods for customization, linking, and sharing.
Based on the sources and our previous conversation, let’s delve deeper into cross-functional flowcharts as discussed in the Vizio advanced course.
In the Vizio advanced course, after learning the basics of creating flowcharts, the next step is to create cross-functional flowcharts. This type of flowchart is designed to illustrate process flow across different functional areas or phases within an organization or project.
Here are the key aspects of creating cross-functional flowcharts as described in the course:
In the example provided, a project lifecycle is mapped across three teams (A, B, and C) and potentially through different phases (although initially set as phases, the labels are changed to teams). You can see how “Project Alpha” is handled by Team A, obtaining permits and contacting developers is done by Team B, while contacting marketing falls under Team C. As the process progresses, different teams become responsible for subsequent steps like building a pricing plan, checking in with other teams, making decisions, and announcing the demo.
By using swim lanes and separators, cross-functional flowcharts offer a more detailed and contextual understanding of a process compared to a basic flowchart, especially when multiple teams or departments are involved.
Based on the sources and our conversation history, let’s discuss the basic flowchart template in Vizio.
The basic flowchart template is presented in the sources as the foundation for creating various types of flowcharts, including the more advanced cross-functional flowcharts.
Here’s what the sources tell us about the basic flowchart template:
In summary, the basic flowchart template in Vizio is the initial template you select to begin creating process flow diagrams. It provides a blank canvas and access to fundamental flowchart shapes and stencils, serving as the starting point for both simple and more advanced flowcharts like cross-functional ones. If you don’t see it immediately, you can easily find it by searching through Vizio’s extensive template library online.
Based on the sources and our previous discussion, let’s delve into swim lanes in Vizio.
Swim lanes are a fundamental component of cross-functional flowcharts in Vizio [1, previous turn]. They serve as visual containers to organize the steps of a process according to different phases or departments involved.
Here are the key aspects of swim lanes as described in the sources:
In the context of creating a cross-functional flowchart, after adding and arranging the swim lanes to represent the different involved parties, you then place the standard flowchart shapes within the appropriate swim lane to visually depict who performs each step of the process [4, previous turn]. The connectors then show the flow of work, often crossing between swim lanes to indicate handoffs or dependencies between different functions.
In summary, swim lanes in Vizio are essential tools for creating cross-functional flowcharts. They provide a structured way to visualize process flow by organizing activities within clearly defined sections representing different responsibilities or stages. The ability to add, resize, and label swim lanes makes them highly adaptable for mapping various types of cross-functional processes.
Based on the sources and our conversation history, let’s discuss project phases in the context of creating flowcharts using Vizio.
The sources indicate that project phases can be effectively represented in a cross-functional flowchart using swim lanes. Swim lanes allow you to visually segregate the different stages or phases of a project, making it clear which activities belong to each phase.
Here’s how project phases are addressed in the sources:
In summary, project phases can be effectively visualized in Vizio by utilizing swim lanes in a cross-functional flowchart. You can label each swim lane to represent a specific phase of the project and then place the relevant process steps within that swim lane. While swim lanes can also represent other functional divisions like teams or departments, they provide a clear and organized way to map out the progression of a project through its various stages. The ability to label and resize swim lanes offers the flexibility to represent project phases in a way that best suits the specific project and its requirements.
hello everyone and welcome my name is Joe I’m going to be facilitating this course for you today and today we’re going to be talking about Vizio advanced in our Vizio introduction course what we ended up creating was a basic flowchart what I want to start off with today is creating what’s known as a cross-functional flowchart to do this we’re going to use our basic flowchart template right here and if you don’t see that you can always go into more templates and search for it online so once you click on basic flowchart we’re then going to use our blank flowchart and click create now you’ll see right away that we have the option for cross-functional flowchart shape stencil and if I click on it this is where we’ll find our swim lanes and our separators this will allow us to separate things by different phases or even different departments that are going to be working on these different flow charts so let’s say that we’re working on a project and we can use some basic flow chart shapes for this we’ll do a start and end and I’ll just put my start right here and let’s say that this is going to be I don’t know we’ll make up the process as we go along we’re going to have a process underneath it we’ll have some sort of process and we’ll reshape this and then we’ll have another process then we can always duplicate for another one then somewhere along the line we’ll have some sort of sub process and we’ll start to follow this out in a little bit we’ll have another process and once again I could just use Ctrl D to duplicate maybe we’ll have a decision somewhere I think that looks good right there just gonna space this out nicely and then we’ll have a document that we need to access or create and last but not least we will duplicate our end so for these different processes what we can do is we can start to map these out to different departments and different phases for instance maybe there’s going to be three phases that this project is going to be completed in and I’m going to have three different departments working on this I’m just going to move my shapes to wherever I’d like just so that they feel like they’re more aligned and we’ll do something like this I think this looks great and next what I’m going to do is start to name these so for this first process what we’ll call this is project Alpha there we go and of course we can always change the size of this and all the other editing tools that we’ve went over in our Vizio introduction video I’ll just add a size 14 on there I think that looks great so what we’re going to do now is fill out the rest of this I’m going to click into the next one and we’ll say for this one we’re going to Bourbon and once again I’ll just change everything I need to change here I’ll go with a 14 point font and then after that I’m thinking we’ll do contact Developers foreign we will contact our marketing team so we could start to get this project marketed after this we might have a sub-process where we’re building a pricing plan and once again I’ll just change that to a 14 point and then we may want to just check in on our developers and marketing team and I like to just do a double click like this so that I can get R if we go one two we get our nice little app box here but what we can also do is just go right up top and just change it here as well whatever works down here we do want a decision point on this and the decision point is how we want to announce this so do we want to announce this via teams or email foreign to do an email we are going to want to write up an email on this so once again I’ll just change this to 14 point there we go we may want to make this a little bigger just because of the text and then if we do decide to do email and I’ll just change that via if we decide to do email well then we’ll go up here and we will write out the document so this will be our demo announcement document and last but not least well we’ll have our demo now we just have to create our connections and I’m going to go to my connector tool and I’ll create a connection I want to make this a static connection so I will be going from point to point and once again point to point and there we go and then for our announcements we’ll either if we decide to do email go to demo announcements or we’re just going to go straight to the demo if we’re going to do a quick little teams announcement and I think that looks great now I’ll go back to my pointer tool I’m just going to switch up this line so it’s straight I might want to switch this line up so it’s straight as well there we go and I think this looks awesome but now what we’re going to want to do is set up our cross functional team because I have three teams working on this team a team B and team C but I also have this in different phases so the first thing I’m going to do is go over to my cross-functional flowchart shape now for this I’m going to use the vertical Lane for the vertical swim Lane and I’m going to click and drag it right here and I can make it as big as I want if I wanted to make it a little bigger you can come over here and click and drag whatever works for you and I’m just going to make that a little bigger there perfect and I want to include that line so perfect it also includes the title which is really nice and now that we have this I might just make this a little different here and there we go beautiful and I think that looks nice now I’m going to add another Swan Layman as well the second one is going to go right next to it and once again I want this to capture the rest of them so I will click away and then once I click away I could just click and drag and I include it like this and then last but not least one last swim Lane right over here and then I click away and then you can resize it now what I want to do is I want to start to add more phases you’ll see here that this is all just one face I want this to be all different types of faces so I want this to say instead of function I’ll double click and I’ll call this one phase one I’ll then click on the next function and I’ll call this one phase two and I’ll click on this third one nice double click phase three now for these phases I don’t really want it to say phase I want it to have theme A Team B Team D but I do need to split this up so I’m going to use what’s known as a separator now if you’re using a vertical swim Lane you’re going to use a vertical separator and if you’re using just a swim Lane horizontally you’re going to use the normal separator so I’ll click on vertical separator and click and drag this one right here and what I’m going to do is I’m going to change this to instead of it saying phase I’m going to call it team a now I know that team a is going to be dealing with the project Alpha discussion a building pricing plan and then that’s it we’ll then go into another separator and I’ll add it between these two right here and we’ll just say that let’s go all the way over here let’s add contact Developers and this is going to be my team so Team B is going to be working on all these different flows now I’ll do class separator if I needed to but since it’s already here all I have to do is double click and then put Dean see and now we have everything organized so for phase one I have Team a working on the idea of project Alpha I have Team B playing the permits and contacting developers while my team fee contact marketing degree then when we switch over to phase two team a will be building out a pricing plan and Team B will be checking in on the marketing and development and then team c will make that decision if they’re going to announce via teams or email once we get into phase three email is fully done with this project I think B is going to be announcing the demo and then of course if we decide to send out this document or if we don’t we can skip into that now I do want to add one more connector just from here demo and there we go I may also want to add the text here as well to decide what is the decision is this the teams or is this the team so I’m going to click on text and I’m going to enter the text here I’m just going to put via themes and you can make that a little bigger if you like I’ll do a 14 point and then once I’m done I can use my pointer tool to actually take this and drag it down here because this is where it’s going to live beautiful and then I’ll do another one I’m going to put it here and I’m going to say via email and once again you can double click make this a little bigger I’ll do 14 point and then I’ll click on my pointer tool and just click and drag it to the middle here and look at that this is looking great of course we could change the colors as I always like to do I could change one color or both at the same time and then I can just do a quick fill maybe I’ll make those ones let’s do a red for those for all the processes I’m gonna do a lighter blue something like that that looks great for the sub process let’s do a nice green for the announcement I’ll do a purple and then for the demo I’ll do chemo announcement in yellow you can also change these shapes as well if you like and fill them with different colors you can do a nice light gray just click on each one maybe I want to change this to a different color as well you’re more than welcome to in each of these as well and there we go and you might just want to change that text of course and change it to a different color and there we go so you can have really a lot of customization to this and make it look any way that you like so take a moment try this out on your own and when we come back we’re going to talk about building a network diagram what we’re going to be talking about next is creating a network diagram now this network diagram will show the hierarchical network design using wlans and also internet working so the first thing I’m going to do is create a new file I’m actually going to just simply search for a network diagram you’ll also see here in the suggested search that we have network if we give that a click it’s going to search thousands of our templates and we can go here and choose which one we want now I’m just going to Simply use a basic diagram so I’ll go to basic Network diagram give it a click use a basic Network diagram or we can use a small slash medium business at work diagram whichever one you’d like to use you’re more than welcome to they just have different icon designs now for me you can even just start from scratch which I’m gonna do and then I’ll click create now the first thing I’m going to do is the insecure route so I want to be able to create a box and then start to put different things in there you’ll see we have access to networks we have computer monitors and we have quick shapes or even more shapes that we can add so I do want to just add some basic shapes here so I will go to more shapes and then I’ll go to General and basic shape this is where I can start to create those borders and I’m going to click and drag the square over here I’ll make a little bigger here just like that I think that looks good I don’t want to fill so I am going to turn the fill off no fill but I do want to make sure I can see that line so I’m going to do that and there we go we have a nice little light box now inside this box I do want to have the internet I’m going to go to network and I’m going to search for anything that helps me to distinguish that this is the internet that we’re connecting to and we can use whatever we like whether we want to do wireless access point or maybe we want to create a cloud so I can search for cloud and there we go we see the cloud right here and you’ll also notice that it’s under Network location so you can just see through all these different things we have symbols we have calendar shapes but I’m going to use this one and put it right here and then what I can do is just enter a text box and the text box is going to say internet just so that I have some sort of labeling system here I’ll put internet and there we go now I can go back to home grab my pointer tool and click and drag it wherever I like and I’ll put it right there now the next thing that I want to do is group these together I think it’s important to do this so that I know this is one object I can do that by clicking on this one holding the control key clicking on internet and then we’ll go to group under the enrangement group give it a click and click group so now it’s all one so even when I move this I can move it around as one piece next up I do want to search for some sort of like business building so that I can represent the building and once again you can either look here add some of your network or you can just search for building and there we go building and it’s under once again Network locations and I’ll give that a click here now I’m going to make a connection from our Internet to our actual building and I may also want to just put in here that this is an insecure Network space so I’m going to add another insert text box and then I’ll add it right here and I’ll just put into here you can also make this a little bigger and I’ll just go with like a 30 point I think that looks good and now I can make my connection by going to the connector tool and connecting this straight to this and there we go looks perfect now if you did want to connect this tool maybe you want to move it over a little bit you’re more than welcome to just so that it looks a little nicer it’s not just coming straight from the middle and I think that looks great the way it is the next thing we need to do is now create the secured route so in order to do that we’re going to actually create the router and the firewall right here once again there’s different things you can use for the shapes and you’ll see I have a firewall here and I have a router designed so I’m going to use both of these I’ll just click my router put it here and I’ll take my firewall and I’ll put it here now I do want my firewall behind the router so I will click on bring front or send back and I’m going to actually send this backwards so that my router is on top of my firewall the next thing I’m going to do is create another shape I’m going to actually just duplicate this one so it saves us some time and I’ll put that right here I think that looks great and now I can start to add my secure network and I like to do a lot of duplication because it’s a lot easier than resizing everything and I’ll put secure it instead the next thing I’m going to do is add another router so I will just click on this router duplicate it and add it right here I’ll add a couple more routers as well three more so I’ll do Ctrl D Ctrl D Ctrl D and I’ll move those to wherever I like and I’m going to go here here and probably one here so I may want to make this a little bigger and there we go and I think that looks great the next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to create the server and then I’ll create the computers as well so I can take the server icon bring it over here and then I’m going to take the computers and I’ll just find the computers here or once again we can just go over to our shapes look at the different stencils we have like computers monitors and I can use these and I’ll just bring out a couple of them here and you know what I’m thinking let’s use laptop that looks better I’ll duplicate those because we’re going to have probably three laptops here and then I’ll make this once again a little bigger of a shape because I want to make sure that it fits all of our different icons and I might move this a little as well and there we go now the last thing I’m going to do is have a couple of wlans and I’m going to have one room filled with computers and then a second one so once again I will create that shape just by duplicating it bring it over here squeeze it up a little bit maybe make it a little and if you notice that it’s doing something like this the shape and it’s just not really listening to how you want it to be what you can always do is enter a different shape and I always like to just use if I’m going to use shapes that have some sort of text box I may just use a text box but if you wanted to once again you can always just go back to basic shapes and instead of choosing Square you can use rectangle whatever way works for you you’re more than welcome to do since I know I’m going to be adding a bunch of different icons in here I’m going to just create a rectangle foreign and then once again on that rectangle I’m going to make sure that there’s no fill and I’ll do the line to be Gray I’ll create a duplicate of that and then I will just grab these text box and that control D like I said it’s going to help out a lot so you don’t have to constantly resize things and I’m going to just call this a WLAN s and we’ll put 0 1. I’ll duplicate it and then I’ll do zero to them and maybe make this a little bit bigger next up I’m going to add let’s say probably four computers here and four computers here as well so I may want to make this a little bigger here and I’ll just add a couple of computers and for these computers I will make them a little smaller just so that we can put them in this box for us and then I’ll do Ctrl d c d control d just like this and all we’re doing is building out a scheme for this network design and I’ll create a couple more and now what I want to do is I want to make sure that there is some sort of access point so I will put a wireless access point here and I’ll put another wireless access point here as well now that we have everything that we need what I want to do is start to create these connections so for the secured what I want to do first is actually bold it and underline it same thing here bold underline bold underline and bold and underline now I’ll create those connectors so I’m going to connect this router to this one and I’m just going to change this over here just like that I’m going to connect this router with this one and then also this router with this one now for this connection I’m connecting this router with the computer this router with this computer and you can always just move those over if you don’t like where their placement is and then I’m just gonna grab one last one and move it over here and make sure once again you just grab by that box there we go now the next thing that I’m going to do is create a connection from here to the server box and once again you’re more than welcome to move these whatever you like I might want it on a more straight path there I think that looks good and I’ll just move this over here move this one a little bit over here as well there we go and the last thing that I’m going to want to do is create some dotted lines to show that this is going to be a wireless connection from this router to these two wireless access points and to do this what we can do is create the connection and I’m going to pull the connection from here to here and I’m going to do that one more time from here to here but when you click on the actual line when you click on this connection here I’m going to go to the line and instead of it being a wait line I’m actually going to make it a dashed fine just like this and I’ll do that for this one as well I go to line and I make it a dashed line and that just gives us a representation that this is actually a wireless access point and there we go we have an awesome now Network design and we can start to create these secured Networks take a moment try this out for yourselves and when we come back we’ll get into some more fun stuff so here I am back at one of the first diagrams that we created now over here we’ve seen that when we select certain templates like basic flows chart you’ll see that we get certain stencils like the basic flowchart shape stencil cross-functional flowchart shapes and that’s how we were able to build this but sometimes what we want to do is create an actual shape and then save it to a personal stencil that way we can use them over and over and over again without having to worry about what kind of formatting we did to it so the first thing you’re going to do is go to more shape and you’re going to go to new stencil and you’ll pick whatever metrics works for you I’m going to use US units now it’s going to say stencil 3 and I can quickly start to drop shape right here for instance I love the way that our star and shapes are they’re red with a blue lining and that’s something I’m going to want to use in the future so what I can do is I can click on this shape duplicate it and then take this shape it’s duplicated and drop it right here that will now add it to my stencil now of course it calls it a master 0.2 so we can right click and we can actually edit this name and I’m just going to say start flash end now we can do the same thing for the rest of them I could just duplicate click and drag and then we can call this one our process and you can add any types of shapes you want even if I go into let’s say more shapes and I decide to use I don’t know maybe food and drink I can take this shape put it here let’s do Apple let’s do cake slice let’s do candy because I know I’m going to use them go back to my stencil 3 and then I can just simply add these over here and there we go and then you can rename them once again by right-clicking rename master I’ll rename them what they are so while I’m doing that I’m then thinking well it does stencil three here I actually want to rename this one as well so if you want to do that you can click save the little save icon and you’re not going to actually move the location you’re just going to name this what you want and I’m going to call this codes stencil once I click save it’s now in the system so if I do decide to open up a brand new file I go to file new and I open up basic diagram it’s actually going to be in more shapes and then I could go to my shape and I could see ghost stencil so you can use this now forever this is a great way to easily access shapes that you use all the time so take a moment try that out on your own and when we come back we’re going to get into using hyperlinks and also the process tab so in our cross-functional flowchart we actually added a couple things here that can be used for linking for instance you’ll see here the building pricing plan and what we’re going to want to do is since it’s a subtask we’re going to want to create a whole nother basic flowchart around the building of the pricing plan we also added in the demo announcements document so wouldn’t it be really nice if we could just click on the shape and it opens up that document in Word well good news you can do that in Vizio you can connect Excel files Word files or even PowerPoint files as well so the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to create that hyperlink for this document I’m going to click on the actual shape and I’m going to go over to the insert tab now inside of the insert tab this is where the link command group lives and that’s where the command link lid now all you have to do is give that a click and it’s going to populate this dialog box it’s going to say okay so we have the address here you want to browse an internet address where you can connect it to some sort of site maybe your home site or do you want to connect this to a local file on your computer the second option here sub address is linking it within the actual file so right now I have a page one and if I click on browse it will offer me page one but I already know what I want to do I want to browse a local file it’s going to pop up this dialog box and what we’re going to do is access some sort of file and I’ll just use a fake one for today I’m going to use some fake Word file here let’s do let’s do this one here now make sure good point right now I’m on Vizio file you’re going to want to click on all files so that you see all of them that’s when you can click and then click open and now it will link you to that document but if you’re on files and it automatically puts you in video files you’re not going to see anything so you’re going to want to click the drop down all files and then choose the file you want to connect to once you’re done you click ok and there we go it is now connected now I know it’s connected because if you hover over any of these you just simply get your cursor with four arrows but if I hover over this one I get a different looking icon here I got my cursor with a little link and if you hover over it it will even display a little text saying if you hold Ctrl click you’ll follow the link so if I hold Ctrl and I click this it’s actually going to open up word boom there it is brings me straight here pretty amazing so the next thing we’re going to talk about is the process Tab and this is very similar to hyperlinks except this goes into subprocess for instance this sub process for building the pricing plan I’m going to create a whole nother basic flowchart for this so to actually access the process tab you’re going to go over the process now once here you can either create a link from an existing subprocess or you can create a new page now I usually use the create new page so when you click on this you’re going to select the building pricing plan make sure it’s selected with the sizing bullet click on create new and it is going to create a brand new page down here for the building a pricing plan which is nice because now I can start to put all this information on here now not only that but it also creates that link so if I use control click it will bring me to the building of the pricing plan workflow and there we go we’re on that second page now I can rename page one if I wanted to and I’ll just double click and I’ll just call it project also and now we have our two sheets project Alpha and the building pricing and this will link straight to that page and this will link straight to the document these can be really helpful especially if you have more than one flowchart for an entire project take a moment try it out for yourselves and when we come back we’re going to talk about making an organizational chart from an Excel file to make an organizational chart from an Excel file the first thing you’re going to want to do is build the Excel file in a nice format that will work with Vizio to do this you’re going to open up Excel file and you’re going to make sure it has three things the first thing has to be the name of the person who they report to and also what their position is the biggest thing out of all of this is the reports too this makes those connections between the different shapes so I see here that I am going to be the CEO if I actually don’t report to anyone here you can leave that blank but then we have Crystal Willie and Dana and they all report to me then we have Marco who reports the crystal Danny and April who report to Marco and then Lucas Elsa Sarah report to Willie Elizabeth reports to Dana and then Caroline and Andy report to Elizabeth so now that I have it like this all I have to do is in my actual Vizio open up Vizio go over to file new and I’m going to search for an org chart so I’ll click into the search I’ll type in organizational chart or if you see it right here you could give it a click now the thing I’m going to use is not one of these pre-built templates I’m actually going to use the wizard and when I use the wizard it will give me that option to actually pull it from a file or entered in the wizard now I’m going to pull it from an Excel file so I’ll use this first one and these are the different files you can choose from I’ll then click next and it’s going to ask you well where is it stored now I’m selecting Excel file and clicking next and then it’s going to ask me where the file is located if I can bounce for this file find it on my desktop and choose Excel org chart data or whatever you named it and click open I’ll click next and the next thing it’s going to do is ask me what columns are we going to fill in well the name is going to be the name column I created reports to will be the reports to and if you did have a first name column you could use that but that is optional so I’ll leave it at none I’ll then click next now it’s going to ask me about the columns that our data wants to display and I want the data file column to be the reports to I actually don’t want to display who they report to that’s just going to be the connectors I want it to display the name and the position of the person I’ll click next ask me for the data file that you want to add to the org chart once again same thing I want the shape data to be the name and position okay you actually want the connectors to be reports to so I’ll click next if you had any pictures of all of these employees you could include the pictures and it even tells you right here an example of that would be if you’re going to match it you want to make sure that it has their first name last name and it’s a DOT PNG but we’re going to say that we’re not going to include fake pictures in this org chart and I’m going to click next up is going to ask what happens if it’s 2 we want to fit this on the entire page so I’m actually going to have the wizard worry about that formed and I’ll click finish once you do that it builds it out and it looks amazing now all we have to do is move some stuff over you can even change the connection points and then I’ll move this one over a little bit we’ll move this over a little bit and then once again I’ll change the connection points and I’m just making it look a little neater here and then I’m going to do the same thing over here as well now you can make this as big as you want it so I’ll just come over here and move and you’ll notice when you move things and move some all at one that’s the best part about this hierarchy and I’m just going to do it so that it’s all leveled nicely I think that looks good and then next up we have the head of HR once again I’ll move those connectors that looks good I might want this in the same place as that and then once again we’re going to just move this way over here just so we have enough room for all of these other things as well so right there I’ll move that connector so you do have to put some work into this but at the same time it’s looking great once again I’m just going to move all of this over yeah so I have enough room here and I’ll change this just like that maybe bring it down a little bit bring it down a little bit so we have some straight line here and then last but not least we’re going to move these make sure that they’re all looking great and there we go I’m just going to move the connectors and then we have a beautiful org chart and there we go look at that now of course I do want to make a connection if the connection moved that’s okay you can always go back to home turn on your connector and then create a connection from here to this one and now we have a beautiful org chart and there we go and take a moment try this out on your own you can use some fake names just remember you have to have the name the reports to column and then also the position we’re going to be talking about making a pivot diagram from an Excel file to do this the first thing we need to do is make sure that we have Excel information now what I always like to do is I like to make sure that I have my headers and then the information in here so all of my months going down my years type of ice cream sold who the sales person was what region they sold in how much they made in sales and then how much they sold in unit now once you have this you’re going to want to make sure to remember what this tab says right here it says it’s the pivot table Basics worksheet tab so I’m going to exit out of here open up my Vizio again and I’m going to go to file new and which template we’re going to use is the pivot diagram template if you don’t see it here in this list you can always search for it in the search for online template connection once you search for it and pull it up you’re going to click and click create now right away it’s going to pop up the data selector and it’s going to ask you where’s the data coming from and you can select it from either Excel or access or SharePoint or even SQL servers I’m using Excel so I’ll choose Excel and click next it’ll then ask me to select the workbook and I’ll click browse and I’ll choose that file that we use we’re in and I’ll click open it’ll then ask me when I click next what worksheet or range do I want to use I’m going to select that pivot table Basics worksheet that I was creating and it’s going to ask you if the first row of the data contains column headers mine did so I’m going to make sure to make that check marked we’ll then click next I want to include everything but you could choose whatever columns and rows you want and then click next once it’s successfully imported I could click finished and now I have all my information here Now by default right now what it’s doing if I zoom in here it’s just giving me the total for the year I don’t want that I want to see how much should I make in total sales so I’ll deselect this and yourself and it shows me we made about 1 million in sales 1.5 the next thing I’m going to do is start to add some layers here so I see that we made 1.5 billion but how much should each sales rep contribute to this number so I can just click on sales and now I can see the sales person Bishop made 531 pull them made 450 and Watson 8575. if I want to know how much should they make per region they sold in I can click on region and then it’s going to add the region for Bishop Central Northwest for Poland Central Northwest and for Watson Central Northwest the last thing I may want to see here is a breakdown of what type of ice cream they sold in each region if I can click on type and there we go for the central region we sold frozen yogurt ice cream and tasty treats for the north we sold frozen yogurt ice cream only and for the West we sold frozen yogurt ice cream popsicles and tasty treats and if I zoom out of this you’ll see we now have this beautiful chart where it gives us a breakdown by the total sales Bishop’s total sales when he made per region and then what he sold in each region we can also change that from sales to unit and then it adds the units on here as well so if I zoom back in added that frozen yogurt we sold 29 000 units which gave us that forty four thousand dollars to take a moment create some sort of data set that has some Grid in there and then you can pull a pivot diagram let’s say that you want to delete something off of this pivot diagram for instance I don’t want the type of ice cream anymore I can always just go back over to type a little drop down select all and when I select all I can press delete on my keyboard and it gets rid of all those types after that I can realign everything by going over to a range in the Home tab going to a line and auto align everything then I can go to position in Auto space and also Auto align everything as well it all makes it look nice another thing that we can do here in our pivot diagram is make changes to our actual shapes here for instance for the region I could go over and change them all at one by clicking the drop down and editing the data graphics you can change to edit that item maybe I don’t want it to look like a heading 1 or maybe I want to choose a different color maybe I want it to be a time call out or a mobile column instead of having one you can do that or if you wanted to you can always just click on the central go over to the fill and then choose whatever color makes sense and there we go so take a moment have some fun with editing this and when we come back we’re going to talk about how we can actually share these diagrams to share a drawing with someone there’s two ways to do it we can either come to the top right corner here and click on share and when I click on share it’s going to give me two options I can either share this on the cloud using my book drive or I can share this in an email as a PDF or as an actual video drawing where they can open it up in their Vizio application the same thing to do this is by going to file share and you’ll see once again we can either share with OneDrive or an email we could send as an attachment or as a PDF I hope you got a lot out of this class thanks so much for being here and have a great day thanks for watching don’t forget we also offer live classes and office applications professional development and private training visit learnit.com for more details please remember to like And subscribe and let us know your thoughts in the comments thank you for choosing learn it [Music]
By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog
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The provided text is a transcript of a Microsoft Visio tutorial led by “Joe.” The tutorial guides users through Visio’s interface and fundamental features, demonstrating how to create various diagrams. It covers building a basic flowchart, including shapes, connections (dynamic and static), text annotations, and visual modifications like color changes. Furthermore, the session explains how to use callouts and grouping to enhance diagrams. Finally, it introduces methods for constructing organizational charts (manual, using templates, and with a wizard) and designing a simple floor plan, before concluding with an explanation of using containers to organize flowchart tasks into phases.
Date: October 26, 2023 Prepared For: Interested Learners Subject: Review of Microsoft Visio Introductory Course
Executive Summary:
This briefing document summarizes the key concepts and functionalities of Microsoft Visio as presented in the provided course transcript. The course aims to introduce users to Visio as a diagramming tool capable of creating simple and complex diagrams, vector graphics, organizational charts, floor plans, and pivot diagrams. The initial sessions focus on navigating the Visio interface, creating basic flowcharts, adding text and connections, customizing shapes, and utilizing features like callouts and grouping. Later sessions delve into creating organizational charts using manual methods, built-in templates, and the Organization Chart Wizard, as well as designing basic floor plans and leveraging containers for project timelines within flowcharts.
Main Themes and Important Ideas/Facts:
1. Introduction to Microsoft Visio:
2. Navigating the Visio Interface:
3. Creating Basic Flowcharts:
4. Adding Connections (Connectors):
5. Customizing Shapes and Connectors:
6. Adding Text to Connectors:
7. Utilizing Callouts:
8. Grouping Shapes:
9. Creating Organizational Charts:
10. Designing Floor Plans:
11. Utilizing Basic Flowchart Templates:
12. Using Containers in Flowcharts:
Quotes from Original Sources:
Conclusion:
The introductory Microsoft Visio course effectively covers the fundamental aspects of using the software for various diagramming purposes. Participants learn to navigate the interface, create and connect shapes in flowcharts, customize their diagrams visually, and leverage advanced features like callouts and grouping. The course also provides a comprehensive overview of creating organizational charts through different methods and introduces the basics of designing floor plans. Finally, the use of containers is presented as a valuable tool for project planning and visualization within flowcharts. This briefing document serves as a testament to the breadth and depth of the introductory material covered in the course.
1. What is Microsoft Visio and what can it be used for? Microsoft Visio is a diagramming tool that allows users to create a wide range of visuals, from simple to complex diagrams and vector graphics. It’s designed to help represent information in a structured and understandable format. Key uses include creating detailed organizational charts to visualize company hierarchy, developing floor plans for office spaces or homes, and constructing pivot diagrams to analyze business data. Additionally, Visio is excellent for illustrating processes through flowcharts, helping to map out workflows and decision-making steps for various business needs.
2. How do I get started with a new diagram in Visio? When you first open Microsoft Visio, you will land on an opening page that displays various templates. You can either select one of the pre-designed templates or start with a basic diagram. To explore more template options, click on “More Templates” located on the right side of the opening page. This will show you the full range of diagram types Visio offers. You can also search for recently accessed files from this page. To begin a new, blank diagram, select “Basic Diagram.” Upon doing so, you’ll be prompted to choose a measurement system, either metric or U.S. units, before clicking “Create” to enter the Visio interface.
3. Can you explain the basic interface elements of Visio? The Visio interface, similar to other Microsoft Office applications, features a ribbon at the top. The ribbon is organized into tabs (e.g., File, Home, Insert, Design), and within each tab, commands are grouped logically (e.g., Font, Shape Styles, Arrange). On the side of the interface, you’ll find stencils, which are collections of shapes categorized by type, such as basic shapes, arrow shapes, decorative shapes, and specific diagramming elements like flowchart shapes. You can browse and add more stencils by clicking “More Shapes.” To use a shape, simply click and drag it from a stencil onto your drawing page. Once placed, you can manipulate its size using the sizing dots.
4. What are the different types of connectors in Visio and how do I use them to show flow in a diagram? Visio offers two main types of connectors: dynamic and static. To use them, you first need to switch from the default “Pointer Tool” to the “Connector Tool” located under the “Home” tab.
To create a connection, select the Connector Tool, then click and drag from one shape to another. For a dynamic connection, click anywhere on the first shape and drag to anywhere on the second shape. For a static connection, click on a specific connection point on the first shape and drag to a specific connection point on the second shape. After drawing connectors, you’ll typically switch back to the Pointer Tool to manipulate shapes.
5. How can I customize the appearance of shapes and connectors in Visio? Visio provides extensive options for customizing the visual style of your diagrams. To modify shapes, select one or more shapes, and then you can use the formatting tools available under the “Home” tab. This includes changing the fill color and outline of shapes using the “Shape Styles” group, as well as altering font properties like size and color in the “Font” group. For consistent formatting across multiple shapes, you can use the “Format Painter” tool. Select a shape with the desired formatting, click the Format Painter (single click for one-time use, double click to apply to multiple shapes), and then click on the shapes you want to format. Similarly, you can customize connectors by selecting them (you can select multiple connectors by holding down the Ctrl key) and then changing their line color and style, typically found in the “Shape Styles” or “Line” options under the “Home” or “Format” tab.
6. What are callouts in Visio and how can they be used to add more information to a diagram? Callouts in Visio are text boxes linked to a specific point on a shape, used to provide additional context or annotations. To insert a callout, select the shape you want to add a note to, go to the “Insert” tab, and in the “Diagram Parts” group, click on “Callout.” You can choose from various callout styles, such as text boxes, cloud shapes, or speech bubbles. Once you select a style, a callout will appear, connected to the selected shape by a line. You can then type your additional information into the callout. The connection ensures that the callout stays associated with the shape even if you move it. Callouts are useful for explaining specific parts of a process, noting details about an element in a floor plan, or adding comments to an organizational chart.
7. How can I group shapes in Visio, and why would I want to do that? Grouping shapes in Visio allows you to treat multiple individual shapes as a single unit. This is useful for several reasons, such as moving a set of related shapes together without disrupting their arrangement or the connecting lines, resizing them proportionally, or copying and pasting them as one object into other documents or presentations (like PowerPoint). To group shapes, you can select the desired shapes in a few ways: click and drag a selection box around them, or select the first shape and then hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on additional shapes. Once the shapes are selected, go to the “Home” tab, find the “Arrange” command group, click on the “Group” dropdown, and choose “Group.” The selected shapes will now be combined into a single movable object. To ungroup them later, select the grouped object, go back to the “Arrange” group, and choose “Ungroup.”
8. What are containers in Visio, and how can they help organize a flowchart? Containers in Visio are visual boundaries that you can apply to a set of shapes to group them thematically or by phase in a process. They help to organize and structure your diagrams, making them easier to understand and manage. To use containers, first select the shapes you want to include in a container (you can select multiple shapes and their connectors). Then, go to the “Insert” tab and in the “Containers” group, choose a container style from the gallery. Visio will then draw a container around the selected shapes. You can resize and reposition the container as needed, and the shapes within it will move with the container. You can also add a title to the container to indicate the phase, department, or category of the tasks or elements it encloses. Containers are particularly useful in flowcharts for visually separating different stages of a process, such as phases in a project timeline.
Microsoft Visio is a diagramming tool used to create simple and complex diagrams as well as vector graphics. According to the source, it enables users to create detailed organizational charts, floor plans, and pivot diagrams according to their business needs. The course outlined in the source aims to cover the basics of creating these different diagrams.
When you first open Visio, you are presented with an opening page displaying various templates from which you can start, or you can begin with basic diagrams. There is also an option to access more templates and search for recently used files. To create a basic diagram, you click on the ‘basic diagram’ option, and the program will first ask you to choose a measurement system (metric or U.S. units).
The Visio interface, like other Microsoft products, features a ribbon at the top, which is organized into tabs containing command groups and individual commands. On the side, you will find different stencils containing various shapes, such as basic shapes, arrow shapes, and decorative shapes. You can add more stencils, including ones for flowcharts, graph and math, and even decorative shapes. You can select multiple stencils to work with simultaneously.
To use a shape, you simply click and drag it from a stencil onto the drawing page. Once a shape is on the page, you can manipulate its size by clicking and dragging the sizing dots. To add text to a shape, you just need to start typing while the shape is selected. You can then format the text using the options available in the Home tab, such as changing the font and size. Visio also provides a duplicate function, accessible via the Ctrl+D keyboard shortcut, which allows you to quickly create copies of selected shapes without having to resize or reformat them.
The source highlights the creation of flowcharts, demonstrating the use of universal shapes like rectangles for processes and diamonds for decisions. To connect these shapes and illustrate a workflow, Visio offers connectors. There are two types of connections: dynamic and static. A dynamic connection links entire shapes, and the connection point will automatically adjust as you move the shapes. A static connection glues specific connection points on shapes together, ensuring the connection remains between those points regardless of shape movement. You can switch to the connector tool (located under the Home tab) to draw these connections. After creating connections, you can switch back to the pointer tool to manipulate shapes.
To enhance the visual appeal and clarity of diagrams, Visio allows you to modify shape colors and outlines via the Home tab and the Shape Styles options. The format painter tool can be used to quickly copy formatting from one shape to another. You can also change the color of the connector lines by selecting them (holding Ctrl to select multiple) and using the line color options. The text tool, also found in the Home tab, enables you to add text to connectors, which is useful for labeling different paths in a flowchart (e.g., “yes” or “no” branches from a decision). You can move the added text using the pointer tool.
Visio also offers callouts, which are useful for adding more information to specific processes or shapes. These can be inserted via the Insert tab under ‘Diagram Part’. Callouts remain connected to the shape they are associated with, even if the shape is moved. For managing larger diagrams, you can group shapes together using Ctrl+A to select all elements or by holding the Ctrl key to select specific shapes, and then using the ‘Group’ option in the Arrange command group under the Home tab. Grouping allows you to move multiple elements as a single unit.
The source details three methods for creating organizational charts:
For designing floor plans, you can access relevant templates under File > New > Floor Plan. These templates provide stencils specific to floor plan creation, such as wall shell and structure, garden accessories, furniture, and electrical components. You can drag and drop these shapes onto the drawing page to design layouts, and some shapes, like room outlines, allow you to specify dimensions and calculate square footage. You can also search for specific items like stoves if they are not immediately visible in the stencils.
When creating flowcharts from the ‘Basic Flowchart’ template (File > New > Basic Flowchart), you start with pre-selected basic flowchart shapes. This template also provides quick access arrows that appear when you hover over a shape, allowing you to quickly add connected process, decision, sub-process, or end shapes using dynamic connections.
Finally, Visio allows for the use of containers to organize tasks or processes within a diagram according to a timeline or phases. To use containers, you first select the shapes and connectors you want to include in a container, then go to the Insert tab and choose ‘Container’. You can then select a container style and label it (e.g., “Phase One”). Containers help to visually group related elements in a diagram.
Creating diagrams in Microsoft Visio is a central function of the software, allowing users to visualize various concepts and processes. The sources highlight several key aspects of diagram creation within Visio, which can be broken down into the following areas:
In summary, Microsoft Visio offers a comprehensive set of tools and templates for creating a wide variety of diagrams. The process generally involves selecting a starting point (template or basic diagram), utilizing stencils to add shapes, connecting these shapes to represent relationships or flow, and then enhancing the diagram’s appearance and organization using formatting options, text tools, callouts, grouping, and containers. The specific steps and tools used may vary depending on the type of diagram being created.
Based on the sources, flowcharts are a type of diagram used to visualize processes. They are built using a set of universal shapes that represent different steps or elements within a process, connected by arrows indicating the flow of activities.
Here are some of the basics of flowchart creation discussed in the sources:
In essence, a flowchart uses a standardized set of symbols connected by arrows to clearly illustrate the steps, decisions, and flow of a process. Visio provides the necessary shapes, connection tools, and formatting options to easily create and customize these diagrams. The ‘Basic Flowchart’ template is a convenient starting point with pre-selected stencils and helpful features for quickly building a flowchart.
Based on the sources, an organizational chart is a diagram that visually represents the structure of an organization, showing the relationships and hierarchy between different positions and departments. Microsoft Visio offers several ways to create organizational charts, catering to different needs and levels of complexity.
The sources detail three primary methods for building organizational charts in Visio:
Once an organizational chart is created using any of these methods, you can further customize its appearance by changing shape colors and outlines, connector styles, and adding other visual elements. The choice of method depends on the size and complexity of the organization, the availability of existing data, and the level of customization required.
Based on the sources, designing a floor plan in Microsoft Visio involves utilizing specific templates and stencils tailored for architectural and interior layouts. Visio provides a range of tools to create both basic and more detailed floor plans.
Here’s a breakdown of floor plan design as discussed in the sources:
In summary, Visio provides a user-friendly interface with dedicated templates and stencils to facilitate the creation of floor plans. You can start with basic room shapes, adjust their size, and then populate the space with furniture, fixtures, and other relevant elements by dragging and dropping from the provided stencils or by using the search functionality. The process allows for both precise dimensioning and quick conceptual layouts.
hello everyone and welcome my name is Joe I’m going to be facilitating this course for you today and today we’re going to be talking about Microsoft physio now Microsoft Visio is a diagramming tool to create simple as well as complex diagrams and vector graphics it enables you to create detailed organizational charts floor plans and pivot diagrams according to your business needs in today’s course we’re going to take a look at some of the basics on grading those different diagrams for you when you first open up Vizio it’s going to bring you to this opening page this is where we’ll see different templates and where we can also start some basic diagrams now if you want to access more templates you can always go over to the more templates over here on the right side give it a click you’ll see all the different types but that video has to offer not only that but you can search for different files that you’ve been working on and see the most recent files you’ve been working on as well today what we’re going to do is we’re going to create a basic diagram so I’m going to make sure to click into my basic diagram now when you do this the first thing it’s going to ask you is what is the measurement system is it going to be a metric or unit in U.S and I’m going to use U.S units and click create but of course you can pick whichever one is applicable to you once I do this it enters me into this interface and just like anything Microsoft the first thing I see about is going to be my ribbon and inside of that ribbon you’ll see that we have our Tab and inside of those tabs we have our Command group and then of course our Command you also notice over here we have different stencils we have basic shape stencils Arrow shaped stencils decorative shaped stencils and you can even add or search for more stencils by clicking into more shapes and taking a look at different ones for instance I know I’m going to be working with a flowchart today I may want to grab instead of Arrow shaped I can instead grab my basic flowchart shape and you can select whichever ones you want and you can keep a list of them here as well you don’t only have to have one stencil at a time you can borrow from different ones maybe some graph and math shapes or even decorative shapes but I’m going to be utilizing basic foam chart tape today now to actually click and drag these over that will just be a click drag and then it will show up on the paper and right here we can start to manipulate the shape by clicking and dragging the sizing Dot and there we go to take a moment try that out for yourselves and when we come back we’re going to start to build out this flowchart and then we’ll also start to add text and connections to it as well so what we’re going to be building today is the process to open up our own coffee shop and what I’m thinking of doing is starting off with well opening a coffee shop now you’ll notice I utilize the start and end shape and all I had to do is once again click and drag it onto my page here now once you do that you’ll have your shape and then you can resize it using the sizing dock now if I wanted to write something in here the best part about it is all I need to do is start typing so if I start typing opening a coffee shop and then I click away you will now see that information inside of the shape of course you can manipulate that information as well if you haven’t highlighted you can just go up to the Home tab and inside of that Home tab this is where we can change our font options so I’m going to format it to be about 12.5 and I think that looks good now we can start to add more shapes to this and once again these are Universal shapes if everyone knows that it’s going to be a rectangle for process and a diamond for decision and you’ll start to learn these as well so I’m gonna start off with another process after this so I start off with the idea of opening a coffee cup and the first thing I’m going to need to do is I’m going to have to probably create a business plan now one of my favorite things about Vizio is that when you start to resize things once you already have a shape you can actually make them exactly the same length and width now I’m going to make mine a little crazier here there we go that looks good and it also has a lot of guidance now I’ll just start typing creating a business plan and I’ll make that font once again 12 points now I know I’m going to create another process and I could do the same thing where I click and drag the process shape over but there’s another little keyboard shortcut that’s going to make you more efficient if you just click on this shape and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl D that equals duplication so once we do that Ctrl d I can now have a duplicate where I don’t have to resize it or even change the font to 12 point all I need to do is double click and change what’s in there in the next process after creating a business plan is to apply for a bank loan now the next thing I can do after this is make a decision Point even though we’re opening a coffee shop up I may want to sell some food too maybe muffins or Donuts so what I can do is go over to decision and drag it over here and once again I’m going to just resize this the same size that’s my other one there we go now I can start typing do we want to sell food too question mark now if we decide we do want to sell food that’s going to be a little bit different we’re going to have to create an extra sub process here so I’m going to actually use the sub process shape because if we decide to create sell food we’re going to have to create a food menu and once again I’m just going to use my sizing guidance here there it is and we’ll say faith of food and now I can take this and once again I’m going to just update the 12 point now let’s say we don’t want to create a food menu we’re not going to sell food instead what we’ll do and we’ll just make this 12 point as well instead what we’re going to do is we’re going to skip this and we’re going to go to renting the location so it’s another process and I’m just going to duplicate Ctrl d and I’ll just change the text to rent location now after that I’m also thinking that I’m going to want to start to finalize some of the hiring contracts and since contracts are documents we can use the document shape so I’m going to click and drag that one right here as well and I’ll just size it once again and I love those guiding arrows they tell me when everything is all aligned and at the time I’m going to say finalize hiring contracts and I’ll just change that font to 12 point now the next two shapes I’m going to do are well higher a thermometer I’m going to use a process for this so I’ll just duplicate and I’ll just say higher store manager and then the last thing I’m going to do is end this entire workflow now to do this I’m just going to once again duplicate the start netting because it is the same thing I’ll just use Ctrl D again and now I’ll just put in Grand opening and there we go the only problem is there is no flow to the chef there’s no connection between each of these processes or each of these starts or ends so what we need to do is create a nice workflow by using what’s known as connectors take a moment to catch up on this and then when we come back I’m going to show you how we can use Dynamic and static connections and what the difference between both of those are so now that we have our shapes what we’re going to want to do next is create connections now there’s two types of connections we can create a dynamic connection and a static connection and the difference between both is that a dynamic connection allows us to create a connection by any of the points on our shapes and once we move our shapes it will update it as we move them a static connection glues the point to each other point so if I want to do a static connection I’m going to go by the point system and if I want to do a dynamic connection I’m going to go by shapes so I’m going to show you an example of this but first what we need to do is move from our pointer tool which is our default over to our connector tool which is right underneath so if I go over to the Home tab you’ll see under fold we have three tools the pointer tool the connector tool and the text tool so if I click over to the connector tool you’ll see that I can actually connect its entire shape to this entire shape and if I do that by clicking somewhere in the middle in the middle it creates my connector now when I go back to my pointer tool to take a look at this you’ll see it has an arrow pointing from the opening of the coffee shop to creating a business plan if I want to move this shape take a look what happens it actually will move the connection with it so when we are in the starting position it was going from the bottom of opening a coffee shop to the top of creating a business plan but when I move this it is now going from the top of the opening of the coffee shop to the left of creating a business plan and this is an example of the dynamic connection where if I move these it will automatically update the connection point now we’re not going to always want this because maybe I want opening a coffee shop never be after creating a business plan because if I switch them around like this well now it looks like a little weird right going from top to bottom still if I wanted to what I can do instead it’d create what’s known as a static connection so I’m just going to delete this by clicking on it and pressing delete on my keyboard now when I go to my connector instead of connecting it from the entire shape I can actually connect it from these four connection points and I’m going to connect it from the bottom of opening a coffee cup to the top point of creating a business this creates that glued connection which is known as the static connection now if I go back to my pointer tool to move this around you will notice no matter where I move it it will always make sure the connection is from the bottom of opening a coffee shop to the top of creating a business plan so for most of this I actually like it that way I like how it will stay stuck like that so if I wanted to stay stuck like that I’m going to create a static connection now for this example we’ll keep it on static connections I think that will be good but you can always choose which one’s going to be the beneficial one for you so we’re going to create the rest of our connections here we’re going to go back to connectors and I’m going to make a connection from creating a business plan the bottom point the top of applying for a bank loan the bottom of the applying for a bank loan I will go to the top of the self food team now from the right side of cell food too I’m going to go over to the left side of creating a food menu I do have to make another connection because if we decide not to sell food we’re going to have to skip this so I’m gonna have to make another connection from the right hand side here and it might take a moment to just have it really picked there we go and we’re going to go to the left side of from the location but if we do decide that we are going to sell food too we would do this first and then we would go from here to there now we’re going to create a connection from run location to finalizing the hiring we’re going to go from the left side or the right side of finalizing to the left side of hiring a store manager and we’re going to go to the bottom of hiring a store manager to the top of grand opening now that we have our connections it looks great but take a moment follow along with those connectors and when we come back I’m going to show you how we can start to manipulate these drawings to make this a little more colorful and a little more vibrant now that we have our connectors and we have our process going what we’re going to want to do next is modify the shape colors because I’m just looking at this and I just see the default colors that Microsoft created so if you want to change the colors you’re more than welcome to if you do like this design you can keep them as well but I want to change it and just make these different colors maybe different sizes anything that you like so the first thing I’m going to do is choose here and we will go over to the design tab here and you’ll see here we have different things that we can choose from and just by hovering over these things we get all these different colors here which is pretty amazing it looks great but what we can also do is we can change these shapes one by one because the minute that you select these shapes you can go to the home path and you can change the way that they look by just simply changing either the font formatting or you can go to shape Styles and you can change the way the shape is filled or even the outline of the shape so for instance for this one I do want to make it a green fill so I’m just going to do a nice green color here like that’s when that looks good and I also want no line so I’m gonna just do no line so it looks like this now I don’t want to have to do this all over again so you can use in the Home tab what’s known as the format painter right there and if you click on a shape click on format painter I can then just click on this one and it will copy that format and it just looks great now for all of my processes I’m going to make those let’s do a nice orange color so I’ll just fill I’ll use orange and I don’t want a line effect and now once again I’m just going to use my format painter and if you double click on format painter it stays on so I can just keep going now quickly get this done and then when you’re done with format painter you could just click again to take it off you also want to change the way that this looks I want this one to be a nice little gold color and once again I don’t want any border now for the finalizing of hiring contracts we’ll make that a nice dark color here and since we’re using a dark color we are going to want to change the font as well so we can actually see the font and we’ll change that to a point font and then last but not least blind now the last one I’m going to do here is our sub process and I’m going to change this to a nice blue color but when you do change it to a blue color you’ll see that the lines are hard to see so I’m going to change the line to actually a white color so that you can see that it’s a sub process and it’s different from a regular process I’ll also change the font here as well too and there we go we’ve added some color to this I just love the vibrant color right it doesn’t look as just blue as Microsoft made it originally if you wanted to also change the colors of our connectors you could click each one and hold down the control key to select more than one connector those damn selecting all of these connectors here and you can change the line color of that so whatever you like I’m going to change it to Black and there we go now the last thing I may want to do here is add some text right because as you can see right here we asked the question are we going to sell food too and it would be nice to see where this flow is going of course if we say no then it’s going to go right here to run location we’re going to skip this but if it is yes then it’s going to go to create food menu then print location so I do want to make sure I make that stand out and for the first time ever we’re going to use our text tool so in our home tab we’ve used the pointer tool which allows us to modify and shape our shapes we’ve used the connector tool which allows us to make connections between our shapes and now we’re going to use the text tool to add text to our connectors I’m going to click on text and you can place it wherever you want I usually like to zoom in on this because it could get a little crazy so I’m just going to use control in my mouse wheel to zoom in and I’ll put the text right here now once I click there you’ll notice that the text actually the text box move down here that’s okay we will snap it right here once we’re done writing what we want to write I’m just going to write the word yes and of course you have all the same formatting I can make this a little bigger if I wanted to I’ll make it 14 and I’m going to make it a do a black font and there we go now of course the more you click around you’ll see like do something like that right you’re gonna insert a text you could just click away but now if I want to move the TS to here we’re going to have to go grab our pointer tool again and now we can click and you’ll see that little yellow Dot and I can click and drag that down to here and there we go we have our yes now I’m going to put my no right below it so I’m going to go to text tool click right here and once again it pushes the text box that’s okay if it does that just write your text make your changes here I’m going to go once again with the 12 point and make it a black color here and now I’ll go to my pointer tool and I’m going to move this here and I love this the reason why I didn’t do an insert and then a text box is because if you enter text box it just goes over the line as you can see here using the text tool will allow for that little bit of space so it looks like it’s really part of this entire flow so now looking at this if I zoom out a little bit this is looking really nice selfie too if yes we’re going to go to create a food menu then we’re going to run the location then we’re going to continue with our process if we sell food when we decide no we’re going to skip all this and go straight to renting location so take a moment try this out on your own and when we come back we’re going to call and use some call outs which will be a lot of fun so we’ll do callouts and we’ll also do some grouping as well so that we can start to group these shapes if we ever want to move them what we’re going to be talking about next is how we can create callouts Now call outs are great to give more information to one of our processes so like for instance maybe I do want to open a coffee shop but I also want to figure out what the name of that coffee shop is going to be so I can click on opening the coffee shop and I can go to the insert tab and inside of the insert tab right here you’ll see diagram part and we have a couple different things we have our containers which we’re going to be talking about in a later section and then we also have our call out and then we know what our connectors are right so we’re going to be using our call out now when you click the little drop down you’ll see there’s a quite a few different just looks whether it’s a piece of text call out or a cloud call out bubbles anything you like whatever makes sense for you and I’m thinking that I just want to do a nice text call out and then there it is it’s actually connected so no matter where you want to move this it’s still going to be connected to that shape which is really nice I’m going to put it right here and we’re going to call this a cup of gold since well my name is Joe right how it works great for us at Club code and I’m just going to make that a little bigger text there and I’m going to use Ctrl shift greater than and those are fun little keyboard shortcuts Ctrl shift less than or greater than two effective and then I’ll make this a little bigger here just like that and I think that looks great perfect so now we have a quick little shout out opening in coffee shop it’s called the cup of Joe’s and there we go now you can add other shout outs as well no matter where you want to go if I want to do print location maybe do a nice little call out there just a thought I’m thinking maybe I want to put this location and by the way you can turn this if you want you can taste the shape if you wanted to anyway you want thought through this and I’m just going to move this over here and then you’ll see it switches sides and I’m going to say that the thought on this one will be let’s do maybe I want to put it in San Francisco there we go and those little those little columns just work really well so take a moment try that out on your own and when we come back we’re going to talk about how we can start to group shapes together so we can move them without messing up our flow you’ll notice that when you move one of your shapes it also changes the connector and that’s because we made our static connections and we want to be able to move things without affecting the flow but the problem is what happens if I just want to move all this over maybe I want to create more spacing between this column in this column in this column well to do this you can group all of these shapes together move it as one so that you don’t always have to just move one single piece at a time and to do this there’s a couple of different ways we can use Ctrl a to select all of them like I just did here and that really selects every single piece of content on this page right now or if I wanted to just do it in sections I can just hold the Ctrl key down and select one thing at a time and you’ll see it is selecting it but the control a is going to be a lot easier for this example so I’m just going to use Ctrl a and now that I’m here in control a what I want to do is go to the Home tab and inside of my Home tab this is where you’ll see the arrange command group and this is where we can access our group setting now when I click on that drop down I’m going to group this together and now it’s all one piece so if I ever have to move this I could just click it and now it’s all one piece that I’m moving which is really nice and there we go and this will be a lot more helpful when you want to put it into let’s say like a presentation so if I decide to copy this into let’s say a PowerPoint now when I use control copy right Ctrl C I can then just Ctrl V into a PowerPoint I’ll show you what that looks like and we’ll just put it in a blank slide here and then we can use Ctrl V and look how nice that looks add some little coloration here and we’re good to go try that out on your own and when we come back we’re actually going to switch gears we’re going to name our project and then we will move on to building an organizational chart before we get into building organizational charts the first thing I’m going to want to do is rename my page so I’m going to come down here to page one and I’m just going to double click and we’re going to name it I’m going to call my business plan now the next thing we can do is click this little plus icon to add another page and I’m going to just click on that now we have a second page here and I’m going to show you three ways to build an organizational chart the first way is just manually building one the second way is using one of the starter diagrams that Vizio has provided and the Third Way is by using the Vizio chart wizard so if I want to build this organizational chart I can just go for my basic flow chart shapes here I can move up and we should have our basic shapes as well and you can just use any shape you want there’s no right or wrong here for this so I’m going to just use a rectangle I’ll Center that make it a little bigger just like that and then I can just start typing in I’ll be the CEO of this company the CEO and you can add your modifications to it maybe I want to make this a lighter blue maybe I don’t want any lines on this I think that looks good now I can add another rectangle one right here and for this one I’m going to put John Doe and John Doe will be my CFO and once again I can just make this any way I want that looks good I’m going to move it a little over here just like that and I’ll just change it to that looks great just like this and maybe no order now I don’t want to have to do this again so I’m just going to use Ctrl D for duplicate and there we go I may want to space this a little better and I think that looks pretty good and then I’ll just do Jane Doe and Jane Doe will be my co now I’ll just make my connections I’ll use my connector from the bottom to the top of that shape and then from the bottom to the top of the shape and then if you wanted to you can re -color these to whatever you like and that’s it there we go we have just made a quick little organizational chart and of course we can add more people here we can add more shapes we can change the shapes maybe we want to add circles for our other employees we’ll do employee foreign and then we can just do a duplication duplication duplication just like that that looks good and I love those lines those lines are always amazing call this employee two and play three and employee four and now all we have to do is set up our connectors and I’ll just go back to the connector just like that and just like that remember I know that part can be a little hard getting it at the same time but no worries if you go a little bit to the top here it should work pretty well there we go and then once again I might just change the connection color and I’ll just change those that and now we have a fun little organizational chart take a moment try this out on your own and when we come back I’m going to show you how we can create an organizational chart by using the starter diagrams so even though creating an organizational chart manually is great and we can do that it’s going to take you a lot more time because we have to build out the shapes and the connectors but Vizio actually has templates for organization charts so what we’re going to do is we’re going to go over to the file tab and click new and here is where you’ll see the organization part template now all we have to do is click on that template and you’ll see here that it gives us a couple of different options we have organization chart corporate charts Department charts all different types so you’re going to pick whichever one makes sense I’ll use this department chart for example and I’m going to click on create and once I do that it’s going to create a new drawing for me I’ll just put this drawing down and I’ll take a look at this one first so we see here that it also gives us a little bit of a guide it says listen you can use data from sources such as Excel or exchange to create more complex org charts on the org chart tap select import to instantly create team drag employee shapes onto their manager shapes and then feeling crowded use the spacing option on the org chart tab to create better spacing once you’re finished with these tips we can select pin and press delete so I can just click on this and press delete so look at this they set it up pretty nice now all I need to do is add some fun pictures and I can go in here and just change the name and I’ll put my name then we can put in someone else’s name and there we go and I just love the design but not only that when you use a template like this you also see here that we have new organizational chart shapes that we can use and not only this but up top we now have a tab for the or part so if I click into it you’ll see here that we can change any of these so if I decide that I want a different design there it goes pretty awesome so we have here all different types of designs that we can use not only that but what we can also do is we can read layout or we can relayer this in different ways horizontally vertically side by side we can do a best fit page so that everything fits on the page we can change or enter pictures we can import the data really amazing so with that said take a moment try it out for yourselves and when we come back we’re then going to talk about utilizing the chart wizard so even though this is a great way to create an org chart there’s one more way that I want to show you and it’s by using the organization chart wizard now once again we’re going to go over to file and click on new and we’re going to use the organization chart again but this time instead of selecting one of these three we’re going to select this one right here the organization chart wizard and we’re going to click create the first thing it’s going to do is pop up this dialog box it’s going to say okay I want to create my organizational chart from information that’s already stored in a file or database or I want to enter using the wizard now we will be talking about this option A little later in the lesson for now we’re just going to use the information that I enter using the wizard and I’ll click next that was going to ask me to choose the type of file you want to enter your data into you can choose the limited text or Excel if your fund of excel you’re more than welcome to use Excel and then you can choose to name the file and I’ll just call this practice Vizio works now I’m going to click next I’ll click next again and then it’s going to take a moment it’s going to open up right here a sample data in Excel and I’ll give you some little samples and you’ll see here Joe Jane and John pretty cool since we’ve been using those examples to begin with now you’ll see here that we have name who the person reports to the title the department and the telephone number and they even give you a little note on each of these which is really nice so for the first one I’m going to put my name and I report to no one because I’m CEO and we’ll just keep the same telephone number then we have Jane Doe who reports to me right we want to make sure these are identical here and here that there is a connector that’s created and then of course undo as well and John Doe will report to me and then we can start to create a couple other people as well we’ll call this the marketing department we’ll say marketing and we will just say employee you know you could put whatever you want foreign we’ll do advertising agent and then we’ll put a couple of people I’ll use my friend Carly you’re amazing at marketing and Carly reports to we’ll say Jane Doe and we’ll have one more person as well in marketing and we’ll just make up the phone number okay it’s like that and we’ll do my friend Keller’s here and Taylor will report to Carly you know what yeah that looks good let’s do Carly because Carly’s gonna be the senior advertising agent and I think this looks good just for a little practice now all we have to do is click save close this out now it’s going to say you can also import pictures from your computer of those people now I’m going to say that I don’t want to include pictures now if you do have pictures of each employee you can put that file in there I’m just going to say no because I don’t have any of those and I’ll click next I will say your org data may contain too many in place if not on one page what do you want to do if that’s the case do you want to specify how much of the organization is displayed on each page or do you want the wizard to automatically break into pieces across different pages and I’m like yeah I think that looks good name at the top of the page should be the top executive and we can also create hyperlink for the employees and synchronize them through across the pages if it is breaking other pages once I click finish there it is looking great there we go and I just love the way this looks now this connector you can move this connector it looks like it is a static connection so you’re more than welcome to move this look amazing so we’ve gone through three different ways to create organization charts manually by using Vizio starter diagrams and also by using this chart wizard when we come back we’re going to switch gears and we’re going to get into designing a floor plan with Vizio what we’re going to be talking about next is designing a floor plan and we’re just going to make a very basic floor plan today so I’m going to open up a new file again file new and we’re going to click over by the template and we’re going to access the floor plan right here now once we do this and we open it up we’ll have all these different types of tablets whether you want to do a home plan or an office layout or just say normalized floor plan and for today Let’s do let’s have some fun with this let’s do a whole plan this would be a lot of fun and we’ll click create now let’s say that we want to create a new I don’t know maybe a new kitchen space right we’re remodeling our kitchen you’ll see here over on the shape side of things that we have our wall shell and structure where we can create exterior walls or rooms or start Windows in there we can also go to Garden accessories you’ll see we have brick Pathways all these different things to allow us to start to build this out Furniture as well if we keep scrolling up we have electrical tell us where our dockets are our wall lights are and if we keep going we have some trying tools as well so we have everything we need to start to really draw this out now the first thing I’m going to start off with is wall gel and structure and we’re going to build out the room that’s it we’re just designing a room so I’ll click and drag this right on here and I’m going to make it as big as I think the room’s going to be and then I’ll zoom in a little I think this room will be about for the kitchen we’ll say 40 by 32. so now that we have this we’re going to start to put in some of the spacing so that we know the square footage and of course it says office by default if I’ll right click and you’re more than welcome to go into the properties and you can change that from office to kitchen or whatever it’s going to be you can even put space hiding you can do the base elevation and other calculations as well for the shape data but we’ll talk about shape data in another lesson now I can click ok and I can start to spread this spacing out just like that and now we have our kitchen face it’s going to be 1282 square feet nice size kitchen for us so now I can start to put in some of the information like maybe I want to put in some furniture maybe some cabinets so I’ll scroll up a little bit we have furniture we have Bath and Kitchen plans so we have the cabinets the sink everything we need we have other Furniture as well I’ll go into cabinets and let’s say I do want to put a cabinet let’s do let’s do one of these and you can have so much fun with this whatever you want to do there’s no right or wrongs here so maybe I just want a cabinet right over here there we go now if you weren’t worried about the actual like size of this and you weren’t getting the specific you could just do a quick layout design where you don’t have to worry about this thing like of course this cabinet is pretty big which I wouldn’t have a cabinet this big but you’re more than welcome to choose any way you want now I’m also going to put another cabinet I have one here I may want to put another one over here maybe a bigger one actually a little bigger there we go and I’ll just make sure that everything dies right and you can do this too there’s once again no right or wrongs here and I’m thinking maybe in between these two cabinets there’s going to be some sort of let’s say probably a sink right now I’m gonna go over to my kitchen plans so you can go over to Bath and Kitchen and I’m going to put a sink in there let’s do a two sink there dual things just like that now of course I do want to put in the information like the stove things like that and if you’re trying to look for it and you’re like yeah I don’t see the stove I can’t find these things of course you’re more than welcome to start to search for them as well so you could go to search and you can put in the stove and then you’ll see there’s a stove here so really nice that we have those options we’re going to make that stove a little bigger there that looks good there we go now I’m going to continue to design this and once again just feel free to put whatever you like in here there’s no right or wrong you can put whatever you like I might want to do a table so I’m just going to search for table and let’s do a well this table Boat table just like that I might want to turn it as well which table there and there we go we’re just really starting to design this I’m going to add some plants in there too why not let’s see if there’s any plants maybe I have a palm plant right over here make it a little bigger and you can really find this out so take a moment try this out for yourselves have some fun with this really get into designing it just think maybe who knows maybe somebody out there is really trying to redesign a kitchen this is going to help you out to know exactly where the placement is what your idea is getting it from your head to Vizio on paper physio is really great about giving us tools to effectively create our flowcharts and what we’re going to be doing next is creating a flowchart based off of a basic flowchart template now when I go into file new instead of using a basic diagram I’m actually going to use basic flowchart the reason I like this is because it sets us up with the stencils that we need right away so when I click on it it’s going to open up and say well do you want to use one of these that we’ve created or do you want to build one from scratch and that’s what I’m going to do I’m going to build a basic flow chart for Scratch and click create now right off the bat I have my basic flowchart shapes and this is great and I can now take my start and end and bring it right here now I can just resize it and we’ll do the same example as we did before we’ll say that the first thing we want to do is open up we can say this time of pizza shop we’ll make it a little different so I’ll say I’ll click into it open a pizza now once we do this you may notice something when we hover over we get these little arrows here and these arrows what they allow us to do is quickly choose whether we want to use a process a decision a sub process or the end of a flowchart so when I click on process it’s just a quick way for me to continue to build this down the one thing I want to know though is do you think it’s going to be a dynamic connection or a static connection well if we move this around we can see that it’s actually a dynamic connection so if you don’t mind that you’re more than welcome to change it if you do but if you don’t mind we could just leave it so I don’t mind in this case I’m just going to resize my things here perfect get a little bigger that looks good and then for this next one I’ll just say create business plan now for the next one once again I can use the little quick access I’m going to click here again and for this one I’ll say apply for bank loan and I’ll just resize this as well and then the next one I’m going to do is the decision and I’ll resize it and for this one the decision on this could be do we also want to sell let’s see Pizza and maybe dessert too right maybe we want to sell dessert too it’s like that next up we’re going to make a sub process and I’ll just put that one right up here and that sub process is going to be just get that sizing right create or decide on flavors we’ll say or decide on desserts menu that sounds good I’m going to click another one and let’s do a process and this one’s going to be rent location and then another one but this time I only have the access to the process the decision the top process in the end I actually don’t have access to the document so this one I will have to drag here and resize and then form that connector and I’ll say this one is finalize hiring contracts and then I’ll create that connection and for this one I’ll just keep it the same Dynamic just like the rest of them and there we go now I do need to make another one here because if we decide to go to location I do need to sell dessert to run location if we decide not to so I’ll go to connector and I’ll make another connection here as well the last thing that I want here is another process and this process is going to be hire a store manager and then last but not least the end process which will be open store and I’ll make that one the same price as the other one and there we go we have our process now of course once again you’re more than welcome to start to add in these coloration shape modifications like we did before so if you did want to change the shapes you can hold the control key and select both the start and end and fill that shape with that green color we liked we can select all of the process there we go and we can do a orange color I think we did a gold color for this one the darker color for this one and we also did the text we changed the text as well and then we did a blue color for this one and we made sure to put the lines in as well and change to text and there we go looks great now once we have this the next thing we’re going to talk about when we come back is being able to utilize containers containers can help us to map out when we’re going to get these different tasks done so that we can open up this pizza shop so take a moment create this and then when we come back we’ll put them in containers now that we have this set up we may want to put this in some sort of timeline whether that would be phases or quarters we can apply what’s known as containers to allow us to contain these tasks or these processes in each container pertaining to a certain time so the first thing I’m going to do here is just move these a little bit over and change where they are on our page here there we go just like that and now I’m going to start to activate our containers by going over to the insert Tab and you’ll see here container now before you click on container we do have to select what we want in each container for the first container I’m going to select this shape along with the connector the next one the connector the next one the connector and the next one now all of these and you can include these as well are going to be in that first container now that I have been selected I can go to container and I can choose which one makes more sense for me and I’m thinking I’m going to use I like this one then I can just click on the heading and I can type whatever I like let’s say that these four tasks are going to take place in phase one now I can do the same thing for the other ones as well the sign on the dessert menu hold the control key click run location while holding the control key click on the connector and finalize hiring contract and click on the connector once again go to enter container and choose which one you like and then I’ll just rename this phase two now you can move these containers as well a little bit further down so that they are matching as close as possible to the other one perfect and then I can make this a little more just like that I think that looks great now the next thing we’re going to do is phase three once again I’m going to just click hold the Ctrl key click on the connector and click again while holding the control key and then go to insert container and we’ll put a third one in and I may made that a little bigger just like this one and make that a little smaller here maybe move it down a little as well and there we go now I’ll just name this one phase three and now what we have here is our three phases our flow chart and when they’re gonna happen so take a moment try this out for yourselves and when we come back we’ll finish up all right thank you all so much for being here as you can see Vizio is an amazing tool to visualize your ideas and get them on paper and then be able to really create these projects or create these business plans or create these floor plans or whatever you’re trying to create this is a great way to do it with that said thank you all so much for being here stay safe stay healthy and I’ll see you all next time thanks for watching don’t forget we also offer live classes and office applications professional development and private training visit learnit.com for more details please remember to like And subscribe and let us know your thoughts in the comments thank you for choosing learn it [Music]
By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog
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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.
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:
2. Managing Project Calendars and Options:
3. Automatic vs. Manually Scheduled Tasks:
4. Utilizing Milestones:
5. Organizing Projects with Summary Tasks and Subtasks:
6. Deleting Tasks, Subtasks, and Summary Tasks:
7. Utilizing Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Codes:
8. Working with Subprojects and Master Projects:
9. Considerations for Project Consolidation and Resource Sharing:
10. Setting Up Recurring Tasks:
11. Creating and Using Custom Fields:
12. Managing Resource Costs and Rates:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.”
The core difference between Automatically Scheduled and Manually Scheduled tasks lies in how Microsoft Project calculates their dates and durations.
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).
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.
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:
After defining the WBS code structure, you’ll typically insert the “WBS” column into your project view to see the generated codes.
Microsoft Project offers several features for managing and tracking project costs:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
[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
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